tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/colonialist-24383/articles
Colonialist – The Conversation
2023-12-18T16:17:09Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219267
2023-12-18T16:17:09Z
2023-12-18T16:17:09Z
How a Victorian trip to Palestine spurred modern ornithology – and left it with imperial baggage
<p>Palestine’s natural splendour offered a landscape ripe for scientific “discovery”, description and expropriation by European imperial powers in the 19th century. And in the 1860s an English vicar named <a href="https://www.sacristy.co.uk/books/history/henry-baker-tristram-ornithology#">Henry Baker Tristram</a> claimed its birds. </p>
<p>Tristram was a co-founder of <a href="https://bou.org.uk/about-the-bou/">Ibis</a>, the ornithology journal published since 1859 by the British Ornithologists’ Union. His articles on Palestinian ornithology began with the first issue, when he contributed a list of birds he’d collected during a brief visit there the previous year. The list included a species previously unknown to western science, which was named in his honour as Tristram’s grackle (now more commonly known as Tristram’s <a href="https://ebird.org/species/trista1?siteLanguage=en_GB">starling</a>). </p>
<p>Tristram made a major contribution to the study of birds. At that time ornithology reflected imperial priorities and was concerned with collecting, describing and mapping. His observations of Palestine’s birds, in particular, laid the groundwork for the modern ornithology of the area. </p>
<p>However, his exploits in Palestine, still honoured in the name “Tristram’s starling”, also show why honorific bird names like this have come under increasing <a href="https://americanornithology.org/about/english-bird-names-project/">scrutiny</a>. </p>
<p>Tristram returned to Palestine for a fuller investigation in 1864. He travelled south from Beirut with a group of fellow naturalists and a large baggage train. The account of his ten-month-long journey was published in 1865 as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Land_of_Israel.html?id=Qd8TAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Land of Israel</a>. </p>
<p>This book, and the several <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Tristram%2C%20H.%20B.%20%28Henry%20Baker%29%2C%201822-1906">others</a> he wrote about Palestine, formed part of a growing wave of popular tourist accounts of the Holy Land. They fed the interest and shaped the perceptions of British readers fascinated by the area’s historical and Biblical remnants, its living inhabitants, and the missionary efforts to achieve conversions to Christianity. </p>
<p>Unusually, Tristram and his companions travelled far off the well-beaten tourist and Christian pilgrimage routes throughout Palestine. The Land of Israel includes detailed descriptions of Palestine’s diverse ethnic groups, their domestic, religious, military and economic traditions and practices, and their relationships with one another. </p>
<h2>Imperialism</h2>
<p>Tristram’s descriptions of Palestine’s people in many ways reflected typical British imperial views of “natives”, not least in his use of the terms “childlike” and “savage”, and his comparison of Bedouins to “red Indians”. His racialising and religious views were also shaped by his inclinations as a natural historian – he categorised those he observed according to type, and deviation from type. </p>
<p>At best, his characterisations are paternalistic; at worst, deeply offensive. The terms “debased” and “degraded” repeat often. Of one group near Jericho he writes: “I never saw such vacant, sensual, and debased features in any group of human beings of the type and form of whites”. </p>
<p>Of some Bedouin further south, he observes that “they were all decidedly of the Semitic type, and, excepting the colour and the smell, had nothing of the negro about them. They must, however, be far inferior to the races they have supplanted.”</p>
<p>Occasionally, he acknowledges Ottoman oppression and neglect as the cause of poverty, but in most cases links it to “Moslem fanaticism” and “Oriental indolence”. Although there are exceptions, Muslim settlements and their inhabitants are almost invariably “filthy”, “squalid” and “miserable”. </p>
<p>Of religious sites, he notes many instances of churches which have been “perverted” into mosques. One of his most offensive observations is of a Bedouin sheikh, Abu Dahuk: “like all his followers, he is very dark – not so black as the commonalty, but of a deep olive brown. This may partly arise from the habit of these people, who never wash. They occasionally take off their clothes, search them, slaughter their thousands, and air themselves, but never apply water to their persons”. The odour, he remarks, “is unendurable”.</p>
<p>Conversion to Christianity appeared to redeem this degradation. In the Galilee he notes: “Christianity had here, as elsewhere, stamped the place and its substantial houses with a neatness and cleanliness to which the best of Moslem villages are strangers”. </p>
<p>Conversion also seemed to him to transform racial attributes. Of two Protestant converts he observes that “so much had religion and education elevated them, that they seemed of a different race from those around them”. Among Bethlehem’s Christians, he particularly admires “the handsome faces of the men and women, and the wondrous beauty of the children, so fair and European-like”. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="An old brown book cover with the words The Land of Israel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566291/original/file-20231218-24-apod48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of Land of Israel 1872 edition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jasmine Donahaye</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tristram describes Jewish ethnicity in typical missionary terms. The Jews were a “decayed and scattered people”, with “musty and crumbling learning”. At a Protestant missionary tent in Tiberias he notes that “the Polish Jews, very numerous here, were willing to listen … but the native Jews, with whom were mingled a few Moslems, were occasionally very violent in their expressions”. The Jews, he concludes, “are a stiff-necked race”. </p>
<p>During his months in Palestine in 1864, Tristram shot hundreds of birds for his collection, and shot many more during subsequent visits. His surviving collection in the Liverpool World Museum includes, among others, the original 1858 <a href="https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/whats-type-guide-type-specimens">type specimens</a> of Tristram’s grackle, and 17 Palestine sunbird skins.</p>
<p>Tristram depended on many people – servants, dragomen, muleteers, cooks, collectors and guards – for their expertise, labour and protection, and sometimes even for <a href="https://newwelshreview.com/book/birdsplaining-a-natural-history-by-jasmine-donahaye">saving his life</a>. He also depended on them for help with obtaining specimens. But for that help with collecting he only names one person: “Gemil, with a little training,” he writes, “would soon have made a first-rate collector.”</p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-dozens-of-north-american-bird-species-are-getting-new-names-every-name-tells-a-story-217886">Why dozens of North American bird species are getting new names: Every name tells a story</a>
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<p>Those British imperial values that coloured Tristram’s view of Palestine’s people enabled him to name and claim its natural resources for western science, and for personal glory. They also gave him licence to propose that the land itself should be claimed: “Either an European protectorate or union with Egypt seems requisite to save Palestine from gradual dissolution,” he remarked, “unless, which seems hopeless, the Arabs can be induced to cultivate the sod.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219267/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jasmine Donahaye 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>
H.B. Tristram was a Victorian clergyman and ornithologist who categorised a list of birds he’d found in Palestine.
Jasmine Donahaye, Professor in English Literature and Creative Writing, Swansea University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169791
2021-10-28T16:58:40Z
2021-10-28T16:58:40Z
Why the idea of ‘African time’ keeps on ticking
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428769/original/file-20211027-15-1m3camx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">GettyImages</span> </figcaption></figure><p>“African time” delivers more hits on internet searches than “African nature” or “African people”. This shows that people seem to need to feed a stereotype. </p>
<p>As anthropologists, we’re interested in why this need exists and what impact it has on people’s lives.</p>
<p>Various scholars have discussed the idea of an African sense of time. Following the Kenyan-born philosopher <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/MBITCO">John Mbiti</a>, some have suggested that Africans have no concept of the future. Others have claimed that the “relaxed” African attitude towards time, of being late and being focused on the ancestral past, prevents economic development. While such generalisations are discredited in science, they seem to live on among policy makers, state planners and NGO workers. </p>
<p>In our recent <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00020184.2021.1942786">paper</a>, we looked at examples of this stereotyping and tried to explain why it happens. We believe it is connected to the ways in which state and non-state planners try to make sense of the diverse expectations and orientations of citizens. </p>
<p>Our discussion builds on an idea that comes from political scientist <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078152/seeing-state">James C. Scott</a>. He argued that administrators seek to make the messiness of everyday life “readable” so that they can deal with it more easily. The effect is that diverse ideas about the future are streamlined and merged into national plans, project plans and budget periods.</p>
<h2>Why time matters</h2>
<p>We are part of a larger research team at the University of Cologne in Germany. With our African counterparts, we have carried out ethnographic field research in the Kavango-Zambezi region in southern Africa. And we are now expanding our work to eastern Africa. We primarily accompany people in their everyday lives, seeking to tie the abstract topic of time back to the ordinary situations that we all share.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428175/original/file-20211025-21-s05w3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young girl sitting on a stone in a patchy football pitch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428175/original/file-20211025-21-s05w3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428175/original/file-20211025-21-s05w3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428175/original/file-20211025-21-s05w3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428175/original/file-20211025-21-s05w3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428175/original/file-20211025-21-s05w3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428175/original/file-20211025-21-s05w3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428175/original/file-20211025-21-s05w3f.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"></a>
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<span class="caption">A girl watches a football game in Namibia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas Widlok, Joachim Knab</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The idea of African time is not merely a philosophical interest. It has become an integral part of state politics, specifically identity politics. States not only introduce clock time and standardised calendars. They also expect their citizens to contribute to development goals. The state tries to commit everyone to national targets, deadlines, plans and procedures. They achieve this with the help of project spreadsheets, media announcements, meeting schedules, work packages and other tools. </p>
<p>States are keen to streamline commitment to future national goals. In our experience from southern Africa, the role of NGOs in this process is often to harmonise the time-frames of marginalised citizens with those of state planning. Citizens navigate seasonal uncertainty, engaging in everyday improvisation to earn a living. To survive, they often need to revise their personal plans and timelines. State and NGO workers, by contrast, are expected to administer, control and direct the lives of people in a linear fashion. They set goals and execute planned projects.</p>
<p>We investigated examples from present-day Namibia. Here, as elsewhere, the state is instrumental in creating age brackets that define when citizens qualify for state services, including education, school feeding and pension payments. The state also sets the time frame for distributing drought relief and other benefits. It also decides when citizens have to provide services to the state – like paying tax, or getting tested for diseases. Individuals usually have a variety of personal plans and agendas. But from the state’s perspective, that is irrelevant. Everyone needs to follow the “proper procedures” of accountancy and policy implementation. </p>
<p>Moreover, most African states publish national “visions” for the future. Marginalised citizens have to comply with the expectations written in such visions, if they want recognition and assistance. Only certain linear timeframes can be “read” by the state (past-present-future, plan-execution, before-after). But other timeframes exist. Some are tuned to seasonal cycles, others are task-oriented rather than clock-oriented. They don’t sit easily with government’s expectations. </p>
<p>All this serves to reproduce the old expectation that all Africans follow a stereotypical “African time”. One way of time organisation is set as the standard, and all other forms are treated as problematic and special. </p>
<h2>Choose your time</h2>
<p>We aren’t attacking or recommending specific strategies of how to organise diverse expectations and aspirations into “future planning”. Our research reminds us that using multiple ways of considering time, and different ways of timing what we do, works well, as people move from one situation to another. </p>
<p>Previously, scholars believed that every “culture” used a specific time frame. But it’s evident that social agents (individuals and groups) possess multiple ways of dealing with time. In our everyday lives, we all choose from this repertoire, according to different situations and circumstances. The state (and NGOs) erode this diversity when they streamline time. It is neither right nor necessary.</p>
<p>“African time” is one option in a repertoire that is available not only to Africans but to everyone else. As a stereotype, it is used to discredit alternative forms of organising things, which depart from the dominant visions of development. We show that the state and other powerful players are not neutral in this. Their interests lie in getting things “lined up” and organised “according to plan”. But opening up the future for everyone starts with opening up to the diverse ways of thinking about time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Widlok and Joachim Knab receive funding from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council)</span></em></p>
Africans are stereotyped as having no regard for time and timing. This is a myth.
