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Critical and post-colonial scholars have argued that a more complete account of sovereignty necessitates an exploration of the colonial experiences through which Western civilised identity was forged. But the way these 'distant' encounters were used in (and interacted with) the process of claiming sovereignty domestically has received less attention. This is surprising as critical scholars have revealed the existence of strong similarities between the domestic and international constructions of sovereignty (and in particular the necessary performance of a savage Other) and have emphasised how sovereignty transcends the domestic/international frontier and provides a crucial link between the two. As a response, this article develops an analysis of the construction of sovereignty that combines both the domestic and international colonial frontiers on which 'civilised' sovereignty relies. I use a large set of primary archives about France in the sixteenth century in order to explore how sovereignty depends on unstable colonial frontiers, that is, differentiations between the civilised and the savage, that are constantly contested and re-established. Combining the domestic and international colonial frontiers reveals how they interact and are used in order to reinforce the civilised identity of the Western ruler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malcolm MacDonald was a high-status British diplomat during the period from the 1940s to the 1960s who achieved success through his unconventional, personable approach to international negotiations. He was equally successful as an architect of decolonization in Asia and Africa. At the same time, MacDonald was a collector in a variety of genres. This collecting activity was not separate from his public career as a diplomat and colonial administrator but rather central to it. MacDonald's identity as a collector helped him build relationships with East- and South-East Asian leaders. His views on material culture and enthusiastic patronage of the arts also influenced MacDonald's efforts at cultural decolonization. This article evaluates the links between MacDonald's collecting and his official international duties, arguing that he should be understood as a 'public collector'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the wrongful labelling in the colonial and post-federation era of Chinese Australians as ‘aliens’, ‘coloured aliens’, ‘outsiders’ or those who did not belong when in fact many had equal status under the law with white settlers as ‘British subjects’, mainly through birth in British possessions in Asia or in Australia itself. Executive, legislative and judicial pronouncements in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australia all played into a racial discourse of alienage overriding the common law meaning regarding Chinese Australians. Existing histories have not properly taken into account the large number of Chinese Australians who were ‘natural-born’ British subjects compared to the small proportion with subject status by naturalisation. Consequently, the extent of the unlawful labelling and treatment of ethnic Chinese who had full legal belonging in Australia has been overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Portuguese pamphleteer Jose´ Freire Monterroio Mascarenhas's journalistic and literary endeavors as they illuminate an early-eighteenth-century intersection of imperial transformation and an expanding culture of print. Recent scholarship has analyzed Mascarenhas's work as editor of the Gazeta de Lisboa, as well as how his writings on monstrosity addressed a waning vision of disaster as divine intervention and newer scientific understandings of nature. This article turns to the less-studied ways in which Mascarenhas's prolific textual production also accounted for territories beyond Europe over which the Portuguese Crown claimed sovereignty. While Mascarenhas's historia presente reinforced the juxtaposition of an Asian military enterprise and its absence in America, his accounts of the empire also invited scrutiny of the scope of conquest and limits of bellicosity and suggested that in cultivating knowledge of the imperial present, readers needed to recognize the range of exchanges that generated Portuguese authority and wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Swazi historical affairs in the colonial period has remained patchy. The historian is confronted by numerous gaps that make it difficult to get a comprehensive view of the development of the history of the country during this period. One of the neglected subjects is the nature of the relations between indigenous rulers who were allowed to exercise some authority by the British policy of Indirect Rule, colonial administrators, and missionaries who promoted western education for Swazi children. This article interrogates such relations in the 1920s and 30s arguing that between 1928 and 1937 the education of Swazi children was intensely contested by groups whose main aim was power and control over the indigenous population. The article shows that indigenous leaders challenged western education as advanced by missionaries because it was viewed to be undermining the power and authority of the Swazi monarchy. Colonial administrators were part of the contest as they wanted an education system that would further the ends of British colonialism. For their part, the missionaries became part of the contest as they believed that western education was a good instrument for evangelization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Material Culture Review is the property of Cape Breton University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the history of the Spanish institution Cuzco in the New World in the 16th century. Topics discussed include the conquest and pacification of the new American territories by the Castilian Crown; actions, diplomacy and implementation of political-administrative structures in the period; and how it helped maintain control over a large population and a broader scope territory.

