scholarly journals Thuggee in England: Tracing the Origin and Development of Fantasies of Thug-Invasion and Reverse Colonization in late nineteenth century British Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayusman Chakraborty ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Government Services ◽  
British Fiction ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Official Records

A lot has been written on Thuggee and nineteenth century British operations against it. Instead of delving directly into either of these two well investigated areas of research, this paper seeks to chart how several nineteenth century British writings exhibit a curious fear of Thug infiltration. Keeping in their minds some actual instances, early British colonial officials worried about the Thugs joining government services under them to survive and sabotage the anti-Thuggee campaign. This paper argues that this apprehension gradually developed into the fantasy of being reverse colonized by the Thugs. Late Victorian writers of fiction fantasized the Thugs invading England, or, what must have been more unnerving to them, converting the Britons themselves to Thugs. Using unpublished official records and literary works as sources, this paper tries to map how colonial anxiety of ‘Thug infiltration’ originated and later grew into the fantasy of reverse colonization by the Thugs. It also tries to link this to specific historical developments in that period.

Anti-Sinicism: Roots in Pre-industrial Colonial Southern Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Yellow Peril ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Negative Feelings

Abstract With the Chinese presence on the African continent being perceived and portrayed as a new global phenomenon there has been a concomitant, albeit sporadic and nuanced, emergence of an aversion to things Chinese, gradually permeating popular consciousness. In a postcolonial world these anti-Sinitic or Sino-phobic sentiments are crudely reminiscent of the late nineteenth century colonial cries of the “yellow peril”, which culminated in acts of exclusion and extreme prohibition that singled out and targeted the Chinese in the various colonies across the Atlantic and Pacific including South Africa. This article, however, proposes to trace the genesis of some of anti-Sinicism to a pre-industrial period by considering developments in colonial Southern Africa. It will show how in the early Dutch settler and British colonial periods at the Cape, when the number of Chinese present in the region was miniscule, negative feelings towards the Chinese as the “other” were already apparent and evident in the reactions to them prior to the arrival of the large numbers which came to America, Australasia and Africa from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.

Ordinary Masochisms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Theoretical Examination ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Ordinary Masochisms argues for literary alternatives to pervasive dictatorial norms about masochism that first surface in Victorian literature, reach their pioneering pinnacle in the modernist moment, and are expressly mourned in post-modern texts. In particular, the literary works discussed all challenge the more popular term “sadomasochism” as a conglomerate form of perversion that was named and studied in the late nineteenth century. Underscoring close textual analyses with modern theories of masochism as empowering, this book argues that Charlotte Brontë Villette (1853), George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin (1886), D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow (1915), and Jean Rhys’s Quartet (1928) all experiment with masochistic relationships that extend far beyond reductive early readings of inherently feminine or sexually aberrant masochism. Ordinary Masochisms begins with a historical and theoretical examination of masochism’s treatment during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries before moving to an examination of the Biblical tale of Samson and Delilah in conjunction with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs (1870), from which masochism garners its name. An intermediary chapter treats Octave Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden (1903) as a case study transitioning between sexological and psychoanalytical discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while the conclusion about Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers (1981) addresses masochism’s seeming inability to recuperate itself from categories of deviance, despite the success of contemporary popular culture representations. The book closes with a brief consideration of masochistic reading, a subtle undercurrent of the project as a whole.

Islamic Identities in Colonial India

2018 ◽  
pp. 14-53
Author(s):  
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British India ◽  
The South ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Subject ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter introduces many of the groups that will form the subject of this book and charts their emergence and development in conditions of British colonial rule. It shows that the traditionalist orientations that enjoy great prominence in the South Asian landscape began to take a recognizable shape only in the late nineteenth century, although they drew on older styles of thought and practice. The early modernists, for their part, were rooted in a culture that was not significantly different from the `ulama's. Among the concerns of this chapter is to trace their gradual distancing from each other. The processes involved in it would never be so complete, in either British India or in Pakistan, as to preclude the cooperation of the modernists and their conservative critics at critical moments. Nor, however, were the results of this distancing so superficial as to ever be transcended for good.

Language Usage in Anglo-Sephardi Jewry

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Bruce Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Official Records

Tracing the history of languages used among England's Sephardim, being the first study of its kind, presents a number of challenges. First and foremost, there is a severe lack of linguistic documentation prior to the seventeenth century, as Jewish communities were illegal on English soil between the mass expulsion of 1290 and the readmission under Cromwell in 1656. Although official records of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue do give some indications of language usage between the readmission of Jews to England and the late nineteenth century, actual linguistic monuments are few.