Thomas Widlok, Professor for the Anthropology of Africa, University of Cologne
Joachim Knab, PhD-student in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165087
2021-07-28T06:13:16Z
2021-07-28T06:13:16Z
From colonial cavalry to mounted police: a short history of the Australian police horse
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and/or images of deceased people.</em></p>
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<p>Images of mounted police contending with anti-lockdown protesters on the weekend have now gone viral <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/26/asia/sydney-covid-lockdown-protest-horse-intl-hnk/index.html">around the world</a>. In fact, mounted police have a long history in Australia. </p>
<p>They have certainly been used as a method of crowd control at countless demonstrations in living memory — from anti-war protests to pro-refugee rallies and everything in between. </p>
<p>But the history of mounted police in Australia goes much deeper.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/enforcing-assimilation-dismantling-aboriginal-families-a-history-of-police-violence-in-australia-140637">Enforcing assimilation, dismantling Aboriginal families: a history of police violence in Australia</a>
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<h2>Mounted reconnaissance and messengers</h2>
<p>In early colonial Australia, horses were at a premium. In the 1790s, policing of convicts and bushrangers in the confined region of the Sydney basin was conducted on foot by night watchmen, constables and the colonial military.</p>
<p>By 1801, the then Governor King formed a <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/LIB100019165">Body Guard of Light Horse</a> for dispatching his messages to the interior and as a useful personal escort. </p>
<p>By 1816, at the height of the <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/sydney-wars/">Sydney Wars</a> of Aboriginal resistance, the numbers of horses in the colony had grown. </p>
<p>Their importance as mounted reconnaissance and for use by messengers was critical to Governor Macquarie’s infamous campaign, which ended in the <a href="https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/stories/massacre-appin-17-april-1816">Appin Massacre</a> of April 17, 1816. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413463/original/file-20210728-25-1y8kh9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C997%2C715&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mounted police, gold escort guard/ sketched on the spot by S.T. Gill." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413463/original/file-20210728-25-1y8kh9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C997%2C715&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413463/original/file-20210728-25-1y8kh9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413463/original/file-20210728-25-1y8kh9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413463/original/file-20210728-25-1y8kh9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413463/original/file-20210728-25-1y8kh9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413463/original/file-20210728-25-1y8kh9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413463/original/file-20210728-25-1y8kh9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Along with firearms and disease, the horse was a key element in occupying Aboriginal land and controlling the largely convict workforce on the frontier.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-135669850/view?searchTerm=mounted+police#search/mounted%20police">NLA/Trove</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The horse as a key element of occupation</h2>
<p>Along with firearms and disease, the horse was a key element in occupying Aboriginal land and controlling the largely convict workforce on the frontier.</p>
<p>In the early 1820s, west of the Blue Mountains, the use of horses in the open terrain of the Bathurst Plains was critical in capturing escaped convicts and bushrangers, as well as defending remote outstations against attacks from Wiradjuri people. </p>
<p>Early intrusions into Wiradjuri land were not so much by British colonists, but by the animals they brought with them. In what is now recognised as “co-colonisation”, cattle and sheep did a lot of the hard yards for the British, often well before they arrived in Aboriginal lands.</p>
<p>In 1817, Surveyor General John Oxley thought he was well beyond the limits of settlement when, as he <a href="https://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00066.pdf">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>to our great surprise we found the distinct marks of cattle tracks [that] must have strayed from Bathurst, from which place we were now distant in a direct line between eighty and ninety miles.</p>
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<h2>From a colonial cavalry to mounted police</h2>
<p>During the first Wiradjuri War of Resistance between 1822 and 1824, calls were made to the colonial authorities for the formation of a civilian “colonial cavalry” to assist the beleaguered and overstretched military forces. My (Stephen Gapps) forthcoming book, developed in consultation with Wiradjuri community members in central west region of NSW, <a href="https://www.westernadvocate.com.au/story/6320680/award-winning-historian-to-discuss-his-research-into-the-bathurst-war/">The Bathurst War</a>, looks in deeper detail at this period.</p>
<p>It was hoped colonial farmers would be their own first line of defence against Aboriginal warrior raids on sheep and cattle stations.</p>
<p>Governor Brisbane <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-233244754/findingaid">wrote</a> to London that in 1824 a mounted force was becoming “daily more essential [for the] vital interests of the of the Colony”.</p>
<p>But by August that year, heavily armed and mounted settlers, overseers and their armed convict workers had decimated Wiradjuri resistance before a formal cavalry militia was established.</p>
<p>After possibly hundreds of Wiradjuri people had been massacred by heavily armed and mounted settlers, a “Horse Patrol” was created in 1825, which soon formally became the <a href="https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/about_us/history/history_pages/significant_dates">Mounted Police</a>.</p>
<p>The Mounted Police were critical during a spree of bushranging soon after — a largely unanticipated side-effect of arming of convict stockworkers to defend themselves against Wiradjuri attacks in 1824. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413472/original/file-20210728-23-zkg4gb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mounted Police and prisoner, 1840-1872, Samuel Thomas Gill" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413472/original/file-20210728-23-zkg4gb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413472/original/file-20210728-23-zkg4gb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413472/original/file-20210728-23-zkg4gb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413472/original/file-20210728-23-zkg4gb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413472/original/file-20210728-23-zkg4gb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413472/original/file-20210728-23-zkg4gb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413472/original/file-20210728-23-zkg4gb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=757&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 Mounted Police were critical during a spree of bushranging.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110350293">Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the 1830s, the force had proved useful as a highly mobile quasi-military unit in combating Aboriginal resistance as well as bushranging. </p>
<p>As the colony continued to expand with an insatiable desire for running cattle and sheep on Aboriginal lands, three regional divisions were based at Bathurst, Goulburn and Maitland. </p>
<p>After conflict between colonists and Gamilaraay warriors on the Liverpool Plains, commander Major Nunn led a Mounted Police detachment on a two-month campaign around the Gwydir and Namoi Rivers, resulting in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Creek_massacre">Waterloo Creek Massacre</a> on January 26, 1838. Armed colonists soon followed suit, ending in the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/myall-creek-massacre">Myall Creek Massacre</a> in June that year, where colonists <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/myall-creek-massacre">killed</a> at least 28 Aboriginal people (possibly more).</p>
<p>The Mounted Police’s military functions came with heavy expenses, which included uniforms, equipment and barracks. During the 1840s, a <a href="https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/about_us/history/history_pages/significant_dates">Border Police</a> force of ex-convicts equipped only with a horse, a gun and rations was created and attached to Commissioners of Crown Lands. </p>
<p>It was funded by a tax on squatters (whose interests they protected) and proved a much cheaper policing option for the frontier. </p>
<h2>The Native Mounted Police</h2>
<p>By 1850 the “Mounted Police” were disbanded. Another relatively cheap and what proved to be a tragic, if remarkably successful, option had been found — the creation of a “Native Mounted Police” force of Aboriginal men with British officers.</p>
<p>The troopers were provided with uniforms, guns and rations. By the 1860s, particularly in Queensland, the main problem on the frontier was not policing colonists but stopping Aboriginal resistance. So arming Aboriginal fighters was part of a tried and tested British method of exploiting existing hostilities by rewarding those who collaborated and punishing those who resisted.</p>
<p>As Bogaine Spearim, Gamilaraay and Kooma man, activist and creator of the podcast <a href="https://boespearim.podbean.com/">Frontier War Stories</a> has noted, the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP) were not only feared by bushrangers such as Ned Kelly, but <a href="https://boespearim.podbean.com/e/frontier-war-stories-lynley-wallis-queensland-native-mounted-police/">known for their violence</a> toward the Aboriginal population of Queensland. </p>
<p>The NMP united incredible bush skills with military capability. Their legacy has been the focus of a recent <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623528.2020.1735147?journalCode=cjgr20">project</a> by Australian researchers Lynley Wallis, Heather Burke and colleagues.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5AIqN_-1Dpk?wmode=transparent&start=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The role of animals in colonisation and policing</h2>
<p>From 1850, the colonial police force (and then from 1862, the NSW Police force) incorporated mounted police as mobile units in mostly remote locations.</p>
<p>But they also found them useful in urban areas, especially with growing numbers of strikes, political disturbances, protests and riots in the rapidly industrialising cities in the late 19th century.</p>
<p>The use of horses in crowd control has a long history in policing, which itself has a long history in warfare. Among the other issues this presents, we might also consider horses’ long suffering <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Animals-Count-How-Population-Size-Matters-in-Animal-Human-Relations/Cushing-Frawley/p/book/9780367855987">histories</a> of being placed in the front lines of conflict.</p>
<p>Like the inexorable march of sheep and cattle as part of the invasion of Aboriginal lands, understanding the role of animals in colonisation and policing is crucial to a broader understanding of Australian history.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/make-no-mistake-cooks-voyages-were-part-of-a-military-mission-to-conquer-and-expand-134404">Make no mistake: Cook’s voyages were part of a military mission to conquer and expand</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Gapps is affiliated with the University of Newcastle and is a Senior Curator at the Australian National Maritime Museum. He is the author of The Sydney Wars (NewSouth Books) and of the forthcoming book, Gudyarra - The First Wiradjuri War of Resistance, the Bathurst War 1822-1824, which was developed in consultation with Wiradjuri community members in the central west region of NSW.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mina Murray 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>
Along with firearms and disease, the horse was a key element in occupying Aboriginal land during the colonial period and controlling the largely convict workforce on the frontier.
