Lineage and Litigation, 1783–1788

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livesay
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Interracial Relationships ◽  
East Indian

This chapter chronicles the personal and public disputes rankling the British Empire after the American Revolution. It includes a case study of a mixed-race Jamaican family who travelled to England, then to India, and back to England. When they finally settled in Britain, a white cousin sued them for their Jamaican inheritance and used their West and East Indian ties (including connections to Bengal’s discredited governor Warren Hastings) as a way of castigating them as both corrupt and racially impure. This lawsuit demonstrates the ways that family negotiation in Britain grew increasingly racialized in the wake of the imperial storm of the American Revolution and the beginning of popular protests against colonial slavery. At the same time, however, the chapter shows great divergences in mixed-race experiences in Britain as well as the continuation of interracial relationships in Jamaica despite increasing calls against the practice.

scholarly journals The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-636
Author(s):  
Noam Maggor
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Regional Autonomy ◽  
Atlantic Trade ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
American Nation

Mark Peterson's The City-State of Boston is a formidable work of history—prodigiously researched, lucidly written, immense in scope, and yet scrupulously detailed. A meticulous history of New England over more than two centuries, the book argues that Boston and its hinterland emerged as a city-state, a “self-governing republic” that was committed first and foremost to its own regional autonomy (p. 6). Rather than as a British colonial outpost or the birthplace of the American Revolution—the site of a nationalist struggle for independence—the book recovers Boston's long-lost tradition as a “polity in its own right,” a fervently independent hub of Atlantic trade whose true identity placed it in tension with the overtures of both the British Empire and, later, the American nation-state (p. 631).

Sophistry, Security, and Socio-Political Structures in the American Revolution; or, Why Jamaica did not Rebel

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. Clayton
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
North American ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Constitutional Principle ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
Political Structures

Britain's most important American colonies did not rebel in 1776. Thirteen provinces did declare their independence; but no fewer than nineteen colonies in the western hemisphere remained loyal to the mother country. Massachusetts and Virginia may have led the American revolution, but they had never been the leading colonies of the British empire. From the imperial standpoint, the significance of any of the thirteen provinces which rebelled was pale in comparison with that of Jamaica or Barbados. In the century before 1763 the recalcitrance of these two colonies had been more notorious than that of any mainland province and had actually inspired many of the imperial policies cited as long-term grievances by North American patriots in 1774. Real Whig ideology, which some historians have seen as the key to understanding the American revolution, was equally understood by Caribbean elites who, like the continental, had often proved extremely sensitive on questions of constitutional principle. Attacks of ‘frenzied rhetoric’ broke out in Jamaica in 1766 and Barbados in 1776. But these had nothing whatsoever to do with the Stamp Act or events in North America.

THE ‘NATIVE’ UNDEFINED: COLONIAL CATEGORIES, ANGLO-AFRICAN STATUS AND THE POLITICS OF KINSHIP IN BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA, 1929–38

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER JOON-HAI LEE
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Ultimate Failure ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Determining Factor

This article examines the categorical problem that persons of ‘mixed-race’ background presented to British administrations in eastern, central and southern Africa during the late 1920s and 1930s. Tracing a discussion regarding the terms ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ from an obscure court case in Nyasaland (contemporary Malawi) in 1929, to the Colonial Office in London, to colonial governments in eastern, central and southern Africa, this article demonstrates a lack of consensus on how the term ‘native’ was to be defined, despite its ubiquitous use. This complication arrived at a particularly crucial period when indirect rule was being implemented throughout the continent. Debate centered largely around the issue of racial descent versus culture as the determining factor. The ultimate failure of British officials to arrive at a clear definition of the term ‘native’, one of the most fundamental terms in the colonial lexicon, is consequently suggestive of both the potential weaknesses of colonial state formation and the abstraction of colonial policy vis-à-vis local empirical conditions. Furthermore, this case study compels a rethinking of contemporary categories of analysis and their historical origins.

