scholarly journals “A Hard Strain on Imperialism”: South Asian Resistance to the British Honduras Scheme

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-109
Author(s):  
Kenneth Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
British Empire ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Canadian Government ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
British Honduras

In the fall and winter of 1908, the Canadian government attempted to relocate South Asians living in British Columbia to British Honduras for indentured labour. Those in favour of relocation claimed that most South Asians were unemployed, were unable to survive winter, and could not adapt to Canadian society because of their religious beliefs. South Asians who opposed relocation challenged many of these claims and formed a wide network across the British Empire to foil this relocation. This study discusses the overlooked subject of the Canadian state’s attempts to remove South Asians who had already settled in the country, as well as the agency of South Asians in early-twentieth-century Canada. The documents examined throughout this article show that the British Honduras Scheme failed when South Asians could not be convinced that it served their interests and found that they possessed the necessary resources to challenge deportation.

scholarly journals “The deportation of the Hindus from British Columbia will be a blessing to all concerned”: Intersections of Class and Race in the British Honduras Scheme

1969 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenny Reilly
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
South Asian Immigrants ◽  
Canadian Government ◽  
Cheap Labour ◽  
British Honduras ◽  
Asian People

In the fall and winter of 1908, the Canadian Government developed the British Honduras Scheme, a plan to transport all South Asian immigrants from British Columbia to British Honduras. To justify this relocation, the Canadian Government argued that British Honduras needed cheap labour to maintain sugar plantations, railroads and that these immigrants could not survive in Canada because they faced unemployment, starvation, and they were not suited for harsh winters. Analyzing this scheme in the context of the way newspapers represented it at the time demonstrates how class and race intersected in popular understandings of South Asian people in Canada. Primary sources also reveal how South Asian immigrants resisted the scheme. They show that despite popular views of South Asians being hapless, hopeless, and inferior “hindoos” who could not survive in the northern hemisphere, the South Asian community recognized and advocated for their own interests, while resisting discrimination.

Hannah Director: Jewish Pioneer, Chairman of the School Board

1969 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lillooet Nordlinger McDonnell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
School Board ◽  
Jewish Woman ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Public Office ◽  
Urban Settings ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Société Canadienne ◽  
Canadian Jews

Hannah Director (1886-1970) is a noteworthy, but overlooked, figure in Jewish Canadian historiography. Her life and contributions encapsulate many of the challenges experienced by Canadian Jews throughout the early twentieth century. In 1917/1918 Director was elected chairman of the school board in Prince George, British Columbia. In doing so, she became the first Jewish woman elected to public office in Canada. By investigating the larger social circumstances within Canadian society this article will elucidate Hannah Director’s integration into the rural frontier and urban settings of BC during the early twentieth century.Hannah Director(1886-1970) est une figure remarquable, et pourtant peu connue, de l’historiographie juive canadienne. Sa vie et ses contributions illustrent parfaitement les nombreux défis auxquels ont été confrontés les Juifs canadiens au début du XXe siècle. En 1917/1918, Director est élue présidente de la commission scolaire de Prince George en Colombie Britannique. Elle est ainsi devenue la première femme juive à être élue à une charge publique au Canada. En s’intéressant au contexte plus large de la société canadienne, cet article jette un éclairage nouveau sur l’intégration d’Hannah Director dans les milieux ruraux et urbains de la Colombie Britannique du début du XXe siècle.

Englishness, Empire and Nostalgia: A Heterodox Religious Community's Appeal in the Inter-War Years

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 374-392
Author(s):  
Jane Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Belief Networks ◽  
Healing Ministry ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
The Rich

This article looks at the ways in which the Panacea Society – a heterodox, millenarian group based in Bedford during the inter-war years – spread its ideas: through personal, familial and shared belief networks across the British empire; by building new modes of attracting adherents, in particular a global healing ministry; and by shipping its publications widely. It then examines how the society appealed to its (white) members in the empire in three ways: through its theology, which put Britain at the centre of the world; by presuming the necessity and existence of a ‘Greater Britain’ and the British empire, while in so many other quarters these entities were being questioned in the wake of World War I; and by a deliberately cultivated and nostalgic notion of ‘Englishness’. The Panacea Society continued and developed the idea of the British empire as providential at a time when the idea no longer held currency in most circles. The article draws on the rich resource of letters in the Panacea Society archive to contribute to an emerging area of scholarship on migrants’ experience in the early twentieth-century British empire (especially the dominions) and their sense of identity, in this case both religious and British.

scholarly journals The Engineers' Engineer: Sir John Kennedy and the Port of Montreal

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Richard White
Keyword(s):  
Civil Engineer ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Life ◽  
River Channel ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Chief Engineer ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
St Lawrence River ◽  
Civil Engineers