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The post-colonial era in Africa has witnessed the emergence of the "hegemonic presidency," which has been variously referred to as the "imperial presidency" and the "Big man/Big woman syndrome." Essentially, the phenomenon entails the illegal exercise of presidential powers beyond both the constitutional and statutory boundaries. Against this background, this article examines three major interrelated issues. First, it interrogates the historical development of the phenomenon. Second, it probes the factors that have caused the emergence of the "hegemonic presidency." Third, the study suggests some ways in which the phenomenon may be curtailed. In the case of the historical development of the phenomenon, the "hegemonic presidency" has its roots in colonialism, especially the ubiquity and the unfettered exercise of power by the chief colonial administrator--e.g. the governorgeneral. As for the major causes of the phenomenon, they include the constitution, statutes, weak public institutions, especially the legislature and the judiciary, and the acts of ultra vires, which are consequences of presidential arrogation of power. Finally, the article suggests various ways for curtailing the phenomenon, including constitutional redesign to limit the appointive and financial powers of the presidency and the strengthening of public institutions, particularly the legislative and judicial branches, so that they can play their effective rules as countervailing forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights a moment in the history of French West Africa when violence was both ubiquitous and forbidden. During the interwar period, French reformers pushed for the elimination of the routine use of violence by colonial administrators. The intervention of activist journalists and human rights groups put pressure on colonial policy makers to finally bring administrative practice in line with imperial rhetoric. Local administrators, however, felt that such meddling interfered with their ability to govern effectively. A case of torture and murder by French functionaries in the Ivory Coast village of Oguiédoumé shows how struggles over antiviolence reform played out from the ground up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on sexual behaviors of British colonial authorities in in Borneo in Malay archipelago, discussing prevalence of concubinage, homosexuality and master-servant relationships. It discusses naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace's journey in archipelago for study of natural history and his closeness to native men. It discusses life of writer W. Somerset Maugham, influence of Wallace's narrative "The Malay Archipelago" in his fiction writings and his attraction toward men.

In 'Social Responsibility and Power I', I have endeavoured to provide an argument for the social responsibility and power of J.T. van der Kemp (joined by James Read in 1801) as manifest in his interventions for and on behalf of the Khoi vis-à-vis the British and later Batavian colonial governments, as well as the frontier settler farmers on the Eastern Cape Frontier (1801 - 1806) (cf. Smit 2016a). His own 'power' became manifest in his interventions for and on behalf of the Khoi and his critique of both the colonial governments and the frontier settler farmers. To this we may add his assertion of the freedom of the landless Khoi, and his contention that they should receive a piece of land, to be allocated by government, for a mission station, where they would be subjected to education and be 'civilized'. I have expounded what these developments meant in terms of the 'archive' of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They included, amongst others, the further de-culturalisation of the Khoi. In this article, I take the argument further by focusing on the 'useful education', 'analytic education', 'institutionalisation', the interaction with the colonial 'government' in these matters, and the 'pacification' of the Khoi by the mission as institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to trace the interesting history of Western medical-zoological engagement with venomous Indian snakes within the context of making and consolidation of British health policy in colonial India during the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries. It shows that while the British colonisers began to exploit flora and fauna of the newly subjugated land for their material benefit, they confronted wild Indian creatures like venomous snakes and anxiously noticed the huge mortality from snake poisoning in India. This threw a direct challenge to the healthy livelihood of the colonisers because of their insufficient knowledge about such a variety of snakes and their envenoming powers. The paper shows how Indian snakes formed a significant part of the British medical-zoological imagination of Oriental/tropical wilderness; a cruel, chaotic and disease-laden condition posing a threat to the life and health of the Europeans and also how the difficulties faced in snake-ridden India were engaged with the idea that India was essentially different from Europe: environmentally and medically. This paper concludes that Western medical engagement with venomous snakes