tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/british-colonies-31830/articlesBritish colonies – The Conversation2024-01-04T19:35:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2202022024-01-04T19:35:55Z2024-01-04T19:35:55Z2 colonists had similar identities – but one felt compelled to remain loyal, the other to rebel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567761/original/file-20240103-29-h271tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C4%2C3246%2C2038&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Martin Howard, left, and Stephen Hopkins came to opposing conclusions about their colonial British identities.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-2b3d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">Howard: John Singleton Copley via Wikimedia Commons; Hopkins: New York Public Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Through the early 1750s, two men in the British colony of Rhode Island – Martin Howard and Stephen Hopkins – had similar backgrounds and led strikingly similar lives. They knew each other, were both supporters of libraries with successful legal careers, and were politically active.</p>
<p>Their writings in the 1760s demonstrate that they were both assessing the political relationship between the North American colonies and Britain.</p>
<p>Both men claimed that they felt truly British – but from their shared identity they arrived at violently opposing conclusions. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=00sDajMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">My historical research</a> into Rhode Island’s politics and economics during the colonial period has found these two men’s approaches to the issues of the day are a microcosm of the decisions faced by thousands of British colonists on the eve of the American Revolution. </p>
<p>And they are a lesson about how what might appear to be common values about shared political and cultural identities can at times serve not as a bridge joining people together but a wedge driving them apart.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The facade of a building, with four columns supporting a portico." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In the 1750s, Martin Howard served as librarian at Newport’s Redwood Library.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Redwood_Library_and_Athenaeum_-_Newport,_RI_(51487895396).jpg">ajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Parallel paths</h2>
<p>The stories of Martin Howard and Stephen Hopkins begin as mirror images of each other, including growing up in Rhode Island. </p>
<p>Howard worked as an attorney in his hometown of Newport. <a href="https://collections.newporthistory.org/Collections/index">The Newport Mercury</a> newspaper chronicles his many civic and political activities. He served as Overseer of the Poor, Smallpox Inspector, and in the Rhode Island General Assembly. In the early 1750s, he served as the librarian at Newport’s <a href="https://ageofrevolutions.com/2021/01/13/loyalists-and-the-birth-of-libraries-in-new-england-the-marriage-of-martin-and-abigail-howard/">Redwood Library</a>. And he was one of two men elected to represent Rhode Island at the 1754 gathering of representatives from the northern colonies known as the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1750-1775/albany-plan">Albany Congress</a>.</p>
<p>Hopkins, for his part, became a <a href="https://archive.org/details/afj7768.0001.001.umich.edu">justice of the peace</a> in Scituate, Rhode Island, in 1730, and served multiple terms as Rhode Island’s governor in the mid-18th century. In 1753, he was a founding member of the <a href="https://archive.org/details/providence-athenaeum-inquire-within">Providence Library Company</a>. And he was the other Rhode Island representative at the Albany Congress in 1754.</p>
<p>In the early 1760s, their paths might have seemed closely aligned. But then, in 1763, everything changed.</p>
<p>That year, the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War – known in the American colonies as the French and Indian War, and called “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/summary/Key-Facts-of-the-Seven-Years-War">the first world war</a>” by historian and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. At the end of a multinational conflict spanning continents and oceans, Britain took over almost all of France’s territory and trade in North America and India. But the triumphant empire had <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1750-1775/treaty-of-paris">incurred enormous debts</a> to fund its war effort. </p>
<p>Seeking to repay its debts and expand its North American influence, the British Parliament passed the <a href="https://ahp.gatech.edu/sugar_act_bp_1764.html">Sugar Act</a> in 1764 and the <a href="https://ahp.gatech.edu/stamp_act_bp_1765.html">Stamp Act</a> in 1765.</p>
<p>These laws <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/sugar-and-stamp-acts.htm">imposed significant tax burdens on colonists</a>, though they had no representatives in Parliament to voice their concerns. Howard’s and Hopkins’ reactions to these laws marked a key phase of division between them, and across colonial North America.</p>
<h2>Dueling pamphlets</h2>
<p>Most political activity in the late 18th-century Anglo-American world was fueled by private groups who advocated for a wide range of causes. </p>
<p>Howard was a founding member of the Newport Junto, which supported both the Sugar and Stamp acts and advocated for Rhode Island to come under greater Parliamentary control. Hopkins supported the loose coalition of organizations collectively known as the Sons of Liberty who campaigned against imperial taxation. </p>
<p>Many members of these groups turned to the printing press to reach audiences across the Atlantic world. Rhode Island had two printing presses: Howard published his ideas via the <a href="https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-the-franklin-press/">Franklin-Hall press in Newport</a>, while Hopkins used the <a href="https://americanantiquarian.org/content/first-press-providence">Goddard press</a> in Providence. </p>
<p>A close read of the pamphlets published by Howard and Hopkins in the mid-1760s shows they both invoke their common Anglo-American heritage – but only one would eventually come to the conclusion that it was necessary to sever that link.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A printed cover of an 18th century pamphlet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stephen Hopkins made his case in this 1764 pamphlet about the American colonies’ relationship with Britain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:303438/">Brown University Library</a></span>
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<p>For example, in November 1764, Hopkins published a pamphlet entitled “<a href="https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:303432/">The Rights of the Colonies, Examined</a>.” It began with the premise that because he was a British subject, he was entitled to all the relevant rights and privileges those subjects held. To him, that included the right to have a voice in Parliamentary deliberations about colonial taxation, because he lived in Britain’s North American colonies.</p>
<p>Less than two months later, in January 1765, Howard published a reply: “<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N07847.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext">A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax to his Friend in Rhode Island</a>, Containing Remarks Upon a Pamphlet Entitled ‘The Rights of the Colonies, Examined.’” Like Hopkins, he began with the premise that because he was a British subject, he was entitled to all the relevant rights and privileges. But in Howard’s view, this did not include a right to vote in Parliamentary elections: Not all British people could vote, even if they lived in Britain.</p>
<h2>A split based on shared identity and values</h2>
<p>The distinctions between the rhetoric of Hopkins and Howard are representative of those between most British North American colonists in the 1760s. Howard and others who wanted to remain subject to the crown continued, through the end of the American Revolution, to believe that their rights were untrammeled. By contrast, Hopkins and the other proponents of revolution with Britain would come to believe in the mid-1770s that the only way to preserve their rights and privileges was to break away completely from the United Kingdom. </p>
<p>It was a revolution, but those who sought to break from Britain did so as a way of preserving their British identity. This seeming contradiction helps illustrate why groups of people who shared Anglo-American identity and heritage fought on both sides of a violent war to preserve their divergent views of that identity and heritage.</p>
<p>The story of Hopkins and Howard ends on either side of a divide as geographic as it was political, with Howard in permanent exile in London, and Hopkins, having <a href="https://library.brown.edu/cds/portraits/display.php?idno=258">signed the Declaration of Independence</a>, living in the Rhode Island town where he was born – in the smallest of the British North American colonies, which had become the smallest state in the United States of America. Nevertheless, the commonalities between them remain as important as the differences, and truly understanding their story requires keeping both elements in mind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abby Chandler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What might appear to be common values about shared political and cultural identities can at times serve not as a bridge joining people together but a wedge driving them apart.Abby Chandler, Associate Professor of History, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169662023-11-07T14:25:20Z2023-11-07T14:25:20ZBritish king acknowledges colonial atrocities in Kenya – here’s what could happen next<p>On his <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/king-charles-and-queen-camilla-start-four-day-kenya-trip-4418742">official visit to Kenya</a>, King Charles III <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67273676">acknowledged</a> Britain’s colonial era “wrongdoings”. He also paid tribute to Kenyan soldiers who had participated in the first and second world wars on behalf of Britain. His visit coincided with Kenya’s 60th independence anniversary. </p>
<p>British colonial rule in Kenya was characterised by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau">injustices</a>. Among <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n05/bernard-porter/how-did-they-get-away-with-it">these</a> were forceful dispossession of indigenous people’s land, torture, detention and brutal suppression of anti-colonial movements. </p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.royal.uk/news-and-activity/2023-10-31/a-speech-by-his-majesty-the-king-at-the-state-banquet-kenya">excerpt</a> from King Charles’s speech is useful to decipher the value and implications of his apology, from an international law perspective:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret. There were abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans as they waged, as you said at the United Nations, a painful struggle for independence and sovereignty – and for that, there can be no excuse. In coming back to Kenya, it matters greatly to me that I should deepen my own understanding of these wrongs, and that I meet some of those whose lives and communities were so grievously affected.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The legacy of colonial rule is similarly apparent in other east African contexts. German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-president-apologizes-for-colonial-crimes-in-tanzania/video-67279610">extended a similar gesture</a> in Tanzania over the brutal suppression of anti-colonial movements. In 2020, Belgium’s King Philippe <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/8/belgian-king-returns-mask-in-visit-to-dr-congo-alongside-pm">expressed regrets</a> about the colonial legacy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. </p>
<p>Are public acknowledgements like this just symbolic? Or do they have the potential to elicit reparations under international law? </p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/tonny-kirabira">academic</a> and practitioner of international law and transitional justice, I have worked (as a visiting professional) in the Office of Public Counsel for Victims at the International Criminal Court. </p>
<p>It is my view that these public acknowledgements of colonial legacy in east Africa by Britain, German and Belgium can be classified under the broad framework of transitional justice, as opposed to mere international relations or politics. </p>
<p>Transitional justice generally <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/transitional-justice">implies</a> both the judicial and non-judicial measures aimed at redressing legacies of human rights abuses. It is different from the traditional view on justice as it provides avenues to redress mass atrocity, in this case, colonial legacies. Measures under transitional justice range from the formation of truth commissions to criminal prosecution and reparation programmes. The process of <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2020/10/expert-memory-key-pillar-healing-democracy-and-peace">memorialisation</a> through museums and monuments is another important tool in the transitional justice process. </p>
<h2>The options</h2>
<p>International human rights law provides the <a href="https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/86303-how-is-transitional-justice-carried-out.html">standards</a> on transitional justice. It has four pillars: prosecutions, truth telling (truth commissions), reparations and institutional reform.</p>
<p><strong>Truth commissions</strong>: These are temporary quasi-judicial inquiries. They are normally commissioned by states to investigate previous wrongdoings and make recommendations. </p>
<p>Belgium, for instance, set up a <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/news/belgium-colonial-past-commission-addresses-issues-raised-belgian-congolese-and-belgian-rwandan_en">Special Parliamentary Commission</a> to deal with the country’s colonial legacy. It was the first of its kind in Europe and ended in December 2022. No <a href="https://asf.be/press-release-special-parliamentary-commission-on-belgiums-colonial-past-a-closure-in-december-2022-will-not-allow-it-to-complete-its-mandate/">concrete proposals</a> came out of it. The government did not show serious interest in the work of the commission. </p>
<p><strong>Criminal prosecutions</strong>: This is not a real option because colonial crimes are state crimes. The International Criminal Court deals with cases of individuals, not states. And it only considers crimes committed after the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf">Rome Statute</a> came into force, in 2002. </p>
<p><strong>Reparative justice</strong>: Apologies and memorials are forms of reparation. But these are incomplete without material aspects like restitution or monetary compensation to a group of victims. International law does not offer specific guidance on reparations for colonial state crimes. </p>
<p>Britain could be guided on reparations by <a href="https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/rsiwa/rsiwa.html">UN’s Articles</a> on responsibility of states (for internationally wrongful acts) adopted by the International Law Commission in 2001. The UN also has a set of <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/basic-principles-and-guidelines-right-remedy-and-reparation">basic principles</a> on remedies for victims of human rights violations. </p>
<p>Reparations for state colonial crimes should take full account of individual and collective harm. But this has never been done before. </p>
<p>The governments in the former colonies are politically oriented to maintain friendly bilateral relations with the western powers. Thus the voices of the families of victims of colonial atrocities remain peripheral. </p>
<p>International law and the framework of transitional justice push the envelope beyond symbolism, and offer potential for actual reparations, but also <a href="https://blog.associatie.kuleuven.be/ltjb/">foster reconciliation</a>.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>There is a historical background to this admission of guilt and commitment to Kenya. In the past decade, Kenyan groups have filed a series of colonial-era compensation claims in the UK, relating to Britain’s brutal suppression of the <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/blogs-opinion/opinion/painful-mau-mau-stories-3223956">Mau Mau insurgency</a>. In 2013, when Kenya was marking its 50th independence anniversary, the UK Foreign Office <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-to-parliament-on-settlement-of-mau-mau-claims">announced</a> it would be settling claims of Kenyans relating to the Mau Mau events. The British government also promised to fund the construction of a memorial in Nairobi. This was largely a negotiated settlement out of court, and not an outcome of a judicial inquiry.</p>
<p>King Charles III’s recent apology is not an isolated event, but rather a reflection of the progress Kenya has made in seeking redress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tonny Raymond Kirabira does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>King Charles III’s recent statements are a reflection of the progress Kenya has made in seeking redress for colonial-era legacies.Tonny Raymond Kirabira, Teaching Fellow, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1816292022-05-13T10:23:58Z2022-05-13T10:23:58ZThree imperial policies that still influence life in Britain today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462746/original/file-20220512-18-fojzfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C9485%2C7025&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Imperial_Federation_Map_of_the_World.jpg">Dennis Sylvester Hurd / Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The revelation that Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-non-dom-an-expert-answers-our-questions-about-the-tax-status-claimed-by-rishi-sunaks-wife-and-other-wealthy-people-180928">claimed non-dom status</a> in the UK for years has drawn renewed attention to an imperialist policy that still holds today. Non-doms may live in the UK, but are considered by the tax authorities to be “non-domiciled” in the country and therefore pay no tax in the UK on their income earned elsewhere. </p>
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<p>The backlash to Murty’s non-dom status pointed out that the chancellor’s family benefited from tax loopholes as he raised taxes on the rest of the country. Some <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/81379a7a-5182-4845-b279-570b99406b5e">articles</a> highlighted the irony that Murty, an Indian citizen, was taking advantage of rules originally put in place to protect the money British imperialists were making in India. Non-dom status is one of several polices and provisions that have roots stretching back to the British Empire, not just in India.</p>
