Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c.1860-1950

Beyond Sovereignty Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 1880–1950

Edited by

Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann

Beyond Sovereignty

Also by Kevin Grant A CIVILISED SAVAGERY: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926

Also by Philippa Levine GENDER AND EMPIRE: Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series PROSTITUTION, RACE AND POLITICS: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE: Citizenship, Nation and Race (co-edited with Laura Mayhall and Ian Fletcher) FEMINIST LIVES IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND: Private Roles and Public Commitment VICTORIAN FEMINISM 1850–1900 THE AMATEUR AND THE PROFESSIONAL: Historians, Antiquarians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886

Also by Frank Trentmann FOOD AND CONFLICT IN EUROPE IN THE AGE OF THE TWO WORLD WARS (co-edited with Flemming Just) CONSUMING CULTURES, GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (edited with John Brewer) THE MAKING OF THE CONSUMER: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World (editor) CIVIL SOCIETY: A Reader in History, Theory and Global Politics (edited with John Hall) WORLDS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY: Knowledge and Power in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (edited with Martin J. Daunton) MARKETS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXTS: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World (edited with Mark Bevir) PARADOXES OF CIVIL SOCIETY: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History (editor) CRITIQUES OF CAPITAL IN MODERN BRITAIN AND AMERICA: Transatlantic Exchanges (edited with Mark Bevir)

Beyond Sovereignty Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 1880–1950 Edited by

Kevin Grant Hamilton College, New York

Philippa Levine University of Southern California, Los Angeles

and

Frank Trentmann Birkbeck College, University of London

Editorial matter, selection and introduction © Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann 2007. All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–8643–6 ISBN-10: 1–4039–8643–6

hardback hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beyond sovereignty : Britain, empire, and transnationalism, c. 1880–1950 / edited by Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine, and Frank Trentmann. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–8643–6 (cloth) ISBN-10: 1–4039–8643–6 (cloth) 1. Commonwealth countries—Social conditions. 2. Imperialism—Social aspects—Great Britain. 3. Human rights—Commonwealth countries. 4. Transnationalism—History. 5. Great Britain—Civilization—19th century. 6. Great Britain—Civilization—20th century. I. Grant, Kevin, 1965- II. Levine, Philippa. III. Trentmann, Frank. DA16.B556 2007 909’.09712410821—dc22 10 16

9 15

8 14

7 13

6 12

2006050836 5 11

4 10

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

3 09

2 08

1 07

Contents List of Contributors

vii

1

Introduction Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann

2

Sovereignty and Sexuality: Transnational Perspectives on Colonial Age of Consent Legislation Philippa Levine

16

After the Nation-State: Citizenship, Empire and Global Coordination in the New Internationalism, 1914–1930 Frank Trentmann

34

3

4

5

6

Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years: The League of Nations’ Combat of Traffic in Women and Children Barbara Metzger Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956 Kevin Grant Beyond Sovereignty?: Protestant Missions, Empire and Transnationalism, 1890–1950 John Stuart

1

54

80

103

7

A Shadow Nation: The Making of Muslim India Faisal Devji

8

‘A Well Selected Body of Men’: Sikh Recruitment for Colonial Police and Military Thomas R. Metcalf

146

Valleys of Fear: Policing Terror in an Imperial Age, 1865–1925 Robert Gregg

169

9

v

126

vi

Contents

10 Screening Empire from Itself: Imperial Preference, Represented Communities, and the Decent Burial of the Indian Cinematograph Committee Report (1927–28) Madhavi Kale 11 The Persistence of Privilege: British Medical Qualifications and the Practice of Medicine in the Empire Douglas M. Haynes Index

191

214 240

List of Contributors Faisal Devji is Associate Professor of History at The New School, New York. He is the author of Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). Kevin Grant is Associate Professor of History at Hamilton College. He is the author of A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (New York: Routledge, 2005). Robert Gregg is Associate Professor of History and Dean of Arts and Humanities at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. His publications include Sparks from the Anvil of Oppression (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993) and Inside Out, Outside In (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000). Douglas M. Haynes is Professor of British History at the University of California, Irvine. His publications include Imperial Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Madhavi Kale is Associate Professor of History at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery and Indentured Labor in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). Philippa Levine is Professor of History at the University of Southern California. She is author, most recently, of Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003) and Gender and Empire: Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Thomas R. Metcalf is Emeritus Professor of History of the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent publications include A Concise History Of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, revised edition, 2006) edited with Barbara D. Metcalf; and Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). Barbara Metzger is Associate at the Centre of International Studies in Cambridge. She received her PhD in history from Cambridge University. vii

viii List of Contributors

She is at present revising her thesis on the League of Nations and Human Rights for publication. Her research and teaching interests are the history of human rights and international governance. John Stuart is Lecturer in History at King’s College London and at Kingston University, London. He is currently writing a history of British Protestant missions and African decolonization. Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, His recent publications include The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006) and Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006) edited with John Brewer.

1 Introduction Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann

Fifteen years ago, Francis Fukuyama declared in his influential The End of History and the Last Man that the future had been settled by the end of the Cold War in 1989 and by the apparent victory of liberal democracy and capitalism over communism. In the intervening years, and particularly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, the significance of the collapse of communism has increasingly become uncertain. As the widening gyre of so many global relationships pivots upon the Middle East, the end of the Cold War appears to have been the end of an interlude, rather than the end of history.1 Politicians and commentators have been confounded by the continuities of the worlds before and after the Cold War, worlds in which the borders of the nation-state have been permeated and undermined by global processes that governments and civil societies have more often encouraged than resisted. Debates over the limits and future of sovereign nation-states, of transnational terrorism, of the impact of migration and the emergence of pluralistic identities, and of global civil society are far from new. This collection of essays illuminates their antecedents between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, demonstrating how transnational dynamics challenged the concept and practice of sovereignty in the age of empire. This volume is a historically informed critical intervention into the field of transnational studies, a field that has been built in large part by political scientists, legal scholars, sociologists, and anthropologists. Steven Vertovec defines transnationalism as the ‘multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states.’2 Ethnic diasporas are, perhaps, the paradigmatic case of a transnational formation that transcends borders. But the significance of transnationalism reaches beyond spatial movements and physical connections, involving distinct 1

2

Introduction

multilocal sets of identities and memories, fluid and hybrid forms of cultural reproduction, and transnational flows of money and expertise. For all its creative momentum, however, the field of transnational studies has mainly restricted its focus to topics after the end of the Cold War or to current developments. Some social scientists have argued that transnational phenomena, such as the back-and-forth movement of migrants, have only recently acquired ‘the critical mass and complexity necessary to speak of an emergent social field’ that warrants the development of transnational studies.3 This is not to say, of course, that other scholars have not considered ideas and movements that moved beyond sovereignty in an earlier period. For example, a major body of scholarship has examined the integration of financial markets, capital flows, labor migrations, and the expansion of trade in the decade before the First World War. Such work has been complemented by an anxious concern about whether anything may be learnt from this earlier period of globalization in order to avoid the catastrophic down-turn marked by the First World War and the Great Depression.4 In this narrative, the era of the two world wars marks a fundamental rupture in the process of globalization, which was then repaired by several decades of affluence and American-led trade liberalization. This volume, however, offers an alternative framework of analysis. It emphasizes additional aspects and dynamics of transnationalism and points to a profoundly different periodization. The seeds of transnationalism are imperial, rather than post-colonial. Empires, we argue, were critical sites where transnational social and cultural movements took place. These movements took the shape of a triadic relationship, in which flows between colonies were as important as those between metropole and colony. Empires, and here most decisively the British Empire, developed concepts and practices of international law that sought to come to terms with issues that palpably transcended the sovereign nation-state, such as slavery and the rights of minorities. It was in a context of imperial society, culture, and rivalry that new ideas of political citizenship developed and challenged inherited notions of nation-state sovereignty. These new ideas moved instead toward conceptions of rights and political participation that anticipated elements of what is currently called ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘global civil society.’ At the same time, empires pioneered instruments of policing that sought to respond to challenges to imperial power arising from the transnational movement of people and ideas. Finally, empires were sites of social and political movements that developed critiques of national sovereignty and explored transnational

Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann 3

identities of citizenship and belonging. These developments took place not only within colonial societies – as in the case of pan-Islamism – but also at the metropolitan heart of Empire, as with the new internationalism during and after the First World War. Empires, then, were microcosms of a transnational order that increasingly exposed the limits of the nation-state system. From this perspective, the First World War was less a sharp break than an amplification of earlier transnational challenges to sovereignty that produced new ideas and institutional and cultural responses in the interwar years. Equally significant, as several essays in this volume demonstrate, the tensions between sovereignty and transnational processes within empires left important legacies for the new international system after the Second World War. In areas of international labor standards and the trafficking in women and children, the British Empire and the League of Nations laid the groundwork for new institutional and ideological ways of recognizing human rights beyond the traditional sphere of sovereignty. Whereas a purely economic view of globalization reveals a rupture between 1914 and 1945, and then a slow reconnection beginning in the Cold War era and reaching consummation in the neo-liberal 1990s, a focus on empire suggests a more continuous and integral connection between cultural, institutional, and ideological forms of transnationalism before 1945 and thereafter. These continuities and synergies between past imperial systems and present international regimes are not merely subjects of academic debate: they now inform official and public debates over government policies in the international community. Unwittingly, U.S. domestic debates over the appropriate political role of the U.S. in Iraq have returned to earlier debates over the Philippines and Cuba during and in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898. Should the U.S. be content to defend democracy at home and among its allies, or does it also have a duty to impose democracy upon other nation-states? Although there is no latter-day Kipling, the poet laureate of empire, to call upon the U.S. to take up the ‘White Man’s Burden,’ there is no shortage of foreign policy advisors and commentators urging a return to an imperial model of international relations.5 The recent revival of imperial rhetoric has been accompanied by arguments for ethical intervention and cosmopolitan peace-keeping,6 and for the regulation of international migration and the enforcement of universal human rights. These projects exceed the capacity of individual nation-states and remind us that our world has not escaped the deeper sources of conflict between traditional forms of sovereignty and transnational pressures that came to the fore in

4

Introduction

an earlier imperial age. The contemporary complexities of this dilemma were perhaps never clearer than in the spring of 2004, when the U.S. government struggled to wage a ‘war on terror’ against an elusive transnational foe and simultaneously insisted that it would soon hand over the sovereignty of Iraq to an Iraqi authority that was as yet unknown. Far from new, these dilemmas revisit long-standing problems and debates about the changing nature and limits of state sovereignty and its relationship to imperial and transnational forms of governance that developed between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Studies of transnationalism originally examined transnational migrants and corporations. These studies have since expanded to encompass political traditions, social movements and networks, and cultural and spatial configurations that transcend state boundaries.7 Transnationalism, then, is a multilayered network of practices, loyalties, institutions, and traditions. Instead of reaching for an essentialist or normative meaning of transnationalism, or posing a sharp distinction between national and transnational, it is important to recognize the disparate and often contradictory relationships between transnational phenomena. As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has warned, it is dangerous to fall into a ‘possible cosmopolitan fallacy’ which presumes that transnational practices automatically create a cosmopolitan mentality.8 Nor are transnational formations inherently emancipatory or transgressive of conventional hierarchies and power structures; ‘translocal villages,’ for example, have been found to use a mixture of rules, discipline, and enforced gifts to preserve social hierarchies and customs of the homeland in distant places.9 Similarly, as the recent debate about global civil society has made clear, it is problematic to view its component transnational social movements in isolation from the transnational dynamics of ‘turbocapitalism.’10 Transnationalism is a concept that is, perhaps, most useful at a distance. Any attempt to study transnationalism in depth leads quickly into disparate sub-fields and methodologies. Following Vertovec, it is possible to discern six significant ‘conceptual premises’ upon which work on transnationalism has been developing in a variety of disciplines: social morphology (such as diasporas); type of consciousness (especially multiple identities); mode of cultural reproduction (including creolization and hybridity); avenue of capital (symbolized by transnational corporations); site of political engagement (global civil society and international non-governmental organizations [INGOs]); and (re)construction of ‘place’ (translocal understandings).11

Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann 5

This volume contributes to the field by expanding and problematizing these different transnational sites, ideas, identities, and modes of cultural and capitalist production by investigating their long-term historical development in the context of empire. Global connections and long-distance networks can be traced back at least to the age of discoveries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and recent research has highlighted the vibrant global currents of trade and exchange in Asia as well as Europe.12 It was in the course of the nineteenth century, driven by the development of new, tighter imperial systems of power and the spread of new technologies, that such earlier networks of exchange and encounter became simultaneously intensified and structured in a more globally integrated system centered upon western Europe, and especially the metropole of imperial Britain. In addition to being the decisive period in the ‘great divergence’ between European and Asian economies, the nineteenth century also saw a new imperial dynamic in the development of transnational relations. In addition to the intensification of transnational trade and finance under the aegis of a ‘free trade’ imperial Britannia that ‘ruled the waves,’ ideas and movements that are now recognized as essential features of transnationalism, ranging from diasporas to systems of international justice, were first developed and explored through institutions and networks established by or in response to the reach of European imperial powers between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The development of transnationalism was contingent upon the existence of the nation-state and the global extension of industrial capitalism. Both the nation-state and industrial capitalism became global phenomena in the context of empire, and it was in the context of empire that rulers and subjects alike began to question the role of sovereignty in governance and commerce.13 The current focus on how transnational communities have subverted the nation-state, and the related search for new cosmopolitan theories of politics and identity, have tended to represent the nation-state and transnationalism as sequential, or even as mutually exclusive. More than just a challenge or reaction to the classic nationstate, however, transnational forces and ideas were also an intrinsic part of the way in which many of these states operated as empires. In framing their analyses in sequential or exclusive terms, recent theorists have limited their selection of intellectual building blocks for constructing an understanding of cosmopolitan governance. They have mainly sought to retrieve cosmopolitan moments before nineteenth-century nationalism, especially through a renewed engagement with Kant.14 This grand, historical leap from the turn of the twenty-first century to the late eighteenth

