A Post-National, Post-Colonial History of Early Sri Lanka and South India

2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-307
Author(s):  
Ravi Vaitheespara
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South India ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Sri Lanka’s Quest for a Reformed Constitution: Lessons from a Lost Opportunity

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-308
Author(s):  
Austin I Pullé ◽  
Suri Ratnapala
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Development Indicators ◽  
The Public ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lost Opportunity

Abstract The history of Sri Lanka is highly instructive of the dynamics of constitutional evolution in a post-colonial, multi-ethnic, and economically challenged Asian nation. Sri Lanka is one of the few ex-colonies where constitutional change has happened without military involvement. Citizens have changed their government 10 times by generally fair and free elections. In the first three decades after independence, the country’s judiciary enjoyed an enviable reputation for independence, integrity, and competence. The public service, though poorly rewarded and resourced, maintained a praiseworthy standard of administrative impartiality and competence. Sri Lanka had, and still has, one of the highest rates of literacy in the developing world and scores creditably on human development indicators. Despite these impressive achievements, the country has a chequered record of constitutional government since independence. It has been ruled for long periods under emergency rule, and the nation’s two republican constitutions have a poor record of maintaining constitutional democracy and basic rights and freedoms. The nation’s most recent efforts at constitutional reform, despite some notable successes, have stalled as a consequence of hyper-partisanship and opportunistic political strategizing. This article examines the post-independence constitutional history of the nation, prognosticates its prospects of constitutional revival, and draws important lessons from the failure of the current constitutional project.

Pan-African charnockite formation in Kerala, South India

1992 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. Choudhary ◽  
N. B. W. Harris ◽  
P. van Calsteren ◽  
C. J. Hawkesworth
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Shear Zone ◽  
South India ◽  
Metamorphic Event ◽  
Isotopic Ratios ◽  
Sr Isotope ◽  
Pan African ◽  
Granulite Metamorphism ◽  
History Of

AbstractSm-Nd mineral ages of gneisses and associated granulites from the Ponmudi incipient charnockite locality (South India) indicate that granulite metamorphism occurred at, or shortly after, 558 Ma. Proterozoic ages recorded by garnet separates reflect a detrital age or an earlier metamorphic event preserved by inclusions within garnet. The age of post-metamorphic uplift (440–460 Ma) is constrained by Sr isotope equilibration between biotite and plagioclase. Since charnockite formation and subsequent uplift north of the Palghat-Cauvery shear zone had terminated by earliest Proterozoic time, these results confirm two distinct periods of granulite formation in South India and suggest that the Palghat-Cauvery shear zone represents the boundary between two blocks of strongly contrasting geological histories. Both incipient charnockite formation and subsequent uplift at Ponmudi may be correlated with the tectonothermal evolution of the Highlands Group in Sri Lanka. The similarity between Nd and Sr model ages for charnockites and gneisses from Ponmudi indicates that no significant Rb-Sr fractionation has occurred during the crustal history of these incipient charnockites. Pb isotopic ratios suggest that Th-U ratios were fractionated during charnockite formation at about 500 Ma. In contrast to charnockites found north of the Palghat-Cauvery shear zone, fractionation of U-Pb during the Archaean did not occur in the Ponmudi granulites.

scholarly journals The story of a tragedy: how people in Haut-Katanga interpret the post-colonial history of Congo

2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Rubbers
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACTIn order to give an account of the Congolese tragedy since independence, the inhabitants of Haut-Katanga often resort to four different narratives: the abandonment by Belgium; the biblical curse on Africans; the conspiracy of Western capitalism; or the alienation of life powers by Whites. Though these four stories offer different scenarios, they are all constructed with two types of actors – Whites and Congolese people. This article suggests that this racial/national frame finds its origins in colonial and national ideologies, which have left their mark on Haut-Katanga, and that it continues today to structure the narratives through which people remember their post-colonial history. Collective memory and racial/national identity are reciprocally constituted in these stories, but in different terms. They offer, accordingly, different ways of influencing the present.