Stephen Gapps, Conjoint Lecturer, University of Newcastle
Mina Murray, PhD student, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138289
2020-05-11T05:43:44Z
2020-05-11T05:43:44Z
This rainforest was once a grassland savanna maintained by Aboriginal people – until colonisation
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333928/original/file-20200511-49584-1g5bwwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C9%2C885%2C588&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Glover's paintings show open savannahs and grasslands in Tasmania. (1838)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/48.1985/">Art Gallery of NSW</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you go to the Surrey Hills of northwest Tasmania, you’ll see a temperate rainforest dominated by sprawling trees with genetic links <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Ecology_and_Biogeography_of_Nothofag.html?id=SKSBF-0ormAC&redir_esc=y%22%22">going back millions of years</a>. </p>
<p>It’s a forest type <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/27/world-heritage-forests-burn-as-global-tragedy-unfolds-in-tasmania">many consider</a> to be ancient “wilderness”. But this landscape once looked very different. </p>
<p>The only hints are a handful of small grassy plains dotting the estate and the occasional giant eucalypt with broad-branching limbs. This is an architecture that can only form in open paddock-like environments – now swarmed by rainforest trees. </p>
<p>These remnant grasslands are of immense conservation value, as they represent the last vestiges of a once more widespread subalpine “poa tussock” grassland ecosystem. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333923/original/file-20200511-49558-k9dcen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333923/original/file-20200511-49558-k9dcen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333923/original/file-20200511-49558-k9dcen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333923/original/file-20200511-49558-k9dcen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333923/original/file-20200511-49558-k9dcen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333923/original/file-20200511-49558-k9dcen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333923/original/file-20200511-49558-k9dcen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333923/original/file-20200511-49558-k9dcen.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The temperate rainforest in Tasmania’s Surrey Hills are a legacy of colonialism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-020-01339-3">Our new research</a> shows these grasslands were the result of Palawa people who, for generation upon generation, actively and intelligently manicured this landscape against the ever-present tide of the rainforest expansion we see today.</p>
<p>This purposeful intervention demonstrates land ownership. It was their property. Their estate. Two hundred years of forced dispossession cannot erase millennia of land ownership and connection to country. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/strength-from-perpetual-grief-how-aboriginal-people-experience-the-bushfire-crisis-129448">Strength from perpetual grief: how Aboriginal people experience the bushfire crisis</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=970100638;res=IELAPA;type=pdf">Myths</a> of “<a href="https://ojs.library.dal.ca/JUE/article/view/8410">wilderness</a>” have no place on this continent when much of the land in Australia is culturally formed, created by millennia of Aboriginal burning – even the world renowned Tasmanian Wilderness World <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02363.x">Heritage Area</a>. </p>
<h2>British impressions</h2>
<p>Today, the Surrey Hills hosts a vast 60,000-hectare timber plantation. Areas outside the modern plantations on the Surrey Hills are home to rainforest. </p>
<p>On first seeing the Surrey Hills from atop St Valentine’s Peak in 1827, Henry Hellyer – surveyor for the Van Diemen’s Land company – <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/156800713?q&versionId=170938503">extolled the splendour</a> of the vista before him: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>an excellent country, consisting of gently rising, dry, grassy hills […] They resemble English enclosures in many respects, being bounded by brooks between each, with belts of beautiful shrubs in every vale.</p>
<p>It will not in general average ten trees on an acre. There are many plains of several square miles without a single tree.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And when first setting food on the estate: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The kangaroo stood gazing at us like fawns, and in some instances came bounding towards us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He went on to note how the landscape was recently burnt, “looking fresh and green in those places”.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is possible that the natives by burning only one set of plains are enabled to keep the kangaroos more concentrated for their use, and I can in no way account for their burning only in this place, unless it is to serve them as a hunting place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The landscape Hellyer described was one <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01426390701767278">deliberately managed and maintained by Aboriginal people with fire</a>. The familiarity of the kangaroo to humans, and the clear and abundant evidence of Aboriginal occupation in the area, implies these animals were more akin to livestock than “wild” animals.</p>
<h2>A debated legacy</h2>
<p>Critically, Hellyer’s accounts of this landscape were challenged later in the same year in a <a href="https://www.foresthistory.org.au/Onfray%20Paper.pdf">scathing report</a> by Edward Curr, manager of the Van Diemen’s Land company and, later, a politician. </p>
<p>Curr criticised Hellyer for overstating the potential of the area to curry favour with his employers, for whom Hellyer was searching for sheep pasture in the new colony.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-tasmanias-aboriginal-people-reclaimed-a-language-palawa-kani-99764">Explainer: how Tasmania's Aboriginal people reclaimed a language, palawa kani</a>
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<p>These contrasting perceptions are an historical echo of a debate at the centre of Aboriginal-settler relations today. </p>
<p>Authors such as Bruce Pascoe (<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dark_Emu/6iZuDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=bruce+pascoe+dark+emu&printsec=frontcover">Dark Emu</a>) and Bill Gammage (<a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Biggest-Estate-on-Earth%3A-How-Aborigines-Made-Gammage/73cd899fc3303a51ccdee280440a2a395f97bd5b">The Biggest Estate on Earth</a>) have been <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/media/2019/11/30/bolt-pascoe-and-the-culture-wars/15750324009163">challenged, ridiculed and vilified</a> for over-stating the agency and role of Aboriginal Australians in modifying and shaping the Australian landscape. </p>
<p>These ideas are criticised by those who either genuinely believe Aboriginal people <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21027637?selectedversion=NBD20462942">merely subsisted</a> on what was “naturally” available to them, or by those with <a href="https://www.dark-emu-exposed.org/">other agendas</a> aimed at denying how First Nations people owned, occupied and shaped Australia.</p>
<h2>New research backs up Hellyer</h2>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-020-01339-3">We sought</a> to directly test the observations of Hellyer in the Surrey Hills, using the remains of plants and fire (charcoal) stored in soils beneath the modern day rainforest.</p>
<p>Drilling in to the earth beneath modern rainforest, we found the deeper soils were full of the remains of grass, eucalypts and charcoal, while the upper more recent soil was dominated by rainforest and no charcoal. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333922/original/file-20200511-49569-di96c9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333922/original/file-20200511-49569-di96c9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333922/original/file-20200511-49569-di96c9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333922/original/file-20200511-49569-di96c9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333922/original/file-20200511-49569-di96c9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333922/original/file-20200511-49569-di96c9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333922/original/file-20200511-49569-di96c9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333922/original/file-20200511-49569-di96c9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We drilled into more than 70 rainforest trees across two study sites, targeting two species that can live for more than 500 years: Myrtle Beech (<em>Nothofagus cunninghami</em>) and Celery-top Pine (<em>Phyllocladus aspleniifolius</em>). </p>
<p>None of the trees we measured were older than 180 years (from 1840). That’s just over a decade following Hellyer’s first glimpse of the Surrey Hills.</p>
<p>Our data unequivocally proves the landscape of the Surrey Hills was an open grassy eucalypt-savanna with regular fire under Aboriginal management prior to 1827.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/1-in-10-children-affected-by-bushfires-is-indigenous-weve-been-ignoring-them-for-too-long-135212">1 in 10 children affected by bushfires is Indigenous. We've been ignoring them for too long</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Importantly, the speed at which rainforest invaded and captured this Indigenous constructed landscape shows the enormous workload Aboriginal people invested in holding back rainforest. For millennia, they used cultural burning to maintain a 60,000-hectare grassland.</p>
<h2>Learning from the past</h2>
<p>Our research challenges the central tenet underpinning the concept of <em>terra nullius</em> (vacant land) on which the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-14/abbot-describes-1778-australia-as-nothing-but-bush/5892608">tenuous and uneasy claims</a> of sovereignty of white Australia over Aboriginal lands rests. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333926/original/file-20200511-31175-vkqqqz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333926/original/file-20200511-31175-vkqqqz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333926/original/file-20200511-31175-vkqqqz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333926/original/file-20200511-31175-vkqqqz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333926/original/file-20200511-31175-vkqqqz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333926/original/file-20200511-31175-vkqqqz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333926/original/file-20200511-31175-vkqqqz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333926/original/file-20200511-31175-vkqqqz.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our research drilled into the soil to learn what the landscape looked like before British invasion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More than the political implications, this data reveals another impact of dispossession and denial of Indigenous agency in the creation of the Australian landscape. </p>
<p>Left unburnt, grassy ecosystems constructed by Indigenous people accumulate woody fuels, in Australia and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-57564-z">elsewhere</a>. </p>
<p>Forest has far more fuel than grassland and savanna ecosystems. Under the right set of climatic conditions, <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-are-our-rainforests-burning">any fuel will burn</a> and increasing fuel loads dramatically increases the potential for catastrophic bushfire. </p>
<p>That’s why <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Fire_Country.html?id=fblqzAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Indigenous fire management</a> could help save Australia from devastating disasters like the recent Black Summer.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-land-is-burning-and-western-science-does-not-have-all-the-answers-100331">Our land is burning, and Western science does not have all the answers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138289/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael-Shawn Fletcher receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
Two hundred years of forced dispossession cannot erase millennia of land ownership and connection to country.