6

Introduction

century has produced interesting new theories of cosmopolitanism. Yet at the same time, it has also side-stepped the cultural and ideological engagement with transnational challenges to state sovereignty coming from imperial and international sources, especially from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. There is little doubt about the intensification of transnational social movements and international unions and organizations in this period, from the anti-slavery congresses to the international office of public hygiene.15 Where the role of colonial modernity has been acknowledged as an integral part of cosmopolitanism in transnational studies, the emphasis has been on its contribution to cultural nationalism, rather than on the ruptures and challenges to nation and sovereignty.16 Without losing sight of the ambition of many nation-states to confine their subjects in the modern period, with all the devastating consequences resulting from it, it is equally important to recognize the builtin transnational momentum generated by empires, and especially by the British Empire. From the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, the British Empire was the principal global conveyor-belt both for transnational social movements, such as missionary societies and social reform movements, and for inscribing the idea of civil society into colonial relations.17 This volume elucidates how imperial rulers and subjects began the reconceptualization of sovereignty that continues today. As the world’s largest and most powerful empire, the British Empire played a central role in developing transnational ideas, institutions, and social movements of increasing scope and influence in the eras of high imperialism and the two world wars. Between 1880 and 1950, British radicals and imperial officials joined in a movement to integrate systems and norms of government, law, and culture between nations within Europe and overseas. This movement was co-ordinated under the League of Nations after 1919, but transnational networks also advanced outside government authority, through migration, the exchange of ideas, and the expansion of INGOs. Reformers in state and civil society began to reconceive sovereignty in the context of the changing world of capitalist development and the challenge to liberal-democratic traditions of national sovereignty produced by the First World War. Indeed, the term ‘transnational’ entered political discourse through the work of a British radical, Norman Angell, and particularly through his commentary on the settlement of the First World War, Fruits of Victory, published in 1921. ‘Much of Europe,’ Angell observed, ‘lives by virtue of an international, or, more correctly, a trans-national economy,’ in which large

Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann 7

populations would be relegated to a ‘coolie standard’ of living without the development of economic co-operation across national frontiers.18 At the same time, beyond Europe, some imperial subjects began to look beyond national identities and borders to strengthen their bonds through culture and race, as in the case of pan-Africanism, or through culture and religion, as in the case of pan-Islamism. By putting empire and transnationalism in the same frame of analysis, this volume also advances foundational debates about the fields of British and imperial history, from which the majority of its authors come. Over the past several years, these fields have benefited from debates over the merits and shortcomings of historical interpretations framed by the unit of the nation-state, and especially by the presumption of ‘British exceptionalism.’ These debates have followed similar discussions under way in the field of U.S. history over the past 15–20 years, discussions which pit the advocates of transnational studies against those who question not only what might be lost in the construction of a transnational historiography – fearing an avoidance of the realities of national power and the belittling of national identities – but also whether transnational studies are even compatible with the very discipline of history.19 By contrast, what may look like a refreshing expansion of the domestic or metropolitan focus of much (though not all) historical writing with the adoption of ‘the imperial turn,’ is rather a new form of boundarydrawing that risks disembedding imperial relations from larger transnational relations which move across and beyond the British Empire. This collection, then, reconsiders the debate about ‘the imperial turn’ in British historiography by asking whether (and where) historians might usefully employ transnational questions and analyses, or whether, perhaps, the imperial turn in British scholarship takes us far enough.20 In the field of transnational studies, scholars continue to fight a rearguard action against critics who question whether transnationalism is, in fact, distinctive from the historical processes that preceded it. Some advocates of transnational studies have asserted that transnationalism can be historically distinguished by its ‘characteristics of intensity and simultaneity,’ bringing to mind Manuel Castells’s work on transnational information networks and David Held’s advocacy of the concept of globalization.21 But claims such as these are not likely to satisfy historians, who are reluctant to declare that quantitative differences constitute qualitative distinctions. In other words, historians are apt to see continuities and evolution, rather than momentous or systemic change – or at least to see continuities in the midst of change. Although historians

8

Introduction

have not been influential participants in transnational studies, historians of the British Empire have begun to engage in related debates over globalization, as part of a larger historiographical trend toward world history.22 Predictably, these historians trace the development of globalization beyond the rise of the nation-state, but all of this scholarship is not necessarily applicable to the development of transnationalism. Transnationalism depends, by definition, upon the existence of the nation-state for its historical significance. This collection treats transnationalism as a multifaceted set of ideas, networks, identities, and movements transcending the state in specific historical circumstances. Imperial rule, and especially the institutions of empire, shaped these historical circumstances and all fields of transnational experience that scholars now distinguish in the terms of their ostensibly post-imperial conceptual premises. As A.G. Hopkins states, ‘Empires were transnational organizations that were created to mobilize the resources of the world. Their existence and their unity were made possible by supranational connections. Their longevity was determined by their ability to extend the reach and maintain the stability of these connections.’23 Hopkins has called for a new direction in imperial history: The tradition of arranging history so that it fits within national borders surely needs to be revised. It is increasingly at variance with the state of the world as it stands at the end of the twentieth century and it captures only a part of the past that it seeks to explain. A revitalized history of empires provides a powerful means of encompassing and ordering the major themes that arise within and beyond the nation-state.24 By examining both imperial institutions and the ideas and movements of imperial subjects in relation to those institutions, this collection will advance our understanding of transnational networks, ideas, and governance that developed in the British Empire between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One advantage of transnationalism is that it allows us to move beyond both the one-directional flow of older core/periphery approaches or the two-directional flow of more recent metropole/colony approaches, by considering multidirectional flows and multifaceted transnational relationships. Such relationships are illuminated by Douglas Haynes’s study of the experiences of Commonwealth doctors in Britain and the Empire. Men and women from the Empire, cognizant of the exploitative economies in which they lived and worked, themselves a legacy of colonial rule, hoped

Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann 9

that a British, or even an American, qualification in medicine would advance their careers, either by granting them access to work in Britain or by improving their position at home. Having received their medical degrees in Britain, they anticipated transnational access to professional advancement in the British Empire. The reality proved more difficult. Those who attempted to build careers in Britain’s new National Health Service encountered an insidious color bar, while opportunities in the colonies themselves could be scarce and uninviting. As Haynes demonstrates, Commonwealth doctors responded to their collective experience of racism by establishing political alliances that transcended their own nationalities, leading ultimately to their creation of the first transnational medical professional association, the Overseas Doctors Association, in 1975. Experiences at the heart of empire could thus lead to cogent critiques of the disjunction between the principles and practices of empire on the whole. Thomas Metcalf, in his essay on the widespread recruitment of Sikhs for police and military work throughout the empire, reveals a different kind of erosion in ideas of sovereignty. The drafting of Sikh policemen and soldiers to imperial sites around the Indian Ocean as bulwarks against unrest vividly demonstrated the limits of sovereignty and the transnational demands that structured colonial authority. In south-east Asia, in the British protectorates of Africa, in the treaty port of Shanghai, in Mauritius, Ceylon, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, uniformed Sikhs became one of the most visible signs of British imperialism until after the First World War. If the physical presence of the Sikhs demonstrated the transnational qualities of British imperial rule, the media helped carry less corporeal ideas across borders. Today there is a great deal of public debate over the influence of western, visual media around the world. Madhavi Kale examines an intriguing precedent for this debate in the promotion of ‘Empire Films’ in India in the 1920s, and the critical response to this promotion by the Indian Cinematographic Committee (ICC). ‘Empire Films,’ produced in Britain, were part and parcel of the civilizing mission, and they enjoyed privileged access to audiences of imperial subjects at the expense of Hollywood’s potential exports. Utilizing interviews and depositions by the ICC in the late 1920s, Kale illuminates how a wide range of people involved in the distribution and consumption of British films in India understood this new and relatively unregulated technology. Moreover, she explains how these people criticized these films as means to offer cultural legitimacy to British sovereignty and, furthermore, criticized the imperial government for using its sovereignty to limit Indians’ access to the growing international cinema.

