A Metropolitan History of the Dutch Empire

This book analyses popular imperial culture in the Netherlands around the turn of the twentieth century. Despite the prominent role that the Dutch empire played in many (sometimes unexpected) aspects of civil society, and its significance in mobilising citizens to participate in causes both directly and indirectly related to the overseas colonies, most people seem to have remained indifferent towards imperial affairs. How, then, barring a few jingoist outbursts during the Aceh and Boer Wars, could the empire be simultaneously present and absent in metropolitan life? Drawing upon the works of scholars from fields as diverse as postcolonial studies and Habsburg imperialism, A Metropolitan History of the Dutch Empire argues that indifference was not an anomaly in the face of an all-permeating imperial culture, but rather the logical consequence of an imperial ideology that treated ‘the metropole’ and ‘the colony’ as entirely separate entities. The various groups and individuals who advocated for imperial or anti-imperial causes – such as missionaries, former colonials, Indonesian students, and boy scouts – had little unmediated contact with one another, and maintained their own distinctive modes of expression. They were all, however, part of what this book terms a ‘fragmented empire’, connected by a Dutch imperial ideology that was common to all of them, and whose central tenet – namely, that the colonies had no bearing on the mother country – they never questioned. What we should not do, the author concludes, is assume that the metropolitan invisibility of colonial culture rendered it powerless.

Violent Trajectories: A Cultural History of the Enfield Rifle in the British Empire

<p>This thesis explores the material, cultural, and political significance of the Enfield rifle in the British Empire from c. 1850 to 1870. Unravelling the weapon’s links with imperial ideology and violence, it argues that the Enfield helped to produce discourses of race, gender, and civilisation during this era. Furthermore, it contends that these discourses shaped the ways in which Britons viewed the Enfield and influenced how they saw themselves. The rifle is best known for its well-chronicled role in the 1857 Indian Rebellion, where it was central to British narratives of the conflict. While acknowledging the Indian context, this thesis aims to draw the Enfield deeper into debates about British imperial culture, comparing the rifle’s physical and discursive influence across a range of imperial spaces. The Enfield rifle was one of the most important weapons of the nineteenth century. The product of a revolution in rifle technology, it amazed the British public and military with its accuracy and range. The weapon’s invention prompted the introduction of large scale factory production techniques in Britain. It also stimulated a massive rethinking of military tactics and was a central component of the militarisation of British society during the 1850s and 1860s. The Enfield then had extensive use in conflicts including the Crimean War, the Indian Rebellion, the New Zealand Wars, and the American Civil War. It also found a home in the burgeoning Volunteer Movement in Britain and New Zealand. Through its use in these arenas, the Enfield had a considerable physical impact on the British Empire, but it had even greater discursive significance. During the 1850s and 1860s, discussions about the Enfield’s invention, production, and usage promoted ideas of rationality, modern science, and individualism. After the 1857 Indian Rebellion, the rifle came to epitomise British technological might and racial ‘superiority’ in the minds of Victorians. The Volunteer Force, established in 1859, embraced the Enfield as its weapon of choice and conceived of it as a weapon that embodied the Force’s values of skill, education and respectability. In the New Zealand Wars however, the rifle failed to bring the decisive victories many settlers expected, and they began to disparage the weapon as a result. Nevertheless, the Enfield was still deeply implicated in the contested process of colonisation in New Zealand. Ultimately, the Enfield’s role in these events transformed the weapon into a deeply raced and gendered object.</p>

Violent Trajectories: A Cultural History of the Enfield Rifle in the British Empire