<p>At the end of the 18th century, Britain’s “sugar colonies” were still its most profitable imperial possessions. The 1799 income tax – Great Britain’s first such tax – exempted non-resident British subjects from paying tax on incomes derived from outside Great Britain. Thousands of British men and women owned agricultural estates (or portions of them) in the colonies, where enslaved men and women laboured to produce sugar, molasses, rum, indigo, coffee and cotton. The favourable tax treatment these individuals secured is testament to the power of the colonial lobbies in policymaking at the time. </p>
<p>The act’s <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31210007001348&view=1up&seq=97&skin=2021">non-dom exception</a> would have encompassed absentee plantation owners who could claim their time in Britain was only a sojourn, as well as all the thousands of British subjects abroad in the West Indies and South Asia. It helped keep plantation owners flush with the cash they needed to keep the wheels of the imperial economy turning, and provide the goods that would pay the customs and excise taxes to keep the government afloat.</p>
<p>Now, a new generation of international elites are using such relics of empire as non-dom status for their own gain. The difference is that today, people from all over the world can take advantage of the UK’s favourable tax system, while in the past Britons went out into the world to make their fortunes.</p>
<h2>Freeports and free trade</h2>
<p>Other imperial policies from the 18th century are also having a resurgence. The current plan to create eight <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/freeports#where-are-they-located">freeports in England</a> resurrects a strategy deployed by the British government in 1766. Now that the UK has exited the EU, it has the ability to alter its trade policies. The freeports plan will allow for lower taxes, customs duties and other regulations in a defined geographical area, known as a special economic zone, around a port. The government hopes the bundle of favourable policies in a freeport will spur job growth and economic activity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Overhead view of Liverpool cityscape and waterfront at dusk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462764/original/file-20220512-16-4ruzsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liverpool, once the centre of global trade, will be a freeport under new plans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/panorama-liverpool-waterfront-evening-1558086938">Alexey Fedorenko / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 18th century, the government aimed to accomplish similar goals through a loosening of trade restrictions. Then, it was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/mercantilism">mercantilist</a> system as established by the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/tradeindustry/importexport/overview/navigationlaws/">Navigation Acts</a> that most restricted trade. Those laws confined most British trade to British ships, imposed duties on foreign products, and banned British colonies from trading with the other European powers and their colonies. Merchants from New England, for example, could not legally sell food and lumber to the French and Spanish West Indian colonies as they could to the British ones. </p>
<p>The Free Port Act of 1766 marked a significant break in this restrictive trade system. It opened four Jamaican ports and two in Dominica to foreign traders, partially repealing the mercantilist policies that had organised British trade for a century. Trade between British and Spanish colonies subsequently boomed. <a href="https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/147718/ajrutled_1.pdf?sequence=1">Exports</a> of African captives and British textiles from Jamaican ports to Spanish American ones made up much of this enlarged trade.</p>
<h2>Any port in a storm</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, some longstanding policies have been consigned to history, unlikely to ever return, yet their effects continue to be felt. The 1703 Methuen treaty between England and Portugal is one example. As part of a diplomatic alliance forged during the war of Spanish succession, Portuguese wines enjoyed favourable customs treatment in England. The treaty helped solidify the famous wool for wine trade, which the economist <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/david-ricardo/">David Ricardo</a> used to illustrate the power of comparative advantage. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two glasses of red wine on a table with a sunny landscape in the background. Someone is pouring from the bottle into one of the glasses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462762/original/file-20220512-2142-q5v5ua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The British taste for port has its roots in imperial trade policy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pouring-fortified-dessert-ruby-tawny-port-1875862648">barmalini / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The British taste for <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Portugal_Trade/r9DNngEACAAJ?hl=en">port</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8GVgPgAACAAJ&newbks=0&hl=en&redir_esc=y">Madeira</a> wines owed much to the price advantage Portuguese producers held over their rivals. Additionally, merchants in Oporto and Madeira – many of them British – adjusted their products to meet their customers’ taste, showing high levels of entrepreneurship and innovation. The Methuen treaty may be long gone, and dry wines more popular than fortified ones, but a glass of port at Christmas continues to be a British tradition. </p>
<h2>Global Britain</h2>
<p>When we look at Britain’s history, the imprints of empire are unmistakable. In the past, British men and women could make money around the world behind protectionist walls. Today, the UK courts foreign opportunities through liberal regulatory and tax policies.</p>
<p>Following Brexit, the UK is now seeking to redefine its international standing with its “global Britain” slogan. We would do well to remember how British prosperity has long been intertwined with the rest of the world – and what “global Britain” has meant for those who were subject to <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-british-empire-was-built-on-slavery-then-grew-by-antislavery">British</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-was-a-disaster-and-the-facts-prove-it-84496">imperialism</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hunter Harris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From the tax we pay to the wine we drink, many policies in Britain today have their roots in imperialism.Hunter Harris, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the City of London and the History of Slavery, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1543562021-03-21T13:06:25Z2021-03-21T13:06:25ZThe search for a new governor general is tough in a disparate nation like Canada<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390392/original/file-20210318-21-vk9t4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4548%2C2952&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Gov. Gen. Julie Payette invests Jeanette Corbiere Lavell, from Wikwemikong First Nation, Ont., as a Member of the Order of Canada outside Rideau Hall in Ottawa in September 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The federal government has <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/governor-general-new-process-payette-1.5947766">kicked off its efforts to choose a new governor general</a> to succeed Julie Payette, who resigned in the face of allegations she created a toxic workplace at Rideau Hall.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390213/original/file-20210317-21-1c4hbfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2428%2C1831&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Julie Payette waves" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390213/original/file-20210317-21-1c4hbfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2428%2C1831&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390213/original/file-20210317-21-1c4hbfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390213/original/file-20210317-21-1c4hbfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390213/original/file-20210317-21-1c4hbfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390213/original/file-20210317-21-1c4hbfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390213/original/file-20210317-21-1c4hbfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390213/original/file-20210317-21-1c4hbfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Gov. Gen. Julie Payette waves prior to delivering the throne speech in the Senate chamber in Ottawa in September 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The long delay in appointing Payette’s replacement illustrates how difficult it is to fill the job. Whoever is ultimately selected by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must represent Canada’s past, especially its linkage to a monarchy that’s currently <a href="https://www.voanews.com/europe/royal-mess-britains-monarchy-facing-biggest-crisis-1990s">in a state of crisis following recent allegations by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex</a>. But the new governor general must also exemplify its future. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-the-meghan-harry-revelations-change-canadian-attitudes-about-the-monarchy-157104">Will the Meghan/Harry revelations change Canadian attitudes about the monarchy?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Even more importantly, the individual must grasp Canada’s difficult and in some ways accidental road to nationhood.</p>
<p>In rejecting the siren call of <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/american-revolution-1763-1783/revolutionary-war-northern-front-1775-1777/">the War of Independence in 1776</a>, the northern colonies that became Canada <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-nova-scotia-almost-joined-american-revolution-180963564/">cemented their allegiance to the British Crown</a>.</p>
<h2>British oversight</h2>
<p>Over the next century, the British offered protection against the expansion of the United States. Even after Confederation in 1867, the interests of the British Empire guided Canada’s foreign policy for decades. </p>
<p>The political culture and traditions inherited from Britain — a parliamentary system of government (House of Commons and Senate), common law, a strong degree of conservatism and emphasis on collective responsibility — have shaped contemporary Canada. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Members of the Ceremonial Guard march past Rideau Hall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390214/original/file-20210317-13-1s66puy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5261%2C3481&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390214/original/file-20210317-13-1s66puy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390214/original/file-20210317-13-1s66puy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390214/original/file-20210317-13-1s66puy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390214/original/file-20210317-13-1s66puy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390214/original/file-20210317-13-1s66puy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390214/original/file-20210317-13-1s66puy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Ceremonial Guard march past Rideau Hall during the first Changing of the Guard ceremony in Ottawa in June 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The very position of governor general, inherited from Great Britain when Canada was but a collection of independent colonies, is one of the features that differentiates Canada from other large countries settled by European powers in the Americas.</p>
<h2>American influence</h2>
<p>Although Canadians rejected the allure of republicanism, politicians over the centuries have felt free to borrow from their American counterparts. Canada pirated federalism (strong regional governments, namely provinces) and a reliance on a written constitution, with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ emphasis on individual rights. </p>
<p>At the same time, the U.S. has been useful as a model of what to avoid: a presidential system of government, slavery, an aversion to gun control and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/5/4/21242750/coronavirus-covid-19-united-states-canada-trump-trudeau">too great a reliance on the free market.</a></p>
<h2>Québec culture</h2>
<p>The defeat of France by Britain that resulted in Québec becoming an English colony is a defining event in Canadian history. However, the decision by the victors to guarantee the French their traditional rights and customs, and the political means to protect their culture, was just as important to Canada’s future.</p>
<p>This approach resulted in bilingualism and biculturalism, ultimately <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-february-24-2019-1.5029453/how-did-multiculturalism-become-so-central-to-canada-s-identity-1.5029456">becoming multiculturalism</a>, and it distinguishes Canada from many other nations. </p>
<p>But Québec has had historical grievances against the rest of Canada, leading to the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7432034/quebec-1995-referendum-25th-anniversary/">1995 sovereignty referendum</a> that came within a few thousand votes of tearing Canada apart. </p>
<p>Québec separatism, even when in decline as it appears to be now, is an existential threat that surely features prominently in the darkest nightmares of every prime minister — and the governor general.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390217/original/file-20210317-17-1hmr3h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Yes supporter holds a Québec flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390217/original/file-20210317-17-1hmr3h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390217/original/file-20210317-17-1hmr3h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390217/original/file-20210317-17-1hmr3h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390217/original/file-20210317-17-1hmr3h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390217/original/file-20210317-17-1hmr3h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390217/original/file-20210317-17-1hmr3h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390217/original/file-20210317-17-1hmr3h9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Yes supporter holding a Québec flag chants nationalist slogans prior to a concert in support of sovereignty in Montréal in September 1995.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Indigenous population</h2>
<p>Life for Indigenous people in what is now called North America has drastically changed since settlers appeared and did everything in their power to wipe them out, including with longstanding colonial policies like <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/">residential schools</a>, the <a href="https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/sixties_scoop/">‘60s Scoop</a> and numerous cases of land dispossession in the 19th and 20th centuries.</p>
<p>Starting in the 1970s, court decisions, changes in federal government policy and determined efforts by First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities and individuals have slowly enlarged the political influence of Indigenous Peoples.</p>
<p>Defining events included Indigenous activist <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/meech-lake-linked-cree-leader-elijah-harper-dies-at-64-1.1286039?cid=ps%3A923">Elijah Harper’s opposition to the Meech Lake Accord</a> in Manitoba,
and the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/oka-crisis">Oka crisis</a>, a 78-day standoff over the proposed expansion of a golf course and development of townhouses on a Mohawk burial ground in Québec.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390216/original/file-20210317-17-non311.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Elijah Harper holds up an eagle feather." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390216/original/file-20210317-17-non311.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390216/original/file-20210317-17-non311.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390216/original/file-20210317-17-non311.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390216/original/file-20210317-17-non311.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390216/original/file-20210317-17-non311.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390216/original/file-20210317-17-non311.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390216/original/file-20210317-17-non311.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late Elijah Harper, a former politician and honorary Cree Chief, holds up one of two eagle feathers he held during Meech Lake proceedings, in Ottawa in May 2008. Harper was a symbol of power for Indigenous people when he helped scuttle the Meech Lake constitutional accord.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tom Hanson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, federal government policy has shifted toward <a href="https://reconciliationcanada.ca/staging/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/NationalNarrativeReport-ReconciliationCanada-ReleasedMay2017_3.pdf">reconciliation with Indigenous people</a>, exemplified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. </p>
<p>Although most policy is largely symbolic, such as land acknowledgements, efforts are being made to improve the living conditions in many First Nations communities. The federal government, while missing the March 2021 goal of <a href="https://theconversation.com/water-crisis-in-first-nations-communities-runs-deeper-than-long-term-drinking-water-advisories-148977">ending drinking water advisories</a> that last more than a year, has made a dent in providing some communities with safe drinking water.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/water-crisis-in-first-nations-communities-runs-deeper-than-long-term-drinking-water-advisories-148977">Water crisis in First Nations communities runs deeper than long-term drinking water advisories</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Yet Indigenous people make up only a small strand in national politics, culture and power structures. <a href="https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/nunavuts-population-could-reach-54000-by-2043-statcan-says/">Only in Nunavut</a>, with a population of 40,000, do Inuit comprise a majority that allows them to enact laws to protect, sustain and advance their culture and interests.</p>