Ethiopian Source Material and Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth Century: The Letter to Menilek (1899) By Blatta Gäbrä Egzi'abehēr

1994 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irma Taddia
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Despite his important political and literary activities, Blatta Gäbrä Egzi'-abehēr is almost unknown to scholars of Menilek's Ethiopia. This historical period is not particularly well researched, and the author stands out as one of the few Ethiopian intellectuals to have written such an important number of literary works focused on nationalistic and anti-Italian feelings. The Amharic/Ge'ez text under discussion, his letter to Menilek written in 1899, is a remarkable document from this point of view because it reveals a strong opposition to colonialism and the Italian occupation of Eritrea. This document is one of the first Ethiopian sources to testify to the growing nationalism and the growth of concepts of unity and independence. It allows us to consider more carefully the beginning of an Ethiopian secular ideology of the modern state. And such an ideology must be placed in the colonial context. The letter to Menilek raises some important questions regarding the new source material in the late nineteenth century available to historians of modern Ethiopia. A translation of the text is given as well as a comment on its historical significance.

Before the Eradication of God: the Yoruba Smallpox Deity Shonponna in t m aLuko's One Man, One Wife

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 266-281
Author(s):  
Frederick Hale
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Health Authority ◽  
Public Health Authority ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Subject ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The One

AbstractThe Yoruba deity Shonponna, feared as both the bearer of smallpox and the one to whom one could turn for protection therefrom, has been the subject of sporadic international, scholarly enquiry for more than a century. William Bascom, Anthony D. Buckley and others went well beyond late nineteenth-century British colonial observations in their attempts to understand the enduring appeal of this dreaded deity, the banning of whose worship in Nigeria did not prevent adherents from crossing into Benin to continue it. In his novel of 1959, One man, one wife, Yoruba novelist and public health authority Timothy Mofolorunso Aluko offered an internal perspective by illuminating further dimensions of the place of Shonponna in the rapidly changing religious matrix of western Nigeria. This account features a plot that unfolds in the 1920s and 1930s, when Anglican missionaries were adding an increasingly prominent and influe.tial factor to the scene, and therein exploring the confrontation of traditional religious beliefs and practices with Christianity, partly during a smallpox epidemic which intensifies the clash of these two systems.

Emigration

1999 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Detailed List ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Official Records ◽  
Maritime Museum

This chapter describes the opportunity Liverpool gave to people wishing to travel across the Atlantic in order to achieve a better life in North America. It charts Liverpool’s success in maintaining a dominant position as the main transatlantic and emigrant transhipment port from the early nineteenth century until the late nineteenth century, when ports with greater geographical advantages such as Southampton, Naples and Bremerhaven began to supersede Liverpool as the busiest emigrant ports in Europe. The article acknowledges the lack of sufficient official records on Liverpool’s emigration history, including passenger lists, but details the existing records, lists and images provided by the Merseyside Maritime Museum, which concern specific ships, sailing dates and the conditions of a journey. The chapter concludes with a detailed list of further resources regarding the emigration experience, including passenger diary extracts, surviving lists, advertisements and newspaper clippings.

Reginald Scot and his Discoverie of Witchcraft: Religion and Science in the Opposition to the European Witch Craze

1983 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leland L. Estes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
European History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
Scientific Rationality ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Intellectual Integrity

Recent discussions of the major literary works of the witch craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have advanced significantly our understanding of this important episode in European history. Clearly, our efforts no longer are controlled by the anticlerical and even antireligious sentiments that corrupted so much late nineteenth-century scholarship on this subject. Yet a more subtle nineteenth-century prejudice still remains with us. We still wish to believe that those who opposed the craze did so because in some fundamental way they were more enlightened, or more rational, or more scientific than those who accepted and even supported witch hunting. Recent anthropological research, however, stressing both the ubiquity and the intellectual integrity of a belief in witches, suggests strongly that this modern viewpoint is probably not correct. Certainly, this prejudice has seriously distorted our understanding of one important contribution to the witch debate, Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Modern commentators have invested this book with an aura of scientific rationality that it ill deserves. A closer inspection, I believe, reveals an entirely different source for Scot's ideas and, more importantly, sheds some new light on what it really was that brought witch hunting in Europe to an end.

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