<p>This thesis explores the material, cultural, and political significance of the Enfield rifle in the British Empire from c. 1850 to 1870. Unravelling the weapon’s links with imperial ideology and violence, it argues that the Enfield helped to produce discourses of race, gender, and civilisation during this era. Furthermore, it contends that these discourses shaped the ways in which Britons viewed the Enfield and influenced how they saw themselves. The rifle is best known for its well-chronicled role in the 1857 Indian Rebellion, where it was central to British narratives of the conflict. While acknowledging the Indian context, this thesis aims to draw the Enfield deeper into debates about British imperial culture, comparing the rifle’s physical and discursive influence across a range of imperial spaces. The Enfield rifle was one of the most important weapons of the nineteenth century. The product of a revolution in rifle technology, it amazed the British public and military with its accuracy and range. The weapon’s invention prompted the introduction of large scale factory production techniques in Britain. It also stimulated a massive rethinking of military tactics and was a central component of the militarisation of British society during the 1850s and 1860s. The Enfield then had extensive use in conflicts including the Crimean War, the Indian Rebellion, the New Zealand Wars, and the American Civil War. It also found a home in the burgeoning Volunteer Movement in Britain and New Zealand. Through its use in these arenas, the Enfield had a considerable physical impact on the British Empire, but it had even greater discursive significance. During the 1850s and 1860s, discussions about the Enfield’s invention, production, and usage promoted ideas of rationality, modern science, and individualism. After the 1857 Indian Rebellion, the rifle came to epitomise British technological might and racial ‘superiority’ in the minds of Victorians. The Volunteer Force, established in 1859, embraced the Enfield as its weapon of choice and conceived of it as a weapon that embodied the Force’s values of skill, education and respectability. In the New Zealand Wars however, the rifle failed to bring the decisive victories many settlers expected, and they began to disparage the weapon as a result. Nevertheless, the Enfield was still deeply implicated in the contested process of colonisation in New Zealand. Ultimately, the Enfield’s role in these events transformed the weapon into a deeply raced and gendered object.</p>

Empire and Arab Indology

This article focuses on the Chouf-born poet, lawyer and translator Wadiʿ al-Bustani (1888–1954), who called himself a “Lebanese Palestinian,” as he moves from Beirut, to Cairo, Hudaydah, Bombay, Transvaal, and finally Haifa. The first to translate Tagore into Arabic after a visit to his Santiniketan in 1916, Bustani spent his life annotating and translating into Arabic the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and Kalidasa's Shakuntala . Alongside his self-professed and self-funded philological project, Bustani was one of the most important poets and lawyers in British Mandate Palestine, inspiring protest with his verse and litigating against colonial land policies. By focusing on Bustani's relation to British imperial culture, his political commitments in Palestine, and the contours of his indological project, this article uncovers a new history of global philology and an enabling colonial frame, long hidden in the many narrations of orientalism's travel and Palestine's colonization.

A Bit of Assyrian Imperial Culture

A key find from the 2018 excavations at the settlement mound of Gird-e Rūstam (Gird-i Rostam) in the easternmost part of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq, directly on the border with Iran, is an inscribed pottery sherd that can be assigned to the Neo-Assyrian period, more specifically the late 8th or 7th century BC. Albeit small, the sherd certainly belongs to a “carinated bowl”, which is a typical wine-drinking vessel of that time, and preserves a few signs of a cuneiform inscription in Akkadian language and Neo-Assyrian script. It is suggested that the reconstructed text contains mention of the local toponym Birtu-ša-Adad-remanni “Fortress of Adad-remanni”. This place is located in the border region between the Assyrian Empire and the kingdom of Mannea, which raises the possibility that Gird-e Rūstam could be identified with Birtu-ša-Adad-remanni.

Indian Fighters in the Philippines

This article explores the connections between the violence that accompanied U.S. continental expansion in the nineteenth century and the Philippine-American War, which began in 1899 after Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States following the Spanish-American War. Perhaps geographic distance has served to mask the temporal proximity of these linked periods of U.S. expansion, because this is a connection that has remained largely unexplored in the historiography. Rather than viewing 1898 as a caesura marking the separation between the continental and global phases of American empire, this article explores continuities through an examination of the interaction between imperial culture and military violence. Some U.S. soldiers in the Philippines drew directly on their experiences in wars with Native people, while others narrated their time in the Philippines as an “Indian war” and validated their actions by discursively positioning themselves and their troops as “Indian fighters.” The Indian Wars were translated, through the actions, imaginations, and writing of U.S. soldiers, politicians, and journalists, into a flexible discourse able to travel across space and time. These frontier resonances became one of several structuring narratives that sought to racialize Filipinos in order to justify the war and occupation.