‘Natural Justice, Equity and Good Conscience’: History, Politics and Law in Nigeria, 1900–1966

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-25
Author(s):  
Katherine Isobel Baxter
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Natural Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Good Conscience ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Indirect Rule

Chapter One provides an account of the history of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, focusing particularly on politics and law. The chapter recounts the long history of British colonial presence in West Africa and explains the introduction of indirect rule as a system of colonial government from the turn of the century. Some of the impacts of indirect rule are considered through reference to Obafemi Awolowo’s memoir, Awo, and Chinua Achebe’s novel, Arrow of God. The chapter also sketches out the divisions that indirect rule fomented and the resistance to which it gave rise. Finally, the chapter explains the implications of indirect rule for the implementation of law in Nigeria both during colonial rule and following independence.

Urban planning, colonial doctrines and street naming in French Dakar and British Lagos, c. 1850–1930

Urban History ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
LIORA BIGON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Street Naming ◽  
Indirect Rule

ABSTRACT:The published literature that has thoroughly treated the history of European planning in sub-Saharan Africa is still rather scanty. This article examines French and British colonial policies for town planning and street naming in Dakar and Lagos, their chief lieux de colonisation in West Africa. It will trace the relationships between the physical and conceptual aspects of town planning and the colonial doctrines that produced these plans from the official establishment of these cities as colonial capitals in the mid-nineteenth century and up to the inter-war period. Whereas in Dakar these aspects reflected a Eurocentric meta-narrative that excluded African histories and identities, a glimpse at contemporary Lagos shows the opposite. This study is one of few that compares colonial doctrines of assimilation to doctrines of indirect rule as each affects urban planning.

The Grooming of an Elite: Malay Administrators in the Federated Malay States, 1903–1941

1980 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeo Kim Wah
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Central Component ◽  
New Order ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Government ◽  
Indirect Rule

Between 1874 and 1888, British colonial rule was imposed on the Malay states of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang later collectively called the Federated Malay States (FMS). Based on the various Anglo-Malay treaties, which maintained the fiction that the British Resident was an adviser to the Malay ruler, the British established a form of administration generally known as a system of indirect rule. In this new order, the Malay rulers retained their constitutional and ceremonial role, while the exercise of executive power was held firmly in British hands. In the rush for establishing a modern administration and accelerating economic development late in the nineteenth century, hardly any attention was paid to training Malays to share executive power with British officials at the higher level of government or to compete effectively with Indians, Eurasians, and Chinese for subordinate appointments. This sin of omission began to stir the British conscience at the turn of the century and, for the next four decades, the British pursued a policy of actively promoting Malay employment in the government. This paper discusses the central component of this policy, namely, the training, recruitment, and development of Malay administrators in the FMS.

The Garvey Movement in British West Africa

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. L. Okonkwo
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
The West ◽  
Universal Negro Improvement Association ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Blacks ◽  
Garvey Movement ◽  
African Nationalism

The paper seeks to present new information concerning the activities of the West African branches of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. The author has included biographical profiles of the British West African Garveyites to integrate the Garvey movement into the history of West African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.It is argued that Garveyism was welcomed in British West Africa by the older cultural nationalists who saw Garveyism as an extension of Blyden's ideas. Pan-African sentiments of racial unity and solidarity of African and American blacks, pride in the history of the race, and self-help projects had wide circulation in West Africa from the latter part of the nineteenth century, as a result of Blyden's influence. Joining the branches of the U.N.I.A. was a practical demonstration of a long-standing commitment to cultural and racial nationalism among the West African elite.The Garvey movement also marked the beginning of a new era in West African nationalism. Garvey's radical pronouncements on freeing Africa from colonial rule were unacceptable to the older cultural nationalists who dominated the Garvey groups. They disavowed any interest in organizing a central nation for the race. However, Garvey's ideas may have had long-term effects. By the 1930s the idea of independence from colonial rule seemed more attractive to the West African nationalists. Garvey was one of the first to speak out boldly for freedom from colonialism.The concrete achievements of the West African branches of the U.N.I.A. were small indeed. Nigeria had the most Garveyite activity in British West Africa. There was an agent for the Black Star Line in Lagos and a branch of the U.N.I.A. and A.C.L. The Gold Coast had the least Garveyite activity, probably because of their involvement in the National Congress of British West Africa and also because of their more critical attitude towards co-operation with American blacks. They believed that Africans were best qualified to lead any joint efforts for intra-racial co-operation.

Self-Rule and the Problem of Peoplehood in Colonial India

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAZMUL S. SULTAN
Keyword(s):  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Indian People ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Indefinite Future

This article theorizes the colonial problem of peoplehood that Indian anticolonial thinkers grappled with in their attempts to conceptualize self-rule, or swaraj. British colonial rule drew its legitimacy from a developmentalist conception of the colonized people as backward and disunited. The discourse of “underdeveloped” colonial peoplehood rendered the Indian people “unfit” for self-government, suspending their sovereignty to an indefinite future. The concept of swaraj would be born with the rejection of deferred colonial self-government. Yet the persistence of the developmentalist figuration of the people generated a crisis of sovereign authorization. The pre-Gandhian swaraj theorists would be faced with the not-yet claimable figure of the people at the very moment of disavowing the British claim to rule. Recovering this underappreciated pre-Gandhian history of the concept of swaraj and reinterpreting its Gandhian moment, this article offers a new reading of Gandhi's theory of moral self-rule. In so doing, it demonstrates how the history of swaraj helps trace the colonial career of popular sovereignty.