Michael-Shawn Fletcher, Associate Professor in Biogeography, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129422
2020-04-29T12:23:54Z
2020-04-29T12:23:54Z
Archaeologists have a lot of dates wrong for North American indigenous history – but we’re using new techniques to get it right
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331175/original/file-20200428-110775-ug6wjw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C43%2C1506%2C1140&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For centuries, indigenous history has been largely told through a European lens.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/1613648693">John White, circa 1585-1593, © The Trustees of the British Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Columbus famously reached the Americas in 1492. Other Europeans had <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2317">made the journey before</a>, but the century from then until 1609 marks the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/books/review/1493-uncovering-the-new-world-columbus-created-by-charles-c-mann-book-review.html">creation of the modern globalized world</a>.</p>
<p>This period brought extraordinary riches to Europe, and genocide and disease to indigenous peoples across the Americas.</p>
<p><iframe id="mi0Pd" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/mi0Pd/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The European settlement dates and personalities are known from <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25645/25645-pdf.pdf">texts</a> and sometimes <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/sketching-the-earliest-views-of-the-new-world-92306407/">illustrations</a>, to use the failed colony on what was then Virginia’s Roanoke Island as an example.</p>
<p>But one thing is missing. What about indigenous history throughout this traumatic era? Until now, the standard timeline has derived, inevitably, from the European conquerors, even when scholars <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/children-of-aataentsic--the-products-9780773506275.php">try to present an indigenous perspective</a>. </p>
<p>This all happened just 400 to 500 years ago – how wrong could the conventional chronology for indigenous settlements be? Quite wrong, it turns out, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aav0280">based on radiocarbon dating</a> my collaborators and I have carried out at a number of Iroquoian sites in Ontario and New York state. We’re challenging existing – and rather colonialist – assumptions and mapping out the correct time frames for when indigenous people were active in these places.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330130/original/file-20200423-47815-10i5haa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330130/original/file-20200423-47815-10i5haa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330130/original/file-20200423-47815-10i5haa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330130/original/file-20200423-47815-10i5haa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330130/original/file-20200423-47815-10i5haa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330130/original/file-20200423-47815-10i5haa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330130/original/file-20200423-47815-10i5haa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330130/original/file-20200423-47815-10i5haa.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dating Iroquoia project member Samantha Sanft excavating at White Springs, New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Samantha Sanft and Kurt Jordan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Refining dates based on European goods</h2>
<p>Archaeologists estimate when a given indigenous settlement was active based on the absence or presence of certain types of European trade goods, such as metal and glass beads. It was always approximate, but became the conventional history.</p>
<p>Since the first known <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt80szr">commercial fur trading missions were in the 1580s</a>, archaeologists date initial regular appearances of scattered European goods to 1580-1600. They call these two decades Glass Bead Period 1. We know some trade occurred before that, though, since indigenous people Cartier met in the 1530s <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4077/4077-h/4077-h.htm#chap03">had previously encountered Europeans, and were ready to trade</a> with him.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331171/original/file-20200428-110738-1dbr0lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331171/original/file-20200428-110738-1dbr0lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331171/original/file-20200428-110738-1dbr0lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331171/original/file-20200428-110738-1dbr0lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331171/original/file-20200428-110738-1dbr0lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331171/original/file-20200428-110738-1dbr0lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331171/original/file-20200428-110738-1dbr0lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331171/original/file-20200428-110738-1dbr0lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">16th-century European copper alloy beads from two sites in the Mohawk Valley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York State Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Archaeologists set Glass Bead Period 2 from 1600-1630. During this time, new types of glass beads and finished metal goods were introduced, and trade was more frequent.</p>
<p>The logic of dating based on the absence or presence of these goods would make sense if all communities had equal access to, and desire to have, such items. But these key assumptions have not been proven. </p>
<p>That’s why the <a href="https://datingiroquoia.wordpress.com/">Dating Iroquoia Project</a> exists. Made up of researchers here at Cornell University, the University of Georgia and the New York State Museum, we’ve used <a href="http://www.c14dating.com/">radiocarbon dating</a> and statistical modeling to date organic materials directly associated with Iroquoian sites in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226334">New York’s Mohawk Valley</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aav0280">Ontario in Canada</a>.</p>
<p>First we looked at two sites in Ontario: Warminster and Ball. Both are long argued to have had direct connections with Europeans. For instance, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_de_Champlain">Samuel de Champlain</a> likely stayed at the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2019.60">Warminster site</a> in 1615-1616. Archaeologists have found large numbers of trade goods at both sites.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331174/original/file-20200428-110752-12sautc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331174/original/file-20200428-110752-12sautc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331174/original/file-20200428-110752-12sautc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331174/original/file-20200428-110752-12sautc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331174/original/file-20200428-110752-12sautc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331174/original/file-20200428-110752-12sautc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331174/original/file-20200428-110752-12sautc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331174/original/file-20200428-110752-12sautc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Centuries-old maize sample, ready to be radiocarbon dated.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eva Wild</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When my colleagues and I examined and radiocarbon dated plant remains (maize, bean, plum) and a wooden post, the calendar ages we came up with are entirely consistent with historical estimates and the glass bead chronology. The three dating methods agreed, placing Ball circa 1565-1590 and Warminster circa 1590-1620.</p>
<p>However, the picture was quite different at several other major Iroquois sites that lack such close European connections. Our radiocarbon tests came up with substantially different date ranges compared with previous estimates that were based on the presence or absence of various European goods.</p>
<p>For example, the Jean-Baptiste Lainé, or <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780759121010/The-Mantle-Site-An-Archaeological-History-of-an-Ancestral-Wendat-Community">Mantle, site</a> northeast of Toronto is currently the largest and most complex Iroquoian village excavated in Ontario. <a href="http://asiheritage.ca/publication/mantle-site/">Excavated between 2003–2005</a>, archaeologists dated the site to 1500–1530 because it lacks most trade goods and had just three European-source metal objects. But our radiocarbon dating now places it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aav0280">between about 1586 and 1623, most likely 1599-1614</a>. That means previous dates were off the mark by as much as 50 to 100 years.</p>
<p>Other sites belonging to this same ancestral Wendat community are also more recent than previously assumed. For example, a site called Draper was conventionally dated to the second half of the 1400s, but radiocarbon dating places it at least 50 years later, between 1521 and 1557. Several other Ontario Iroquoian sites lacking large trade good assemblages vary by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2019.60">several decades to around 50 years or so</a> from conventional dates based on our work.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330138/original/file-20200423-47810-yawh32.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330138/original/file-20200423-47810-yawh32.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330138/original/file-20200423-47810-yawh32.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330138/original/file-20200423-47810-yawh32.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330138/original/file-20200423-47810-yawh32.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330138/original/file-20200423-47810-yawh32.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330138/original/file-20200423-47810-yawh32.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330138/original/file-20200423-47810-yawh32.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sturt Manning examining a sample in the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Kitchen/Cornell University</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My colleagues and I have also investigated a number of sites in the Mohawk Valley, in New York state. During the 16th and early 17th centuries, the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers formed a key transport route from the Atlantic coast inland for Europeans and their trade goods. Again, we found that radiocarbon dating <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226334">casts doubt on the conventional time frame</a> attributed to a number of sites in the area.</p>
<h2>Biases that led to misguided timelines</h2>
<p>Why was some of the previous chronology wrong?</p>
<p>The answer seems to be that scholars viewed the topic through a pervasive colonial lens. Researchers mistakenly assumed that trade goods were equally available, and desired, all over the region, and considered all indigenous groups as the same.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mqup.ca/children-of-aataentsic--the-products-9780773506275.php">To the contrary</a>, it was Wendat custom, for example, that the lineage whose members <a href="https://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/published/native-peoples/">first discovered a trade route claimed rights to it</a>. Such “ownership” <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/palethnologie.482">could be a source of power and status</a>. Thus it would make sense to see uneven distributions of certain trade goods, as mediated by the controlling groups. Some people were “in,” with access, and others may have been “out.”</p>
<p>Ethnohistoric records indicate cases of indigenous groups rejecting contact with Europeans and their goods. For example, Jesuit missionaries described an <a href="http://moses.creighton.edu/kripke/jesuitrelations/relations_15.html">entire village no longer using French kettles</a> because the foreigners and their goods were blamed for disease.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330132/original/file-20200423-47784-y5x5hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330132/original/file-20200423-47784-y5x5hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330132/original/file-20200423-47784-y5x5hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330132/original/file-20200423-47784-y5x5hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330132/original/file-20200423-47784-y5x5hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330132/original/file-20200423-47784-y5x5hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330132/original/file-20200423-47784-y5x5hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330132/original/file-20200423-47784-y5x5hg.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dating Iroquoia Project member Megan Conger excavating at White Springs, New York. Some locations have been under-explored, so far, by archaeologists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Megan Conger, Kurt Jordan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are other reasons European goods do or do not show up in the archaeological record. How near or far a place was from transport routes, and local politics, both within and between groups, could play a role. Whether Europeans made direct contact, or there were only indirect links, could affect availability. Objects used and kept in settlements could also vary from those intentionally buried in cemeteries.</p>
<p>Above all, the majority of sites are only partly investigated at best, some are as yet unknown. And sadly the archaeological record is affected by the looting and destruction of sites.</p>
<p>Only a direct dating approach removes the Eurocentric and historical lens, allowing an independent time frame for sites and past narratives.</p>
<h2>Effects of re-dating indigenous history</h2>
<p>Apart from changing the dates for textbooks and museum displays, the re-dating of a number of Iroquoian sites raises major questions about the social, political and economic history of indigenous communities.</p>
<p>For example, conventionally, researchers place the start of a shift to larger and fortified communities, and evidence of increased conflict, in the mid-15th century. </p>
<p>However, our radiocarbon dates find that some of the key sites are from a century later, dating from the mid-16th to start of the 17th centuries. The timing raises questions of whether and how early contacts with Europeans did or did not play a role. This period was also <a href="https://time.com/4946501/colonial-america-climate-change/">during the peak of what’s called the Little Ice Age</a>, perhaps indicating the changes in indigenous settlements have some association with climate challenge.</p>
<p>Our new radiocarbon dates indicate the correct time frame; they pose, but do not answer, many other remaining questions.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sturt Manning receives funding from The National Science Foundation and The National Endowment for the Humanities. He is affiliated with Cornell University. </span></em></p>
Modern dating techniques are providing new time frames for indigenous settlements in Northeast North America, free from the Eurocentric bias that previously led to incorrect assumptions.