and the consequential health measures which flourished under the British agency provided the tools to order and control the snake-ridden landscape of India and paved the way for the assertion of an intellectual superiority over the colonised people. In this regard, Western medicine and health policy, not only as practice but also as ideology, served to justify the colonial rule and became a true instrument of the British Indian Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is R2P the most effective tool the international community has to prevent genocide, or the newest neo-imperial norm perpetuated by the most powerful states? In a dramatic performance of the key debates within R2P, each of these views is presented before Aristotlean and Tocquevillean insights are drawn upon to find a middle ground rooted in citizen resistance against mass atrocity crimes. R2P can both become a more effective tool of prevention and gain needed political legitimacy by drawing on the rich historical tradition of citizen resistance to empower local actors defying regimes engaged in mass atrocity crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1867, the Government of India passed one of the most brutal-minded and draconian laws ever created in colonial India. Known as the ‘Murderous Outrages Act’, this law gave colonial officials along the North-West Frontier wide powers to transgress India's legal codes in order to summarily execute and dispose of individuals identified as ‘fanatics’. Arguments for the creation and preservation of this law invariably centred around claims about the purportedly ‘exceptional’ character of frontier governance, particularly the idea that this was a region that existed in a perpetual state of war and crisis. Far from being peripheral in its impact, this article explores how this law both drew upon and enabled a wider legal culture that pervaded India in the wake of 1857. It argues that this law was a signal example of British attempts to mask the brute power of executive authority through legalistic terms, and was also evocative of a distinctly ‘warlike’ logic of colonial legality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

These days the rule of law is often invoked in Burma. Although its contemporary salience is partly a consequence of recent global trends, the rule of law also has lineages in the country's colonial and early post-colonial periods. To examine these lineages, this article distinguishes between its procedural and substantive conceptions. Whereas the latter conception recognizes the subjects of law as freely associating equals, the former is compatible with a range of political practices, including those that are undemocratic. The records of decisions in criminal cases before Burma's superior courts during the period of British domination suggest that some semblance of procedural rule of law did exist, and that it was compatible with the rule of colonial difference. Out of this procedural rule of law a nascent, substantive type emerged during the early years of democratic life in the post-colony, before the onset of military dictatorship. The article concludes that more effort to structure interpretations of the rule of law in history might better enable discussion about the concept's continued relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was publicly excluded from the European 'civilizing mission'. The victorious Allies stripped Germany of its overseas empire. The German colonies were awarded to other imperial powers as mandates under the League of Nations. This action was justified by citing colonial atrocities, such as the German campaign against the Herero, which were used to label Germans as 'exceptionally cruel colonial masters' and 'unfit imperialists'. Yet, during the tenure of the League's mandate system, several former German colonial officials rose to prominence in the League of Nations as 'imperial experts'. The involvement of German colonial officials in League agencies and events suggests that, although no longer part of an imperial power and officially ostracized from the 'work of civilization', Germans remained adaptive contributors to international discourses on empire. In order to determine how individual Germans and lobbying interests were able to make use of the spirit of internationalism to minimize their association with 'unfit imperialists' and re-establish themselves as 'fellow civilizers', this paper focuses on the interwar careers and interactions of two colonial officials: Dr Ludwig Kastl and Dr Julius Ruppel--former bureaucrats who had served in the African colonies, each of whom became German members on the PMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An unapologetic perspective in the study of colonialism in Africa is currently reasserting itself forcefully. It sees the colonial experience as a mere sporadic change initiated by the need to use traditional institutions in the administration of the natives. It assumes that the responses of the natives had imposed some restrictions on the creative disposition of the colonial overlords. With evidence from some Stateless societies of Nigeria this article shows that colonialism had been occasioned by currents that denaturalized the social order to the extent that traditional