Malaysia: Prospect and Retrospect. The Impact and Aftermath of Colonial Rule

1969 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 1071
Author(s):  
Lennox A. Mills ◽  
Richard Allen
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Impact

From Little King to Landlord: Property, Law, and the Gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas B. Dirks
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Permanent Settlement ◽  
The Impact

In the last few years, modern historians of India have pushed the historical frontier of their field backwards in time. Colonialism is no longer considered the great watershed it once was thought to be. Historians who concern themselves with economic processes such as protoindustrialization tend in particular to minimize the impact of the consolidation of colonial rule in the late eighteenth century. Changes viewed as significant by these historians usually begin with the introduction of capitalism and the early encroachment of a world system, both of which predate the full political realization of colonialism. Historians who concern themselves with political changes tend in the other direction, although increasingly they have proposed major continuities between the ancien régime and the early colonial state. Historians concerned with social change view colonialism as significant but invoke various new forms of dualism to account for the limited effects of colonialism on local social forms. Whatever their differences, all of these historians agree that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are crucial for viewing later changes in economy, polity, and society, and, from their varying theoretical and ideological perspectives, delight in excoriating traditional views of India as static and “traditional” before the arrival of the British.

The Spectre of Americanization: Western Europe in the American Century

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Gassert
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
Film Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Threat ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Time

By 1945, the spectre of Americanisation had been haunting Europe for half a century. With the United States still struggling to establish colonial rule over the Philippine Islands, European observers began framing the ‘American challenge’ as a cultural and most of all economic threat to national independence. Controversies about the impact of ‘America’ often served as a stand-in for a more fundamental reckoning with processes of modernisation. The initial period of sustained Americanisation was the 1920s, when American film, music, and automobiles were conquering Europe for the first time. A second heyday of Americanisation ‘from below’ started with the ‘American occupation of Britain’ and that of continental Europe during and after World War II. This article focuses on Western Europe and Americanisation, highlighting Americanisation from above and Americanisation from below. It looks at two concepts that often come up within debates about Americanisation: Westernisation and anti-Americanism.

Colonial rule and the ‘legal factor’ in Ghana and Lesotho

Africa ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Gocking
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Legal Factor ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact ◽  
British Colonies

This article compares and contrasts the development of the legal systems of two British colonies that occuped almost opposite ends of the colonial judicial continuum: what in colonial times were known as the Gold Coast and Basutoland. Both became British colonies in the late nineteenth century, but followed considerably different paths to that status. In the case of the Gold Coast it followed centuries of contact between Europeans and the coastal peoples in this area of West Africa. In the case of Basutoland incorporation into the European world was a nineteenth-century phenomenon and far more rapid. Nevertheless, at the turn of the century, as indirect rule became the officially accepted wisdom as to how colonial peoples should be ruled, administrators in both colonies sought to make the chiefly order an integral part of the colony's administration and award its chiefs judicial responsibilities. In the Gold Coast, however, chiefly courts remained in competition with a highly developed British-style Supreme Court. In Basutoland there were basically only chiefly courts until late in the colonial period, which applied Sesotho customary law that was written down as the Laws of Lerotholi in 1903. The two-tier judicial system of the Gold Coast allowed far more contestation and was far more flexible and responsive to social changes than was the case in Basutoland. Incremental changes over time meant that the judicial system evolved far more smoothly than in Basutoland. When in the latter colony changes did not come ‘from above’ in the 1940s, there was a serious outbreak of ‘medicine murders’ that many observers felt was directly related to the chiefs losing their judicial role. Also, the colony's high court ruled against the validity of the Laws of Lerotholi in the controversial ‘Regency case’. Apart from being a return to comparative analyses of the impact of colonial rule on former African colonies, much in vogue in the 1960s, this study is an attempt to modify the emphasis on ‘cleavage’ and the ‘coercive’ that has characterised historians' approach to the study of colonial law.

Akan stool succession under colonial rule—continuity or change?