Sturt Manning, Director of the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory and Professor of Classical Archaeology, Cornell University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/113995
2019-04-18T21:10:14Z
2019-04-18T21:10:14Z
Earth Day: Colonialism’s role in the overexploitation of natural resources
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270020/original/file-20190418-28110-hl4mnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mining is a highly destructive endeavour towards our environment but demand for gems and minerals is non-stop; early colonial relationships continue to define these industries. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are currently experiencing the worst <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn">environmental crisis</a> in human history, including a “biological annihilation” of wildlife and dire risks for the future of human civilization. </p>
<p>The scale of that environmental devastation has <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2016/05/rate-of-environmental-damage-increasing-across-planet-but-still-time-to-reverse-worst-impacts/">increased drastically</a> in recent years. Mostly to blame are anthropogenic, or human-generated factors, including the burning of <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/">fossil fuels</a> like coal and oil. </p>
<p>Other industries like gem and mineral mining also destroy the world’s ecological sustainability, leading to deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats. Much of this traumatic exploitation of natural resources traces its origins to early <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.716603">colonialism</a>. </p>
<p>Colonialists saw “new” territories as places with unlimited resources to exploit, with little consideration for the long-term impacts. They exploited what they considered to be an <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520246782/the-unending-frontier">“unending frontier”</a> at the service of early modern state-making and capitalist development. </p>
<p>To understand our current <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html">ecological catastrophe</a>, described as “a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040,” we need to look at the role of colonialism at its roots. </p>
<p>This exploration is not a debate over <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/dont-mistake-nostalgia-about-british-empire-scholarship">whether colonialism was “good” or “bad”</a>. Instead, it is about understanding how this global process helped create the world we currently inhabit. </p>
<h2>Clear-cutting rainforests for industrial rubber</h2>
<p>Since the 15th century, <a href="https://indianoceanworldcentre.com/welcome/our-mission/">the Indian Ocean has been the site of global trade</a>. Colonialism built upon local economic systems but also profoundly built up and shaped many of the massive industries and processes that are currently at play in the region. </p>
<p>For example, British colonialists transformed the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674287242&content=reviews">Malay peninsula into a plantation economy</a> to meet the needs of industrial Britain and America. This included the expanding demand for cheap rubber during the industrial revolution. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270011/original/file-20190418-28103-d0fnyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270011/original/file-20190418-28103-d0fnyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270011/original/file-20190418-28103-d0fnyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270011/original/file-20190418-28103-d0fnyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270011/original/file-20190418-28103-d0fnyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270011/original/file-20190418-28103-d0fnyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270011/original/file-20190418-28103-d0fnyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands of Indians were brought in as indentured (contract) workers to work in various Malayan rubber plantations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.nlb.gov.sg/biblio/14416012">The Malaysian Indian Dilemma/Janakey Raman Manickam</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Exploitative colonial policies in Singapore and the peninsula limited the economic options of poor Malays, Indians and Chinese. These workers were increasingly forced to clear cut vast swathes of rainforest to literally carve out a living for themselves at the expense of local ecosystems. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, more than half a century after the end of colonial rule in the Malay peninsula, the over-exploitation of local resources through extensive logging continues apace. Once numerous, Malayan tigers are now classified as a <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/malayan-tiger#">critically endangered</a> species due, in part, to habitat loss from logging and road development. </p>
<p>Deforestation in Malaysian Borneo also continues to accelerate, mainly due to the ongoing global demand for <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/stop-deforestation/drivers-of-deforestation-2016-palm-oil">palm oil</a> and lumber.</p>
<h2>Exporting for global markets</h2>
<p>In Myanmar (formerly Burma), trade in raw commodities goes back centuries. Under colonial rule, the export of minerals, timber and opium expanded enormously, placing unprecedented strain on local resources. </p>
<p>The integration of regions north of the <a href="https://wle-mekong.cgiar.org/changes/where-we-work/irrawaddy-river-basin/">Irrawaddy River basin</a> into the Burmese colonial state <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417504000179">drastically increased</a> economic integration between upland areas rich in natural resources and larger flows of European and Chinese capital. </p>
<p>Today, despite generating <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/cf46e086-6909-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f">billions of dollars in revenue</a>, these regions are some of the poorest in the country and are home to widespread human rights abuses and environmental disasters. </p>
<h2>Extracting Africa’s gemstones and minerals</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/10/diamond-trade-still-fuels-human-suffering">human cost</a> of the diamond trade in West and South Africa is relatively well-known. Less known are the devastating effects on Africa’s environment that the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/may/02/society.conservationandendangeredspecies1">stripping of natural resources</a> such as diamonds, ivory, bauxite, oil, timber and minerals has produced. This mining serves a global demand for these minerals and gems.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-environmental-impact-of-the-mining-industry.html">intensive mining operations</a> required to deliver diamonds and other precious stones or minerals to world markets degrades the land, reduces air quality and pollutes local water sources. The result is an overall loss of biodiversity and significant environmental impacts on human health. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270015/original/file-20190418-28103-1jay9t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270015/original/file-20190418-28103-1jay9t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270015/original/file-20190418-28103-1jay9t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270015/original/file-20190418-28103-1jay9t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270015/original/file-20190418-28103-1jay9t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270015/original/file-20190418-28103-1jay9t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270015/original/file-20190418-28103-1jay9t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">African gold miners in a tunnel following a vein of ore, in the Crown Mine, in the greatest gold-bearing region of the world, near Johannesburg, South Africa, 1935.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From 1867 to 1871, exploratory digging along the Vaal, Harts and Orange rivers in South Africa prompted a large-scale diamond rush that saw a massive influx of miners and speculators pour into the region in search of riches. By 1888, the diamond industry in South Africa had transformed into a monopoly, with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-de-beers-2011-12">De Beers Consolidated Mines</a> becoming the sole producer. </p>
<p>Around the same time, miners in nearby Witwatersrand discovered the world’s largest gold fields, fuelling the spread of lucrative new mining industries. As European powers carved up the continent in the so-called “scramble for Africa” during the late 19th century, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050718000128">commercial exports</a> came to replace slavery as the primary economic motivation for direct colonial occupation. </p>
<p>New transportation technologies and economic growth fuelled by the industrial revolution created a global demand for African exports, including gemstones and minerals that required extensive mining operations to extract.</p>
<p>From 1930 to 1961, the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-2281.12103">diamond industry in Sierra Leone</a> played a crucial role in shaping and defining colonial governmental strategies and scientific expertise throughout the region. </p>
<p>Nearby Liberia was never formally colonized and was established as a homeland for freed African-American slaves. But American slaveholders and politicians saw the republic primarily as a solution to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/03/our-liberian-legacy/304821/">limit the “corrupting influence” of freed slaves on American society</a>. </p>
<p>To “help” Liberia get out of debt to Britain, the U.S.-based Firestone Tire and Rubber Company extended a $5-million loan in 1926 in exchange for a 99-year lease on a million acres of land to be used for rubber plantations. This loan was the beginning of direct <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1922/09/liberia-and-negro-rule/376221/">economic control</a> over Liberian affairs. </p>
<h2>Unequal power relations</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12076">report</a> suggests that Africa is on the verge of a fresh mining boom driven by demand in North America, India, and China that will only worsen existing ecological crises. Consumer demand for minerals such as tantalum, a key component for the production of electronics, lies at the heart of current mining operations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270009/original/file-20190418-28084-iu6dgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270009/original/file-20190418-28084-iu6dgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270009/original/file-20190418-28084-iu6dgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270009/original/file-20190418-28084-iu6dgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270009/original/file-20190418-28084-iu6dgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270009/original/file-20190418-28084-iu6dgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270009/original/file-20190418-28084-iu6dgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photograph from 1892 of a pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground for fertilizer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our understanding of colonialism is often limited to simple ideas about what we think colonialism looked like in the past. These ideas impede our ability to identify the complex ways that colonialism shaped and continues to shape the uneven power structures of the 21st century, as anthropologist and historian Ann Laura Stoler <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/19/DuressImperial-Durabilities-in-Our-Times">argues in her book, <em>Duress</em></a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2017/wp152_2017.pdf">Unequal power relations</a> between and within developed and developing countries continue to define the causes and consequences of climate change. A clearer understanding of where these problems came from is a necessary first step towards solving them.</p>
<p>People in prosperous countries are often unaware that the garbage they throw out every day often gets shipped around the world to become <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/craig-and-marc-kielburger/canada-manila-recycling_b_5452730.html">somebody else’s problem</a>. </p>
<p>While people debate whether climate change should be taken seriously from the comfort of their air-conditioned homes, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/climate-change-drives-migration-crisis-in-bangladesh-from-dhaka-sundabans/">hundreds of thousands of people</a> are already suffering the consequences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph McQuade receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and is a Senior Research Fellow at the NATO Association of Canada.</span></em></p>
Much of the devastation of our globe’s natural resources traces its origins to early colonialism. These relationships continue to define the extraction of resources that severely impact ecosystems.
Joseph McQuade, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for South Asian Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107479
2018-11-23T13:13:56Z
2018-11-23T13:13:56Z
Returning looted artefacts will finally restore heritage to the brilliant cultures that made them
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247032/original/file-20181123-149338-1jkg488.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C258%2C2617%2C1804&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the plundered Benin plaques, at the British Museum.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/plaque-warrior-attendants-16th17th-c-nigeria-751012396?src=da3MPHvFfZ4elDJvDArYtw-1-0">Shutterstock.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>European museums are under mounting pressure to return the irreplaceable artefacts plundered during colonial times. As an archaeologist who works in Africa, this debate has a very real impact on my research. I benefit from the convenience of access provided by Western museums, while being struck by the ethical quandary of how they were taken there by illegal means, and by guilt that my colleagues throughout Africa may not have the resources to see material from their own country, which is kept thousands of miles away. </p>
<p>Now, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/arts/design/france-museums-africa-savoy-sarr-report.html">a report</a> commissioned by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has recommended that art plundered from sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial era should be returned through permanent restitution. </p>
<p>The 108-page study, written by French art historian Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese writer and economist Felwine Sarr, speaks of the “theft, looting, despoilment, trickery and forced consent” by which colonial powers acquired these materials. The call for “restitution” echoes <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-3-cases-explain-restituting-nazi-looted-art-difficult">the widely accepted approach</a> which seeks to return looted Nazi art to its rightful owners.</p>
<p>The record of colonial powers in African countries was frankly disgusting. Colonial rule was imposed by the barrel of the gun, with military campaigns waged on the flimsiest excuses. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700010215">Benin expedition of 1897</a> was a punitive attack on the ancient kingdom of Benin, famous not only for its huge city and ramparts but its extraordinary cast bronze and brass plaques and statues. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247018/original/file-20181123-149314-19h5v9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=123%2C146%2C1462%2C1013&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247018/original/file-20181123-149314-19h5v9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247018/original/file-20181123-149314-19h5v9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247018/original/file-20181123-149314-19h5v9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247018/original/file-20181123-149314-19h5v9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247018/original/file-20181123-149314-19h5v9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247018/original/file-20181123-149314-19h5v9r.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">Three British soldiers in the aftermath of the Benin expedition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Interior_of_Oba%27s_compound_burnt_during_seige_of_Benin_City,_1897.jpg">Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The city was burnt down, and the British Admiralty auctioned the booty – more than 2,000 art works – to “pay” for the expedition. The British Museum got around <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=621873&partId=1&searchText=benin+bronze+oba&page=1">40% of the haul</a>.