institutions used lost their traditionalness hence ushering changes that were decisive in nature and far reaching in consequence. Furthermore, colonialism altered the direction of history in a manner that laid the basis for the sprouting of dividing walls around different cultural clusters thereby calcifying flexible identities with negative consequences on contemporary political developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Outre-Mers: Revue d'Histoire is the property of Societe Francaise d'Histoire d'Outre Mer and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In spite of historians' sophisticated understanding of how Africans shaped colonial administration in Natal, in many accounts the European side of native administration remains highly personalised. In this article I challenge the widely held assumption that Theophilus Shepstone was the central colonial figure responsible for the establishment of indirect rule in Natal. I advance two interrelated arguments. The first is that Shepstone was just one of half a dozen imperial officials, located variously in Natal, the Cape and London, who together made key decisions that laid down the basic framework of native administration in the 1840s. This basic framework I take to be the establishment of Natal's first locations and the official recognition of chiefly rule and native law, all of which had been formalised by 1849. The second argument is that these officials specifically drew from their close experience of the eastern Cape frontier – and in particular the administrative policies trialled in Queen Adelaide Province from 1835 to 1836 and British Kaffraria in 1847 – in devising a model for governing Natal's Africans in the 1840s. I suggest that it is the Queen Adelaide Province experiment, along with the early government of British Kaffraria the following decade, that provided colonial officials with a distinct template for native administration in Natal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks back on the record of the British Colonial Service in Africa, with a particular focus on how it ran Zambia immediately prior to its independence in 1964. The author, a member of that service, argues that, for all their faults, British colonial administrators discharged their duties with dedication, skill and the welfare of the general population in mind. There is, he notes, a need for a better understanding of the positive effects of contact between cultures that British colonial rule engendered in societies such as Zambia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobility—of people, products, and capital—is a common trope of the contemporary globalized world. Yet, mobility is not only a current phenomenon, but has an integral role in the constitution of past empires. In particular, the governance of empire requires the mobility of administrators and their families: people who, in the service of empire, travel between metropole and periphery, and even more typically, in the multiple circuits between peripheries. The life of Sir Anthony Musgrave, a colonial administrator who served in posts in the Caribbean, Canada, South Africa, and Australia, exemplifies the movement which empire demands. In their travels around the British world of the late nineteenth century, the Musgraves—Sir Anthony, his American-born wife Lady Jeanie, and their three sons—engaged with empire in ways both physical and conceptual. In this essay, I explore how the Musgraves’ mobility contributed to a sense of overlapping colonial worlds that were supported and challenged by the rise of communication and transport technologies, the flows of international labor, and the competing demands of national and imperial identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that in its liberal form, transitional justice has no future as it cannot encompass structural injustices arising from issues related to postcolonial land conflicts. The bias of liberal transitional justice discourse towards corrective and retributive justice invites criticism that it is a tool for dealing with ‘uncivilized’ rogue states. In addition, transitional justice’s liberal individualism overlooks pluralistic arrangements of property rights which were secured by colonialism. Liberal justice mechanisms also take no account of the fact that postcolonial states did not start from a ‘veil of ignorance’ and as such cannot presume that liberty has to take primacy over redistribution. Nonetheless, the article also contends that the continuum of transitional justice can be assured if there is a serious engagement with recent postcolonial innovation which is ‘mimicry’ of the dominant discourse. The article’s use of the concept of ‘mimicry’ is inspired by the term's use in postcolonial and colonial literature to describe the interaction between members of colonized people and their colonizers. In the context of transitional justice, mimicry can be shameful, empowering and subversive as it includes the shameless copying of former colonizers’ tactics by the postcolonial ruling elite and the diffusion of ‘western’ concepts of rule of law, justice and human rights, and also presents opportunities for postcolonial ‘agency.’ Postcolonial ‘agency’ occurs where postcolonial societies merge liberalism with postcolonial realities, thereby responding to these societies’ actualities without completely disavowing international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Visitador" Muñoz arrived to New Spain to oversee how the newly appointed viceroy had managed a conspiration to overthrow the government. There are three literary versions of the government official (a play, two historical chapters in a book, and an anonymous short story) which emphasize his cruelness. The literary treatment of this character contributed to validate Mexican Independence, criticizing the Spanish King and his officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the autobiographical writing and reading practices of Giovanni Bembo, a colonial governor posted to Skopelos and Skiathos in the Aegean in 1525. During his term as rettore in the Aegean, Bembo's scribe had an affair with his daughter and helped her to abort her ensuing pregnancy. Bembo then ordered the scribe to be publicly castrated. In the aftermath of this violent act, Bembo was blacklisted from any further governmental position in Venice. In his autobiographical letter, written ten years after the events on Skiathos, Bembo reflects on his role in the colonial Aegean, using textual practices that he learned in Venetian humanist schools during adolescence. I argue that in Bembo's autobiographical writing and annotations, we can see the ways in which humanist education shaped the Venetian patrician colonial administrator's experience and practice of governance in the Aegean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the life and career of Sir James Wright, colonial governor of Georgia, during the U.S. Revolution. Emphasis is given to to topics such as his political ideology in the face of rebellion, the unsuccessful siege and bombardment by French forces on the city of Savannah in 1779, and Wright's escape from capture by Rebel authorities.

This article examines a group of restorationist proposals for Spanish Hispaniola from the late seventeenth century in the context of peninsular arbitrismo in order to understand the participatory nature of reform throughout Spain's empire. While their aims were more limited than those of arbistristas across the Atlantic, colonial advocates' idealized visions of the island and claims about the major threats it faced represented a shared local imaginary, and their proposals found a receptive audience in metropolitan authorities, who agreed that Hispaniola had strategic value but were constrained by limited resources. Taken together, the recommendations of overseas advocates and the responses of royal councilors illustrate a transatlantic conception of the Spanish monarchy and an active desire for restoration during the reign of Charles II, despite the supposed decadence of Spain under the last Habsburg monarch. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the present paper I discuss the assumptions and significance of some of the theses and techniques behind Portuguese colonial land policies in Africa between the mid-1920s and the 1940s, and discuss their role in the Portuguese colonial project. I particularly address the extent to which, both in national and international discussion fora on colonial topics, as well as in official discourse, through the voice of politicians in the metropole as well as colonial administrators and experts, arguments in favour of African access to individual property, for different purposes, gained ground. These arguments went against the dominant perspective in Portuguese colonial thought between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which dictated the limited access of Africans to the land for instance in the name of economic development of colonial territories, the fight against land speculation and the safeguarding of Portuguese sovereignty in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is agreement that the Colonial Office continued to man an expanding empire in the nineteenth century by the technique of patronage, the reasons for the longevity of this practice, despite ‘reform’ of civil service recruitment in the early 1850s, have been little analysed. This article explores, from patronage records and private papers, the factors sustaining preferment in the gift of secretaries of state and their governors, rather than by resorting to examinations. Its conclusions are that the practice was associated with class status among senior civil servants, gradually mitigated by promotions from within colonial establishments. Patronage was burdensome to manage centrally and had to be devolved to governors, as colonial establishments expanded, creating a pool of talent among senior officials for secretaries of state to draw on. This trend is evident in establishment statistics from the late 1840s to1871. It supports the Colonial Office claim that the service was ‘professional’ according to its own criteria of learning through experience in political accommodation with local notables and dealing with emergencies. Thus, the department justified its opposition to competitive examinations for appointments overseas, while tolerating them for junior posts at home, and the practice survived till the end of the century and after. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]