scholarly journals Unemployment and Social Disorder during the British Colonial Period in Eritrea (1941–1951)

Aethiopica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Temesgen Tesfamariam Beyan
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Social Disorder ◽  
The Public ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
British System ◽  
British Colonies

This article investigates the connection between unemployment and social disorder that characterized British colonial rule in Eritrea between 1941 and 1951. Using the archives of labour of the British period, this article documents the causes of social disorder that galvanized the British period in Eritrea. Based on archival documents, the article argues that the public insecurity and social disorder of the British period were largely related to socio-economic conditions resulting in mass unemployment caused by (1) the dissolution of the colonial army institution; (2) the destruction of the manufacturing industries; (3) the importation of labour from neighbouring British colonies. Upon the defeat ofItaly by the British in Eritrea during WWII, the British system had a clearly diminished appetite for colonialism and abandoned any agenda of capitalist expansion, inflicting massive redundancies on the labour force. This produced new social groups such as migrant workers, brigands, and vagabonds. Based on these archival documents, an alternative explanation is introduced pinpointing far more accurately the sources of public insecurity and social disorder during the British colonial period between 1941 and 1951.

scholarly journals A Selected Fiction? Lawrence Durrell and the Overgrown Typescript of Bitter Lemons

2017 ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
David Roessel
Keyword(s):  
Public Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Publication History ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Lawrence Durrell ◽  
Colonial Government

This article looks at previously unmined archival documents in order to explore the preand post-publication history of Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons, a travelogue written during the ‘emergency years’ of the EOKA campaign against British rule and for union with Greece. It examines the ways in which paratextual documents surrounding this publication history illuminate the awkward, sometimes contradictory, relationship between Durrell’s book and the last years of the British colonial government in Cyprus, a government for which Durrell worked as an employee in the Public Information Office.

Policing the British Empire on the Bund: The Origin of the Sikh Police Unit in Shanghai

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
Cao Yin
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Modern Shanghai

Red-turbaned Sikh policemen have long been viewed as symbols of the cosmopolitan feature of modern Shanghai. However, the origin of the Sikh police unit in the Shanghai Municipal Police has not been seriously investigated. This article argues that the circulation of police officers, policing knowledge, and information in the British colonial network and the circulation of the idea of taking Hong Kong as the reference point amongst Shanghailanders from the 1850s to the 1880s played important role in the establishment of the Sikh police force in the International Settlement of Shanghai. Furthermore, by highlighting the translocal connections and interactions amongst British colonies and settlements, this study tries to break the metropole-colony binary in imperial history studies.

FOREIGN SERVANTS IN AN INDIAN PRINCELY STATE BHOPAL (19TH — EARLY 20TH CENTURIES)

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-163
Author(s):  
E. Yu. Vanina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Central India ◽  
High Status ◽  
Domestic Servants ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Princely State ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
British Colonial

Bhopal, one of the ‘princely states’ and vassals of the British Empire (Central India), enjoyed special favour with its sovereign. Throughout a century, it was ruled by four generations of women who gained themselves, in India and outside, the reputation of enlightened and benevolent monarchs. Archival documents and memoirs allow glancing at the hitherto hidden world of domestic servants who not only ensured the comfortable and luxurious life of the princely family, but its high status too, both for fellow Indians and for British colonial administrators. Among the numerous servants employed by the Bhopal rulers, freely hired local residents prevailed. However, the natives of some other countries, quite far from India, were conspicuous as well: the article highlights West Europeans, Georgians and Africans (“Ethiopians”). In the princely household, foreign servants performed various functions. While British butlers and Irish or German nannies and governesses demonstrated the ruling family` s “Westernized” lifestyle, Georgian maids and African lackeys showcased the affluence and might of the Bhopal queens. Some foreign servants came to Bhopal by force: the reputation of ‘progressive’ was no obstacle for the Bhopal queens to use slave labour. When such cases became public, the British authorities responded with mild reproaches: condemning slavery, they nevertheless loathed any discord with their trusted vassals.