<p>The new governor general will have to fuse the British, French, American, Indigenous and multicultural elements of Canada that together are at the core of the country. It is not an easy job, especially given the position is mostly ceremonial and one that not all Canadians see as even necessary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154356/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Klassen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Canada’s new governor general will have to fuse the British, French, American and Indigenous elements of Canada that together are the core of the country.Thomas Klassen, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1284692020-04-28T19:55:09Z2020-04-28T19:55:09ZBotany and the colonisation of Australia in 1770<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315880/original/file-20200218-10985-kndbtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3494%2C1267&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Botanist Joseph Banks recommended Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/collection-items/botany-bay-new-south-wales-ca-1789-watercolour-charles-gore">Charles Gore (1788) / State Library of NSW</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>James Cook and his companions aboard the Endeavour landed at a harbour on Australia’s southeast coast in April of 1770. Cook named the place Botany Bay for
“the great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place”.</p>
<p>Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander were aboard the Endeavour as gentleman botanists, collecting specimens and applying names in Latin to plants Europeans had not previously seen. The place name hints at the importance of plants to Britain’s Empire, and to botany’s pivotal place in Europe’s Enlightenment and Australia’s early colonisation.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>‘Nothing like people’</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Banks became one of Britain’s most influential scientists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Science/Science">National Library of Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cook has always loomed large in Australia’s colonial history. White Australians have long commemorated and celebrated him as the symbolic link to the “civilisation” of Enlightenment and Empire. The two botanists have been less well remembered, yet Banks in particular was an influential figure in Australia’s early colonisation. </p>
<p>When Banks and his friend Solander went ashore on April 29, 1770 to collect plants for naming and classification, the Englishman recollected they saw “nothing like people”. Banks knew that the land on which he and Solander sought plants was inhabited (and in fact, as we now know, had been so for at least 65,000 years). Yet the two botanists were engaged in an activity that implied the land was blank and unknown. </p>
<p>They were both botanical adventurers. Solander was among the first and most favoured of the students of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and colonial traveller who devised the method still used today for naming species. Both Solander and Banks were advocates for the Linnaean method of taxonomy: a systematic classification of newly named plants and animals. </p>
<p>When they stepped ashore at “Botany Bay” in 1770, the pair saw themselves as pioneers in a double sense: as Linnaean botanists in a new land, its places and plants unnamed by any other; as if they were in a veritable <em>terra nullius</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The plant specimens Joseph Banks collected were taken back to England, where they remain today in the Natural History Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/joseph-banks-scientist-explorer-botanist.html">Natural History Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Botany in ‘nobody’s land’</h2>
<p><em>Terra nullius</em>, meaning “nobody’s land”, refers to a legal doctrine derived from European traditions stretching back to the ancient Romans. The idea was that land could be declared “empty” and “unowned” if there were no signs of occupation such as cultivation of the soil, towns, cities, or sacred temples. </p>
<p>As a legal doctrine it was not applied in Australia until the late 1880s, and there is dispute about its effects in law until its final elimination by the High Court in <em>Mabo v Queensland (No. II)</em> in 1992. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Cook never used this formulation, nor did Banks or Solander. Yet each in their way acted as if it were true. That the land, its plants, and animals, and even its peoples, were theirs to name and classify according to their own standards of “scientific” knowledge.</p>
<p>In the late eighteenth century, no form of scientific knowledge was more useful to empire than botany. It was the science <em>par excellence</em> of colonisation and empire. Botany promised a way to transform the “waste” of nature into economic productivity on a global scale. </p>
<h2>Plant power</h2>
<p>Wealth and power in Britain’s eighteenth century empire came from harnessing economically useful crops: tobacco, sugar, tea, coffee, rice, potatoes, flax. Hence Banks and Solander’s avid botanical activity was not merely a manifestation of Enlightenment “science”. It was an integral feature of Britain’s colonial and imperial ambitions. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Banksia ericifolia</em> was one of the many species given a new name by Banks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Natural History Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the Endeavour’s voyage, Banks, Solander, and their assistants collected more than 30,000 plant specimens, naming more than 1,400 species. </p>
<p>By doing so, they were claiming new ground for European knowledge, just as Cook meticulously charted the coastlines of territories he claimed for His Majesty, King George III. Together they extended a new dispensation, inscribed in new names for places and for plants written over the ones that were already there. </p>
<p>Long after the Endeavour returned to Britain, Banks testified before two House of Commons committees in 1779 and 1785 that “Botany Bay” would be an “advantageous” site for a new penal colony. Among his reasons for this conclusion were not only its botanical qualities – fertile soils, abundant trees and grasses – but its virtual emptiness. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-captain-cook-to-the-first-fleet-how-botany-bay-was-chosen-over-africa-as-a-new-british-penal-colony-128002">From Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Turning emptiness to empire</h2>
<p>When Banks described in his own Endeavour journal the land Cook had named “New South Wales”, he recalled: “This immense tract of Land … is thinly inhabited even to admiration …”. It was the science of botany that connected emptiness and empire to the Enlightened pursuit of knowledge. </p>
<p>One of Banks’s correspondents was the Scottish botanist and professor of natural history, John Walker. Botany, Walker wrote, was one of the “few Sciences” that “can promise any discovery or improvement”. Botany was the scientific means to master the global emporium of commodities on which empire grew. </p>
<p>Botany was also the reason why it had not been necessary for Banks or Solander to affirm the land on which they trod was empty. For in a very real sense, their science presupposed it. The land, its plants and its people were theirs to name and thereby claim by “discovery”. </p>
<p>When Walker reflected on his own botanical expeditions in the Scottish Highlands, he described them as akin to voyages of discovery to lands as “inanimate & unfrequented as any in the Terra australis”. </p>
<p>As we reflect on the 250-year commemoration of Cook’s landing in Australia, we ought also to consider his companions Banks and Solander, and their science of turning supposed emptiness to empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Buchan receives research funding from the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and from the Swedish Research Council, for two projects with Dr Linda Andersson Burnett: ‘The Borders of Humanity: Linnaean Natural Historians and the Colonial Legacies of Enlightenment’ (P15-0423:1) 2016-19, and 'Collecting Mankind: Prehistory, Race and Instructions for ‘Scientific Travelers’, circa 1750-1850' (2019-03358) 2020-24.</span></em></p>Botany was an integral feature of Britain’s colonial and imperial ambitions.Bruce Buchan, Associate Professor, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1336052020-04-17T12:11:15Z2020-04-17T12:11:15Z1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians, and British overlords’ indifference strengthened the anti-colonial movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327346/original/file-20200412-8893-1ihy43t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C56%2C4200%2C4011&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cremation on the banks of the Ganges river, India.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crémation-sur-les-bords-du-gange-à-benarès-inde-circa-1920-news-photo/833384176?adppopup=true">Keystone-France via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In India, during the 1918 influenza pandemic, a staggering <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0116-x">12 to 13 million people died</a>, the vast majority between the months of September and December. According to an eyewitness, “There was none to remove the dead bodies and the jackals made a feast.” </p>
<p>At the time of the pandemic, India had been under British colonial rule for over 150 years. The fortunes of the British colonizers had always been vastly different from those of the Indian people, and nowhere was the split more stark than during the influenza pandemic, as I discovered while researching <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zQnyI1cAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my Ph.D. on the subject</a>. </p>
<p>The resulting devastation would eventually lead to huge changes in India – and the British Empire. </p>
<h2>From Kansas to Mumbai</h2>
<p>Although it is commonly called the Spanish flu, the 1918 pandemic likely <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-american-history/americas-forgotten-pandemic-influenza-1918-2nd-edition?format=PB">began in Kansas</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwy191">killed between 50 and 100 million people</a> worldwide. </p>
<p>During the early months of 1918, the virus incubated throughout the American Midwest, eventually making its way east, where it <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/210420/worldwide_flu_outbreak_killed_45000_american_soldiers_during_world_war_i">traveled across the Atlantic Ocean</a> with soldiers deploying for WWI. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indian soldiers in the trenches during World War I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/indian-soldiers-in-the-trenches-world-war-i-1914-1918-news-photo/463957843">Print Collector / Contributor via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Introduced into the trenches on Europe’s Western Front, the virus tore through the already weakened troops. As the war approached its conclusion, the virus followed both commercial shipping routes and military transports to infect almost every corner of the globe. It <a href="https://www.macmillanlearning.com/college/us/product/Influenza-Pandemic-of-1918-1919/p/0312677081">arrived in Mumbai in late May</a>.</p>
<h2>Unequal spread</h2>
<p>When the first wave of the pandemic arrived, it was not particularly deadly. The only notice British officials took of it was its effect on some workers. A report noted, “As the season for cutting grass began … people were so weak as to be unable to do a full day’s work.” </p>
<p>By September, the story began to change. Mumbai was still the center of infection, likely due to its position as a commercial and civic hub. On Sept. 19, an English-language newspaper reported 293 influenza deaths had occurred there, but assured its readers “The worst is now reached.” </p>
<p>Instead, the virus tore through the subcontinent, following trade and postal routes. Catastrophe and death overwhelmed cities and rural villages alike. Indian newspapers reported that crematoria were receiving between 150 to 200 bodies per day. According to one observer, “The burning ghats and burial grounds were literally swamped with corpses; whilst an even greater number awaited removal.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the British Raj out for a stroll, circa 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-british-raj-walking-together-in-an-indian-news-photo/3398825?adppopup=true">Fox Photos/Stringer via Getty images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But influenza did not strike everyone equally. Most British people in India lived in spacious houses with gardens and yards, compared to the lower classes of city-dwelling Indians, who lived in densely populated areas. Many British also employed household staff to care for them – in times of health and sickness – so they were only lightly touched by the pandemic and were largely unconcerned by the chaos sweeping through the country. </p>
<p>In his official correspondence in early December, the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces did not even mention influenza, instead noting “Everything is very dry; but I managed to get two hundred couple of snipe so far this season.”</p>
<p>While the pandemic was of little consequence to many British residents of India, the perception was wildly different among the Indian people, <a href="https://www.saada.org/item/20130823-3118">who spoke of universal devastation</a>. A letter published in a periodical lamented, “India perhaps never saw such hard times before. There is wailing on all sides. … There is neither village nor town throughout the length and breadth of the country which has not paid a heavy toll.” </p>
<p>Elsewhere, the Sanitary Commissioner of the Punjab noted, “the streets and lanes of cities were littered with dead and dying people … nearly every household was lamenting a death, and everywhere terror and confusion reigned.” </p>
<h2>The fallout</h2>
<p>In the end, areas in the north and west of India saw death rates between 4.5% and 6% of their total populations, while the south and east – where the virus arrived slightly later, as it was waning – generally lost between 1.5% and 3%. </p>
<p>Geography wasn’t the only dividing factor, however. In Mumbai, almost seven-and-a-half times as many lower-caste Indians died as compared to their British counterparts - <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/001946468602300102">61.6 per thousand</a> versus 8.3 per thousand. </p>
<p>Among Indians in Mumbai, socioeconomic disparities in addition to race accounted for these differing mortality rates.</p>
<p><iframe id="9Mq9o" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/9Mq9o/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The Health Officer for Calcutta remarked on the stark difference in death rates between British and lower-class Indians: “The excessive mortality in Kidderpore appears to be due mainly to the large coolie population, ignorant and poverty-stricken, living under most insanitary conditions in damp, dark, dirty huts. They are a difficult class to deal with.” </p>
<h2>Change ahead</h2>
<p>Death tolls across India generally hit their peak in October, with a slow tapering into November and December. A high ranking British official wrote in December, “A good winter rain will put everything right and … things will gradually rectify themselves.” </p>
<p>Normalcy, however, did not quite return to India. The spring of 1919 would see the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre">British atrocities at Amritsar</a> and shortly thereafter the launch of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/noncooperation-movement">Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement</a>. Influenza became one more example of British injustice that spurred Indian people on in their fight for independence. A <a href="https://www.saada.org/item/20130128-1271">nationalist periodical stated</a>, “In no other civilized country could a government have left things so much undone as did the Government of India did during the prevalence of such a terrible and catastrophic epidemic.”</p>
<p>The long, slow death of the British Empire had begun.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct that the final quote is not from a periodical published by Mahatma Gandhi, but rather a separate nationalist publication of the same name based in New York.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maura Chhun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the 1918 influenza pandemic struck India, the death toll was highest among the poor.Maura Chhun, Community Faculty, Metropolitan State University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1213942019-08-29T13:11:04Z2019-08-29T13:11:04ZWhy are dollar bills green?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287412/original/file-20190808-144892-lmuonu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Have you ever wondered why U.S. money is green?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hands-holding-us-dollar-bills-small-367090130?src=WjOxzXKYvRsZUj6xpRpzTQ-1-33">Yulia Grigoryeva/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Why is money green? – Marek P., age 12, Dorchester, Massachusetts</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>We use money all the time, but have you ever wondered why it’s green?</p>
<p>As a <a href="http://american.academia.edu/JonahEstess">student of the history of U.S. money</a>, I study <a href="https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/republics-are-not-ungrateful-the-american-revolution-and-memory-in-new-york-city">how people understand the purpose of money in their lives</a> and how people feel about the way the government produces it.</p>
<p>Learning the history of money has helped me answer questions people have about why it comes in certain colors and not other colors. For example, why is U.S. money green, instead of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/27/new-zealands-stunning-5-note-named-best-banknote-of-the-year">orange, like it is in New Zealand</a>?</p>
<h2>Why green?</h2>
<p>While our money is not completely green, it has lots of green ink on it. The green ink on paper money <a href="https://www.moneyfactory.gov/resources/faqs.html">protects against counterfeiting</a>. Counterfeiting is <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/counterfeit">the process of making fake money</a> that tricks people and the government into thinking that it is real money.</p>
<p>Counterfeiting is dangerous because it causes <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070616172012/http://wfhummel.cnchost.com/counterfeiting.html">the value of the real money to go down</a>. If this happens, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inflation.asp">people need more dollar bills, and therefore more money, to buy things</a>. This special green ink is just one tool that the government uses to protect us from counterfeiters.</p>