1975 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henige
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Indirect Rule

This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘normative’ and structured may be incorrect, at least in so far as stool succession is concerned. Contemporaneous evidence for this early period is at best sparse and at worst simply non-existent and seldom allows even tentative hypotheses. Rather, it is necessary to infer past practices from more recent data, whether this be observation of present behaviour or recent testimony about the past. In this case I have used the testimony presented at various stool and jurisdictional disputes during the colonial period for which records survive. These are generally, of course, ex parte statements and can be used only with caution. However, there is a surprising consensus throughout these records that both the principles and the patterns of stool succession and paramountcy in the pre-colonial period were variegated and even extemporaneous although, not surprisingly, there is much dispute about the reasons for this. On balance, this testimony suggests that a re-interpretation of early Akan political culture using a wider range of evidence is desirable.Although this implies that the impact of colonial ‘indirect’ rule was not as profound as has often been supposed, I have not discussed this problem directly except as it bears on the quality of the data. Nor have I attempted to analyse the day-to-day dynamics of political life, either for the earlier period (which would be impossible on the evidence) or for the colonial period (which would be irrelevant for comparison). Nevertheless, within the restricted compass of stool succession and paramountcy the argument here is that colonial rule involved little fundamental change from earlier practices. If anything, it probably served to delimit a greater range of previous options by seeking to codify them.

Race and the Construction of Working-Class Masculinity in the Nigerian Coal Industry: The Initial Phase, 1914–1930

2006 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Brown
Keyword(s):  
Coal Industry ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Southeastern Nigeria ◽  
Rural Villages ◽  
Rural Village ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Crucial Part

This article examines the impact of the capitalist economy, colonial rule, and wage labor on African masculinity and how African ideas about manhood impacted behavior and expectations of work in the coal mines of the Enugu Government Colliery in southeastern Nigeria from 1914 until the great depression. These mines were a “site” where racism became a crucial part of British strategies to control African labor and is one of the first places African workers experienced the “colonial masculinity” of racist white bosses. Both the workplace and the development of the city of Enugu encouraged subordinate local men (local slaves, unmarried men, poor men) to challenge the hegemony of powerful elite rural men in the form of rural revolts by men pressed into the mines and waves of industrial protest against conditions in the mines. Coalminers' presence in and political ties to rural villages led them to push for increased wages used to enhance their standing as men in their communities. Also, both the material and ritual requirements of rural male status and the masculine ethos of coalmining figured critically in workers' assessments of a “just” wage and respectful working conditions. Finally, miners drew strength from their position as “modern,” self-improving rural men to challenge racist (the African “boy”) and emasculating treatment in the mines. At the same time working men drew strength from their jobs in a “modern” industry (and the income they generated) to challenge the power of authoritarian colonial chiefs and elite men in the rural village. The article suggests that by factoring race and masculinity into the analysis of African laboring men scholars can gain new insights into the consciousness of workers.

‘The Real Value of the Lands’: The Nawabs, the British and the Land Tax in Eighteenth-Century Bengal

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. TRAVERS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Revenue Collection ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Real Value ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Ever since the late eighteenth century, no subject has been more prominent in histories of ‘the transition to colonialism’ in south Asia, than the issue of taxation. In particular, the complex system of agrarian taxation that was developed under the Mughal empire, and further elaborated by various post-Mughal regimes, has often been seen as the defining institution of both the pre-colonial and colonial states. What the British called ‘land revenues’, which included taxes on land proper (mal) and taxes on trade and markets (sair), were the main source of income for both Indian and British rulers. Assessments of the impact of colonial rule have often depended on supposed changes in the tax regime. Since the nineteenth century historians have tended to focus their attention on the relationship between the land tax and structures of agrarian property. They have generally argued that British rule both substantially increased the tax burden, and modified structures of agrarian tenure by splicing together rights of revenue collection and private property in land. But they have focused much more on early colonial policies with regard to private landed property, and less on the issue of the actual tax assessment. This paper takes up the issue of the land tax demand (known as jama in the terminology of Mughal and post-Mughal administration) tracing British debates about tax assessments through the first three decades of colonial rule in Bengal.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document