Commemorating Raffles: The creation of an imperial icon in colonial Singapore

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-598
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Barnard
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Core Element ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Trade Port ◽  
Modern Nation State

While Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles led the expedition that founded colonial Singapore in 1819 and conceptualised many of the early institutions that developed the trade port, it was the depiction and commemoration of his time in the region that made him an icon of imperial mythology. This was part of a process in which admiration of his name and exploits were exalted, ultimately representing a core element in the Victorian mentality, the need to create heroes to glorify the British Empire. This article will survey and analyse how the commemoration of Raffles in the first 75 years of colonial rule, through the commissioning of statues and the attachment of his name to establishments and institutions, solidified and justified a British presence in the region and larger imperial history, which continues to echo in the modern nation-state of Singapore and its history.

The Third British Empire: Transplanting the English Shire to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and America

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myron C. Noonkester
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
World History ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Third ◽  
Simple Matter ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Vast Literature ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
As If

During their hegemony in world affairs, the English exported persons, commodities, and texts to regions that they absorbed into a widening pale of influence. Discussion of these ventures has consumed a vast literature. What once seemed to be a simple matter of transporting Protestantism (or convicts) into an overseas wilderness or making distant lands safe for English farming and trade now seems a matter too complex to be captured in a metaphor or an alliterative catchphrase. Yet it remains a matter of historical fascination that a relatively small archipelago off the coast of Europe not only could become the first “modern” nation-state but could then transform itself into a vast global empire, ultimately making it seem as if the affairs of this proverbial workshop encompassed world history itself. For many years, such success seemed too evident for investigation, and scholarly attention turned toward explaining how this achievement unraveled or declined. The result has been a quest for detailed precision and microhistorical reconstruction on the part of those who have adopted an “empirical,” geopolitical approach to imperialism and an outpouring of criticism from those who, on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, have penned polemical classics whose evocative, if not evidentiary, power envisioned revolution as historical destiny and a means of filling the intellectual and political void left by imperial evacuation. Their disagreements notwithstanding, however, both categories of imperial commentary display relative innocence of the paradox that imperial power represented: that, despite voluble criticism, it enjoyed eclipsing success for a time and produced effects whose mysteries continue to survive postcolonial deconstruction.

scholarly journals Vague and unworkable: The fuzziness of the archipelago as a concept and its unsuitability as model for a 21st century Palestinian nation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saba Bebawi ◽  
Christian Fleury ◽  
Philip Hayward
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Substantial Proportion ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Vague Concept ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Modern Nation State

While it is frequently invoked, the archipelago is such a vague concept that its deployment in fields such as island studies is only productive when the contingency of its use is specified. In this article, we examine the concept itself and then consider the use of the archipelago as a metaphor and/or model for a future Palestinian state. The creation of the modern nation-state of Israel in Palestine in 1948, various Israeli military actions, and (often related) public and private developments of former Palestinian lands has resulted in a substantial proportion of Palestinians fleeing to neighbouring countries (chiefly Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria). Those Palestinians who have remained have largely been confined to territorial isolates within the Jewish state. These isolates have frequently been understood and analogised as ‘islands’ within Israel, and the aggregation of these isolates has been variously referred to and/or represented as an archipelago. This article examines the development of this metaphoric interpretation of the Palestinian community within Israel in Anglophone, Arabic, and Francophone discourse, and characterises the contortions necessary to imagine Palestinian territories as archipelagic. The conclusion returns to consideration of the notion of the archipelago itself and of its usefulness in island studies and other contexts.

Beijing and Beyond

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weijie Song
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Urban Literature ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Literary Topography ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter situates Beijing in a larger context of modern Chinese urban literature, and charts the trajectories of affective mapping of major cities in the Chinese-speaking world against the great backdrop of the downfall of the (Manchu) Empire, the rise of modern nation-state, the 1949 great divide, and the formation of Cold war and globalizing world. The main issues are modern urban awareness, historical consciousness, individual/collective memories, and nationalist perceptions regarding the old and new capital, Beijing; the semicolonial metropolis and socialist Shanghai and its remnants; the traumatized and aloof Nanjing; the abandoned capital, Xi’an; Taipei under Japanese colonial rule and the subsequent Nationalist Party’s dominance; and Hong Kong from a British Crown Colony to a Special Administrative Region of China. Urban experiences, emotional vicissitudes, and literary topography continue to provide illustrating and illuminating methods of mapping Sinophone cities.