scholarly journals “Imperium in Imperio”: The Corporation, Mining, and Governance in British Southeast Asia, 1900–1930

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
DAVID BAILLARGEON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
State Model ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Corporate Ventures

This article examines the history of mining in British Southeast Asia during the early twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the histories of the Burma Corporation and the Duff Development Company, which were located in British-occupied Burma and Malaya, respectively. It argues that despite being represented as “rogue” corporate ventures in areas under “indirect” colonial rule, the contrasting fates of each company—one successful, one not—reveal how foreign-owned businesses operating in the empire became increasingly beholden to British colonial state regulations during this period, marking a shift in policy from the “company-state” model that operated in prior centuries. The histories of these two firms ultimately demonstrate the continued significance of business in the making of empire during the late colonial period, bridging the divide between the age of company rule and the turn toward state-sponsored “development” that would occur in the mid-twentieth century.

You're a Better Filipino than I Am, John Wayne: World War II, Hollywood, and U.S.-Philippines Relations

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles V. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Between 1939 and 1945 several Hollywood studios produced significant films set in the war-torn Philippines, including Bataan (MGM, 1943), So Proudly We Hail (Paramount, 1943),and Back to Bataan (RKO,1943). Although these films immediately preceded Philippines independence in 1946, they do not position the Philippines as a soon-to-be autonomous nation. Instead, these films reaffirm, and even celebrate, the unequal colonial power relationship that marked the history of U.S. occupation of the archipelago. A careful reading of these films, which is the subject of this article, reveals the stamina of this colonial ideology (colonial uplift, tutelage, and nation-building) that legitimized U.S. colonial rule in the Phillapines and dates back to the turn of the century. What the perpetuation of this ideology suggests is the postwar neocolonial relationship between the two nations that U.S. government officials anticipated. This revised neocolonial ideology is expressed through the racialized and gendered images of Filipino characters and their interaction with U.S. American characters. The U.S. government attempted to control such images as part of its wartime propaganda, but had to rely on the voluntary compliance of the major Hollywood studios. While the Filipinos in films like Back to Bataan, made at the war's end, appear to challenge the racist stereotypes of prior films, they are re-inscribed by a neocolonial form of U.S. supremacy—— framed as wartime U.S. guidance and Filipino dependency.

Primary Materials

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-583
Author(s):  
Nida Rehman
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Model Improvement ◽  
Garden Plants ◽  
The City ◽  
Primary Materials

Abstract This article explores plants, seeds, soils, and other nonhuman actors as archival and architectural agents within the history of Lahore's urban landscape, as seen from the ground. It traces the halting efforts of the Agri-Horticultural Society of Punjab to enact regional improvement through the development of agricultural and botanical expertise at the advent of British colonial rule in the province, focusing on the materialization of this work in the society's gardens in Lahore. Foregrounding the contingencies of everyday garden making and maintenance, the article posits nonhuman ecologies as a materially diverse and ephemeral architecture and archive of landscape. It argues that, in helping assemble and modulate the society's efforts to model improvement, conduct plant testing, and develop an ornamental garden, plants, seeds, and soils become unlikely and sometimes unruly aesthetic and historical actors, furthering but also unsettling improvement discourse while relocating its historical effects from the region to the city, and providing new readings of the colonial urban landscape.

India-Pakistan Relationship: A Case of Perpetual Instability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanzeela Khalil
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Personal Involvement ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Two Sides

The study aims to dispassionately analyze what the future holds for Indo-Pak relations. The two sides have maintained strained relations since their independence from the British Colonial rule in 1947. It appears unlikely that India will change its course of action owing to the US support and resultant dismissiveness towards Pakistan’s peace overtures. The current security situation between India and Pakistan is presumed to be unprecedented because of Prime Minister (PM) Modi’s history of personal involvement in actions against Muslims and Pakistan. Therefore, the improvement in bilateral relations cannot be expected until the time some major compromises are made by the leadership on both sides. The lack of convergence in how each side views its security along with a long history of mistrust, are the root causes of this strained relationship. Although the broader dynamics of the Indo-Pak relationship cannot be analyzed in isolation from the very presence of nuclear weapons in the region; however, the occurrence or non-occurrence of crisis between India and Pakistan is not primarily subject to the presence or absence of nuclear weapons. The actual causes of conflict remain the non-resolution of outstanding disputes. To this end, India lacks a demonstrable and consistent political will to resolve conflicts through a spirit of accommodation, compromise, and reconciliation.

Sati

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brick
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Self Immolation ◽  
Colonial Government

This chapter examines the history of the traditional Hindu practice of widow self-immolation, commonly known as sati, which is one of the mostly widely known and discussed forms of ritual suicide in world religions. The chapter begins by briefly placing sati within the context of other historically practiced forms of “following into death” (in German, Totenfolge), and discussing those features of sati that make it unique among these practices. Then, in three separate sections, it provides an account of the earliest surviving sources on sati, which likely date as far back as the fourth century BCE; outlines an important medieval debate on the validity of the practice that took place within the orthodox Hindu legal tradition known as Dharmaśāstra; and, lastly, notes some major later developments regarding sati, including especially its legal prohibition by the British colonial government in India in 1829.

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