<p>Also, there was lots of green ink for the government to use when it started printing the money we have now. The green color also does not fade or decompose easily.</p>
<h2>When US money was different colors</h2>
<p>In Colonial America, the colonies printed their own currency <a href="https://time.com/4675303/money-colonial-america-currency-history/">for several reasons</a>.</p>
<p>One reason was that colonists often <a href="https://www.lizcovart.com/blog/why-colonial-america-suffered-from-a-currency-shortage">did not have enough coins to buy food and household items</a>. Colonial money was often intended to give colonists a way to buy what they needed or wanted. This money was initially <a href="https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/american-currency-exhibit/independence/">tan with black or red ink</a>.</p>
<p>During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress printed money that was also a tan color called continental dollars.</p>
<p>Just like the green color of our paper money today, the Continental Congress used a specific kind of material that only it could buy in order to prevent counterfeiting. <a href="https://cdm16694.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/NYHSR01/id/12000/rec/190">The paper was made of cloth, sometimes silk</a> and <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/isinglass">isinglass</a>, which is somewhat see-through and made from fish air bladders.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287413/original/file-20190808-144847-kujmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287413/original/file-20190808-144847-kujmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287413/original/file-20190808-144847-kujmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287413/original/file-20190808-144847-kujmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287413/original/file-20190808-144847-kujmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287413/original/file-20190808-144847-kujmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287413/original/file-20190808-144847-kujmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The three-pence note of Pennsylvania was printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1764.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency#/media/File:US-Colonial_(PA-115)-Pennsylvania-18_Jun_1764.jpg">Godot13/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>After the revolution</h2>
<p>The U.S. government didn’t print any paper money for a long time after the American Revolution, since Congress believed that <a href="http://numismatics.org/a-history-of-american-currency/">Americans would trust coins</a> more than paper money.</p>
<p>People no longer trusted paper money largely because too much <a href="http://infostation1.net/books/Zarlenga,%20LOST%20SCIENCE%20OF%20MONEY/CHAPTER%2014%20-%20US%20COLONIAL%20MONEYS/SOURCES/ERIC%20NEWMAN%20-%20ARTICLE%20ON%20COUNTERFEITING%20OF%20CONTINENTAL/article%20about%20counterfeiting%20continentals%20by%20british.pdf">counterfeit money existed during the Revolution</a>. Besides, gold and silver coins were trustworthy because they were made of valuable metals.</p>
<p>Congress eventually passed a law called <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/this-day-in-politics-legal-tender-act-passed-feb-25-1862-103857">the Legal Tender Act of 1862</a> allowing the federal government to print paper money.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287415/original/file-20190808-144862-1k8zt43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287415/original/file-20190808-144862-1k8zt43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287415/original/file-20190808-144862-1k8zt43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287415/original/file-20190808-144862-1k8zt43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287415/original/file-20190808-144862-1k8zt43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287415/original/file-20190808-144862-1k8zt43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287415/original/file-20190808-144862-1k8zt43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287415/original/file-20190808-144862-1k8zt43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘Greenback’ was first issued in 1862.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenback_(1860s_money)#/media/File:US-$1-LT-1862-Fr-16c.jpg">Godot13/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The government began printing money again <a href="https://www.treasurydirect.gov/kids/history/history_civilwar.htm">because the government was struggling</a> to pay for the Civil War. Both the <a href="https://www.moaf.org/exhibits/checks_balances/abraham-lincoln/greenback">Union</a> and <a href="https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/american-currency-exhibit/civil-war/">Confederacy</a> printed their own money, and both sides used green ink partly because it made counterfeiting more difficult. Money printed by the Union came to be known as “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greenback.asp">greenbacks</a>.”</p>
<p>Today, our money is green because the government has <a href="https://www.moneyfactory.gov/resources/faqs.html">no real reason to change the color</a>. The government is able to produce enough of it for people to use, can protect against counterfeiting and makes sure that we can trust our money to remain valuable.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonah Estess does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The color of American money goes back to the British colonies.Jonah Estess, Ph.D. Student of History, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1030522018-09-12T19:09:42Z2018-09-12T19:09:42ZIndia’s sodomy ban, now ruled illegal, was a British colonial legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236026/original/file-20180912-133898-1h4h27s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hindu texts from thousands of years ago demonstrate acceptance of a 'third gender.' Today, transgender Indians, or hijras, remain visible members of society.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bikas Das</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Indian Supreme Court has <a href="http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=201592">legalized homosexuality</a>, overturning a 157-year ban on consensual gay sex.</p>
<p>In a nearly 500-page unanimous <a href="https://www.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2016/14961/14961_2016_Judgement_06-Sep-2018.pdf">decision</a> issued on Sept. 6, India’s highest court affirmed that “whenever the constitutional courts come across a situation of transgression or dereliction in the sphere of fundamental rights which are also the basic human rights of a section, howsoever small part of the society, then it is for the constitutional courts to ensure that constitutional morality prevails over social morality.”</p>
<p>Gay rights advocates <a href="https://psmag.com/news/viewfinder-celebrating-indias-landmark-lgbt-victory">worldwide</a> celebrated the legal victory, which came after nearly a decade of contentious <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/opinion/indias-reversal-on-gay-rights.html">court battles</a> against a <a href="https://factly.in/tracing-the-history-of-ipc-section-377/">British colonial law criminalizing homosexual acts</a>. </p>
<p>“Our court, our justice system, really believes in the rights of the people,” <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Nazfoundationindiatrust/">said</a> Kalyani Subramanyam, program director for the Naz Foundation, the primary petitioner in the court case, which could <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/06/asia/india-gay-sex-ruling-intl/index.html">open the door to gay marriage</a>.</p>
<p>And the ruling is more than a human rights win. It is also a restoration of ancient Indian sexual norms.</p>
<h2>India, homosexuality and the ‘third gender’</h2>
<p>In that way, India’s ruling differs from recent court decisions legalizing gay marriage in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/06/latin-america-could-lead-way-lgbt-rights-2018">Colombia</a>, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/05/24/first-asia-taiwan-legalize-same-sex-marriage">Taiwan</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41460032">Germany</a> – though for LGBTQ Indians, the impacts may be similarly life-changing. </p>
<p>Sexual and gender minorities in India are regularly <a href="http://www.ijims.com/uploads/cae8049d138e24ed7f5azppd_597.pdf">harassed</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/02/world/asia/gay-in-india-where-progress-has-come-only-with-risk.html">assaulted</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-45444652">jailed</a>.</p>
<p>Yet many gender researchers who study India – <a href="http://amybhatt.com/">myself</a> included – argue that India’s religious and cultural heritage has long been more accommodating to multiple gender and sexual expressions than Western societies. </p>
<p>According to scholars <a href="http://hs.umt.edu/ghr/faculty-staff/default.php?s=Vanita">Ruth Vanita</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saleem_Kidwai">Saleem Kidwai</a>’s groundbreaking 2000 <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/in/book/9780312221690#aboutAuthors">essay collection</a> on same-sex love in India, Hindus embraced a range of thinking on gender and sexuality as far back as the Vedic period, around 4000 B.C. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236037/original/file-20180912-133892-1palpbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236037/original/file-20180912-133892-1palpbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236037/original/file-20180912-133892-1palpbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236037/original/file-20180912-133892-1palpbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236037/original/file-20180912-133892-1palpbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236037/original/file-20180912-133892-1palpbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236037/original/file-20180912-133892-1palpbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Hindu god Shiva has both male and female characteristics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Ardhanarishvara%2C_Chola_period%2C_11th_century%2C_Government_Museum%2C_Chennai_%283%29.jpg/400px-Ardhanarishvara%2C_Chola_period%2C_11th_century%2C_Government_Museum%2C_Chennai_%283%29.jpg">Richard Mortel via Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hinduism’s first sacred texts tell stories of same-sex love and gender-morphing figures. The Hindu deity Shiva is sometimes worshipped as a multi-gendered figure composed of Shiva and his wife Parvati together, in what’s known as his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ardhanarishvara">Ardhanarishvara</a> form. </p>
<p>Hindu texts from around 1500 B.C. likewise <a href="https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/LGBT_topics_and_Hinduism.html">show that the “third gender”</a> – individuals sometimes called “<a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-history-of-indias-third-gender-movement_us_58334db5e4b099512f841fd0">hijras</a>,” who do not fit into the categories of man or woman – were integrated into India’s political and social life.</p>
<p>In the Kama Sutra, India’s famed erotic guidebook, the character <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3704787?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Svairini</a> is described as as a liberated woman who lives either alone or in union with another woman. </p>
<p>“Male-male attraction” is also “one of the themes of pre-colonial Urdu poetry” writes Vanita in her <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230340640">book</a> about Indian Islamic literature from the 18th and 19th centuries.</p>
<p>India’s <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/240">Khajuraho temples</a>, built in Madhaya Pradesh state between 950 and 1050, even include depictions of homosexual orgies and fellatio, among other erotic <a href="http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20150921-indias-temples-of-sex">sculptures and scenes</a>.</p>
<p>Some scholars of Islam, India’s <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/29/5-facts-about-religion-in-india/">second-largest religion</a>, also find acceptance of gender fluidity in the <a href="https://dailytimes.com.pk/198615/third-genders-spirituality-social-status/">Koran</a>, which says that Allah “shapes you in the wombs as He pleases.”</p>
<p>Indeed, in <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/liaquat-ali-khan/transgender-dignity-in-is_b_10089712.html">India’s 16th-century Mughal courts</a>, hijras and eunuchs often held positions of high esteem as advisers or emissaries between men and women.</p>
<h2>The British preferred the binary</h2>
<p>India’s fluid gender and sexual norms did not fit into Britain’s <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/sex-and-sexuality-19th-century/">strict Victorian conceptions</a> of appropriate sexual behavior. </p>
<p>As the British empire grew more powerful in the Indian subcontinent in the early 19th century, so did their ideas about culture, society and law. Viewing local notions of sexuality as barbaric, British officials <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/12/17/alien-legacy/origins-sodomy-laws-british-colonialism">imposed</a> Western, Judeo-Christian sexual norms on colonial subjects.</p>
<p>Before the British, homosexuality was not illegal in India. </p>
<p>But by 1861 the British had consolidated their rule over India and were enforcing Section 377 of their penal code, which <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_377">could punish those who committed sodomy</a> or other homosexual acts with life in prison. </p>
<p>When India gained its independence in 1947, this statute remained, becoming Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colonial British rule over India included the imposition of laws mandating strict gender roles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.istaunch.com/">Istaunch.com/</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="iStaunch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236041/original/file-20180912-133874-fvg1dw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British men and women observed strict gender roles in the 19th and early 20 centuries, and they required colonial subject in India to do the same.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.istaunch.com/">Author unknown</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Britain’s anti-gay colonial legacy</h2>
<p>India was not the only British colony where formerly acceptable sexual behaviors and identities became criminalized.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_377">Section 377</a>, or a similar statute, was imposed in 42 former colonies, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Nepal, which was never formally colonized by Great Britain, also <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/10/14/how-nepals-constitution-got-queered">adopted</a> anti-sodomy laws based on India’s British-influenced penal code. </p>
<p>In 2007, the Nepali government became the first in South Asia to re-recognize a third gender category. Today, <a href="https://www.hrc.org/blog/in-a-historic-step-nepal-ratifies-new-constitution-that-includes-lgbt-prote">Nepal’s Constitution</a> specifically protects LGBTQ people from discrimination and abuse. </p>
<p>Neighboring Pakistan, like former British colonies Bhutan, Uganda and Singapore, still criminalizes homosexuality <a href="http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/1860/actXLVof1860.html">under Section 377</a>. This “unnatural offense” is punishable with up to 10 years in prison. </p>
<p>But in 2018, Pakistan, a Muslim-majority country, passed the historic <a href="http://www.senate.gov.pk/uploads/documents/1520932539_231.pdf">Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act</a>, allowing Pakistanis to choose their gender on government documents and prohibits discrimination in employment and public accommodations on the basis of gender identity. </p>
<h2>The future of gay rights in India</h2>
<p>Despite India’s legalization of gay sex, the path toward full acceptance of LGBTQ rights is complicated. </p>
<p>For more than a decade, India’s right-wing Hindu nationalists – who espouse a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-the-origins-of-todays-hindu-nationalism-55092">fundamentalist interpretation of Hinduism</a> called Hindutva – have <a href="http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1379514490_Hunt.pdf">worked</a> to portray homosexuality as a reprehensible Western import. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236091/original/file-20180912-133871-1jsjgpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236091/original/file-20180912-133871-1jsjgpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236091/original/file-20180912-133871-1jsjgpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236091/original/file-20180912-133871-1jsjgpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236091/original/file-20180912-133871-1jsjgpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236091/original/file-20180912-133871-1jsjgpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236091/original/file-20180912-133871-1jsjgpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the LGBT community dance to celebrate after the country’s top court struck down a colonial-era law that made homosexual acts punishable by up to 10 years in prison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-India-Gay-Rights/b195a4cda8b44f55beb44c135dce2d47/3/0">AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist elected in 2014, <a href="https://theconversation.com/indian-state-elections-give-modi-a-boost-but-the-country-is-fracturing-59632">is himself a follower of Hindutva</a>.</p>
<p>In July, as India’s Supreme Court was preparing to hear arguments on the gay sex ban, Subramanian Swamy, a high-ranking member of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/being-gay-is-against-hindutva-it-needs-a-cure-bjp-mp-subramanian-swamy/articleshow/64927333.cms">retorted</a> that homosexuality “is not a normal thing.” </p>
<p>It’s “against Hindutva,” he said.</p>
<p>After the ruling against Section 377, an armed Hindu nationalist group called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh <a href="https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/rss-un-others-react-to-supreme-court-judgement-on-section-377/316138">declared</a> that “same-sex marriages and relations are not in consonance with nature.” </p>
<p>Traditionally,“ read the Sept. 8 public statement, "Indian society has not supported such relations.”</p>
<p>Historic evidence says otherwise. </p>
<p>“India’s pre-colonial sexual history is important,” Chaitanya Lakkimsetti, a Texas A&M professor who has studied the fight to end Section 377, told me. </p>
<p>Yet, she reflects, “This is not just about hearkening back in time.” </p>