10 Introduction

The chapters by Frank Trentmann and Faisal Devji consider how political thinkers and movements attempted to reconceive sovereignty, from within and without the center of imperial power. Trentmann explores the reconfiguration of citizenship in the political and intellectual movement for a ‘new internationalism’ during and after the First World War. In the nineteenth century, ‘internationalists’ had been committed to free trade, but they had always advocated free trade in a world of nation-states. In response to the pressures of nationalism and the political economy of total war, however, a new generation of thinkers and reformers began to turn to transnational ideals of society and government to revitalize citizenship within as well as between societies. New internationalist ideas challenged any natural unity between nation and state. Instead of being commensurate, nation and state were reconceived as fundamentally different principles connected to different types of community and identity: social and ethnic identity (the nation) versus political rights and allegiance (the state). Many new internationalists came out of a liberal tradition. Rather than seeing transnationalism and cosmopolitanism as a natural reaction to the failure of liberalism to come to terms with globalizing pressures, then, ideas of transnationalism can be seen as a constructive development within a liberal internationalist tradition. Contemporaneous with this development of new internationalist ideas at the center of imperial and western inter-allied power, advocates of pan-Islamism looked beyond sovereignty in the face of not only the liberal British Empire, but also internationalist ideologies such as communism and fascism. Pan-Islamism transcended race as well as sovereignty, attempting to secularize Islam by dispensing with traditional distinctions between faiths and practices in favor of a transnational identity. Considering the particular issue of ‘Muslimhood’ in colonial India, Faisal Devji explains how Muslims adopted forms of self-definition that deterritorialized not only Islam, but India itself. INGOs are currently identified as leading agents of transnationalism, but scholars of transnationalism have been less inclined to study a particular group of such organizations that is arguably the oldest and most widespread of all INGOs: Christian missions.25 Curiously, missions have been – until only recently – understudied in the field of British imperial history, and they are commonly misconceived as agents of imperial sovereignty. In fact, the brethren of missions were not only multinational, but multiracial. John Stuart demonstrates that the providential theology that underpinned Protestant missions was global in conception and application. It had worldwide reference

Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann 11

points in the expansion of Islam, the decline of papal Roman-Catholic power, and in millennial expectations. Stuart demonstrates that the multinational, multiracial nature of the missionary movement was at odds with and often subversive of European imperial sovereignties. In sum, the Bible did not necessarily accompany the flag, although instances in which it did are certainly to be found in the historical record. The current ‘war on terror’ is a further example of the long-standing, complicated processes through which nation-states have attempted to adapt sovereignty to respond to transnational risks and challenges.26 Robert Gregg presents a timely discussion of an earlier war on terror, recounting the co-operation between Britain and the U.S. in policing terrorism between the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the Second World War. Gregg follows the spread of policing methods and technologies against Irish and Indian militant nationalists, and explains how Anglo-American collaboration during the First World War set the stage for the creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He further addresses the establishment of the League of Nations, suggesting that President Woodrow Wilson was largely motivated by his realization that the sovereign nation was vulnerable unless tied to an international organization with which to combat transnational terror. In other words, Wilson agreed that members of the League should retain their sovereignty, but he did so in order to compromise sovereignty in the interests of security against terrorism. The tension between the sovereignty of the nation-state and the requirements of transnational administration is also examined in Philippa Levine’s contribution. She addresses age of consent legislation in the 1890s, noting the disparities between colonial legislation and that of the metropolis, and between the legislations of different colonies. Scholars have commonly treated Britain’s 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act as the catalyst, if not the precedent, for colonial legislation, but the processes through which colonial legislations were created suggest otherwise. Moving beyond traditional interpretations of the sovereign nation-state as the agent of colonial legislation, Levine privileges the racial and cultural factors at work in legislating sexuality. On the bases of race and culture, Levine builds an alternative, transnational model that more fully explains the tensions between law making in the British metropole and in Britain’s colonies. The United Nations and its predecessor, the League of Nations, have historically struggled to reconcile the sovereignty of nation-states with transnational standards of rights. Both Barbara Metzger and Kevin

12 Introduction

Grant offer case studies from the era of the League of Nations that illustrate the development of this ideological and practical dilemma in international government. Metzger examines humanitarian campaigns sponsored by the League against the trafficking in women and children between the First and Second World Wars. She demonstrates how, during the interwar years, the international community moved toward closer co-operation in these humanitarian endeavors. She argues that international consensus on the primacy of individual rights grew not in response to abstract ideological debates, but in response to practical humanitarian interventions. In a related vein, Grant examines the development of international labor law and humanitarian campaigns against slavery in the context of European imperialism in Africa and under both the League and the United Nations. These campaigns reflected clear divisions between the imperial advocates of the paternalistic principle of trusteeship – premised on cultural hierarchy and sovereign authority – and the advocates of universal human rights – ostensibly transcending cultural differences and sovereignty. Ultimately, British imperial officials succeeded in establishing trusteeship as the ideological basis of international labor law and the organization of international government under the League. The chapter further shows that laws passed after the Second World War to secure the transnational, human rights of labor were based on the earlier labor laws defined by British imperialists between the Berlin Act of 1885 and the subsequent League of Nations Slavery Convention of 1926. European imperial politics, thus, played a formative role in shaping ideologies and institutions that have perpetuated the conflict between state sovereignty and transnational labor standards and enforcement in the twentieth century. Collectively the studies in this volume make, we think, stimulating and original reading for scholars working in transnationalism studies, as well as for those more focused on national and imperial histories. Like its cousin, globalization, transnationalism has historical forebears. While not identical with earlier historical formations, current modes of transnationalism have evolved out of longer historical traditions. From diasporas to the realm of governance, there remain historical linkages between the worlds of empire and our world today. Instead of approaching transnationalism as a successor to forms of national and imperial power and identity, a more historically sensitive and open approach points to the symbiotic relationship between the two. This does not mean that transnationalism grew in a linear, organic fashion. Like globalization, the evolution of transnational networks is not all in one direction. There are reverses and lost traditions, as well as growth. Still, attention

Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann 13

to transnational networks of ideas, rules, and practices does suggest that the conventional tripartite division of the twentieth century into a period of globalization before the First World War, followed by contraction in the interwar years, and a rediscovery of globalization in the 1980s–90s, may be unnecessarily stark as well as over-simplified. Following the interplay between transnationalism and empire suggests many lines of continuity that cut across the markers of the two world wars, linking imperial and international visions and practices of governance. To see transnationalism and empire operating in tandem, therefore, promises to avoid both naïve cosmopolitanism and the parochialism of national histories. There is no need to view transnational and national inquiries as rival, mutually exclusive enterprises. Instead of distracting from the realities of national power, the study of transnationalism can inform a more realistic understanding of the nation by placing it in the context of expanding transnational networks of power and identity.

