Book Review: Review Article: Slavery in the Western Hemisphere and South Africa: Legacy of European Colonialism: Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labor on the Dutch Frontier, Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, Breaking the Chains: Labour in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s

1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-86
Author(s):  
Kwame Nantambu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
European Colonialism

Humanitarianism, Human Rights and Biopolitics in the British Empire, 1890–1902

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Clark
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Personal Rights

The 1890s were a key time for debates about imperial humanitarianism and human rights in India and South Africa. This article first argues that claims of humanitarianism can be understood as biopolitics when they involved the management and disciplining of populations. This article examines the historiography that analyses British efforts to contain the Bombay plague in 1897 and the Boer War concentration camps as forms of discipline extending control over colonized subjects. Secondly, human rights language could be used to oppose biopolitical management. While scholars have criticized liberal human rights language for its universalism, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberals did not believe that rights were universal; they had to be earned. It was radical activists who drew on notions of universal rights to oppose imperial intervention and criticize the camps in India and South Africa. These activists included two groups: the Personal Rights Association and the Humanitarian League; and the individuals Josephine Butler, Sol Plaatje, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, and Bal Gandadhar Tilak. However, these critics also debated amongst themselves how far human rights should extend.

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