Why Zambia failed

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-821
Author(s):  
STUART JOHN BARTON
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Institutional Quality ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Foreign Investors ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Institutional Constraint ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Inducement

Abstract:Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson and others are explaining divergent economic histories with qualitative measures of institutional quality – including Acemoglu and Robinson's popular inclusive/extractive dichotomy. While quantitative studies have sort to confirm these links using econometric proxies, few empirical accounts have shownhowthese proxies, or indeed the institutions they seek to represent actually influenced economic growth. This study helps fill that gap by testing whether evidence in Zambia's post-colonial history supports a proposed econometric link between its institutional quality and its slow economic growth. Support for this link is found in foreign investors’ interpretation of declining institutional constraint on Zambia's President as the potential for increased policy volatility, and as such an economic inducement to delay critical investment to Zambia's capital constrained economy. These findings add weight to the institutional argument in general, as well as present one concrete example in history of a mechanism through which institutional quality affected economic growth.

“Victory over Communism: South Korean Protestants’ Ideas about Democracy, Development, and Dictatorship, 1953–1961”

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 233-258
Author(s):  
Jeongran Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The North ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
North Korean Regime

This article complicates the traditional narrative of anti-Communist Christians in Korea, examining the history of anti-communism among them in light of their claims to support democracy and development. Changes in Christian thinking in Korea followed the end of formal fighting in the Korean War. The conflict transformed Korea’s post-colonial history into a developmental struggle, pitting communism versus capitalism in a deadly battle. From the mid-1950s, South Korean Protestants saw the struggle as a competition between two systems, not simply one to eradicate the North Korean regime. From this new perspective, they began condemning political injustice and corruption under President Syngman Rhee. The contradictions in the ideas of Christians were partly embodied in their support for the civil uprising that would topple the Rhee regime, but also in their endorsement of Park Chung-hee’s military takeover in 1961. South Korean Protestants assisted the coup’s central leadership and helped a totalitarian regime come to power. This paradoxical aspect within Korean Protestant history is closely tied to the unique characteristics of its anti-communism and how it evolved after the Korean War.

The politics and practice of Thomas Adeoye Lambo: towards a post-colonial history of transcultural psychiatry

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew M Heaton
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Transcultural Psychiatry ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Over Time

This article traces the career of Thomas Adeoye Lambo, the first European-trained psychiatrist of indigenous Nigerian (Yoruba) background and one of the key contributors to the international development of transcultural psychiatry from the 1950s to the 1980s. The focus on Lambo provides some political, cultural and geographical balance to the broader history of transcultural psychiatry by emphasizing the contributions to transcultural psychiatric knowledge that have emerged from a particular non-western context. At the same time, an examination of Lambo’s legacy allows historians to see the limitations of transcultural psychiatry’s influence over time. Ultimately, this article concludes that the history of transcultural psychiatry might have more to tell us about the politics of the ‘transcultural’ than the practice of ‘psychiatry’ in post-colonial contexts.

THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA IN THE IMPERIAL AND POST-COLONIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY OF FRANCE

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 935-949 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER M. DUECK
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

ABSTRACTThe imperial and post-colonial history of France has inspired an ever-growing body of literature in the last decade. Moving well beyond traditional political and economic narratives, these histories present a rich portrait of the policies, peoples, and perceptions that shaped the colonial and post-colonial experience in France and overseas. This article looks at how Arab communities and nations figure within the historiography on the period since the First World War. The first of three sections examines works devoted to culture and imperialism that span the twentieth century, with special emphasis on the differences between the scholarship emerging from French and Anglo-Saxon milieus. The second section looks at how recent histories have used the interwar years as a unit of analysis for understanding French colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa. Algeria, as the cornerstone of the empire and the theatre of the bloodiest colonial war for independence, forms the basis of the third section, which considers new conceptions of nationalism and decolonization.

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