<p>For Lakkimsetti, the legal victory shows that “the Indian constitution is a living document that protects minorities.” In legalizing gay sex, then, the Supreme Court is not just recognizing India’s rich past – it’s also “looking forward.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Bhatt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Before colonialism, India embraced homosexuality and gender fluidity. The Supreme Court’s repeal of a 157-year-old gay sex ban partially reclaims that history, but LGBTQ Indians still face hurdles.Amy Bhatt, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/998892018-07-19T09:55:29Z2018-07-19T09:55:29ZJohn Nicholson: the sadistic British officer who was worshipped as a living god in India<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228045/original/file-20180717-44076-r1f7uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C586%2C749&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brigadier-General John Nicholson was a British officer in India between 1839 and 1857.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nicholson_(East_India_Company_officer)">wikipedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It does not fall to many of us to be worshipped as a living god, but that was the fate of John Nicholson, a 19th century British army officer in the service of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/taboo-the-east-india-company-and-the-true-horrors-of-empire-73616">East India Company</a>. Nicholson – the subject of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cult-Dark-Hero-Stuart-Flinders/dp/1788312368/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529417537&sr=1-1&keywords=cult+of+a+dark+hero">a new book</a> covering his life and times – served for much of his career on the disputed and perilous northwest frontier of India and it was there that his fearsome reputation led to the creation of a religious cult dedicated to the veneration of the great god “Nikal Seyn”.</p>
<p>Although his colleagues were understandably amused at the spectacle, Nicholson himself – a stern Victorian Christian who read a chapter of the Bible every day – took a dim view of this idolatry and set about his devotees with a whip. This, however, merely strengthened their conviction that he was a god and the cult lingered on, long after his death and <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cult-Dark-Hero-Stuart-Flinders/dp/1788312368/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529417537&sr=1-1&keywords=cult+of+a+dark+hero">into the 21st century</a>.</p>
<p>Nicholson is forgotten today but at the time he was one of a celebrated band of British officers in India, like <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp01433/sir-herbert-benjamin-edwardes">Herbert Edwardes</a>, <a href="https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/09/24/abbottabad-and-sir-james-abbott/">James Abbott</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynell_Taylor_(British_Army_officer)">Reynell Taylor</a> and the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brothers-Raj-Lives-Henry-Lawrence/dp/019579415X">Lawrence brothers</a> (Henry and John), whose adventures made them national heroes. Their deeds and deaths are recounted in memoirs, biographies, statues and memorials, both in India and at home.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228037/original/file-20180717-44091-ilcy0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228037/original/file-20180717-44091-ilcy0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228037/original/file-20180717-44091-ilcy0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228037/original/file-20180717-44091-ilcy0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228037/original/file-20180717-44091-ilcy0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228037/original/file-20180717-44091-ilcy0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228037/original/file-20180717-44091-ilcy0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brigadier General John Nicholson’s statue in the grounds of the Royal School Dungannon, Northern Ireland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brigiadier_General_John_Nicholson_statue_-_geograph.org.uk_-_942349.jpg">wikipedia/KennethAllen</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A sadistic bully and a racist</h2>
<p>Nicholson’s life was told in patriotic popular fiction and verse, including by <a href="http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/sir_henry_newbolt/poems/15755">Sir Henry Newbolt</a> and <a href="http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_lostlegion1.htm">Rudyard Kipling</a>. But to modern eyes these military upholders of empire are problematic figures. The steely determination the Victorians so admired looks more like cruel victimising to modern eyes. The historian Charles Allen, himself related to Nicholson, <a href="https://www.hodder.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781848547209">tells of the difficult feelings he experienced</a> when he first realised that his illustrious forebear was being denounced as a sadistic bully, a racist and a religious bigot. </p>
<p>Nicholson’s tough, uncompromising character was formed partly by his background in the north of Ireland and partly by his experiences as a prisoner during Britain’s disastrous invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Anglo-Afghan-Wars">First Afghan War</a> (1839-42). Already quick-tempered, Nicholson emerged from this experience with a reputation, even among the hardened East India Company officer corps, for his unforgiving attitude towards Indians.</p>
<p>When one Indian leader spat on the ground in front of him, Nicholson, correctly perceiving it as a serious insult, had the man manhandled to the ground and forced him to lick up his own spittle. Passing a mosque one day, Nicholson noticed an imam who, engrossed with other things, had not greeted him with the customary “salaam”. He had the unfortunate man brought before him and, with his own hands, shaved his beard off – a deep humiliation for a Muslim, as Nicholson well knew.</p>
<p>In one of the most famous tales told of him, during the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/indian_rebellion_01.shtml">1857 Indian Uprising and Mutiny</a>, Nicholson personally ordered and oversaw the hanging without trial of a whole set of regimental cooks, when poison was found in the soup they had been preparing for his fellow officers.</p>
<p>Such stories were well calculated to please the Victorian public but they are far more problematic for people today. Where the Victorians saw a manly character embodying the virtues of the British Empire, a modern audience is more likely to see a violent bully, contemptuous of Indian life and dignity. The personification of the worst aspects of colonialism. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228040/original/file-20180717-44097-pq0tmn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228040/original/file-20180717-44097-pq0tmn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228040/original/file-20180717-44097-pq0tmn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228040/original/file-20180717-44097-pq0tmn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228040/original/file-20180717-44097-pq0tmn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228040/original/file-20180717-44097-pq0tmn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228040/original/file-20180717-44097-pq0tmn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sir John Lawrence thought Nicholson was too keen on humiliating Indian leaders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lawrence,_1st_Baron_Lawrence#/media/File:John_Lawrence_by_Maull_and_Polybank.jpg">wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even in his lifetime, Nicholson had his critics. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Laird-Mair-Lawrence-1st-Baron-Lawrence">Sir John Lawrence</a>, later governor general and viceroy of India, found him difficult to work with and far too keen on confronting and humiliating Indian leaders. Others found his keenness for flogging Indians on almost any grounds – sometimes even when he did not have the authority to do so – deeply disturbing.</p>
<p>For Nicholson, as for all the British in India, the supreme challenge came in 1857, when a military mutiny among the “sepoys” (Indian soldiers) of the East India Company led to a full scale rebellion, which quickly spread across northern India. Nicholson seized the military opportunity with relish, leaping into action and openly expressing his contempt for any commander who did not measure up to his own demands for a speedy resolution. </p>
<p>He was, of course, an enthusiast of flogging, torturing and executing captured rebels. Like many of the British that year, he was incandescent with rage against the Indians – partly because of the revelations of atrocities committed against British women and children, who were <a href="https://www.newhistorian.com/massacre-brutal-retaliation-siege-cawnpore/6715/">murdered and their bodies mutilated</a>. However, his vengeful hatred sprang also from outrage that Indians should dare to challenge British rule at all. He died of wounds, leading an assault to lift the siege of Delhi.</p>
<p>Few Victorian imperial hero figures survive the scrutiny of the post-colonial age but his lust for blood has made Nicholson particularly reviled. These “Soldier Sahibs” of British India were men of remarkable energy and drive, firm believers in the benefits of British rule and genuine in their desire to rescue India from what they saw as its backward and oppressive rulers. These attitudes no longer hold sway, of course, but no career encapsulates the deep chasm that separates modern attitudes towards colonialism from those of the Victorians quite as well as that of “Nikal Seyn”, the living god John Nicholson.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Lang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Few Victorian imperial ‘hero’ figures survive the scrutiny of the post-colonial age, but John Nicholson’s lust for blood led to a strange twist.Sean Lang, Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/942022018-06-11T10:42:18Z2018-06-11T10:42:18ZI visited the Rohingya camps in Myanmar and here is what I saw<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222425/original/file-20180608-191947-xwbo1q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A camp for displaced Rohingyas in the city of Sittwe in western Myanmar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cresa Pugh</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Myanmar recently claimed to have <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43772364">repatriated its first Rohingya refugee family</a>. But, as an official from the United Nations noted, the country is still <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-un/myanmar-not-ready-for-return-of-rohingya-refugees-un-official-idUSKBN1HF04M">not safe</a> for the return of its estimated 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape an ongoing state-sponsored military campaign and persecution from Buddhist neighbors.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222423/original/file-20180608-191974-1qp1usq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222423/original/file-20180608-191974-1qp1usq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222423/original/file-20180608-191974-1qp1usq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222423/original/file-20180608-191974-1qp1usq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222423/original/file-20180608-191974-1qp1usq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222423/original/file-20180608-191974-1qp1usq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222423/original/file-20180608-191974-1qp1usq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rohingya refugees holding placards, await the arrival of a U.N. Security Council team in Bangladesh, on April 29, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/A.M. Ahad</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, in recent times, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/myanmar-blocks-rohingya-return-with-fence-barbed-wire-and-land-mines-1521538203">the Myanmar military</a> has been building a fence along the 170-mile border and fortifying it with landmines, to prevent the Rohingya from returning to their villages. </p>
<p>I spent two months between June and July 2017 talking to Rohingya individuals who are still in the country living in an internally displaced person camp, about their <a href="http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/media/WP-2013-107-Pugh_Stateless_Rohingya_Burma.pdf">experiences of violence, displacement and loss</a>. My research shows the difficult conditions under which the Rohingya live in Myanmar today and why there is little hope of a safe return for the vast majority of the refugees anytime soon. </p>
<h2>Conditions in Rohingya camps</h2>
<p>Since 2012, more than 1 million Rohingya refugees have fled their homes in Rakhine. The vast majority that fled in 2017 sought refuge in Bangladesh, where <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/developing-cyclone-threatens-rohingya-refugee-camps-bangladesh-180529090047890.html">fears of an imminent monsoon flood</a> are currently looming. In addition, there are an estimated 3.5 million Rohingya dispersed across the globe, the majority of whom have either fled or were born into exile due to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/12/burma-ethnic-violence-escalates">violence in their homeland</a>.</p>
<p>Those who remain in Rakhine are either in their homes and are prohibited from traveling away from their villages, or dwell in temporary camps. There are roughly <a href="https://www.mmtimes.com/national-news/6645-thousands-still-without-shelter-in-rakhine.html">120,000 Rohingya encamped</a> in settlements, located on the outskirts of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, just a few miles from their former homes.</p>
<p>Most residents have lived in the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/rohingya-refugee-crisis-burma-s-muslim-minority-face-choice-of-life-in-open-air-camps-or-dangers-of-a6721516.html">camps since 2012</a>, despite the fact that they were forcibly relocated by the government on a purportedly temporary basis. The camps are managed jointly by the government and military, and receive substantial assistance from international NGOs and U.N. agencies. However, there have been times when even the <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-myanmar-rohingya/in-myanmars-rakhine-aid-workers-blocked-from-entering-muslim-camp-amid-tension-idUKKBN1CU1PR">humanitarian organizations</a> have been barred from delivering food rations and other goods and services by the government and military. </p>
<p>I received government approval to visit the camps last year. In Northern Rakhine, I was interrogated by military officials, and one officer came to my friend’s home where I was having dinner to ask for my passport and travel documentation. I was then allowed to stay.</p>
<p>When I visited the Rohingya camp on the outskirts of Sittwe, the fear was palpable. The only road leading to the camp was dotted with police checkpoints staffed by AK-47-wielding officers. One of my interviews was cut short because there was a rumor of a man being shot dead, while trying to escape the camp. The entire quarter was put on high alert. </p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-280" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/280/ba9e984a69d6831fe50741480e709de23f298ec6/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>I happened to be visiting the camp on Eid al-Fitr, the last day of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-ramadan-is-called-ramadan-6-questions-answered-77291">Ramadan</a> when Muslims break their monthlong fast. In the midst of the tension, there was joy as well. Young girls with freshly oiled hair adorned with satin bows and sequined dresses played alongside the officers with machine guns. </p>
<p>At the same time, there was also the trauma of not being able to freely honor and practice their faith. Residents of the camp spoke to me of the <a href="https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/268962.pdf">limitations on their religious expression</a>. They explained how camp officials required them to remain in their homes from 10 p.m. onward and how it was not possible for them to gather at a mosque to participate in traditional celebrations central to the Islamic faith, even during Ramadan.</p>
<h2>Destruction of mosques</h2>
<p>Another sad reality for many Rohingya in Myanmar is the destruction of their religious buildings. All mosques in Rakhine have been either destroyed or shuttered after communal riots broke out between the local Buddhist population and Rohingya in 2012.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222426/original/file-20180608-191947-vm36fi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222426/original/file-20180608-191947-vm36fi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222426/original/file-20180608-191947-vm36fi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222426/original/file-20180608-191947-vm36fi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222426/original/file-20180608-191947-vm36fi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222426/original/file-20180608-191947-vm36fi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222426/original/file-20180608-191947-vm36fi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mosque in Sittwe, Rakhine state, that was torched and damaged in the 2012 conflict.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of the abandoned mosques that I saw had been reduced to rubble, and many of them continued to be heavily policed. The government has also made it illegal to construct new mosques to replace those that have been destroyed or to make repairs or renovations. In addition, in 2016 state authorities announced plans to <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/mosques-madrasas-to-be-razed-in-myanmar-rakhine-state/3520279.html">demolish dozens of other mosques</a> and madrasas (Muslim religious schools), based on a claim, that they had been illegally built.</p>
<p>In the camp, I learned that residents were allowed to build two small mud and thatch huts, which would serve as their mosques. These small structures were hardly able to accommodate the thousands who wanted to pray there. People must therefore pray separately, a move which has deeply fractured social relations within their community. </p>
<p>Residents reminisced about the beauty of their now demolished mosques, some refusing to even call the structure in the camp a mosque for they believed it was disrespectful to their religion. For some residents, offering prayers in this structure was not a true practice of their faith. As one young man told me, “Without being able to worship Allah, we no longer have our lives.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, it is only men who are allowed into this space. Women are required to pray within their shelters. During one of my interviews with a young man, I saw his wife crouching down on the dirt floor in the rear corner of their bamboo hut amid a pile of cookware. I asked what she was doing. “Praying,” he said. </p>