A Public Nuisance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Llano
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Social Disorder ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Nuisance ◽  
Rural Immigrants ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter documents the early presence of organilleros in the streets of Spanish cities from the 1860s on and analyzes their impact on Madrid’s society during the ensuing decades. Considered an exotic amusement during the 1860s, organilleros came to be seen as sources of “noise” and social disorder soon after. Although the information available on organilleros makes it hard to describe their social background accurately, it is likely that some of them were rural immigrants who took up organ grinding intermittently when other sources of income failed. Their impact on the public sphere raised awareness about the effects of sound and prompted legal measures that could be considered as the first attempts to spread an “aural” hygiene in Madrid. For this reason, organilleros played a key role in the modernization of this city.

The Rise of Flamenquismo in Madrid, 1888–1898

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Llano
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Social Disorder ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rural Immigrants ◽  
The Impact

This chapter analyzes the impact on the population of the expansion of nightlife in Madrid from the 1880s on. More particularly, it studies public fears raised by alcoholism and flamenco that led to this music being identified with social disorder and immorality. The Fuencarral Street murder (1888), in which a flamenco aficionado was involved, shocked the public and triggered a campaign against flamenco and the culture associated with it, known as flamenquismo. Behind this campaign, however, was fear and hatred of rural immigrants from Andalusia, who transformed Madrid’s culture and elicited the opposition of the population most affected by the rise of hunger and deprivation in Madrid. At the turn of the twentieth century, this situation led to flamenquismo being used as a catchword to designate any social problems affecting Spain in the wake of the 1898 desastre.

scholarly journals Migrant Labour during the Pandemic: A Political Economy Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 001946622110212
Author(s):  
Deepak K. Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Migrant Labour ◽  
Cheap Labour ◽  
The One

This article aims to analyse the plight of the migrant workers in India during the Covid 19 pandemic from a political economy perspective. While taking note of the disruptions and uncertainties during the drastic lockdown that was announced suddenly, it is argued that the vulnerabilities of the migrant labour force are deeply embedded in the long-term changes in the political economy of development in India. These changes, on the one hand, have resulted in the gradual weakening of state support to the working classes, and on the other, have resulted in the normalisation of ‘cheap labour’ as a legitimate objective of neoliberal capitalist development. Locating the conditions of the migrant working class on the specificities of the manifold restructuring of the Indian economy under neoliberal globalisation, the study attempts to emphasise the structural dimensions of the current crisis faced by the migrant labourers. JEL Codes: J46, J61, O15, O17, P16

Postcolonialism

Geography ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Naylor
Keyword(s):  
Production Systems ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Accumulation By Dispossession ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Impact ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Independence Movements

In the colonial period imperialism advanced in uneven ways across time and space globally. European exploration in the late 15th century first brought destructive, exploitative, and deadly changes to what became known as the Americas. The subjugation and elimination of Indigenous groups, which commenced during this period, created the conditions for accumulation by dispossession, enslavement (of both Indigenous groups and people stolen from Africa), plantation-style production systems, and the extraction of resources—the legacies of which still mark political, social, economic, and environmental landscapes today. Following rebellion and successful de jure (legal) independence from Europe in the late 1700s and early 1800s (starting with the radical uprising of enslaved peoples in Haiti), Western powers turned to new regions to regain such systems of control and resource extraction. In 1848, the Berlin Conference was held— also called the “Scramble for Africa,” where European powers divided the continent and created new sites of extraction. Such patterns followed in South and Southeast Asia as well as North Africa and Central Asia in the latter parts of the 19th century. As a result of these violent campaigns, there are very few places on the globe that did not sustain, at some point, a form of colonial-imperial relation. Independence movements were ongoing and by the end of the 20th century, de jure colonial control had all but disappeared. Decolonization had occurred and the global periphery entered the period of being postcolonial. Former British colonies were assembled into the Commonwealth, which changed relations from direct control and subjugation to allegiance to the Queen and for some, drastic changes in economic relations, (this had the effect of marginalizing Indigenous struggles in many of these places). Notwithstanding the legal separation of the colonies from imperial powers, de facto (in effect) colonial arrangements lingered and remain today, giving rise to a series of critiques and new ways of thinking about imperialism and the impact of colonialism, such as the theory of postcolonialism.

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