Ethnicity, Indigeneity, and Migration in the Advent of British Rule to Sri Lanka
About: This article is published in The American Historical Review.The article was published on 2010-04-01. It has received 9 citations till now.
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TL;DR: The authors explored the regulation of prostitution in colonial India between the abolition of the Indian Contagious Diseases Act in 1888 and the passing of the first Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act in 1923.
Abstract: This paper explores the regulation of prostitution in colonial India between the abolition of the Indian Contagious Diseases Act in 1888 and the passing of the first Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act in 1923. It challenges the commonly held assumption that prostitutes naturally segregated themselves in Indian cities, and shows that this was a policy advocated by the Government of India. The object was to prevent the military visiting these segregated areas, in the absence of effective Cantonment Regulations for registering, inspecting, and treating prostitutes. The central government stimulated provincial segregation through expressing its desires via demi-official memoranda and confidential correspondence, to which Rangoon and Bombay responded most willingly. The second half of the paper explores the conditions, in both India and Ceylon, that made these segregated areas into scandalous sites in the early twentieth century. It situates the brothel amongst changing beliefs that they: increased rather than decreased incidents of homosexuality; stimulated trafficking in women and children; and encouraged the spread of scandalous white prostitutes ‘up-country’, beyond their tolerated location in coastal cosmopolitan ports. Taken alongside demands that the state support social reform in the early twentieth century, segregation provided the tipping point for the shift towards suppression from 1917 onwards. It also illustrates the scalar shifts in which central-local relations, and relations between provinces, in government were being negotiated in advance of the dyarchy system formalized in 1919.
24 citations
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11 Feb 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the making of a 'rhizomatic' landscape: place, space and the politics of memory in the Andamanese Islands is discussed. Andaman local born: history, identity and convict descent.
Abstract: 1. Introduction Part I. Contentious Landscapes: 2. Improving visions, troubled landscapes: the legacies of colonial Ferrargunj 3. Entangled struggles, contested histories: the Second World War and after 4. The making of a 'rhizomatic' landscape: place, space and the politics of memory in the Andamanese Islands Part II. Affective Landscapes: 5. The Andaman local born: history, identity and convict descent 6. Dwelling in fluid spaces: the Matuas of the Andaman Islands 7. In pursuit of fireflies: the poetics and politics of 'lightscapes' in the Jarawa forests Part III. Imagined Landscapes: 8. Visual representations of the penal colony 9. Endangered landscapes, dream destinations: the shifting frames of 'tropicality' in the Andaman Islands 10. Conclusion Bibliography Index.
15 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a parallel hardening of British and Italian colonial governances in the Eastern Mediterranean in the interwar period is discussed, focusing on the cases of the Dodecanese, an Italian dependency since 1912, and Cyprus, a British dependency since 1878, lying on the geographical and cultural margins of, and the border between, these two colonial empires.
Abstract: This article records and offers to interpret a parallel hardening of British and Italian colonial governances in the Eastern Mediterranean in the interwar period. It focuses on the cases of the Dodecanese, an Italian ‘Possedimento’ since 1912, and Cyprus, a British dependency since 1878, lying on the geographical and cultural margins of, and the border between, these two colonial empires. Building on the recurrent cross-references between British and Italian colonial systems in British, Italian and Greek archives, official and unofficial, this article highlights the circulation of administrative ideas and practices across imperial boundaries. It suggests that British and Italian authorities saw in enosis, or the union with Greece advocated by the Orthodox majorities under their rule, an opportunity to implement an authoritarian form of governance potentially transposable to other Mediterranean settings. Engaging with current debates on inter-imperial transfers, this article enquires into colonial policyma...
7 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a thorough analysis of three spheres of Dutch bureaucracy (reporting, registering, and litigating) makes it clear that there was no uniform ideology that steered categorisation practices top-down throughout the studied colonial institutions.
Abstract: Feeding into current debates on ethnic identities in colonial South Asia, this article questions to what extent Dutch institutions articulated and impacted social categories of people living in coastal Sri Lanka during the eighteenth century. A thorough analysis of three spheres of Dutch bureaucracy (reporting, registering, and litigating) makes it clear that there was no uniform ideology that steered categorisation practices top-down throughout the studied colonial institutions. Rather, the rationale of the organisation as such affected the way people were classified, depending to a large extent on what level of bureaucracy individuals were dealing with, and what the possible negotiation strategies were for the people recorded. Future research should perhaps not ask “when” certain ethnicities were “made up,” but strive to understand the process in which they were created, the institutional contexts in which they were recorded, and how changing bureaucratic practices not only articulated, but also transformed, social categories in the long run.
3 citations