<p>Even before the 2012 military crackdown, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/world/asia/state-department-religious-freedom-myanmar.html">restrictions had been placed on many of the religious obligations and rituals</a> of the Rohingya. From my interviews I learned that for the better part of the decade, no Rohingya living in Rakhine have been able to engage in spiritual pilgrimage to Islamic holy sites in other areas of the country and globe. They have also been prohibited from inviting Muslim religious leaders to visit their mosques. </p>
<p>When I spoke with Rohingya individuals in the camp, they told me the deep religious significance of these practices. To many, it wasn’t just a denial of their religiosity, but of their humanity. “Our history is Rohingya, our religion is Islam, and our home is Rakhine,” said one older man, as he showed me the damp, often muddy, dirt floor where his family of eight sleep has slept every night since June 9, 2012.</p>
<h2>Not losing faith</h2>
<p>Over the past several years, <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo27374504.html">opposition to the Rohingya</a> has deepened. Many residents of Rakhine believe that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, referring to the fact that some of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Rohingya-in-South-Asia-People-Without-a-State/Basu-Ray-Chaudhury-Samaddar/p/book/9781138743458">the Rohingya trace their heritage to Bengal</a>, an area that became part of British India in the mid-18th century and from which many people migrated during the colonial period.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222427/original/file-20180608-191978-1dyf89y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222427/original/file-20180608-191978-1dyf89y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222427/original/file-20180608-191978-1dyf89y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222427/original/file-20180608-191978-1dyf89y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222427/original/file-20180608-191978-1dyf89y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222427/original/file-20180608-191978-1dyf89y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222427/original/file-20180608-191978-1dyf89y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mosque in one of the Rohingya camps on the outskirts of Sittwe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cresa Pugh</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nonetheless, despite their persecution, the individuals with whom I spoke remained unwavering in their faith. As I was departing, a young man, who had spent five years, or roughly a third of his life, in the camp, told me, “This has only made me stronger. The government has tried to destroy our religion and destroy our people, but a child never loses faith in his mother, and we can not lose our faith now.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cresa Pugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar who visited Rohingya camps in Myanmar found little hope of a safe return home for refugees, who are currently living in camps in neighboring Bangladesh.Cresa Pugh, Doctoral Student in Sociology & Social Policy, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/874702017-12-12T14:58:11Z2017-12-12T14:58:11ZWest Africa: empirehood and colonialism offer lessons in integration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198564/original/file-20171211-15358-mcmtm8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Great Mosque of Djenné, in Mali, has a history dating back to the 13th century which can inspire regional trade in West Africa.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The dream of the founding fathers of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was, among others, to foster trade and development among member states. But the integration dream will only be realised if institutional barriers to trade are addressed. These include poor protection of trade routes, weak enforcement, the fact that traders don’t know their rights and how to make complaints, and the lack of a common currency in the region. </p>
<p>The union has relied on agreements and announcements to meet its integration goals. But they aren’t enough. ECOWAS needs to operate beyond the office and paper agreements. It needs to establish physical operations at border points. </p>
<p>Leaders have lessons to learn from history – both ancient and recent. Our <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jid.3292/full">latest study</a> shows that policymakers concerned with deepening integration in <a href="http://www.ecowas.int/">ECOWAS</a> should look back in time to regional trade institutions in West Africa.</p>
<h2>How empires laid the foundation for integration</h2>
<p>Western Sudan experienced three major empires - Ghana, Mali and Songhai - from around 790 to 1650 AD. These empires covered most of present day West Africa and, to some extent, defined the precolonial history of the region. They laid the foundations for standards governing regional trade. For example, the Mali Empire – which succeeded and absorbed the Ghana Empire – adopted the import and export taxes it found. The Mali and Songhai empires - through consensus, trust and cooperation - subsumed more than 24 lesser kings under their authority. </p>
<p>The expansion of empires by absorbing other empires gradually led to common trade taxes and institutions. The <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/manden-charter-proclaimed-in-kurukan-fuga-00290">Mande charter of 1236</a> was particularly important. The charter is one of the oldest constitutions in the world although in oral form. It brought clans and small kingdoms together and codified how they were governed. It’s provisions entrenched tolerance and social peace among diverse groups through the building of trust and cooperation. Citizens of different clans and kingdoms agreed to live under one king in order to maintain peace, protect trade routes and harmonise trade rules. </p>
<p>In those ancient times, intra-West African trade was extensive with cowrie shells, gold, copper, manillas and cloth acting as common currencies and facilitating trade in the region. </p>
<p>But the last major empire in West Africa - Songhai - collapsed around 1650, creating a power vacuum that resulted in internal conflicts. This gave rise to inward looking kingdoms, and marked another turning point in the development of trade institutions in West Africa. </p>
<h2>Slave trade, colonialism and regional institutions</h2>
<p>The conventional argument is that the <a href="http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/">Atlantic slave trade (1500 and 1900)</a> and subsequent <a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-colonization-of-africa.html">colonisation (1885 - late 1960s)</a> interrupted the natural development of institutions in the region. But it’s important to note that institutions such as common currencies, single administration, contract enforcement through chiefs and a common education system were put in place. These institutions continue to be important in promoting regional trade. </p>
<p>Colonialism led to a production structure that served international rather than regional trade. Europeans were interested in trade flows between Europe and West Africa, where West Africa provided the raw materials for manufactured goods. </p>
<p>Despite the potential practical benefits, enthusiasm to preserve the institutions of the colonial powers gradually waned, particularly in the British colonies. Apart from the West African Examination Council - which designed a uniform curriculum and examination materials for all the British West African colonies - other institutions in the former British colonies were abandoned after independence. Things were somewhat different in the French colonies where the single currency and some of the other institutions of colonial times were maintained. </p>
<p>During colonial times, contracts were enforced and disputes settled in ways similar to the empirehood period. Chiefs in the colonial era communicated the value of the colonial currency to the locals and taught them how to avoid exploitation. These chiefs were synonymous to the representatives in provinces during the empirehood. </p>
<p>But the protection of trade routes was more standardised and better enforced during the empirehood than it was in the colonial period. For example, during the colonial period, the influence of European traders gradually replaced that of the chiefs, and consequently led to bandits and robbers attacking trade routes.</p>
<p>Just as the royal armies patrolled trade routes and royal officials in the provinces monitored arrangements during the empirehood, ECOWAS needs to deploy personnel to patrol trade routes as well as place staff at border points to monitor how trade takes place. </p>
<h2>Deep integration</h2>
<p>The empirehood and colonial eras offer a practical case study for West Africa to have the confidence that deep integration is feasible. </p>
<p>Over the longer term, a federal style administration could be a sustainable approach to deeper integration. For example, West Africa could be clustered into zones where each zone has an elected head of state on a rotational basis. But it would require strong political will to give up national sovereignty. This can only be considered if it can be demonstrated that the benefits would be greater than under current arrangements. </p>
<p>Some progress has been made. A common external tariff for the region came into force in 2015. And more economic integration is happening with the establishment of the <a href="http://www.uemoa.int/en/presentation-uemoa">West African Economic and Monetary Union</a> and the <a href="http://www.wami-imao.org/">West African Monetary Zone</a>. </p>
<p>In the shorter term, we also suggest that regional trade institutions such as a common currency, enforcement of contracts and protection of trade routes become more standardised. In addition, ECOWAS needs to use the media to tell people about their rights. It must also be ready to punish those who harass traders, and to give incentives to its officers to reduce the motivation to take bribes.</p>
<p>These steps worked in the empirehood era. They worked in the colonial era. They will work today to foster trade among member states and integrate the West African region.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87470/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>West Africa has lessons to learn from its ancient empires and colonial governments on regional trade and integration.Karen Jackson, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of WestminsterDavid Potts, Senior Lecturer (Development Economics/Project Appraisal), University of BradfordEssa Bah, Teaching Assistant in Economics, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878812017-11-26T10:09:12Z2017-11-26T10:09:12ZPatterns inherited from South Africa’s colonial past still persist in sport<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196182/original/file-20171123-18001-p40k7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's sport facilities are sorely lacking.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Delwyn Verasamy/Mail & Guardiian</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African sporting roots are deep in the country’s colonial past. </p>
<p>During the 19th century, sport in Britain and her colonies – South Africa one of them – was played and organised according to a class structure. It was based on English cultural critic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-Arnold">Matthew Arnold’s</a> <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sport_in_society.html?id=iLfcAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">classification</a> of society into “barbarians”, “philistines” and the “populace”. The barbarians were the aristocrats, the philistines the petty bourgeoisie, and the populace represented the working class.</p>
<p>According to Arnold’s classification, the staunchly individualistic and well-organised barbarians controlled sport at the beginning of the 19th century. They did so without making any attempt to hand down sport to the populace. Consequently, the philistines developed their own games such as athletics, hockey, soccer and tennis. They also infiltrated the Barbarian strongholds of cycling, rowing and rugby. </p>
<p>Later they welcomed the populace into their sports. This, provided they would conform to their etiquette of good manners and fair conduct in play. Many Philistines went further and introduced games and sport with a religious motive to the Populace.</p>
<h2>Restricted participation</h2>
<p>Transported to the British colonies, this class structure in sport was evident in the Cape Colony. The Western Province Rugby Football Union played the Junior Challenge Cup for rugby for the first time in 1897. It was explicitly stated that participation was restricted to boys from “European descent” in the union’s minutes of 4 May 1898.</p>
<p>In the Western Cape town of Stellenbosch, local white students expressed concern about playing rugby with the “chams” (Coloureds) on a piece of land called <em>Die Braak</em>. They were pleased when the authorities approved segregation measures. This was a <a href="http://encore.seals.ac.za/iii/encore_nmmu/plus/C__SSports%20%20%20%20South%20Africa%20%20%20%20History.__Orightresult;jsessionid=AA3EC06870231EB67633855A3123583E?lang=eng&suite=nmmu">reflection</a> of 19th and 20th century societies where people were included and excluded from sport participation by design.</p>
<p>The colonised had little room to manoeuvre outside these restrictions, discriminatory attitudes and exclusionary clauses in their sport organisation’s constitutions. Hence, prior to the Second World War, separate sport organisations for African, mixed race (Coloured), Muslim and Jewish communities existed at provincial and national level.</p>
<p>Occasionally, these clubs played each other. But generally the administrators and supporters remained strict about who could play or not in their fixtures. </p>
<p>After the Second World War, there was a drive towards black unity amongst sport federations that mirrored resistance political initiatives. By then, these sport-political drives stretched beyond the male muscular sports of cricket, rugby and soccer. It also included athletics, baseball, softball and weightlifting amongst others, as Robert Archer and Antoine Bouillon wrote in the study of racism in local sport, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_South_African_game.html?id=lXeBAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">The South African Game</a>.</p>
<h2>International participation</h2>
<p>Under the influence of administrators such as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dennis-brutus">Dennis Brutus</a> and Milo Pillay, black sport structures started directing their efforts towards international participation. Pillay wrote to the South African Empire and Olympic Games Association in 1947, requesting permission to consider black athletes for selection to the 1948 Olympic Games. The association’s refusal resulted in the Capetonian, weight lifter <a href="https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/el/ron-eland-1.html">Ron Eland</a>, participating for England in the games.</p>
<p>Pillay represented the traditional method of sport resistance of writing pleading letters that would appeal to white sympathy. Brutus, a more radical minded politician, and the better known, <a href="https://www.olympic.org/mr-sam-ramsamy">Sam Ramsamy</a>, agitated for South Africa’s complete expulsion from international sport while apartheid was still the law of the land. </p>
<p>A major stimulus for black unity in sport came with the formation of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637137?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">South African Council on Sport (Sacos)</a> in Durban in 1973. The council grew into the internal sport wing of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. It remained a political home for the broader black liberation movement, for black consciousness and Pan-Africanist formations, as well as the anti-racist <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03213.htm">New Unity Movement</a>. </p>
<p>At times Sacos was in conflict with its international counterpart, the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/SPORT/SPORTRAM.htm">South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee</a> who was influenced largely by the politics of the African National Congress (ANC).</p>
<p>In 1990 the ANC and other liberation organisations were <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/fw-de-klerk-announces-release-nelson-mandela-and-unbans-political-organisations">unbanned</a>. It led to South Africa’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1991/jul/10/southafrica.davidberesford">readmission</a> to international sport. But it also resulted in the demise of Sacos and the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/sacos-vs-nsc">dominance</a> of the short-lived ANC body, the National Sports Congress. The National Sports Congress punted the ANC line of power first, then development, whereas Sacos argued for the reverse. </p>
<p>Both the National Sports Congress and Sacos have dissolved with unresolved issues of ensuring maximum sport participation for all South Africans in the 21st century. </p>
<h2>Array of evils</h2>
<p>Today, the class gap as outlined by Arnold in the 19th century, remains firmly intact in South African sport. Media <a href="http://www.heraldlive.co.za/sport/2014/08/28/transformation-trips-lack-facilities/">reports</a> of <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/eastern-cape/poor-facilities-cripple-teaching-1326099">inadequate sport facilities</a> and lack of participation <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-09-23-00-ten-things-that-sa-sport-must-fix">opportunities</a> in poor communities, corruption and an array of evils surface regularly.</p>
<p>South African sport administrators seek to address inequalities of the past through politically convenient identity politics. In the process they utilise instruments such as race-based <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-04-28-sports-farce-in-land-of-pantomime">quotas</a>, while ignoring historical class divides that formed a basis for modern day sport formations. </p>
<p>Access to good schooling is generally considered a key to successful sport participation at senior level. However, many young people across the race spectrum, lack access to schools and universities. Only a select few make it into national representative teams. </p>
<p>In this way, modern day sport participation remains rooted in the dilemmas of colonial society. It necessitates an ongoing need for discourse, debate and dialogue on decolonisation in sport history. </p>
<p>South Africans owe it to themselves and their sport.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francois Cleophas receives funding from Stellenbosch University.
