“The Lost Province”: Neglect and Governance in Colonial Ogoja

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 327-345
Author(s):  
John Manton
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Clayey Soils ◽  
Wet Season ◽  
Southeastern Nigeria ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
And Migration

The notion that the colonial entity administered as Ogoja Province represented a Nigerian form of “the frontier” persisted right through the period of British rule in Nigeria. In a late colonial geography, Ogoja and eastern Calabar are referred to as the “pioneer fringe.” Marginalized by the economic geography of colonialism, as a result of its relatively low population density, in contrast to much of southeastern Nigeria, and by virtue of its terrain, crossed by unforded rivers and characterized by heavy, clayey soils which restricted wet-season travel, it could still be characterized in the 1940s as a “traceless praierie [sic]” by one of its most seasoned European observers, and as “the Lost Province” in common colonial parlance. Scholarly exploration has done little to address this marginalization, a fact both pivotal in the administration and development of Ogoja Province and restrictive of our attempts to understand and describe these administrative processes. The dynamics of community, trade, and migration in Ogoja, and the systematic misunderstandings to which these dynamics were subject, both constitute historical processes which call for scrutiny, and help shape development and welfare projects undertaken in the later colonial period and in post-independence Nigeria. This study investigates the problematic interaction of ethnography and administration at the colonial margin, and the implications of this both for the historical study of Ogoja and its hinterland and for economic and social development planning in the area.

Prisons and Prison life in Princely State: A Historical Study of Cooch Behar

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-156
Author(s):  
Ram Krishna Biswas
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Prison Life ◽  
Princely State

The present paper deals with the issue of prisons and their life in the Princely State of Cooch Behar. Cooch Behar was princely state during colonial period in India. With the advent of colonial power in India; the princely state had indirect relations with British power. Due to the contact with colonial power, the indigenous native rule in India became modified and codification of law and orders, regulations were introduced in the line of British pattern. The primitive systems of jails and prisons confinement were revised accordance with the new light of reformation, and in India especially in the princely rule modified. However, in this content the main aim is to find out the condition of the prisoners in the jails and police custody under the rule of Princely State.

scholarly journals When Borders Migrate: Reconstructing the Category of ‘International Migrant’

Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Gorodzeisky ◽  
Inna Leykin
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
International Borders ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Cross National

Using the Baltic states as an empirical example of a wider social problem of categorization and naming, this article explores the statistical categories of ‘international migrant/foreign-born’ population used in three major cross-national data sources (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Eurostat and The World Bank Indicators (WBI)). We argue that these seemingly politically neutral categories ignore historical processes of state formation and migration, and privilege the current ethnonational definition of the state. We demonstrate how, in regions with recent geopolitical changes, the international migrant category’s spatial and temporal constraints produce distorted population parameters, by marking those who have never crossed sovereign states’ borders as international migrants. In certain social contexts, applying the international migrant category to those who have never crossed international borders shapes and legitimizes restrictive citizenship policies and new forms of social exclusion. We further argue that, when uncritically adopting this category, transnational institutions assert territorial imaginaries embedded in ethnonational political discourses and legitimize exclusionary citizenship policies.

The Presence of Coloniality in Central American-American Fictions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oriel María Siu
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Central American ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Social Classification ◽  
Social Domination ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The 19Th Century

The Spanish invasion of 1492 was the first marker and constitutive element of coloniality. The presence of coloniality is critical for the explication and reflection on racialized and subalternized relations of dominance/subordination in the Americas and all other places affected by European colonization. In 1992, Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano introduced the category of coloniality of power, further developed in 2000 by Walter Mignolo in his work Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality not only constituted a pattern of continual production of racialized identities, and an unequal hierarchy whereby European identities and knowledge were considered superior to all others in what amounted to a caste system; it also generated mechanisms of social domination that preserved this social classification into the present. Coloniality is not limited to the colonial period, which ended for most of Latin America in the first quarter of the 19th century. Despite political independences from Spain and Portugal, the pattern articulated by Quijano continues to our day, structuring processes of racialization, subalternization, and knowledge production. This is the reason Mignolo labels coloniality a “matrix of power.” The literature examined in this article concerns itself with revealing the markers of coloniality on the Central American social body in diaspora. This article contends that diasporic Central American literatures produced within the United States represent not only the experience of exile and migration, but also an experience of continued war and perpetual violence, as Central American bodies discover in this US diasporic landscape, the racialization of their bodies, and how they in turn become disposable as a result of their status.