Notes 1. F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992). 2. S. Vertovec, ‘Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism,’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, XXII(2) (March 1999), p. 447. See other articles in this special issue on transnationalism. 3. A. Portes, L.E. Guarnizo, and P. Landolt, ‘The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field,’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, XXII(2) (March 1999), p. 217. 4. D. Held, A.G. McGrew, D. Goldblatt, and J. Perraton (eds), Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Oxford, 1999); P. Hirst and G. Thompson, Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance (Cambridge, 1996); H. James, The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (Cambridge, MA, 2001). 5. R. Kipling, ‘White Man’s Burden’ (London, 1898); R. Cooper, ‘Why We Still Need Empires,’ Observer, 7 April 2002; N. Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (New York, 2004). 6. M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars (Stanford, CA, 1999). 7. M. Taylor and N. Thrift (eds), The Geography of Multinationals, 2 Vols (London, 1982/1986); A. Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1996); Vertovec, ‘Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism;’ K. Mitchell, ‘Transnational Discourse: Bringing Geography Back,’ Antipode, XXIX (1997), pp. 101–14; P. Jackson, P. Crang and C. Dwyer, Transnational Spaces (London, 2003); M. Miyoshi, ‘A Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationalism and the Decline of the Nation-State,’ Critical Inquiry, 19 (Summer 1993), pp. 726–51. 8. U. Beck, ‘The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies,’ Theory, Culture and Society, XVIII(6) (2001). For different notions of cosmopolitanism, see S. Vertovec and R. Cohen (eds), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford, 2002).

14 Introduction 9. S. Velayutham and A. Wise, ‘Moral Economies of a Translocal Village: Obligation and Shame among Indian Transnational Migrants,’ Global Networks, 5(1) (2005), pp. 27–48. 10. See J. Keane, Global Civil Society? (Oxford, 2003); H. Anheier, M. Glasius, and M. Kaldor (eds), Global Civil Society Yearbook 2001 (Oxford, 2001), and subsequent yearbooks. 11. Vertovec, ‘Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism,’ pp. 447–62. 12. K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence (Revised edition) (Princeton, 2001); R. Bin Wong, ‘The Search for European Differences and Domination in the Early Modern World: A View from Asia,’ American Historical Review, 107(2) (April 2002), pp. 447–69; P. Parthasarthi, ‘The Great Divergence,’ Past & Present, 176 (2002), p. 275; G. Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Chicago, 1991); J. Whaley-Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing (New York, 1999). Cf. P. Aghion and J.G. Williamson, Growth, Inequality, and Globalization: Theory, History, and Policy (Cambridge, 1998). A.G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History (London, 2002); M. Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005). 13. For an example of a Eurocentric approach to sovereignty that might usefully consider these broader imperial contexts, see J. Sheehan, ‘The Problem of Sovereignty in European History,’ American Historical Review, 111(1) (February 2006), pp. 1–15. 14. Held, Global Transformations; J. Bohman and M. Lutz-Bachmann (eds), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge, MA, 1997). 15. For more information on international organizations and global agencies, see F.S.L. Lyons, Internationalism in Europe, 1815–1914 (Leiden, 1963), and, from a Gramscian perspective, C.N. Murphy, International Organization and Industrial Change: Global Governance since 1850 (New York, 1994), especially Chapters 2 and 3. 16. P. van der Veer, ‘Colonial Cosmopolitanism,’ in Vertovec and Cohen, esp. p. 166f. Van der Veer sees modern cosmopolitanism as a provincialized Western view that is universalized through imperialism. For anticolonialism and international anarchism, see B. Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (London, 2005). 17. J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff (eds), Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa (Chicago, 1999); S.S. Maughan, ‘Civic Culture, Women’s Foreign Missions, and the British Imperial Imagination, 1860–1914,’ in F. Trentmann (ed.), Paradoxes of Civil Society (Oxford and New York, 2000/2003), Chapter 8; C. Hall, Civilising Subjects (Chicago, 2002); P. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993). 18. N. Angell, Fruits of Victory (London, 1921), p. 63. 19. I. Tyrrell, ‘American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,’ American Historical Review, 96(4) (October 1991), pp. 1031–55; M. McGerr, ‘The Price of the “New Transnational History,”’ American Historical Review, 96(4) (October 1991), pp. 1056–67. This volume suggests that the study of transnationalism need not be a distraction from ‘the realities of nationalism and national power,’ but can inform a more realistic understanding of the changing power and problem of the nation when placed in the context of expanding transnational networks of power and identity.

Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann 15 20. A. Burton (ed.), After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation (Durham, NC, 2003); A.G. Hopkins, ‘Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History,’ Past & Present, 164 (1999), pp. 198–243. 21. Vertovec, ‘Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism,’ p. 448; M. Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, 3 Vols, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2000–2004); Held, Global Transformations. Also see the early emphasis on transnational relations in R. Keohane and J. Nye, Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, MA, 1971). 22. C. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford, 2004); Hopkins, Globalization in World History. For a critique of studies of globalization by an historian of colonial Africa, see F. Cooper, ‘What is the Concept of Globalization Good For? An African Historian’s Perspective,’ African Affairs, 100 (2001), pp. 189–213. See also C. Maier, ‘Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era,’ American Historical Review, 105(3) ( June 2000), pp. 807–31. For the genealogies of geo-political histories, see J. Osterhammel, ‘Die Wiederkehr des Raumes: Geopolitik, Geohistorie und historische Geographie,’ Neue Politische Literatur, 43 (1998), pp. 374–97. 23. Hopkins, ‘Back to the Future,’ p. 205. 24. Hopkins, ‘Back to the Future,’ p. 243. 25. For discussions of this subject, see A. Bogner, B. Holtwick, and H. Tyrell (eds), Missionsgesellschaften als globale Organisationen (Würzburg, forthcoming); A. Porter (ed.), The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880–1914 (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2003); P. Van der Veer, ‘Colonial Cosmopolitanism,’ in Vertovec, Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, esp. pp. 172–9; G. Hüwelmeier, ‘Women’s Congregations as Transnational Communities,’ Transnational Communities Working Paper 2K 13; P. Levitt, ‘“You Know, Abraham was Really the First Immigrant:” Religion and Transnational Migration,’ International Migration Review 37(3) (2003), pp.847–73; S. Vertovec, ‘Three Meanings of Diaspora, Exemplified Among South Asian Religions,’ Diaspora, VI(3) (1997). 26. For responses to commercial and monetary challenges, see P.T. Marsh, Bargaining on Europe: Britain and the First Common Market, 1860–1892 (New Haven and London, 1999); L. Einaudi, Money and Politics: European Monetary Unification and the International Gold Standard (Oxford, 2001).

2 Sovereignty and Sexuality: Transnational Perspectives on Colonial Age of Consent Legislation Philippa Levine Consent as a legal and a social principle has been applied in many fields, from medical practice to political governance. It has been a key and controversial element in the legislation of sexuality, that arena balanced so uneasily – and so very often – between the private and the public. Arguments over age of consent have resurfaced periodically and always controversially. In Britain, the most recent manifestation of this debate has been over equalizing the sexual age of consent for same-sex and for heterosexual partnerings, a debate resolved by the passage of legislation in 2000 that finally allowed gay men the same age of consent as straight men and women. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, it was heterosexual consent that was at issue, and most specifically female age of sexual consent. Male age of consent was, at this juncture, a non-issue. Age of consent legislation in Britain was revived in the wake of W.T. Stead’s famous revelations in the 1880s about the ease with which wealthy debauchees could purchase young working-class virgins. Legislation quickly followed Stead’s dramatic exposé in the Pall Mall Gazette, the ‘Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon.’ Couched in the language of protection, the notion of consent enshrined in this and subsequent related legislation encapsulated not only a double sexual standard well understood by feminists of the period, but also reinforced and magnified other forms of inequality in its gendered specificity. For in ignoring male consent but making female consent an issue appropriate for debate and for legislation, politicians, lawmakers, and journalists naturalized consent as an already male activity. Men were ‘natural’ citizens of the polity and of the world, rational enough not to need the protection of the law. By contrast, women’s lack of autonomy foregrounded – as did protective labour legislation, also seldom applied to men – their political 16