</span></em></p>Sport participation in South Africa remains rooted in the dilemmas of colonial society. It necessitates an ongoing need for discourse, debate and dialogue on decolonisation in sport history.Francois Cleophas, Senior Lecturer in Sport History, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/840402017-09-21T00:15:54Z2017-09-21T00:15:54ZThe history of the persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya<p>Some <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-trapped/rohingya-muslims-trapped-after-myanmar-violence-told-to-stay-put-idUSKCN1BU293">420,000</a> Rohingya Muslims, a <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">religious and ethnic minority community</a> in Myanmar, have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since August this year. </p>
<p>The United Nations has called the Rohingya the world’s most <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">persecuted</a> minority group and described the atrocities by Myanmar’s authorities as “<a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57490#.WcK6utOGOqA">ethnic cleansing</a>,” whereby <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57490#.WcK6utOGOqA">one group removes another</a> ethnic or religious community through violence. </p>
<p>But the persecution of the Rohingya is not new. My <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">research</a> on the Rohingya Muslim experience in Myanmar shows that this pattern of persecution goes back to 1948 – the year when the country achieved independence from their British colonizers.</p>
<p>Here is their brief history.</p>
<h2>The legacy of colonialism</h2>
<p>The British ruled Myanmar (then Burma) for over a century, beginning with a series of wars in <a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/sbbr/editions/file64388.pdf">1824</a>.</p>
<p>Colonial policies encouraged migrant labor in order to increase rice cultivation and profits. Many Rohingya entered Myanmar as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">part of these policies in the 17th century.</a> According to <a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/sbbr/editions/file64388.pdf">census records</a>, between 1871 to 1911, the Muslim population tripled.</p>
<p>The British also promised the Rohingya separate land – a “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">Muslim National Area</a>” – in exchange for support. During the <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/rohingya">Second World War</a>, for example, the Rohingya sided with the British while Myanmar’s nationalists supported the Japanese. Following the war, the British <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/rohingya">rewarded</a> the Rohingya with prestigious government posts. However, they were <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">not</a> given an autonomous state.</p>
<p>In 1948, when Myanmar achieved independence from the British, <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">violent conflicts broke out</a> among various segments of its more than one hundred ethnic and racial groups. </p>
<h2>Decades-long persecution</h2>
<p>After independence, the Rohingya asked for the promised autonomous state, but officials rejected their request. Calling them foreigners, they also denied them citizenship. </p>
<p>These animosities continued to grow. Many in Myanmar saw the Rohingya as having benefited from colonial rule. A nationalist movement and Buddhist religious revival <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/rohingya">further contributed</a> to the growing hatred. </p>
<p>In 1950, some Rohingya staged a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">rebellion</a> against the policies of the Myanmar government. They demanded citizenship; they also asked for the state that had been promised them. Ultimately the army <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/rohingya">crushed</a> the resistance movement.</p>
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<p>Much like today’s terrorists, the rebels at the time were called “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">Mujahid</a>” or engaged in “struggle” or “jihad.” It is important to point out that the international community has never agreed on how to define “terrorism.” The legal definition could vary by country as politics dictates its contours. As scholar <a href="http://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/11613/Saul">Ben Saul</a> <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/defining-terrorism-in-international-law-9780199295975?cc=us&lang=en&">says</a>, officials can use its meaning as a weapon against even valid political rivals. The lack of consensus, as Saul argues, reflects <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/defining-terrorism-in-international-law-9780199295975?cc=us&lang=en&">disagreement</a> about what violence is legitimate, when and by whom. </p>
<p>In 1962, just over a decade later, a military coup culminated in a <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">one-party military state</a> where democratic governance was woefully lacking. During the next 60 years of military rule, <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">things worsened</a> for the Rohingya. The authorities saw the minority group as a threat to <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/rohingya">nationalist identity</a>. </p>
<p>Calling them foreigners, the army killed, tortured and raped. They <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">closed</a> Rohingya social and political organizations. They also <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/rohingya">transfered</a> private Rohingya businesses to the government, debilitating the group financially. Further, the Rohingya <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">suffered</a> forced labor, arbitrary detention and physical assaults. In 1991 and 1992, more than <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">250,000</a> attempted to escape to Bangladesh. </p>
<h2>Rohingya ‘statelessness’</h2>
<p>In 1977, when the army launched a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">national drive</a> to register citizens, the Rohingya were considered illegal. More than <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">200,000</a> Rohingya fled to Bangladesh at the time because of further atrocities. Authorities pointed to their flight as purported evidence of their illegal status.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">Citizenship Act</a> of Myanmar, enacted in 1982, formally denied the group citizenship rights. This law <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">required</a> that a person’s ancestors belong to a national race or group present in Myanmar prior to British rule in 1823, to become a citizen. The Rohingya were still classified as illegal immigrants allowed in by British colonizers. As Human Rights Watch has noted, however, their presence actually dates back to the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-01.htm">12th century</a>. </p>
<p>Today, the Rohingya are the single largest “<a href="http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-content/uploads/UNHCR-Statelessness-2pager-ENG.pdf">stateless</a>” community in the world. Their “statelessness” or lack of citizenship increases their vulnerability because they are not entitled to any legal protection from the government. </p>
<p>Without citizenship, they are deprived of basic rights such as access to health services, education and employment. The <a href="http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1373/23PRLPJ0511.pdf?sequence=1">illiteracy rate</a> among the Rohingya, for example, is a staggering 80 percent. </p>
<p>Additionally, they have been <a href="https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm#wrapper">denied</a> the right to worship freely. They also face <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/17966/Abdelkader.pdf;sequence=1">restrictions</a> on the right to marry, move freely and own property because of their religious and ethnic identity. </p>
<p>Even though Rohingya population growth has <a href="http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1373/23PRLPJ0511.pdf?sequence=1">slowed down</a>, anxieties <a href="http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1373/23PRLPJ0511.pdf?sequence=1">not only persist but are codified in law</a>: Rohingya couples are allowed no more than two children. </p>
<p>Those who break the law risk imprisonment, and the government <a href="http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1373/23PRLPJ0511.pdf?sequence=1">blacklists</a> their children. Without legal status, they cannot go to school, travel or buy property. The police can also arrest and imprison them. </p>
<h2>The current crisis</h2>
<p>Despite Myanmar’s recent democratic transition, the persecution persists. </p>
<p>The current <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/sep/15/humanitarian-catastrophe-unfolding-as-myanmar-takes-over-aid-efforts-in-rakhine-state-rohingya">humanitarian catastrophe</a> ostensibly began with an assault on police posts by the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/11/burma-ensure-aid-reaches-rohingya">Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army</a>, a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41160679">new insurgency group</a>. </p>
<p>Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh told Human Rights Watch that Myanmar government forces had <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/11/burma-ensure-aid-reaches-rohingya">carried out</a> armed attacks, and burned down their homes. In addition, they <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjvznd/horrifying-stories-of-rohingya-refugees-fleeing-death-in-myanmar">beheaded men</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/correspondentsreport/rohingya-woman-tells-story-of-brutal-rape-in-rakhine/8866566">raped women</a> and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/08/burma-rohingya-describe-military-atrocities">murdered children</a>. <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/11/burma-ensure-aid-reaches-rohingya">Tens of thousands</a> of Rohingya have become internally displaced. Even prior to this crisis, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/17/us-call-burma-cease-persecution-rohingya">120,000</a> displaced Rohingya had been living in internment camps.</p>
<p>Amnesty International said there were indications that authorities in Myanmar have also <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/09/myanmar-new-landmine-blasts-point-to-deliberate-targeting-of-rohingya/">placed illegal landmines at locations commonly used by refugees</a> Among those killed were two children. What is more, international humanitarian aid <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/11/burma-ensure-aid-reaches-rohingya">has been blocked</a>, preventing necessities like food, water and medicine from reaching a quarter of a million people. </p>
<h2>Aung San Suu Kyi and human rights</h2>
<p>The Myanmar Army, meanwhile, denies any wrongdoing. Despite the global outcry, they claim to be conducting “<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/08/burma-rohingya-describe-military-atrocities">counterterrorism</a>” operations. Due to the severity of the human rights crisis, however, the British government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/19/uk-suspend-training-burmese-military-treatment-rohingya">decided</a> to stop its defense engagement and training of the military in Myanmar.</p>
<p>None of this criticism, however, has made Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader and Nobel laureate, acknowledge the plight of the Rohingya. Amid international criticism, she recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/world/asia/myanmar-united-nations-aung-san-suu-kyi-rohingya.html?_r=0">canceled</a> her visit to this week’s U.N. General Assembly in New York. In her speech to Myanmar’s parliament, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41315924">she denied</a> that there had been any “armed clashes or clearance operations” since September 5, this year. </p>
<p>Tragically, her actions signal there will be no end to the persecution of Rohingya anytime soon. </p>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84040/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Engy Abdelkader does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The persecution of the Rohingya goes back to 1948, the year when Myanmar achieved independence from the British.Engy Abdelkader, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/838332017-09-11T15:27:44Z2017-09-11T15:27:44ZHurricane Irma’s devastation of Caribbean territories piles pressure on strained relationship with UK<p>Hurricane Irma has torn a path of devastation through the Caribbean. Current indications suggest that <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/09/hurricane-irmas-death-toll-devastation-predicted-path-everything/">at least 25 people have been killed</a> – a figure likely to rise significantly – while many thousands have lost their homes and businesses. The clean-up operation will take years to complete, with costs running into the hundreds of millions.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Leeward-Islands">Leeward Islands</a> have borne the brunt of it. This island chain that marks the boundary of the Caribbean and the Atlantic is a patchwork of independent island nations and territories in various forms of association with France, the Netherlands, the US and the UK. However, while <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/france-steps-up-hurricane-irma-aid-as-uk-defends-response">France</a> and the Netherlands have been praised for their rapid and coordinated actions in their territories of Guadeloupe (France) and Sint Maarten (Netherlands) among others, the UK government has been <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/irma-caribbean-overseas-territories-uk-government-help-hurricane-damage-anguilla-antigua-barbuda-a7933856.html">criticised for being too slow to act</a> in the British Overseas Territories of the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla. </p>
<p>Anguilla’s representative to the UK and EU, Blondel Cluff, chided the Westminster government in a BBC interview for offering “<a href="https://twitter.com/AlPinkerton/status/906130792820215809">precious little support</a>”, while demanding a “permanent commitment to the development of Anguilla”. Others say that the residents of the overseas territories have been made to feel like “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/08/hurricane-irma-shows-high-time-british-overseas-territories/">third class citizens</a>” of the UK. Television news reports added visual power to these claims, juxtaposing images of uniformed French and Dutch troops on the ground in Guadeloupe and Sint Maarten within hours of Irma’s passing with aerial footage of the British territories where UK troops had yet to arrive.</p>
<p>The evidence against the UK government certainly looks damaging at first – but, as always, the reality is rather more complex and nuanced. In this case it is important to set this current crisis within its geographical, geopolitical and strategic context.</p>
<h2>Distributed support</h2>
<p>There are distinct differences between the French, Dutch and British territories in the Caribbean, leading to the adoption of quite different security and defence regimes. </p>
<p>The French West Indies, for example, has a population approaching 850,000 people spread over seven islands (the largest being Guadeloupe) in relatively close proximity in the Antilles archipelago. The Dutch Caribbean has about 315,000 spread over six islands in the Antilles. The UK, on the other hand, is responsible for five island groups in the Caribbean region dispersed over a distance of more than 1,250 miles: from west to east, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, and Montserrat, with a total population of fewer than 100,000 people. Add to this the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda in the North Atlantic and it is perhaps understandable why the UK has adopted a mobile defence and security presence for its Caribbean territories, as opposed to the more garrisoned approach taken by their French and Dutch equivalents. </p>
<p>This has had implications in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Irma. Whereas France and the Netherlands had a large number of troops to deploy quickly from their territorial bases, the UK was reliant on a supply and logistics ship — the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/09/royal-navy-arrives-british-virgin-islands-bringing-much-needed/">RFA Mounts Bay</a> — positioned nearby in the Caribbean to deploy troops and equipment to areas of need once the hurricane had passed. This maritime approach is supplemented with aid and military reinforcements transported directly from the UK by air. In this way, so the Ministry of Defence’s argument goes, the UK has been able to deliver the most appropriate aid to the most acutely affected areas, irrespective of whether they have international airport facilities.</p>
<h2>Global Britain?</h2>
<p>While there is some merit to this approach, this does not exonerate the British government from the pointed criticisms expressed by Caribbean representatives following Irma’s passing through the region. Complaints about the UK’s lack of attention to its Caribbean territories and their citizens – the majority of whom are black people – speak to much more longstanding concerns about the political, economic and diplomatic marginalisation of the small, less economically developed territories within the club of 14 British overseas territories. </p>
<p>For instance, in written evidence presented to the <a href="http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/european-union-committee/brexit-overseas-territories/written/69295.html">House of Lords EU select committee</a> earlier this year, the government of Anguilla criticised the UK’s one-size-fits-all administrative approach to its overseas territories in ways that ignore their heterogeneity. Their accusations of “nominal” economic support from the UK were equally damning, emphasising perceived shortfalls in funding, “despite Anguilla having a lower GDP than other recipients of aid and British overseas territories being deemed to have first call on DFID [Department for International Development] support”.</p>
<p>All too often, the public and political discourse related to the overseas territories has been dominated by the military, defence and security priorities of disputed territories such as <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03071847.2016.1224489">Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands</a>. When Caribbean overseas territories appear in the mainstream news it has tended to be in response to crises, such as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/28/montserrat-volcano-british-territory-geothermal-energy-tourism-sand-mining">volcanic eruption in Montserrat in 1995</a>, or <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/former-turks-and-caicos-premier-s-corruption-trial-to-go-ahead-without-a-jury-10346428.html">corruption such as in the Turks and Caicos Islands</a>, or in the recent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35965855">Panama Papers tax haven scandal involving the British Virgin Islands, among others</a>.</p>
<p>The spectre of Brexit cannot be ignored here. During a series of focus groups held earlier this year at a conference reflecting on the future of Britain’s Overseas Territories at the National Maritime Museum, young citizens of the Caribbean overseas territories spoke of their frustration that their relationships with Europe (<a href="http://westindiacommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/The-White-Paper-on-Anguilla-and-Brexit-1.pdf">and their European neighbours in the eastern Caribbean</a>) would be affected by a vote they were not allowed to participate in. </p>
<p>More troubling were their reflections on their changing feelings towards the UK: some felt that the racial undertones in some of the pro-Brexit campaigning had directly targeted “people like us”, and some had even experienced a rise in racial abuse in the weeks and months after the referendum while working and studying in the UK. It is a reminder that the “loyalty” of the British Overseas Territories and their citizens should not be taken for granted, and requires mutual trust and respect.</p>
<p>Britain’s commitment to its Caribbean overseas territories will be seriously tested over the coming months and years. For how long, and to what extent, will the UK’s humanitarian support be sustained? How will the UK now support the longer-term redevelopment, defence and security needs of these devastated communities? </p>