British Rule and Tribal Revolts in India: The curious case of Bastar

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 1619-1644 ◽  
Author(s):  
AJAY VERGHESE
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Indian Government ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Princely State ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Policies

AbstractBritish colonial rule in India precipitated a period of intense rebellion among the country's indigenous groups. Most tribal conflicts occurred in the British provinces, and many historians have documented how a host of colonial policies gave rise to widespread rural unrest and violence. In the post-independence period, many of the colonial-era policies that had caused revolt were not reformed, and tribal conflict continued in the form of the Naxalite insurgency. This article considers why the princely state of Bastar has continuously been a major centre of tribal conflict in India. Why has this small and remote kingdom, which never came under direct British rule, suffered so much bloodshed? Using extensive archival material, this article highlights two key findings: first, that Bastar experienced high levels of British intervention during the colonial period, which constituted the primary cause of tribal violence in the state; and second, that the post-independence Indian government has not reformed colonial policies in this region, ensuring a continuation and escalation of tribal conflict through the modern Naxalite movement.

Race and riots in Thatcher's Britain

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Peplow
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Migration History ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Constitutional System ◽  
Black Britons

In 1980–1, anti-police collective violence spread across England. This was the earliest confrontation between the state and members of the British public during Thatcher’s divisive government. This powerful and original book locates these disturbances within a longer struggle against racism and disadvantage faced by black Britons, which had seen a growth in more militant forms of resistance since World War II. In this first full-length historical study of 1980–1, three case studies – of Bristol, Brixton, and Manchester – emphasise the importance of local factors and the wider situation, concluding that these events should be viewed as ‘collective bargaining by riot’ – as a tool attempting increased political inclusion for marginalised black Britons. Focussing on the political activities of black Britons themselves, it explores the actions of community organisations in the aftermath of disorders to highlight dichotomous valuations of state mechanisms. A key focus is public inquiries, which were contrastingly viewed by black Britons as either a governmental diversionary tactic, or a method of legitimising their inclusion with the British constitutional system. Through study of a wide range of newly-available archives, interviews, understudied local sources, and records of grassroots black political organisations, this work expands understandings of protest movements and community activism in modern democracies while highlighting the often-problematic reliance upon ‘official’ sources when forming historical narratives. Of interest to researchers of race, ethnicity, and migration history, as well as modern British political and social history more generally, its interdisciplinary nature will also appeal to wider fields, including sociology, political sciences, and criminology.

“Free Our Brothers!”

2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 686-693
Author(s):  
João Gabriell
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Black People ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Oppressed Group ◽  
Political Project ◽  
And Migration

Why does a given oppressed group sometimes revolt and take to the streets, while other times it does not? This is a question that is never easy to answer. It requires a detailed examination of its history in a given context (here, France), the conditions and means for self-organization, the forms resistance takes, the struggles for hegemony within this social group to impose a group definition, what should comprise its struggle for emancipation. This article is an attempt to question how the revolt against slavery in Libya, after its presentation in a CNN video, was politicized by black people in the French context. We pay attention to the fact that the outrage exceeded frontiers of political organization and took the form of a mass revolt, under the “black” banner. But it has also shown limits in terms of translating this indignation into a political project of emancipation. To our understanding, those limits take root in the weakness of materialist analysis of race and migration as historical processes within a capitalist system, which cannot be understood solely in terms of ideology.

Intermarriage in colonial Malaya and Singapore: A case study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Roman Catholic and Methodist Asian communities

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 302-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Rerceretnam
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Grassroots Level ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Divide And Rule ◽  
First And Second Generation ◽  
Generation Migrant

Colonial race relations are regularly portrayed in light of the attempts to divide and rule colonialised Asian communities. While this article does not challenge this view, it attempts to uncover a hitherto hidden level of interaction and even intermarriage at the grassroots level in colonial Malaya and Singapore. With the exception of the various Peranakan communities that predated British rule, little to no evidence exists to show that interaction and especially intermarriage existed within early first- and second-generation migrant communities during the British colonial period. The findings show how colonial attempts to encourage a heightened sense of race and its frailties may have fallen short among some sections of the Asian community.

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