Humanitarianism, Human Rights and Biopolitics in the British Empire, 1890–1902

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Clark
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Personal Rights

The 1890s were a key time for debates about imperial humanitarianism and human rights in India and South Africa. This article first argues that claims of humanitarianism can be understood as biopolitics when they involved the management and disciplining of populations. This article examines the historiography that analyses British efforts to contain the Bombay plague in 1897 and the Boer War concentration camps as forms of discipline extending control over colonized subjects. Secondly, human rights language could be used to oppose biopolitical management. While scholars have criticized liberal human rights language for its universalism, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberals did not believe that rights were universal; they had to be earned. It was radical activists who drew on notions of universal rights to oppose imperial intervention and criticize the camps in India and South Africa. These activists included two groups: the Personal Rights Association and the Humanitarian League; and the individuals Josephine Butler, Sol Plaatje, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, and Bal Gandadhar Tilak. However, these critics also debated amongst themselves how far human rights should extend.

South Africa and the International Community

1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Dale
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Western World ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Boer War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Ever since the discovery there of gold and diamonds in the last half of the nineteenth century, South Africa has engaged the rapt attention of the Western world. The saga of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, perhaps the last of the “gentlemen's wars,” and now the refurbished accounts of the gallant defense of Rorke's Drift in the AngloZulu War of 1879 have been fascinating material for both novelists and film scriptwriters. In addition, the history of South Africa is replete with titanic figures who rank with, or perhaps even above, those from the rest of the continent: the aggressive architect of empire, Cecil J. Rhodes; the redoubtable Zulu warrior, Chaka; the dour, stern-willed President of the South African Republic, “Oom” (Uncle) Paul Kruger; the world-renowned statesman and philosopher, Field Marshal Jan C. Smuts; the founding father of Indian independence, Mohandas K. Gandhi; the compassionate and courageous writer, Alan S. Paton; and the dignified, modest Zulu Nobel Laureate, Albert J. Luthuli. By any standard, South Africa and its leaders of all races have made far-reaching and impressive contributions to the continent, the British Empire, and the world at large.

Barbed-Wire Imperialism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Forth
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
Epidemic Diseases

Some of the world’s first refugee camps and concentration camps appeared in the British Empire in the late 19th century. Famine camps detained emaciated refugees and billeted relief applicants on public works projects; plague camps segregated populations suspected of harboring disease and accommodated those evacuated from unsanitary locales; concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War, meanwhile, adapted a technology of colonial welfare in the context of war. Wartime camps in South Africa were simultaneously instruments of military violence and humanitarian care. While providing food and shelter to destitute refugees and disciplining and reforming a population cast as uncivilized and unhygienic, British officials in South Africa applied a developing set of imperial attitudes and approaches that also governed the development of plague and famine camps in India. More than the outcomes of military counterinsurgency, Boer War camps were registers of cultural discourses about civilization, class, gender, racial purity and sanitary pollution. Although British spokesmen regarded camps as hygienic enclaves, epidemic diseases decimated inmate populations creating a damaging political scandal. In order to curb mortality and introduce order, the British government mobilized a wide variety of disciplinary and sanitary lessons assembled at Indian plague and famine camps and at other kindred institutions like metropolitan workhouses. Authorities imported officials from India with experience managing plague and famine camps to systematize and rationalize South Africa’s wartime concentration camps. Ultimately, improvements to inmates’ health and well-being served to legitimize camps as technologies of liberal empire and biopolitical security.

‘And What Concentration Camps Those Were!’: Foreign Concentration Camps in Nazi Propaganda, 1933-9

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 649-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Moore
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines nazi propaganda on non-German ‘concentration camps’ in the years 1933—9. It shows how the regime publicized internment facilities in Austria, the Soviet Union and South Africa during the Boer War for rhetorical effect. This examination is placed within the context of extensive nazi propaganda concerning Germany’s own camps, demonstrating that the two propaganda strands worked not contrary to each other, but rather in a mutually reinforcing manner. In addition, the article will explore the legacy of this propaganda material in shaping popular attitudes with the onset of war and genocide.

“But I Have No Wish to Be Discharged”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Padraic Kenney
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
State Prisons ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Opposition Movements ◽  
Political Imprisonment

Political imprisonment originated in the mid-nineteenth century, as European states turned away from the use of exile (to places such as Australia or Siberia) and increasingly placed opponents in state prisons for lengthy periods. At the same time, opposition movements became more organized around coherent ideologies and developed the capability of celebrating and publicizing their imprisoned comrades. This era would see the first concentration camps, the first genocides, and the first civilian refugees. It is not surprising that political prisoners would take their place on stage at the same time. The Fenian movement in Ireland, the socialists in the Russian Empire (especially in Poland), the British suffragettes, and Gandhi’s satyagraha resisters in British South Africa are the primary examples used.

Legacies

2020 ◽  
pp. 181-201
Author(s):  
Alison Games
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
Subject Classification ◽  
British History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Modern Library ◽  
Academic Subject ◽  
Late Nineteenth

By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna massacre had become the linchpin of the British Empire, explaining why the British came to have a stronghold in India. This chapter looks at a convergence of circumstances in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the new availability of historical sources, the rise of imperial history as an academic subject, and the crisis of empire posed by the Boer War, to explore the centrality of Amboyna in British history. Works of history and children’s schoolbooks are key sources. The triumph of the Amboyna Massacre—in British history and culture, in reference works, in modern library subject classification systems—reveals that the English at Amboyna may have lost their heads, but they got the last word.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sarah LeFanu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Personal Histories

The introduction provides a contextualizing synopsis of the involvement of the three protagonists, Kipling, Kingsley and Conan Doyle, in the Anglo-Boer War, and flags up the experiences that they would share – fatal in the case of Kingsley – of the typhoid that would account for over half of British fatalities. It places the war within the historical context of Queen Victoria’s long reign and the growth of the British Empire. It suggests that the motives of all three protagonists were mixed: that while they were all public figures in Britain, their personal histories nonetheless made them see themselves as social outsiders. It introduces the idea that all three had personal reasons for leaving England, as well as being drawn towards the war in South Africa by more abstract notions of duty, patriotism or imperialism.

Navy, nation and empire: nineteenth-century photographs of the British naval community overseas

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-112
Author(s):  
Cindy McCreery
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
St Helena ◽  
Naval Base

From approximately 1860, the vogue for both individual, ‘carte-de-visite’ portraits taken in professional photography studios as well as group photographs, often taken outdoors, swept across the British Empire. Photography studios from Plymouth to Cape Town catered to an increasingly enthusiastic naval community. This essay focuses on photographs taken in the 1860s of officers, their families and associates in and beyond the Royal Naval base at Simonstown near Cape Town, South Africa. Individual studio portraits such as ‘Officers of HMS Racoon, 1857-61’, outdoor shots of officers, women and children at naval picnics, photographs of dead officers as well as commemorative photographs of officers visiting Napoleon’s former tomb in St. Helena and Sir John Moore’s tomb at Corunna indicate the links made between the past and the present, and between, navy, nation and empire. The album also provides a unique documentary record of Prince Alfred’s 1867 visit to the Cape whilst Captain of HMS Galatea. When compared with the more formal, professional album of this cruise held in the Royal Archives in Windsor, the Wits album helps us to understand how photographs both identified and supported members of the British naval ‘family’ ashore as well as at sea.

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