<p>As the UK prepares to reposition itself as a global player outside the European Union – perhaps at the centre of a rejuvenated Commonwealth – the UK’s actions in the Caribbean will serve to give substance to the highly tweetable, but so far distinctly nebulous, hashtag much favoured by the Foreign Office and other government departments. What kind of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/globalbritain">#GlobalBritain</a> will the UK choose to be?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alasdair Pinkerton has received funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Benwell received funding from The Leverhulme Trust (Early Career Fellowship) - 2013-2016. He has previously received funding from the ESRC and the British Academy.</span></em></p>The aid and assistance Britain’s Caribbean territories will need to rebuild will make highlight the fault lines in the relationship between Westminster and its former colonies.Alasdair Pinkerton, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Royal Holloway University of LondonMatthew Benwell, Lecturer in Human Geography, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/813692017-07-25T01:16:13Z2017-07-25T01:16:13ZHong Kong’s democratic struggle and the rise of Chinese authoritarianism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179543/original/file-20170724-11177-1tuktps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Four pro-democracy Hong Kong lawmakers of the Legislative Council have been ousted.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Kin Cheun</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In July, a Hong Kong court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/14/hong-kong-pro-democracy-legislators-disqualified-parliament">purged four pro-democracy politicians</a> from its Legislative Council. </p>
<p>This move comes after two other <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/2090736/disqualified-pro-independence-hong-kong-lawmakers-yau-wai">Hong Kong lawmakers</a> were expelled from the Legislative Council earlier this year and at the same time as the recent death of Chinese political activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/21/the-death-of-liu-xiaobo-marks-dark-times-for-dissent-in-china/?utm_term=.544acf1c0b10">Liu Xiaobo</a>. Add to this the growing unpopularity of Hong Kong’s new leader, Carrie Lam. </p>
<p>A new wave of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/world/asia/hong-kong-china-xi-jinping.html">pro-democratic protests</a> has begun in what was once seen as a model metropolitan city. </p>
<p>In a classic David and Goliath scenario, pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong are struggling to stand up to the Chinese mainland’s increasing control over the territory. Unfortunately for Hong Kong’s democratic movement, it looks like Goliath may have the upper hand.</p>
<p>My dissertation research on the 2014 Umbrella Movement shows that despite recent attempts to gain more political momentum, many recent pro-democracy calls to action have struggled in the face of Chinese power and Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing dominated Legislature. In fact, more radical “localist” movements that favor complete separation from China are becoming more common.</p>
<h2>The rise of localism</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-localism-20160428-story.html">localist movement</a>, made up of different and diverse groups, gained popularity in the wake of the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03068374.2014.994957?src=recsys">2014 Umbrella Movement</a> in which 100,000 people took to the streets for 79 days to demand universal suffrage. Following the Umbrella Movement, I interviewed the people of Hong Kong on their views on the territory’s political future. A year after the movement, these individuals felt optimistic about the territory’s democratic future. Two years later, people began to lose faith in Hong Kong’s political system.</p>
<p>Many of the people I interviewed on my trips in 2015 and 2016 believed the Umbrella Movement remained peaceful because neither the Chinese government nor the people of Hong Kong wanted a repeat of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03612759.1992.9950736">June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square</a>, when the student movement that had lasted for months ended with the deaths of hundreds at the hands of Chinese forces clearing the city square. </p>
<p>And at first, localists seemed willing to work within the political system, so long as their elected officials were able to enact policies under “one country, two systems.” But in 2016, violent skirmishes between Hong Kong police and localist activists took place in what was dubbed the “<a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1911341/mong-kok-riot-how-hong-kongs-first-night-year-monkey-descended-mayhem">Fishball Riots</a>.” Although violence has not been the primary goal of recent protests, activists have expressed willingness to use more forceful action if Beijing continues to increase its control.</p>
<p>I believe this new wave of protests may potentially lead to more violence. As opposed the Umbrella Movement’s call for universal suffrage, localist groups will likely unite under the rallying cry for independence from the unseen influence of Beijing.</p>
<h2>One party politics</h2>
<p>With the expulsion of the six lawmakers this year, the pro-democracy faction of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council no longer has veto power against pro-Beijing politicians. Some of the ousted politicians have announced that they will run for <a href="https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/07/24/ousted-lawmaker-edward-yiu-says-may-consider-running-direct-elections-regain-seat/">office again</a>, but it is unlikely that pro-democratic politicians will ever outnumber their pro-Beijing counterparts. Increasingly, Hong Kong’s government seems to be an extension of Beijing’s one-party rule: a political system in which only the Chinese Communist Party makes decisions.</p>
<p>It’s no surprise that China is so eager to reassert its control over the territory. Hong Kong was once considered China’s <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5665-lost-in-transition.aspx">“Gateway to the World”</a> and “Asia’s World City.” Yet Hong Kong was also one of the few places that kept the memory of democratic ideas alive in the region. That democratic tradition may be nearing its end. </p>
<p>Hong Kong’s democratic traditions, remnants of British colonialism, are being challenged. Under Chinese sovereignty, Hong Kong’s political system is being pushed in the opposite direction favoring more <a href="https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/07/24/hong-kong-democrats-must-get-smart-defending-citys-core-values-creeping-authoritarianism/">authoritarian policies</a>. </p>
<p>The yearly <a href="https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/06/06/donations-tiananmen-vigil-organiser-drop-hk340000-reduced-attendance/">June Fourth candlelight vigils</a>, established to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, were once well-attended events. In recent years, interest has dwindled. Younger generations have become more interested in their own causes. A growing number of factions seems to plague Hong Kong’s democratic movement.</p>
<p>Hong Kong’s relative autonomy following its 1997 transition out of British rule seemed to signal that the mainland could also experience democratic reform. As both economies flourished, more political freedom seemed possible. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, China’s authoritarian system has continued to exert control, thwarting democratic reform in both territories. If the global community does not pay attention, the prospect of a democratic China will continue to slip away. The more attention that is placed on Hong Kong’s current political crisis, the harder it will be for China to overtake the territory’s weakening democratic movement. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp cannot stand up to China alone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81369/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Chernin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratic political system are under threat, and pro-democracy advocates are once again ready to act.Kelly Chernin, Lecturer in International Communications, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/662982016-10-03T18:56:58Z2016-10-03T18:56:58ZConversing across a century with thinker, author and politician Sol T Plaatje<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140095/original/image-20161003-20205-1m2pbr4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sol Plaatje at his writing desk taken from his book Native Life in South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand A979 Fca3.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sol T. Plaatje is a fairly familiar name in South Africa. Born <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/solomon-tshekisho-plaatje">Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje</a> on 9 October 1876, he is often remembered as one of the founding members, and first general secretary, of the South African Native National Congress in 1912 which became the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/anc-origins-and-background">African National Congress</a> in 1923. </p>
<p>In recognition of his admirable service and talents as a pioneering politician, intellectual, journalist, linguist, writer and translator, Plaatje has been memorialised by, among other honours, having a <a href="http://www.thesolomon.co.za/sol-plaatje-museum.html">museum</a>, <a href="http://www.spu.ac.za/">university</a> and a <a href="http://www.solplaatje.org.za/">municipality</a> named after him.</p>
<p>This year marks the centenary of the publication of Plaatje’s seminal book, <a href="http://www.thejournalist.org.za/pioneers/centenary-of-sol-plaatjes-native-life-in-south-africa">“Native Life”</a> in South Africa. <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/Native%20Life%20in%20South%20Africa_0.pdf">Native Life</a>, together with his novel “<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/757233.Mhudi">Mhudi</a>” which was published in 1930, and reputed to be the first novel written in English published by a black South African, constitutes the cornerstones of Plaatje’s remarkable oeuvre. </p>
<p>A new edited volume, “<a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/sol-plaatjes-native-life-in-south-africa/">Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa: Past and Present</a>” – edited by Janet Remmington, Brian Willan and Bhekizizwe Peterson and published by Wits University Press –- reflects the significance of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/control-1910-1948">Native Life</a> and its continuing resonances.</p>
<p>At the time of its publication Native Life was widely read and even discussed in the South African House of Assembly. It disappeared out of the public eye only to reappear from the 1960s as historians started to chart the history of black South Africans.</p>
<h2>A little book</h2>
<p>In 1913 the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/natives-land-act-1913">Natives Land Act of 1913</a> was passed. The South African History Online described the act as the “most catastrophic provision for Africans” being “the prohibition from buying or hiring land in 93% of South Africa”.</p>
<p>The passing of the Act was a key catalyst that sparked Plaatje to write Native Life. At the time, Plaatje quaintly described it as “a little book”. It was conceived as part of his arsenal to petition the British government and public to protect the rights of black South Africans following the Act of Union of 1910. The unification of four former British colonies – Cape Colony, Natal Colony, Transvaal Colony and Orange River Colony – led to the formation of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/union-south-africa-1910">Union of South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>This new South African state legislated a wide range of discriminatory policies that turned the country into a white oligarchy that was structured in racial dominance and exploitation. The book that resulted far exceeded its author’s modest aims. Instead it raised a range of complex issues that continue to bedevil South African society.</p>
<p>Revisiting Native Life a 100 years later one is struck by the daunting task of how to position and engage with foundational texts and figures. One has to ensure that they retain their complexities and even contradictions. Those are qualities that can be productive in thinking-through both past and present experiences and challenges. </p>
<p>There are two possible forms of reception. There is the celebration of “heritage” and “human treasures” that, paradoxically, often flatten out the very attributes that made the person or text noteworthy. Alternatively, there is the tendency to dismiss members of the early black intelligentsia as black Victorians. They supposedly assimilated Western culture in the hope of achieving social “respectability”.</p>
<h2>Take Paper and Ink!</h2>
<p>The profound social changes that were brought about by conquest compelled black intellectuals to respond in numerous and creative ways to the ordeals that they faced. Instead of trying to draw a distinct line between tradition and modernity, orality and writing, Plaatje and his colleagues realised that such categories and practices were not mutually exclusive. These categories and practices needed to be recalibrated and used simultaneously in response to the new circumstances.</p>
<p>Plaatje’s literary endeavours were in line with <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/challenges-written-word">IWW Citashe</a>’s incendiary call in his poem, “Zimkile! Mfo wohlanga / Gone are your cattle, countryman!” to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Take Paper and Ink/
That’s your armour. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As he acknowledged in the preface to Mhudi, since the writing of history is partisan Plaatje felt it incumbent that black writers should offer their own interpretations.</p>
<p>Native Life is, in the first instance, such an account. Yet it also extends way beyond the imperative to bear witness to the dislocation and alienation unleashed by the Land Act. In order to get readers to fully grasp the turmoil Plaatje elaborates the beliefs, cultures and social lives of Africans before the Act. In the process he also provides an extensive and compelling archive of African ways of being and knowledge systems. A similar compulsion is behind his collection and publication in 1916 of “<a href="http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/XVI/LXII/183.full.pdf">Sechuana Proverbs</a> with Literal Translations and Their European Equivalents”.</p>
<h2>Bear Ye One Another’s Burden</h2>
<p>The recuperation of the distinctiveness of African life and culture was complicated by Plaatje’s equally insistent affirmation of the ties and needs that bind humanity. He draws attention to what he regards as common human desires – such as food, clothing, shelter and love - that all people share irrespective of race, class or gender.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140097/original/image-20161003-20196-rqfqou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140097/original/image-20161003-20196-rqfqou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140097/original/image-20161003-20196-rqfqou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140097/original/image-20161003-20196-rqfqou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140097/original/image-20161003-20196-rqfqou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140097/original/image-20161003-20196-rqfqou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140097/original/image-20161003-20196-rqfqou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of Wits University Press’, ‘Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa: Past and Present’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Plaatje evokes what he calls “mutual suffering” and advises that “bear ye one another’s burden”. Remarkably, before the two world wars and genocides that shook the 20th century, Plaatje argued that we bear an ethical responsibility to ensure the well-being of all people. We are also called upon to intervene and stop injustice and atrocities wherever they manifest themselves across the world.</p>
<p>This challenge is directed at all the citizens of the British Empire but it is also aimed at black and white South Africans. Plaatje’s compassion is particularly attentive to the hardships that are encountered by vulnerable groups. He is left distraught after witnessing a displaced family, the Kgobadis, burying their infant in an unmarked grave.</p>
<p>At the funeral of his own son, he contrasts its pomp and ceremony with the fugitive nature that marked the Kgobadi burial. He is appalled by the incarceration in the Orange Free State of black women who staged one of the earliest marches against the pass laws in July 1913.</p>
<p>Two chapters in Native Life eulogise the social roles performed by women and they indicate his support of the rights of women and especially the need for them to participate in public life. All these responses are consistent with Plaatje’s believe in equality irrespective of “race or colour… one’s sex” or class.</p>
<h2>The Art of the Human Condition</h2>
<p>The links and empathies between people across race, class, gender and experience that Plaatje proposes is also apparent in his equally receptive attitude and appropriation of art from all over the world. Native Life makes extensive use of quotations from major global texts ranging from the Bible to Shakespeare. The citations are not simply a sign of Plaatje’s erudition, they are pointedly used to strengthen Plaatje’s own argument. </p>
<p>The human bonds that Plaatje evokes are, of course, fundamental to “the human condition” that art is preoccupied with. If great art is informed by but also transcends the time and locality of its emergence, this then requires a more sophisticated appreciation of the value of even canonical works. </p>
<p>For instance, in addition to the need to centre African and other marginalised thinkers, knowledge systems and art across the educational and cultural landscapes, should the project of decolonisation in South Africa erase the Western canon or counter the ways in which it has been used in support of the colonial project? Are African works not susceptible to similar conservative and exclusionary uses? Such as when they are deployed in ways that validate traditional authority, patriarchy, ethnicity, class privileges, homophobia and xenophobia?</p>
<p>Plaatje also encouraged independent thought. He felt that a critical disposition coupled with empirical evidence and public accountability was indispensable, not only in relation to contesting colonial ideology but also with regards to views and actions in the black community as well. </p>
<p>After learning that his mentor, the journalist and educator <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/john-tengo-jabavu">John T Jabavu</a>, was in support of the Land Act, Plaatje describes, in chapter 13, his unsuccessful mission to convince Jabavu to alter his position. After his failure, Plaatje cautioned against the dangers of being held ransom by the powerful and wealthy in society. He declared that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>God forbid that we should ever find that our mind had become the property of someone other than ourselves. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Plaatje’s high estimation of intellectual work, critical thinking and access to information is in stark contrast to the current disparagement of “<a href="http://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/Zuma-scolds-clever-blacks-20150429">clever blacks</a>”, transparency, access to information and the media.</p>
<p>It is as a result of the deep appreciation of the complexities and entanglements that underpin social change and the imperatives to create a more just and humane world that Plaatje, and his contemporaries, preferred to pursue a multi-pronged, nuanced and compassionate understanding and representation of life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66298/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bhekizizwe Peterson receives funding from the National Research Foundation. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>The centennial publication of Sol Plaatje’s seminal, ‘Native Life’ is a timely reminder of his estimation of intellectual work, in contrast to the current disparagement of ‘clever blacks’.Bhekizizwe Peterson, Professor of African Literature, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.