Philippa Levine 17

incapacity as well as their sexual vulnerability. Age of consent legislation only ever addressed female age of consent, and was concerned most specifically with the age at which a girl was deemed biologically and physically capable of sustained heterosexual relations without bodily harm. Clearly, this reading of consent, which was the dominant nineteenth-century reading, was deeply gendered for it implied that male sexuality was a constant while female sexuality had to be grown into, protected, hedged around with constraints and regulations. Consent was thus something which women were expected to confer upon men and about that there was really never a question; the laws addressed most centrally the age at which this consent could safely be given without physical harm to her body. Age of consent laws aimed only at women thus established political gender boundaries delimiting female rationality (and for sexual reasons) by positing the urgency of a state protection not needed for men. Sovereignty as an expression of free will within an increasingly rights-based system of governance (implied by consent) was thus made masculine by women’s apparent incapacity to choose or reject sexual advances without the help of the state. Sovereignty, then, alongside sexuality, lies at the heart of age of consent legislation. In the late nineteenth century, the swift spread of this legislation in both settler and dependent colonies of Britain further complicated the principles at stake. What could consent actually mean in the context of imperial rule? Already burdened by gender difference, the principle of consent was further muddied in those contexts where imperial forms of rule expressly denied the modern forms of political consent that structured the broader debate in sovereign Britain. While non-adult women were deemed incapable of consenting to sexual activity, colonial men in dependent colonies were regarded as incapable of consenting to governance; they had to be trained and educated and civilized before such privileges could be granted. Not surprisingly, arguments over female sexual consent in the colonies had rather different resonances. Yet the term ‘age of consent’ was applied across the imperial world as if it had a fixed meaning, despite the vastly different forms of governance, consensual, and non-consensual, which made up the British Empire. As we shall see, laws laying down the age of female sexual consent were passed in settler and in dependent colonies alike, and while the actual age of consent could differ significantly the gendered component of such legislation never wavered. In discussions of sovereignty, then, the critical links between gender distinction and imperial rule offer a useful corrective to a potentially ahistorical reading of sovereignty. By considering the quite different

18 Sovereignty and Sexuality

contexts in which similarly constructed age of consent laws were passed in different colonial sites, we can add a distinctive and critical dimension to the debates around transnationalism and sovereignty. Forced to find locally persuasive rationales for such laws, colonial authorities as well as their antagonists looked as much to other imperial sites as they did to Britain for solutions. The clear impossibility of applying a universalist framework to justify such legislation and the highly particular forms of opposition which emerged in some arenas called into question, if implicitly, any over-arching principle of sovereignty, a principle undercut both by gender inequality and by the political inequalities associated with imperialism. Britain’s Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, a now notorious statute, infamous more for its naming and illegalizing of male–male sexual relations, was concerned mostly with age of consent issues. It raised the female age of consent from 13 (an age set only in the previous decade, prior to which it had been 12) to 16. In its wake, a slew of British colonies passed age of consent legislation in the 1890s. The 1889 Women and Girls’ Protection Ordinance raised the age of consent in Hong Kong to 15. Ceylon’s Criminal Law Amendment Act passed in 1890, raising the age of consent for girls to 12. In the following year India followed Ceylon in raising female age of consent from 10 (the age set in 1860 when the Indian Penal Code was promulgated) to 12. In the same year, 1891, the white settler colony of Queensland raised the age of consent from 12 (set in 1865) to 14, although the bill’s most enthusiastic proponents lobbied for age 21. The Australian colony of Victoria also raised the age of consent from 12 to 16 in 1891. Two years later in 1893 the South African Criminal Law Amendment Act followed the Queensland legislature in moving from age 12 to 14. A year later, at the Straits Settlements, the age was raised to 15. Two years later, in 1896, New Zealand raised its female age of consent from 15 to 16. South Australia and Queensland raised the bar to age 17 in 1899, while in 1913, Victoria raised it to 18. Over the course of the 1890s, then, female sexual consent was quite palpably a transnational as well as a deeply imperial consideration. These varying laws were passed at roughly the same time, though they were by no means identical with one another. The combination of temporal coincidence and the significant differences between those laws – in rhetoric, practice, and reception – leads me to suppose that a transnational perspective might help us to think through what produced this intense burst of interest in female consent in the 1890s. What, this essay asks, does a consideration of the colonial sites and

Philippa Levine 19

versions of this legislation add to our existing understanding of the meaning and implications of age of consent legislation? And might such considerations change our perception of political relationships across the empire? Rather than opting for an analysis in which colonial governments, whether elective or appointed, merely followed suit when the imperial parliament set about raising female age of consent, we might fruitfully focus on why ‘home’ and colonial laws were so different, and more specifically see this as a form of imperial legislation, acknowledging the fragility of a national construct in which colonies copied, as dictated, from model legislation. By de-emphasizing the metropole–periphery relation and seeing rather a relational set of interactions between the different sites where such laws were enacted, a transnational reading will, I hope, allow us to lay greater emphasis on the political rather than the social meaning within sexual consent law. Striking in the different versions of the law discussed here is that there was palpably a profound need to invoke a universalistic moralizing around reproduction, around the sanctity of marital relations and the role of sex in women’s lives, even while the legislation dealt quite clearly in what were seen as the peculiarities and requirements of the local. Persis Charles notes exactly this tension at work in nineteenth-century Jamaica, where, as she points out, there was widespread agreement among colonists that an age of consent was necessary, but that ‘the greater maturity of the negro’ dictated that it should always be two years lower than the age set for British girls. Charles’ comment is illuminating. ‘This law,’ she argues, ‘was therefore simultaneously universalist and differentiating, aiming to make Jamaica and Britain the same by using one principle of regulation, but inscribing race as the difference between colony and mother country.’1 Other and considerable factors were also at work alongside the racial difference Charles emphasizes. The pull between the universal and the local, between the desire for an overarching moral law and the equally strong desire to judge colonial and racially different peoples as wanting, cut across national lines. In all these instances, claims about the premature sexuality of girls in hot climates were raised as proof of the need for adequate protection. Local customs and practices, such as early age of marriage in India, were acknowledged, but the female body was invariably defined as in need of protection from a dazzling array of biological, environmental, and social factors. Western commentators persistently promulgated the idea that hot climates engendered fecundity, and the abundance of flora was seen as just one element in the depiction of such environments as closer to nature. An essential component of this vision was that peoples as