Peoples of the Gourd: Imagined Ethnicities in Highland Southeast Asia

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 999-1032 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Proschan
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
World System ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Modern Nation State

Since its appearance in 1983, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism has taken on almost talismanic status, ritually invoked for its quasi-magical efficacy in thousands of scholarly discussions of nationalism and ethnicity. Anderson's book has given focus to a line of argument in which not only nationalism but also ethnicity are seen as reflexes of the Euroamerican colonial enterprise. Anderson proposes what we might call an “appendency theory” of ethnicity, holding that ethnicity is a phenomenon that is secondary to, contingent upon, and necessarily later than the modern nation, and that therefore it could not possibly have existed prior to the colonial conquest and the creation of nation-states. In this view, ethnicity itself is a recent product of modern history—of the colonial or postcolonial era, the age of the modern nation state and the capitalist world system.

The Japanese Factor in the Making of North Korean Socialism

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-251
Author(s):  
Ernest Ming-Tak Leung
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Stepping Stone ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Juche Ideology

This article explores a commonly ignored aspect of Japan–North Korean relations: the Japanese factor in the making of Korean socialism. Korea was indirectly influenced by the Japanese Jiyuminken Movement, in the 1910s–1920s serving as a stepping-stone for the creation of a Japanese Communist Party. Wartime mobilization policies under Japanese rule were continued and expanded beyond the colonial era. The Juche ideology built on tendencies first exhibited in the 1942 Overcoming Modernity Conference in Japan, and in the 1970s some Japanese leftists viewed Juche as a humanist Marxism. Trade between Japan and North Korea expanded from 1961 onwards, culminating in North Korea’s default in 1976, from which point on relations soured between the two countries. Yet leaders with direct experience of colonial rule governed North Korea through to the late 1990s.

Policing the British Empire on the Bund: The Origin of the Sikh Police Unit in Shanghai

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
Cao Yin
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Modern Shanghai

Red-turbaned Sikh policemen have long been viewed as symbols of the cosmopolitan feature of modern Shanghai. However, the origin of the Sikh police unit in the Shanghai Municipal Police has not been seriously investigated. This article argues that the circulation of police officers, policing knowledge, and information in the British colonial network and the circulation of the idea of taking Hong Kong as the reference point amongst Shanghailanders from the 1850s to the 1880s played important role in the establishment of the Sikh police force in the International Settlement of Shanghai. Furthermore, by highlighting the translocal connections and interactions amongst British colonies and settlements, this study tries to break the metropole-colony binary in imperial history studies.

Minorities in the Contemporary Egyptian Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Youssef
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robust Analysis ◽  
Specific Approach ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Historical Moment

This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising. This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.

1830: van de Belgische protonatie naar de natiestaat (deel 1)

2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-227
Author(s):  
Lode Wils
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Nineteen Twenties ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
The North ◽  
Binding Factor ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
The Creation

In dit eerste deel van zijn uiteenzetting poneert Lode Wils de door zijn bronnen onderbouwde stelling dat het ontstaan van de Belgische (natie)staat de feitelijke slotfase was van een passage van de protonatie(s) in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden doorheen de grote politiek-maatschappelijke en culturele mutaties na de Franse Revolutie. Een passage die tijdens de late twintiger jaren van de negentiende eeuw bovendien sterk gekruid werd door het Belgisch 'wij'-denken dat meer en meer het cement ging vormen in de parlementaire en buitenparlementaire contestatie tegen het Hollandse regime.Wils verbindt in zijn uiteenzetting zijn eigen onderzoek omtrent de "cruciale parlementaire debatten in de jaren 1827-1830" aan zijn lectuur van de wetenschappelijke literatuur die zowel in het Noorden als in het Zuiden werd gewijd aan die problematiek, in bijzonderheid de doctoraalstudie L’invention de la Belgique. Genèse d’un Etat-Nation. 1648-1830 van de UCL-historiograaf Sébastien Dubois. Betekenisvol is overigens de frase van Wils waarin hij stelt dat Dubois zich "na het doorworstelen van bijna 2000 archiefbundels, ergert aan de voorstelling alsof niet het koninkrijk, maar 'België' geschapen werd in 1830."________1830: from the Belgian pre-nation to the nation state [part I]In this first part of his discourse Lode Wils puts forward the thesis corroborated by his sources that the creation of the Belgian (nation)state was in fact the final phase of a transition from the pre-nation(s) of the Southern Netherlands through the major socio-political and cultural mutations after the French Revolution. During the late nineteen twenties this transition was particularly marked by the Belgian “we-thinking” that gradually came to be the binding factor in the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary protest against the Dutch regime.  In his argument Wils connects his own research into the “crucial parliamentary debates during the period of 1827-1830” to his reading of the scientific literature, which was dedicated to that issue both in the North and in the South, in particular to the doctoral dissertation by the UCL historiographer Sébastien Dubois L’invention de la Belgique. Genèse d’un Etat-Nation. 1648-1830  (The invention of Belgium. Genesis of a Nation State: 1648-1830). We note in particular Will’s remark that Dubois “after having waded through almost 2000 archival volumes is irritated by the conception that 1830 saw the creation not of the kingdom but of ‘Belgium’.”

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