None of the artefacts stayed in Africa – they’re now scattered in museums and private collections around the world.</p>
<p>The 1867 British expedition to the ancient kingdom of Abyssinia – which never fully acceded to colonial control – was mounted to ostensibly free missionaries and government agents detained by the emperor Tewodros II. It culminated in the Battle of Magdala, and the looting of priceless manuscripts, paintings and artefacts from the Ethiopian church, which reputedly needed 15 elephants and 200 mules to carry them all away. Most ended up in the British Library, the British Museum and the V&A, where they remain today.</p>
<h2>Bought, stolen, destroyed</h2>
<p>Other African treasures were also taken without question. The famous ruins of Great Zimbabwe <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa/article/abyssinian-difficulty-the-emperor-theodorus-and-the-magdala-campaign-18671868-by-darrell-bates-oxford-oxford-university-press1979-pp-xiv-240-map-plates-bibl-950/87357AE77ACA20265A82FD6BBCE7BF21">were subject to</a> numerous digs by associates of British businessman Cecil Rhodes – who set up the Rhodesia Ancient Ruins Ltd in 1895 to loot more than 40 sites of their gold – and much of the archaeology on the site was destroyed. The iconic soapstone birds were returned to Zimbabwe from South Africa in 1981, but many items <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=596305&partId=1">still remain</a> in Western museums. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247009/original/file-20181123-149329-1h1bbe2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247009/original/file-20181123-149329-1h1bbe2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247009/original/file-20181123-149329-1h1bbe2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247009/original/file-20181123-149329-1h1bbe2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247009/original/file-20181123-149329-1h1bbe2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247009/original/file-20181123-149329-1h1bbe2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247009/original/file-20181123-149329-1h1bbe2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zimbabwe’s soapstone birds, photographed in 1892.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Soapstone_birds_on_pedestals.jpg">Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While these are the most famous cases, the majority of African objects in Western Museums were collected by adventurers, administrators, traders and settlers, with little thought as to the legality of ownership. Even if they were bought from their local owners, it was often for a pittance, and there were few controls to limit their export. Archaeological relics, such as inscriptions or grave-markers, were simply collected and taken away. Such <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/cultural-property-global-commodities-case-mijikenda">activities continued</a> well into the 20th century.</p>
<h2>Making them safe</h2>
<p>The argument is often advanced that by coming to the West, these objects were preserved for posterity – if they were left in Africa they simply would have rotted away. This is a specious argument, rooted in racist attitudes that somehow indigenous people can’t be trusted to curate their own cultural heritage. It is also a product of the corrosive impact of colonialism.</p>
<p>Colonial powers had a patchy record of setting up museums to preserve these objects locally. While impressive national museums were sometimes built in colonial capitals, they were later starved of funding or expertise. After African countries achieved independence, these museums were low on the priority list for national funding and overseas aid and development, while regional museums were virtually neglected. </p>
<p>Nowadays, many museums on the African continent lie semi-derelict, with no climate control, poorly trained staff and little security. There are numerous examples of theft or lost collections. No wonder Western museums are reluctant to return their collections. </p>
<p>If collections are to be returned, the West needs to take some responsibility for this state of affairs and invest in the African museums and their staff. There have been <a href="http://www.getty.edu/foundation/initiatives/past/africa/geap.html">some attempts</a> to do this, but the task is huge. It is not enough to send the contentious art and objects back to an uncertain future – there must be a plan to rebuild Africa’s crumbling museum infrastructure, supported by effective partnerships and real money.</p>
<h2>The rightful owners</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247015/original/file-20181123-149338-11wnsh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247015/original/file-20181123-149338-11wnsh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247015/original/file-20181123-149338-11wnsh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247015/original/file-20181123-149338-11wnsh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247015/original/file-20181123-149338-11wnsh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247015/original/file-20181123-149338-11wnsh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247015/original/file-20181123-149338-11wnsh9.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 Hoa Hakananai’a: a Moai at the British Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheeprus/13335231584/sizes/l">Sheep</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Will the <a href="http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/">Musée du quai Branly</a>, that great treasure house of world ethnography in Paris, which holds more than 70,000 objects from Africa, be emptied of its contents? Or the massive new <a href="https://www.humboldtforum.com/en">Humboldt Forum</a> – a Prussian Castle rebuilt at great cost to house ethnographic artefacts in Berlin which opens early in 2019 – be shorn of its African collections? There are already fears at the British Museum that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/20/easter-island-british-museum-return-moai-statue">a very effective campaign</a> may lead to the return of its Rapu Nui Moai statues to Easter Island.</p>
<p>This year is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Magdala, and the V&A Museum has <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/v-and-a-opens-dialogue-on-looted-ethiopian-treasures">entered into worthy discussions</a> to return its treasures to Ethiopia. But there are reports this would be on the basis of a long-term loan, and conditional on the Ethiopian government withdrawing its claim for restitution of the plundered objects. The Prussian Foundation in Berlin <a href="https://plone.unige.ch/art-adr/cases-affaires/great-zimbabwe-bird-2013-zimbabwe-and-prussia-cultural-heritage-foundation-germany">entered into a similar agreement</a>, unwilling to cede ownership of a tiny fragment of soapstone bird to the Zimbabwe Government in 2000.</p>
<p>The report by Savoy and Sarr offers hope that such deals could become a thing of the past and that Africa’s rich cultural heritage can be returned, restituted and restored to the brilliant cultures that made it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107479/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Horton 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>
Colonial powers plundered the heritage of countries all over the world – restitution is long overdue.
Mark Horton, Professor in Archaeology, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105250
2018-11-02T13:22:06Z
2018-11-02T13:22:06Z
British Empire is still being whitewashed by the school curriculum – historian on why this must change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243506/original/file-20181101-83657-c58vpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Imperial Federation Map of the World showing the extent of the British Empire. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_British_Empire#/media/File:Imperial_Federation,_Map_of_the_World_Showing_the_Extent_of_the_British_Empire_in_1886_(levelled).jpg">The Empire in red in 1886, by Walter Crane</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jeremy Corbyn recently proposed that British school children should be taught about the history of the realities of British imperialism and colonialism. This would include the history of people of colour as components of, and contributors to, the British nation-state – rather than simply as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/11/jeremy-corbyn-labour-vows-to-increase-teaching-of-black-history-in-schools">enslaved victims of it</a>. As Corbyn rightly noted: “Black history is British history” – and hence its study should be part of the national curriculum, not segregated in a single month each year. </p>
<p>This is a welcome proposal because, as an academic who teaches modules on South Asian, imperial, colonial and global history, I face an uphill struggle at the start of each new academic year. Many of the undergraduates who greet me know virtually nothing about any of the subjects I teach. </p>
<p>These are students who are educated through a school history curriculum that focuses almost entirely on English political and religious history – with bits of 20th-century European history thrown in. These are the bits with figures who can easily be cast as “evil” – Hitler or Stalin, for example. The students who I encounter know very little about Britain’s past, let alone Britain’s connections with the wider world or the history of the world outside Europe. </p>
<p>They therefore know practically nothing about empire and its legacies – including in Britain. The histories they have studied and texts they have read were virtually all about or by white men, so they also know nothing about the history of women or the histories of people of colour, either. This includes those who have played important roles in shaping Britain’s past.</p>
<h2>‘Black history is British history’</h2>
<p>Corbyn’s proposals would not only begin to redress the phenomenal gulf between academic history and the English school curriculum. They would also help students to see people of colour as historical agents. The proposals may also help to challenge the exclusivist and essentialist ways in which students are taught to view both <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/12/jeremy-corbyn-right-pride-shame-britain-history-empire">Britain and the wider world</a>. </p>
<p>These proposals, however, have been met with the type of outrage many have come to expect from white, middle-aged, right-wing conservatives. According to the “bullish” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2013/may/20/mps-debate-gay-marriage-live">Brexiteer</a> and <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/740871/Conservative-MP-Tim-Loughton-politicians-stop-games-Brexit-European-Union">Conservative MP Tom Loughton</a>, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1030049/jeremy-corbyn-news-labour-latest-school-reform-bristol-speech">Corbyn’s proposals</a> demonstrated he was “ashamed” of his own country – and was more interested in “talking down” Britain rather than celebrating “the immense amount of good we have done in the world over many centuries”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243509/original/file-20181101-83644-1xmeayf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243509/original/file-20181101-83644-1xmeayf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243509/original/file-20181101-83644-1xmeayf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243509/original/file-20181101-83644-1xmeayf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=340&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243509/original/file-20181101-83644-1xmeayf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243509/original/file-20181101-83644-1xmeayf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243509/original/file-20181101-83644-1xmeayf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A battle between revolting slaves and colonial soldiers at the plantation Bachelor’s Adventure in the Demerara Province of British Guiana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Bad things”, according to Loughton, undoubtedly happened in the name of empire, but Britain should be proud of its many legacies – including its role in abolishing the global slave trade. Not to be outdone, the equally bullish Brexiteer Jacob Rees Mogg trotted out Britain’s abolition of the slave trade on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/aug/06/radio.immigrationasylumandrefugees">Nick Ferrari’s LBC show</a>. He also <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1031716/Jacob-Rees-Mogg-news-latest-Jeremy-Corbyn-British-Empire-Winston-Churchill-history-school">noted that while there were</a> “blots” on Britain’s colonial history it had some “good bits” that were “really wonderful”.</p>
<h2>Denial about empire</h2>
<p>Such responses demonstrate a profound ignorance about British imperial and colonial history, particularly about the impact of empire on not only the colonised but also the colonisers as well. But it is a state of denial about empire that makes views like those of <a href="http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9780745623924">Loughton and Rees Mogg possible</a>. To say that empire had “good bits” is to deny what empire entailed – namely the conquest, subjugation and <a href="https://www.academia.edu/29120422/_Colonial_Violence_in_Jonathan_Hogg_ed._Using_Primary_Source_a_practical_guide_for_students_Liverpool_Liverpool_University_Press_2017_?auto=download">exploitation of millions of people</a>. </p>
<p>It is to erase the tremendous structural and symbolic violence that empire unleashed. To praise Britain’s role in abolishing the slave trade is only possible if we deny the various forms of economic, political, social and cultural violence that enabled the perpetuation of such a trade – in Britain and its empire – as well as the ongoing legacies of such forms of violence. To view empire as having “good” and “bad” bits also entails viewing the past in simplistic terms. And to claim students should only study the “good bits” of the past also begs the question: whose “good bits”, exactly? </p>
<p>It also assumes that to teach schoolchildren the “bad” bits is to make them ashamed of their country’s past. <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-teaching-the-holocaust-in-germany-1.5244019">Yet as Germany has demonstrated</a>, teaching children to interrogate difficult histories does not make them hate their country. It can serve, instead, to promote an “anti-nationalist nationalism”, in which the very tenets of nationalist thinking – including viewing the past in nationalistic terms – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/21/has-germany-come-to-terms-past">are critiqued</a>.</p>
<p>As my own students have told me, being able to interrogate difficult histories such as the history of empire, to explore the myriad connections between people in different parts of the planet, or to study the writings of Indian thinkers and actors has given them a much better understanding of themselves and their place in the world. Or, as one student put it, it has enabled them to “grow as a person”. And that, surely, is what education is supposed to do.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105250/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deana Heath 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>
Students need to be taught about colonialism’s dark past.