20 Sovereignty and Sexuality

well as plants and animals expressed and lived that lush fecundity. Young girls were said to reach puberty more quickly, to be suitable for motherhood earlier, and to give birth with greater ease than their counterparts living in cool climes. The corollary of this vision of natural excess was moral condemnation, that these were also peoples incapable of appreciating the virtues of restraint and the curbing of sexual appetite. It was their closeness to the untamed natural world that rendered those who lived in hot climates more unrestrainedly sexual than the denizens of the colder north. These were common arguments throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which found purchase in scientific texts, in anthropological literature, and in popular lore. The stage was set for a revisioning of sexual readiness closely linked to differing readings of the female body by climate and, by extension, by morality. In such a context, it is no surprise that many of these laws revealed an early embracing of eugenist fears over bad breeding. The 1891 Queensland Act, like its UK counterpart, included clauses invoking heavier penalties for those who violated, in the language of the day, idiot and imbecile women. Incest, too, was debated during the passage of the bill. The Indian legislation of the same year raised related fears that early sexual activity sapped vital energy and, even more critically, that children born to child-mothers would be stunted and weak. The 1893 Criminal Law Amendment Act in South Africa outlawed sexual intercourse with idiot and imbecile women, although the debate in the legislature was focused far more on appropriate age than on any measures of intelligence or defect. Those having carnal knowledge of ‘female idiots’ and ‘imbecile women’ were liable to punishment.2 Neither India nor Ceylon legislated in this area. Indeed, the colonial secretary advised the governor of Ceylon that beyond an increase in the age of female consent, ‘I do not think it necessary at the present time to legislate in the Colony on the lines of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885.’3 Champions of consent legislation included local feminist groups in the settler colonies, and missionaries as well as colonial officials in the dependent colonies. Indeed, missionaries and feminist groups had been lobbying for colonial legislation along the lines of Britain’s 1885 act ever since that law had been promulgated. By 1886, feminists in Queensland were sending deputations to the colony’s premier for action on issues raised in the British act.4 In October 1887, women from the ladies’ branch of the Calcutta Missionary Conference for the Protection of Young Girls had memorialized the viceroy for laws to punish men having sexual relations with Indian girls under 16, and imposing an age

Philippa Levine 21

of consent on women remaining unmarried as teenagers.5 When the abandonment of Contagious Diseases Acts, which controlled women sex workers, came swiftly on the heels of the 1885 legislation, colonists alarmed at losing the right to control prostitution and sexually transmissible diseases in their colonies demanded laws allowing them to protect local women from the alleged brutalities of their own menfolk. It was their efforts that resulted in the Women and Girls’ Protection Ordinances passed at Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements where colonial belief in Chinese brutality towards women was widespread. Yet colonial governments were reluctant to act. In Queensland, it took five years before the lobbying efforts of 1886 bore fruit. In South Africa, the bill was an opposition measure, brought by the Liberal politician James Rose Innes (later South Africa’s Chief Justice), and unpopular with Cecil Rhodes’ government. In India, the government took a formal decision in 1886 not to intervene in the intimately related question of child marriage.6 A year later the viceroy sent the women of the Calcutta Missionary Conference his regrets that ‘he [was] unable to take any action’ on their pleas for a raised age of consent in India.7 It would be 1890 before the government of India and the India Office began quietly to discuss the possibility of drafting a law to raise the age of consent. The Parsi reformer, Behramji Malabari, was in London that summer campaigning against infant marriage customs in India.8 Malabari had begun actively campaigning against child marriage in the mid-1880s and his published work on the issue had attracted attention in many quarters in India.9 India Office officials kept those in India apprised of his activities.10 Malabari’s work received a qualified welcome, though the governor-general, Lord Lansdowne, was ‘anxious that it should be made clear that we had taken up the question quite irrespectively of Malabari’s movement.’11 Lansdowne wrote to his friend and mentor, Lord Northbrook, in the autumn of 1890, that, ‘we had … considered the matter pretty thoroughly some months ago, but had on that occasion determined to defer action.’12 Clearly, then, the legislation, when it did finally make an appearance in 1891, cannot be characterized as a simple case of colonial governments obediently following the dictates and models supplied by the imperial government. More was at stake, and the dictates of the locale in conjunction with considerations of what was occurring elsewhere were key factors in the passage of colonial legislation. In Queensland, a high-profile legal case was in part responsible for catalyzing action and interest in consent laws. R v. Jimmy, heard before the colony’s chief justice in November 1886, concerned an aboriginal male accused of

22 Sovereignty and Sexuality

unlawful carnal knowledge with multiple young girls. The inability of the prosecution to succeed in making a rape accusation stick in the case of one of the girls, who was already 12, spurred politicians into action.13 It was, similarly, a legal case of some notoriety which gave reformers their opportunity in India. Sir Andrew Scoble, architect of the law, wrote to the viceroy in 1890. A Hindu, named Hurry Mohun Maitee, has been committed for trial to the sessions at Calcutta for causing the death of his wife … The short facts of the case are that he had sexual intercourse with her, she being about eleven years of age, and that she died from hemorrhage in consequence …. I think the feeling which this case is likely to excite in the best European and Native circles will afford a good opportunity for raising the age of consent from ten to twelve years.14 The death of 11-year old Phulmoni as a result of complications after forced sexual connection with her adult husband attracted considerable press in India and in Britain, fuelling the conviction of reformers and social purity activists, and not surprisingly suggesting to government officials that the political climate might be ripe for change. After all, it was the revelations of the journalist William Stead, and his ability to purchase a child for sexual purposes in Britain, which had galvanized the domestic legislation of 1885. Scoble and Lansdowne must have seen the Phulmoni case as India’s version of Stead’s luridly popular articles in the Pall Mall Gazette on the ‘Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon.’ Conservative Hindus alleged that raising the age of consent to 12 would jeopardize the sacred duty of the husband in consummating his marriage immediately after a bride’s menses commenced. The argument was that where a girl-bride began menstruating younger than 12, her husband would be forced to choose between sin and prosecution, breaking either the religious or the secular law. Government sought medical opinion on the average age of puberty for girls in India as opposed to temperate climates, and whether pre-pubertal sexual relations would physically damage a girl. While in the Queensland context, the Brisbane Courier could comfortably argue that ‘puberty is of the mind as well as of the body,’ the Indian debate rested exclusively on physical and biological criteria – on when the average Indian girl began to menstruate.15 While no women were granted a great deal of self-awareness in these debates, there was nonetheless clearly some distinction drawn between the white Australian girl raised in a rational and sovereign environment, and the hapless Indian child bride doomed to moral and

Philippa Levine 23

physical degradation. The debate in India centred almost exclusively on the physical body, and on the consequences and importance of heterosexual penetrative sex.16 Even the sympathetic Malabari dubbed a girl’s virginity, ‘her most precious possession,’ a comment which spoke volumes about the deeply gendered differences in how property and possession – and relatedly consent – were regarded for men and for women.17 Patriarchal government met patriarchal protest in the Indian arena, and the figure of woman at the centre of the controversy was effectively erased, in favour of medical and religious opinion. While in Queensland, tropically induced maturity was still an issue, sexual development was nonetheless represented as a psychological as well as a physical process. In the non-settler context, body, it seems, was all. An age of consent necessarily assumed that a young woman’s age could always be effectively determined, not an easy matter in practice. Civil registration had been established in Britain in the 1830s, and birth certificates had become a familiar presence on the official landscape by this time, but opponents and sceptics in the colonies argued that consent law would be a dead letter since the registration of births was neither widespread nor mandated by law. Colonial governments had moved on occasion to instigate limited versions of registration. In the Indian North-West Provinces, for example, mounting concern over female infanticide had ushered in a Female Infanticide Act in 1870 to monitor the birth of female children and institute enquiries into suspicious child deaths.18 But this was piecemeal and local legislation, and legislators did not mobilize its existence or techniques in support of the 1891 law in British India. Even where formal registration was an established practice, however, this question of knowing a girl’s age could be a fearful business. There was always the worry that girls who looked older than their years (and this was said to be a working-class phenomenon) would unfairly lead men into illegality. Indeed in Britain, the alleged earlier sexual maturity of working-class girls was often held up as reason to exercise legislative caution. In a pioneering article on Victorian childhood and sexuality, Deborah Gorham has pointed out that girls from poor families would often have been wage-earners by the time they were 12, and frequently worked away from home as live-in domestics.19 There was clearly a tension, forged by middle-class ideology, which pitted the sexuality of the working girl against the economic reality which dictated her place in the adult workforce. A House of Lords select committee considering the protection of minors in 1882 argued against a proposal to raise the age of consent to 18 on the grounds that men frequenting prostitutes under