The Mestizos of Kisar: An insular racial laboratory in the Malay Archipelago

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-463
Author(s):  
Hans Pols ◽  
Warwick Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
East Timor ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Malay Archipelago ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
Race Mixing

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Mestizos of Kisar, a dry, almost barren island in the Dutch East Indies off the coast of East Timor, were a model for the study of race mixing or human hybridity. Discovered in the late nineteenth century, these ‘anomalous blondes’ of Dutch and Kisarese ancestry became subjects of intense scrutiny by physical anthropologists. As a German specialist in tropical medicine in search of a convenient empire after 1918, Ernst Rodenwaldt favourably evaluated the physique and mentality of the isolated, fair Mestizos in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Back in Germany in the 1930s, as professor of hygiene at Heidelberg, his views on race hardened to accord with Nazi doctrine. Yet after the war, Rodenwaldt successfully cited his earlier appreciation of mixed-race peoples in the eastern Malay Archipelago as grounds for rehabilitation. Once a celebrated case study in human hybridity, the Mestizos of Kisar were erased from anthropological discussion in the 1950s, when race mixing ceased to be a biological issue and became instead a sociological interest. Still, Rodenwaldt's work continues to exert some limited influence in the eastern parts of the archipelago and among the Kisarese diaspora, indicating the penetrance and resilience of colonial racialisation projects.

Communalizing Colonial Policies and Postcolonial Ethnic Warfare: A Multimethod Analysis of the British Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Matthew Lange ◽  
Emre Amasyali ◽  
Tay Jeong
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Mixed Use ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Indirect Rule

Abstract In this article, we reorient the literature on colonialism and ethnic violence by exploring how different types of communalizing colonial policy (CCP) affected postcolonial patterns of ethnic warfare. We hypothesize that CCPs have limited or mixed effects when they simply recognize or empower communities but that they promote ethnic warfare when explicitly favoring some communities over others, especially when this discrimination affects the power of communities. To test these hypotheses, we combine a statistical analysis of the British Empire with a focused case study of Myanmar. We find that two relatively non-discriminatory CCPs—the use of communal census categories and high levels of indirect rule—had limited or mixed effects on postcolonial ethnic warfare. Unequal communal representation in the legislature and security forces and a mixed use of indirect rule, on the other hand, are three highly discriminatory CCPs, and we provide evidence that they increased the odds of postcolonial ethnic warfare.

Merdeka for Malaya: Imagining Independence across the British Empire

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Rice
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Malayan Emergency

In his chapter on ‘Merdeka for Malaya: Imagining Independence Across the British Empire’, Tom Rice explores how this film produced by the Malayan Film Unit in 1957 portrays Malaya’s path to independence. Through this case study, Rice brings relevant nuances to the accepted discourse of change between the colonial and post-colonial periods. He demonstrates that both the film and the film infrastructure reveal a continued British influence, although they also validate the transition to an independent state. In his argument, the process of independence as it is recorded on film remains mainly idealised and conceals tensions for the sake of the project of imagining the new nation. Rice also Focuses on the period of the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), and the Malayan Film Unit.

Imperial Pressures, 1800–1812

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livesay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Interracial Relationships ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Institutional Pressures ◽  
High Class ◽  
Class Standing ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
The Caribbean

This chapter chronicles the institutional pressures put on mixed-race migrants in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Although families continued to assist relatives of color—which included helping get them into the East India Company to advance their social standing—constricting notions of kinship and political wariness of African-descended people made it challenging for Jamaicans of color to thrive in Britain. Their attempts to assimilate were made more difficult by the growing calls of abolitionists and pro-slavery supporters to curtail interracial relationships in order to create a demographic separation between blacks and whites in the Caribbean. Within this abolitionist debate, Trinidad’s governor Thomas Picton went to court for having tortured a mixed-race girl named Louisa Calderon. Her arrival in Britain prompted a flurry of accusations that she had become pregnant by a Scottish protector, escalating the general public’s concern about mixed-race migrants and their impact on British demography. This chapter contends that by the early nineteenth century, high class standing and genetic connections to prominent Britons were losing their social power for Jamaican migrants of color.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livesay
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Influential Individuals

This chapter introduces the main ideas and themes of the book. It describes not only how and why mixed-race Jamaicans travelled to Britain, but it explains why their migration was so important. Because they were connected to such wealthy and influential individuals in the British Atlantic, and because family relationships complicated their racial status, mixed-race migrants were instrumental in deliberations on questions of race in the British Empire. The introduction also analyses the various sources and methodology that constitute the book’s research base.

The Academy Effect

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-48
Author(s):  
Mark Boonshoft
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Education ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Continental Army

This chapter traces how academies came to be seen as training grounds for political leaders. During the Seven Years’ War, academy teachers and trustees claimed their schools benefitted the British Empire. But when the Imperial Crisis hit, the political ambitions of academy students, which the British had stoked in the 1750s and early 1760s, became a liability. The academy generation became the revolutionary generation, and students and faculty streamed into the ranks of the Continental Army and state and national political offices. The American Revolution solidified the civic purposes of education, and academies in particular. But the war was also destructive to American education. As peace arrived in 1783, Americans, and especially academy alumni, began to think about how to rebuild American education.

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