Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State by Radhika Mongia, and: Singapore, Chinese Migration and the Making of the British Empire, 1819–67 Stan Neal

In this article, I elaborate on Lisa Lowe’s “intimacies as method” by examining the case of 198 Chinese men conscripted to Trinidad in 1806. I argue that tracing Chinese migration to the Caribbean in the early nineteenth century demonstrates that the British empire began to imagine new hierarchies of unfreedom for people of Asian and African descent before the abolition of chattel slavery. British imperial actors hoped that Chinese men would assume a mediating function between white planters and the extant population of colour in Trinidad. This vision was predicated on the assumption that the migrants would partner with women of colour to form heterosexual intimacies while also refraining from other forms of socio-political contact with Afro-Trinidadians. Lowe’s intimacies as method guides my navigation of the imperial archive and, in particular, compels me to think relationally about differentially colonized and racialized sub jects in early nineteenth-century Trinidad, both as they were positioned in the colony and as they refused these stereotypes, brokering their own transactions and collaborations.

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The British Empire and Muslim Identity in South Asia

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ◽

10.2307/3679298 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 271-289 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Francis Robinson

Keyword(s):

South Asia ◽

British Empire ◽

Modern State ◽

Muslim Identity ◽

Muslim Society ◽

British Rule ◽

Political Outcome ◽

Muslim Identities ◽

Shed Light

British Empire in India saw major transformations in the identities of its Indian subjects. The growth of the modern state, the introduction of new systems of knowledge, the expansion of capitalist modes of production, and the spread of communications of all forms—railway, telegraph, post, press—made possible the fashioning of all kinds of new identities at local, regional and supra-regional levels. One of the identities which developed most strikingly was the Muslim. Indeed, at independence in 1947 it gained the particular accolade of embracing its own modern state in the shape of Pakistan. This political outcome, however, was just part of an extraordinary series of developments in Muslim identities under British rule which shed light not just on the nature of British rule but also on major changes at work in Muslim society.

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Singapore, Chinese migration late 19th century to present

The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration ◽

10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm485 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Jason Lim

Keyword(s):

19Th Century ◽

Late 19Th Century ◽

Singapore Chinese ◽

Chinese Migration

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