Abstract This article gives an overview and analysis of the career of Canadian civil engineer Sir John Kennedy (1838-1921), and comments on what Kennedy's career reveals of the professional ideals of early twentieth century engineering. Kennedy was a highly regarded engineer in his day. He served as an early President of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers (CSCE) in 1892 and is one of the few Canadian engineers to have been knighted. Kennedy spent most of his working life as Chief Engineer of the Montreal Harbour Commission, in which capacity he oversaw the deepening of the St Lawrence River channel from Quebec to Montreal and a complete reconstruction of the Montreal harbour—two projects that essentially made the modern Port of Montreal. The study provides details of these construction jobs and of Kennedy's role in the work. So well regarded was Kennedy by his peers that shortly after his death the CSCE named its highest professional award after him, making him literally a professional icon. The author takes this to indicate that Kennedy's professional style and values—congenial, practical, and public-spirited—evidently embodied the professional ideals of the time.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 231-236
Author(s):  
Bill Bell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Official Sources ◽  
The Web

The epilogue rounds off the argument by returning to Crusoe as a paradigm of the act of reading in the British empire. In the hands of different readers not even Robinson Crusoe was as straightforward as it seemed. Despite the fact that the novel has often been read as a manual for empire, it is far more complex than some commentaries would have us believe. Similar ambivalences apply to the lives and minds of many overseas British in the long nineteenth century. While the early twentieth century is commonly thought to have embodied a decline in imperial values, the reading habits of colonial subjects throughout the period would seem to indicate that imperial assurances were less robust than official sources would seem to suggest. The five reading constituencies that are described in the foregoing chapters, all of them in different ways operating within the web of empire, were ones in which individuals often found imperial confidence in its own mission wanting, something that was time and again demonstrated through in their acts of reading.

Catalogue of Tamil manuscripts in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine

1990 ◽  
Vol 122 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-369
Author(s):  
S. Gunasingam
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
South Asia ◽  
History Of Medicine ◽  
British Empire ◽  
South Asian ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of

Since the time South Asia, together with other Asian and African countries, became an integral part of the British Empire, the significance of manuscripts, published works and other artefacts, relating to those regions has stimulated continued appreciation in the United Kingdom, albeit with varying degrees of interest. It is interesting to note that the factors which have contributed in one way or another to the collecting of South Asian I material for British institutions vary in their nature, and thus illuminate the attitudes of different periods. During the entire nineteenth century, the collectors were primarily administrators; for most of the first half of the twentieth century, it was the interest and the needs of British universities that led to the accumulation of substantial holdings in many academic or specialist libraries.

The Evolution of Japanese Colonialism

1959 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyman Kublin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Japanese Colonialism ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Colonial Government

Reflecting upon the career in the colonial government of Formosa that was to win him world-wide fame in the early twentieth century, Baron Shimpei Goto once remarked that “Japan had made no preparations whatever for the administration of the island at the time of its acquisition”. Underscoring this neglect, he added, was “the fact that, in the case of other nations confronted by a similar occasion, elaborate schemes are generally formulated to meet contingencies connected with the occupation of a new territory”. One may wonder whether the Baron included among the “elaborate schemers” the “absent-minded” builders of the British Empire.It does not matter whether Baron Goto was aware of the complex historical processes, of the actions and accidents, involved in the creation of great empires. It is not even important whether he really believed that the colonial programs of the imperial powers were, like the war plans carefully devised by army general staffs, drawn from secret files as occasions demanded. Goto was primarily interested in the formulation and implementation of a colonial policy for Japan. His observation on his government's lack of preparedness to assume control and direction of Formosan affairs should thus be taken not simply as a confession and condemnation but rather as a statement of purpose.

What to do about cows? Princely versus British approaches to a South Asian dilemma

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN COPLAND
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Custom ◽  
Vexed Question

For more than a millennium, cow slaughter has been a source of bitter contention in South Asia. Hindus revere the animal; Muslims like to eat it and, until recently, the cow has been the preferred animal of sacrifice at the Islamic festival of ‘Id-ul-Adha¯. This paper looks at how, over the twentieth century, Indian governments of differing type and ideological colour—British and princely during the late colonial period and Congress nationalist after 1947—have tried to mediate this vexed question. It finds that while policies differed widely, there was a tendency for all governments in the early twentieth century to be guided by social custom and local opinion, so that in the small Muslim-ruled state of Mangrol, which had an official ban, the Muslims who killed cows occasionally for food were never prosecuted so long as they kept their activities discreet—but this ‘discretionary’ option became politically unviable once the country embraced democracy.

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