Showing papers on "Indirect rule published in 1989"

Luve Ni Wai as the British Saw It: Constructions of Custom and Disorder in Colonial Fiji

Abstract: In 1887 British colonial authorities in Fiji established a regulation prohibiting "luve ni wai and kindred practices." Never clearly comprehended by the British, these varied possession and invulnerability rites evoked characterizations ranging from "superstition" to "rebellion." Taking the colonial British as its object of ethnographic analysis, this essay explores luve ni wai as the British saw it. Analyzing indirect rule based on "Fijian custom" as a British invention of tradition which created a Christian, chiefly hierarchy, the essay finds in the 1887 regulation against luve ni wai a corollary creation of negative tradition in which alternative Fijian expressions of authority and order were constructed as criminal and disorderly. In Night Battles, Carlo Ginzburg (I983) writes of the sixteenthand seventeenth-century benandanti, participants in an agrarian fertility cult in the Friuli region of Italy, who were constructed as "witches" by the Inquisition, and of the process by which the inquisitorial categories eventually refracted into the beliefs of the benandanti themselves. Keith Thomas (1971: 2I3-67) chronicles a similar historical process in sixteenthand seventeenth-century England in which practitioners of magic, so-called "cunning men" and "wise women," became "witches" of a different sort in relation to the Christian church's distinction between the godly and the satanic.1 So too in colonial Peru did an indigenous cosmological system (and in particular indigenous women's relationships to founding goddesses) become "witchcraft" in the Spanish colonial rule and records (Silverblatt 1987). In parallel, in the British colony of Fiji invulnerability rituals called luve ni wai were initially labeled "heathen" by settlers, missionaries, and colonial officials. In 1887 the British colonial government of Fiji passed a regulation against "luve ni wai, kalou rere and kindred practices" which Ethnohistory 36:4 (Fall I989). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc ooI4-I8oI/89/$I.50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.123 on Tue, 18 Oct 2016 06:30:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

British Administration and the Decline of the Patronage-Clientage System in Northwestern Nigeria, 1900-1934

Abstract: It is currently assumed by many scholars that the British ruled northern Nigeria through the indirect rule system The essence of this system, according to our authorities, was to maintain the cultural and religious status quo (Perham, 1960; Temple, [1918] 1968; Crowder and Ikime, 1970) This assumption has fostered the belief that the British administration in northern Nigeria had very little impact on the traditional political system and society Hence, many writers who have written on the British administration in northern Nigeria have tended to ignore the traditional political system and society Thus, while we have scholarly works on the relationship between the British officials and the chiefs of northern Nigeria (Heussler, 1968), little work has been done on the relationship between the chiefs and their subjects Yet we cannot adequately assess the impact of the British administration on the status of the Hausa-Fulani feudal aristocrats by simply examining the aristocrats' relationship with the British officials We also need to examine the extent to which the British administration affected the relationship between the chiefs and their subjects British rule in northern Nigeria, like any other alien rule in Africa, whether it was French or Portuguese, was a culturalizing agent which affected every fiber of the society The British as colonizers had to create a sequacious society, which would be conducive to the chief aim of their rule, ie, economic exploitation, from the restive communities of the precolonial days (Last, 1970: 345-57)

Dream of Commonwealth: 1921-42

Abstract: Part 1 The attempt at consolidation 1921-1932: the Empire in 1921 - the British Empire - a Frenchman's and an insider's view, the Middle East and wider implications, Ireland and imperial implications, differences between the Dominions Britain as a Middle Eastern power - Anglo-French imperial interdependence, Egypt, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Persia Palestine - the British Labour Party and Zionism Empire into Commonwealth - the Irish anomaly - the Empire and the Chanak affair the economic argument - the Empire Marketing Board, India imperial defence and arms control - the role of the United States - defence policy and arms control, the London Naval Conference of 1930, Singapore the Indian ambiguity - the Round Table Conference of 1930. Part 2 The quickening pace 1932-1939: the Empire and the world depression - the depression and the Ottawa Conference and its aftermath trusteeship, indirect rule and colonial development - India and Africa, "closer union" and the destiny of East and South Africa, indirect rule in practice in Ceylon and Malaya the Empire and rearmament - Hankey's tour of the Empire 1934-5, the Imperial Conference of 1937 and its aftermath clearing the decks - Ireland, India and the Middle East the Empire and appeasement - the question of the German ex-colonies, the Dominons and Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and the Japanese threat, the Dominions and the challenge from Italy, the Dominions, the German threat and the Roosevelt initiative. Part 3 The accounting: the Empire goes to war - the problem of Irish neutrality, the Dominions, the guarantees and the Nazi-Soviet pact, Australia, Japan, Middle East, Anglo-French Union proposal, New Zealand and South Africa, Canada and America, India, colonial development and welfare and the 1940 Act defeat and the shadow of dissolution - Irish neutrality and the war, securing Egyptian co-operation, Syria and Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, South Africa, Mackenzie King fights the Canadian corner, Australia - Menzies' ambitions and setbacks, Pearl Harbour, Singapore and eclipse signposts to the future - Anglo-American relations, the Empire, Asia and Europe, Canada, India, the Middle East and Africa - contrasts in imperial decline.

The British Alteration of the Political System of Alwar State: Lineage Patrimonialism, Indirect Rule, and the Rajput Jagir System in an Indian 'Princely' State, 1775-1920:

Abstract: to a careful re-examination of these political and economic structures in the ,light of complex South Asian historical realities. Very frequently, our attention is directed more toward institutions of kinship than at more familiar political structures. Likewise, a deepening study of the nature of other non-Western socio-economic systems has broadened our comparative understanding of the universal characteristics of the pre-industrial corporate state/lineage relationship. While it is abundantly clear that South Asia is no

Trusteeship, Indirect Rule and Colonial Development

Abstract: The most obvious fact about British policy in relation to those territories for which the Colonial Office was responsible was that it could hardly be said to exist. The territories themselves — crown colonies, protectorates, mandates, and lesser islands and enclaves — were so varied in size and population and in the level of economic, social and cultural development to which they had attained, that no system that could be designed for some of them would not be wholly unsuitable for others. In this the dependencies reflected the very varied circumstances of their original acquisition and the different degrees of importance attached to them from an economic or strategic perspective. In contrast to the Indian Empire, they were not thought of in terms of future self-government, at however distant a date, nor (except temporarily in regard to the German colonial claims) was the idea of parting with any of them seriously entertained. They were territories subject to the sovereignty of the British Crown in Parliament and had to be governed in some fashion according to the constitutional precedents and available administrative machinery.