Deana Heath, Senior Lecturer in Indian and Colonial History, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77068
2017-08-11T13:47:17Z
2017-08-11T13:47:17Z
Colonialism in India was traumatic – including for some of the British officials who ruled the Raj
<p>When India gained independence from Britain on August 15 1947, the majority of Anglo-Indians had either left or would leave soon after. Many within the Indian Civil Service would write of the trauma that they experienced from witnessing the violence of the years leading up to the end of British rule and the bloodbath that would follow as the lines of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-partition-of-india-happened-and-why-its-effects-are-still-felt-today-81766">partition</a> were revealed.</p>
<p>Colonialism was certainly a far more traumatising experience for colonial subjects than their colonisers. They suffered poverty, malnutrition, disease, cultural upheaval, economic exploitation, political disadvantage, and systematic programmes aimed at creating a sense of social and racial inferiority. While some may argue that any suffering on the part of the British colonialists ought to be met with little sympathy, this is not a reason to obscure it from history. </p>
<p>It was the very notion that Indian civil service servicemen were usurpers, full of privilege, in a foreign land that led to the sapped sense of humanity that many wrestled with – both during and after their India careers. </p>
<p>As my own forthcoming book details, some shut themselves off from the day-to-day lives of Indians, unless forced to engage for work purposes. Others escaped through drowning themselves in alcohol, opium or other drugs. Some convinced themselves of the intellectual superiority of the white man and his right to rule over “lesser races”, while a number found solace in Christianity. Several came to see their role as being a peacekeeper between various ethnic and religious groups, despite the irony of the British having encouraged and exploited the categorisation of colonial subjects on these grounds in the first place. </p>
<p>Underneath all of this sits a trauma that the coloniser had to either deal with – or resign their post and go home.</p>
<h2>Serving the Raj</h2>
<p>One serviceman of the late Raj who I have focused on in my research is an example of the coping mechanisms that British officials deployed. Andrew Clow entered the Indian Civil Service in 1912 at the age of 22 and would remain a civil servant until 1947 when he reached the mandatory retirement ceiling of 35 years. His most notable portfolios were as secretary of the Indian Labour Bureau in the late 1930s, followed by minister for communications and then governor of Assam from 1942 to 1947. </p>
<p>Clow, and his one thousand or so colleagues at any one time, effectively ruled India during the late Raj. This was a time of declining British prestige, and declining public and political opinion of colonialism as an acceptable social, economic and political practice. The <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781349024391">rise</a> of the Indian independence movement with Mohandas Gandhi as its nominal leader, coincided with the anti-British international propaganda concerning its empire that came from the Soviet Union and its sympathisers. </p>
<h2>Doubt and self-loathing</h2>
<p>In the early 1920s, the Indian independence movement grew in prominence and received a significant level of sympathy at home and abroad. In 1919, the <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-amritsar-massacre">Amritsar Massacre</a> of unarmed protesters by British and Gurka troops received much public criticism. A year later, two of Clow’s civil service intake year group were assassinated in a market in Midnapore, West Bengal. From letters Clow wrote to a friend, we know he considered resigning on several occasions during the early 1920s. This period of reflection led him to fundamentally question his role within the colonial system, but he ultimately decided to continue his career.</p>
<p>Clow was a devout Christian and his life in India would develop into a religious cocoon of sorts where he used his relationship with God to suppress his trauma at being a colonial usurper.</p>
<p>As he became more senior within the administration he increasingly distanced himself from Indians, Indian culture and expressed little sympathy for the plight of people who suffered from British exploitation. He spent the vast majority of his time with other Europeans and his holidays at his house at the British hill station of Simla. His diaries throughout the 1930s and 1940s became almost entirely written prayers requesting salvation punctuated by private comments of self-loathing, written in confidence between himself and God. </p>
<h2>Defender of British colonialism</h2>
<p>Upon his retirement from the Indian Civil Service in 1947, Clow returned to Scotland and became chairman of the newly-created Scottish Gas Board. His private time was spent largely in the pursuit of the preservation of the legacy of British India. He voraciously read memoirs and other reflections by his former colleagues, and would lambast any critique of the British, even if those criticisms were rather sparse. </p>
<p>Clow’s failure to concede publicly that colonialism was an exploitative practice is indicative of a complex reaction to his trauma at being a key part of a system of suppression. His heightened religiosity was a key part of his way of dealing with this. In many ways he “used” God to negate his discomfort at being one of the main figures of the British colonial enterprise.</p>
<p>Clow was typical of many within the Indian Civil Service who became troubled by their roles facilitating the exploitation of the Indian subcontinent for the British Empire. Yet, rather than resign his post and become a critic of colonial practices, Clow built a number of internal mechanisms so that he could carry on. Reactions like Clow’s go some way to explain the romance that many within British society have had for the age of empire. But today, 70 years on from the end of the Raj, public bodies and the British media are willing to engage in a much more robust critique.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Alexander 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>
How one member of the Indian Civil Service coped with being a colonial usurper.
Colin Alexander, Principal Lecturer in Political Communications, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79242
2017-06-12T04:24:18Z
2017-06-12T04:24:18Z
Puerto Rico votes on statehood: Polls and protests
<h2>Will the vote matter?</h2>
<p><strong>Charles R. Venator-Santiago, University of Connecticut</strong></p>
<p>The 2017 Plebiscite for the Immediate Decolonization of Puerto Rico was held on June 11. This is <a href="https://theconversation.com/puerto-rico-votes-on-statehood-fifth-times-the-charm-75975">the fifth vote</a> on the political status of Puerto Rico since the United States annexed the island in 1898.</p>
<p>Only 23 percent of the 2,260,804 registered Puerto Rican voters <a href="http://resultados2017.ceepur.org/Noche_del_Evento_78/index.html#en/default/CONSULTA_DESCOLONIZACION_Resumen.xml">participated</a>. This is in stark contrast to the <a href="http://64.185.222.182/REYDI_Escrutinio12/index.html#en/default/OPCIONES_NO_TERRITORIALES_ISLA.xml">last plebiscite</a> held in 2012 – in which 1,363,854 people, or 78.19 percent of registered voters, cast a ballot.</p>
<p>This year’s results were as follows:</p>
<p>The statehood option received 502,616 votes, or 97.18 percent of the votes cast.</p>
<p>The sovereignty/independence option received 7,779 votes, or 1.5 percent.</p>
<p>The current territorial status option received 6,821 votes, or 1.32 percent.</p>
<p>Moreover, this plebiscite was not authorized or certified by the U.S. Department of Justice or Congress, which throws its impact into question. Although the U.S. DOJ did not offer any reasons for not certifying the plebiscite, the most likely reason is a dispute over the language of the ballot, which was the subject of <a href="http://www.noticel.com/uploads/gallery/documents/fa26731a26c7e725e180e729574ed49e.pdf">a memorandum</a> the DOJ sent to the governor of Puerto Rico in April. </p>
<p>Given the low voter turnout and the failure of the U.S. DOJ to certify the plebiscite, Congress is likely to ignore the outcome of this vote – much as it did in 2012.</p>
<h2>Voters fail to turn out</h2>
<p><strong>Carlos Vargas-Ramos, City University of New York</strong></p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of eligible voters in Puerto Rico chose not to participate. </p>
<p>The June 11 vote brought out the second-lowest turnout rate of all electoral contests <a href="http://209.68.12.238/cgi-bin/municipios.pl">conducted in Puerto Rico since 1967</a>. This is unusual in a political system in which turnout in general elections has ranged between <a href="http://209.68.12.238/cgi-bin/eventos.pl">78 and 89 percent of registered voters</a>. Three of the four political parties that participated in the elections of November 2016 called for a boycott of this plebiscite – which seems to have had a large impact. </p>
<p>Moreover, the low turnout in this plebiscite follows on the heels of another historically low-turnout election in 2016, in which only <a href="http://elecciones2016.ceepur.org/Escrutinio_General_77/index.html#es/default/GOBERNADOR_Resumen.xml">55 percent of voters turned out</a>. The results from these elections are but a reflection of not simply the economic crisis Puerto Rico is facing, but of the political crisis it is facing as well.</p>
<h2>Calls for protest and action</h2>
<p><strong>Jossianna Arroyo, University of Texas Austin</strong></p>
<p>Many who boycotted the vote believed the plebiscite’s cost – more than <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rico-holds-vote-sunday-statehood-amid-criticism-over-timing-n770496">US$8 million</a> – neglects the needs of <a href="https://www.childtrends.org/left-behind-povertys-toll-on-the-children-of-puerto-rico/">citizens living in precarious economic conditions</a> in Puerto Rico.</p>
<p>After Puerto Rico declared bankruptcy in 2006, the government entered into a process of “debt analysis” and arbitration, directed by a financial control board <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/business/dealbook/puerto-rico-debt.html">appointed by President Obama</a>. The board recommended, among many measures, to cut US$300 million to $500 million from the Puerto Rican state government budget. That would mean a 30 percent cut to the <a href="https://www.elnuevodia.com/noticias/locales/nota/discutenrecortesde120millonesparalaupr-2288254/">administrative budget</a> of the University of Puerto Rico.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/28/thousands-university-students-go-on-strike-in-puerto-rico.html">March 2017</a>, students, faculty and staff went on strike, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/05/20/529309138/students-at-puerto-ricos-largest-university-continue-strike-amid-shutdown">closing the gates</a> of the 11 public campuses on the island.</p>
<p>Many Puerto Ricans view the government as subservient to this board, some <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/249146-what-a-federal-financial-control-board-means-to-puerto">representatives</a> of which have been connected to Wall Street. <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/249146-what-a-federal-financial-control-board-means-to-puerto">Critics feel</a> these board members may be motivated by a desire to make money, or threaten the island’s sovereignty. While students and faculty protests continue, all campuses are now opened and classes resumed. Still, the fate of the University of Puerto Rico is not clear. Faculty, students and staff are taking matters into their own hands.</p>
<p>On May 24, representatives of the Board of Students met with members of the Financial Control Board to present <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/students-are-now-leading-the-resistance-to-austerity-in-puerto-rico/">a plan to negotiate debt</a> and build a possible consensus for an open and democratic university, which will be able to continue as the top-rated public institution on the island. It was the first time the Financial Control Board met with a collective of citizens. The students believe that the promise of a more democratic future for Puerto Rico will not happen via traditional polls or call to the electorate, but with an active mobilization of all citizens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79242/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 organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Some Puerto Ricans voted, but most stayed home amid a looming financial debt crisis and political protests. Will this vote matter?
Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez, Chair/Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Literatures and Cultures, Depts. Spanish and Portuguese, African and African Diaspora Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
Carlos Vargas-Ramos, Professor of Political Science, City University of New York
Charles R. Venator-Santiago, Associate Professor of Political Science and El Instituto, University of Connecticut
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68029
2016-11-03T00:17:50Z
2016-11-03T00:17:50Z
Dylann Roof, Michael Slager on trial: Five essential reads on Charleston
<p><em>Editor’s note: The following is a roundup of archival stories related to race and violence.</em></p>
<p>Two white men are going on trial this month for shootings that happened in Charleston, South Carolina during 2015.</p>
<p>Michael Slager, a white former police officer, faces a murder charge for killing 50-year-old Walter Scott, a black man who was unarmed. Slager fired eight shots as Scott ran away.</p>
<p>Dylann Roof, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, faces 33 federal charges, including a federal hate crime for massacring nine black churchgoers at an AME church. He is eligible for the death penalty.</p>
<p>As the trials bring back memories of those horrifying events, we look at highlights from The Conversation’s archive.</p>
<h2>A dark past, present</h2>
<p>Parallels between the two shootings and South Carolina’s history of racial violence quickly rose to the surface.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-massacre-at-mother-emanuel-the-past-still-lives-with-us-43597">The past is still with us</a>, writes A.D. Carson, a Ph.D. student at Clemson University.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In 1876, State Senator Simon Coker – who was in Charleston investigating violence against blacks – was seized by a mob and shot in the head as he kneeled in a last prayer. One of the perpetrators of that atrocious event was none other than the eventual governor and senator, Benjamin Tillman, who made his disdain for black people known…”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A statue of Tillman still stands on the grounds of the South Carolina State House in Columbia. Remembering, not honoring, this dark past is important to stop the past from repeating itself, Carson writes.</p>
<h2>A place of hate, hope</h2>
<p>It also was <a href="https://theconversation.com/emanuel-ame-has-long-been-a-target-for-hate-as-well-as-place-of-hope-43601">not the first time</a> the Emanuel AME church was the target of racial violence, writes Sandra Barnes, a religion scholar at Vanderbilt University. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Here are just a few examples of the assaults that took place on Emanuel AME and other churches over the years: white raids; black church services being made illegal in Charleston between 1834 and 1865; the burning of Emanuel AME after the slave rebellion lead by Denmark Vessey; the police harassment of civil rights protesters at Emanuel AME in the 1960s.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Roof’s attack was one of many – part of systemic violence embedded in the state’s history.</p>
<h2>All oppression is connected</h2>
<p>Before opening fire, Roof said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not only are his words deeply racist, they are saturated with a form of sexism that reaches back to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lethal-gentleman-the-benevolent-sexism-behind-dylann-roofs-racism-43534">colonial mentality of entitlement</a>, writes Lisa Wade, a sociologist at Occidental College.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s most clearly articulated in the history of lynching, in which black men were violently murdered routinely by white mobs using the excuse that they had raped a white woman. Roof is the modern equivalent of this white mob.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A vulnerable father</h2>
<p>South Carolina also has struggled with an issue related to Walter Scott’s death – child support. Reports from the Scott case suggest he ran from Officer Slager because he was afraid of being jailed for not paying child support.</p>
<p>In 2011, a case went to the Supreme Court in which a South Carolina man served one year in prison when he failed to pay child support. Incarcerating poor men often makes <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-crisis-revealed-by-the-killing-of-walter-scott-how-were-failing-vulnerable-fathers-40610">a difficult situation much worse</a>, writes Ronald Mincy, professor of Social Policy at Columbia University.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The fear of incarceration bears indirect responsibility for Scott’s death. And Walter Scott was not alone in feeling this fear. At present, there are approximately 9 million nonresident fathers (that is to say, fathers who do not live in the same household as their child or children) of whom over half are economically vulnerable.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A movement grows</h2>
<p>After a video of Scott’s death was released, members of the #BlackLivesMatter movement called for more citizen oversight of policing. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ferguson-and-blacklivesmatter-taught-us-not-to-look-away-45815">This call to bear witness</a> has served as a form of resistance to oppression since the Jim Crow era, writes Nicholas Mirzoeff, professor at New York University.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The #BlackLivesMatter movement that began after the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 insists not just that we sneak a sidelong glance, but that we pay full attention to the repeated deaths of African Americans. This looking is not a gaze, because it does not claim power over the victims. Rather, it creates the digital form of what Martin Luther King Jr called ‘the beloved community.’”</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Two major trials in the killings of black victims in South Carolina start this week. Learn about the state’s past and present struggle with racial violence in this roundup.
Danielle Douez, Associate Editor, Politics + Society
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53850
2016-01-29T13:08:38Z
2016-01-29T13:08:38Z
Rhodes: closet gay man who hatched a secret society to promote empire?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109638/original/image-20160129-27351-1efd1iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cecil John Rhodes: master of all he surveys - but not of a secret society.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Eddie Keogh</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost 114 years after the death of Cecil Rhodes his memory lives on, with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/search?q=%23RhodesMustFall">Rhodes Must Fall</a> campaign spreading from Cape Town to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/opinion/must-rhodes-fall.html?_r=0">Oxford</a>. </p>
<p>Once glorified by white colonialists, Rhodes is now more widely viewed as a prime villain in southern African history. Since his death he has been the subject of more than 30 biographies, so one is left to wonder if there is anything new that could be said about him. An attempt is made in the latest book by Robin Brown, <a href="http://penguinbooks.co.za/book/secret-society/9781770229204">The Secret Society: Cecil John Rhodes’s Plan for a New World Order</a> – an attempt that fails.</p>
<p>The main claim of the book is that Rhodes established a “secret society” whose task was to extend British rule across the globe. This society continued to exist in different guises long after Rhodes’ death in 1902. Thereafter the society came to operate within, or under the guise of, other bodies – the Rhodes Trust operating as the “top layer of the structure”; in 1909 the society was renamed the <a href="http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_roundtable_5.htm">Round Table</a>; and from 1920 the Institute of International Affairs became its new face.</p>
<p>The book adds another dimension to this central thesis, making a rather startling assertion on page 144:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a homosexual hegemony – which was already operative in the Secret Society – went on to influence, if not control, British politics at the beginning of the twentieth century. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rhodes himself, the book alleges, was gay, and because homosexuality was a criminal offence in Britain at the time, he realised that gays only survived if they operated in:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a society that remained secret, ring-fenced by wealth and political influence. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So it appears that the society’s secrecy was necessitated by both imperial aspirations and sexual inclinations.</p>
<p>The book contains major flaws, the chief of which is the lack of solid, supporting evidence. Brown claims that “Rhodes documented everything” – which was not actually the case in this regard. Just about the only documentary evidence cited to support the existence of this secret society is the codicil attached to Rhodes’ first will, which did indeed proclaim his intention to form such a society. </p>
<p>The problem is that this will was drawn up in 1877 when Rhodes had not yet accumulated great wealth. According to this early will he would leave all his worldly goods in trust to allow for the formation of a secret society, but his limited wealth at the time could hardly have made this possible. </p>
<p>The plan to form such a society also did not appear in Rhodes’ final will. One has to agree with Robert L. Rotberg – whose <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Founder-Cecil-Rhodes-Pursuit/dp/0195049683">biography of Rhodes</a> is the most substantial – that to read Rhodes’ plan today is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… to sense the ruminations and even fantasies of a madcap bumbler.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Each chapter of Brown’s book has just a handful of endnotes, and there are hardly any references to source material that might substantiate the claims made. The problem is highlighted on pages 237-38. First it is stated that there is “clear evidence” that Lord Alfred Milner took over and transformed the secret society after Rhodes’ death. But on the very next page Brown writes that during this transformation process Milner “kept things covert” so that ‘there is little hard evidence’ of the society’s existence at the time.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109516/original/image-20160128-27156-j6oulh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109516/original/image-20160128-27156-j6oulh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109516/original/image-20160128-27156-j6oulh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109516/original/image-20160128-27156-j6oulh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109516/original/image-20160128-27156-j6oulh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109516/original/image-20160128-27156-j6oulh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109516/original/image-20160128-27156-j6oulh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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<p>This is the problem throughout the book – because the society was so secret it presumably kept no surviving records, meaning that there is no proof of its existence. The book thus comes to be based heavily on surmise and assertion. While critics can argue that it is impossible to prove that the society existed at all, Brown can retort that it is impossible to prove that it did not exist. What cannot be contested is that the book lacks referenced source material to substantiate its claims.</p>
<p>The suggestion that the Rhodes Trust was closely linked to the secret society is not credible. In Anthony Kenny’s <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-history-of-the-rhodes-trust/anthony-kenny/9780199201914">massive book</a> on the history of the trust there are only three brief references to the idea of a secret society – and one of those is to a letter by Leo Amery stating that there was no such society.</p>
<p>The book contains some basic errors which undermine one’s confidence in the content and analysis. The cotton farm where Rhodes joined his brother on arrival in Natal in 1870 was not north-east of Durban, but to the west (p.6). Rhodes was not “of the era of British reformers who caused slavery to be outlawed”, nor did he display “liberal attitudes towards blacks” (p.19). Jameson was imprisoned for four months, not one (p.22). Rhodes’ brokers were not John Rudd and Robert Moffat – they were Charles Rudd and J.S. Moffat (p.57). </p>
<p>George V did not precede Victoria (p.154). Clinton’s presidential nomination speech was in 1991, not 1981 (p.168). Chamberlain was the colonial secretary, not foreign secretary (p.222 and elsewhere).</p>
<p>The book would have worked better had it been presented as an examination of the personal networks that Rhodes developed. There is no doubt that he succeeded in cultivating influential figures in the world of politics, business and finance in Britain, but Brown’s attempt to conjure up a secret society out of these networks is misguided and not adequately substantiated.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://penguinbooks.co.za/book/secret-society/9781770229204">The Secret Society: Cecil John Rhodes’s Plan for a New World Order</a> is published by Penguin.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Maylam 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>
The book contains major flaws, the chief of which is the lack of solid, supporting evidence. Brown claims that ‘Rhodes documented everything’ – which was not actually the case in this regard.
Paul Maylam, Emeritus Professor, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.