24 Sovereignty and Sexuality

that age should not be liable to arrest and criminalization.20 A Police Court magistrate warned the Home Office in 1895 that if men were punishable for solicitation, they would become ‘the victims of wicked women.’21 Almost 20 years later, when the issue surfaced yet again in governing circles, a very indignant senior Home Office official commented that ‘It is absurd to say that a girl between 13 and 16 cannot consent when we know they often not only consent but incite with a full knowledge of what they are doing’ [emphasis in original].22 This deep discomfort in Victorian Britain around working-class female sexuality was further complicated in the colonies by racial and environmental issues. While it might be logical to assume that the belief in hotter climates accelerating sexual maturity would persuade governments in tropical locations to institute a lower age of consent than in Britain, the situation was more complicated. White settler colonies opted for a higher age of consent in line with British practice, while in non-white colonies much lower ages of consent prevailed, a choice shaped by the presumption of the over-sexed native. Hot climates were associated with lush fecundity, a metaphor for sexual looseness, and the varied laws enshrined this distinction between proper respectable environments and those abandoned to sensuality and beyond redemption. For the settler colonies, association with and cultural proximity to Britain overrode the physical and environmental conditions that elsewhere produced justifications for far lower ages of consent. Persis Charles’ emphasis on race as a key difference is clearly operating here, as is a belief in a cultural and civilizational divide. Nor were such considerations short-lived. In 1919 Basutoland was considering an age of consent law. ‘Though the necessity for’ passing an age of consent law, wrote the resident commissioner, ‘has not hitherto become apparent, the continued influx of Europeans into the Territory tends to make it desirable.’23 It was less a case of following in metropolitan footsteps than of securing the care of an expanding white population that prompted the Basutoland legislation. In India, by contrast, the stress was on obdurately ‘savage’ indigenous conditions. The 1891 legislation, claimed its author, was designed to stem the twin evils of juvenile prostitution (an echo of the 1885 British legislation, to be sure) and the sexual misuse of child brides. Significantly the seemingly shared problem of juvenile prostitution was barely discussed in the deliberations of the Legislative Council, and warrants no further mention in the legislation itself. The rationale for the legislation was the local phenomenon of child marriage. This was, in part, as we have seen, because the law had raised the ire of orthodox

Philippa Levine 25

Hindu activists who saw it as an attack on religious practices and who focused their objections on this aspect of the bill. But it was clearly also a pathologizing strategy, whereby colonial politicians and medical officers could wring their hands at the cruelties wrought on girls of tender years, a working of what literary scholar Jim Kincaid has identified as the Romantic idealization of the child.24 Mrinalini Sinha contrasts the British context in which child prostitution was a perfect target for feminists, allowing them access to purity debates, and the Indian arena in which purity was, for the British, simply not an issue. Such an environment, she argues, ‘was less conducive to the deployment of a language of purity for redefining the regulation of female sexuality.’25 Only missionaries adopted the language of purity in the Indian debate. The other players fought on the biological terrain of sexual readiness. It was not that sensibilities in Britain had been mobilized in favour of the prostitute woman when debating the 1885 law. The law was seen as a means for preventing young women from entering prostitution, but it extended no protection to women already working in the trade. A police memorandum of 1895, discussing further amendment to the criminal law proposed by the National Vigilance Association, asked in horror: ‘I take it that it is not intended … to protect Prostitutes’ [emphasis in original].26 The emphasis was squarely on preventing prostitution, a motive shared by the white settler colonies and spurred on by the growing embrace of eugenics, which linked ‘feeble-mindedness’ to sexual vulnerability. In Queensland and in South Africa, as well as in Britain, a major concern of the legislation was preventing women from being lured or forced into the sex trade. Reference to the activities of the imperial parliament was at best only partially relevant. Some argued that it was British disgust at the Phulmoni case that pushed the Indian government into action, but Ceylon had passed remarkably similar legislation a year before. The discussions preceding Ceylon’s law explicitly looked both to the language of the Indian Penal Code and to the demographic similarities of the two countries in housing both large Hindu and Muslim populations. George Johnson at the Colonial Office mentioned in 1889 that he was refraining from commenting on the Ceylon legislation pending possession of the Hong Kong ‘papers on similar subjects.’27 Discussing the proposed legislation, Johnson made reference to pertinent discussions of the Indian National Congress, to legislation at Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements, and to laws in Indian princely states, but did not mention the British legislation of 1885. His colleague Edward Wingfield reacted similarly, citing India and the Straits in writing up his opinions.28

26 Sovereignty and Sexuality

The cross-colonial traffic was clearly just as pertinent at the Colonial Office as was domestic legislative preference. India, likewise, made frequent reference to the Sinhalese legislation and its passage during the unusually rapid passing of its own age of consent law in 1891, collecting up for reference, and comparison, papers on the Ceylon legislation.29 And when the princely Indian state of Mysore banned infant marriages in 1894, it was clear how closely they had tracked, in turn, the passage of the Indian law. The Dewan was ‘painfully aware of the scale of protests unleashed by the passage’ of the 1891 law, and moved cautiously in his own state to secure success.30 Moreover, unlike India, where there were no convictions under the act between 1891 and 1921, Mysore’s ruler was determined that his law would have teeth. Around 475 people were prosecuted between 1896 and 1911. 31 These striking examples of interest and concern that did not relate back to an imperial centre suggest that local conditions could trump British considerations. Opposition to the bill in India was well organized, highly conservative, and unrelenting. In other colonies, there was little debate outside governing and activist circles. Stead’s exposé had certainly encouraged public debate in Britain, and there the voices of protest were largely in favour of new and stiffer protective laws. In South Africa, white middleclass women campaigned on behalf of the new legislation, but the measure evinced little interest beyond such circles. In Queensland, passage of the bill was slow and the select committee’s deliberations were held in camera and few of their findings were ever made public. There were surprisingly few objections to the secrecy which veiled the committee’s deliberations, for the issue was seen as delicate but necessary. Conversely, in India, government secrecy as well as what was seen as the unseemly haste with which the bill was rushed through, were among the issues which ignited the furious protests there. The scope of the Hindu protests caught the Indian government by surprise, scattered as they were the length and breadth of British India.32 Lansdowne had confidently anticipated that his administration would be ‘on very strong ground’ in raising the age of consent by two years.33 To Northbrook, he wrote that the government was ‘on unassailable ground,’ a prediction that proved disastrously inaccurate.34 Only days after the raising of the age of consent, the government of India issued orders which effectively nullified the prosecution of any such cases. The law was a dead letter, not because proof of age was unattainable but because the clash between effective local protest and government obduracy proved insurmountable. The impossibility of straddling local culture and customs while remaining

Philippa Levine 27

committed to a British reading of both culture and law were perhaps nowhere more vividly demonstrated than in the Indian version of the age of consent debate, which Amiya Sen rightly characterizes as ‘one of the major public events of the closing decades of the century.’35 What, then, does a transnational reading of age of consent laws offer us? The concept of consent always requires historical grounding, but it also always signals certain processes associated most especially with modernity. While we need to draw careful distinctions between the contemporary principle of informed consent and the ideas around consent more commonly articulated in the nineteenth century, both, nonetheless, imply and refer to critical and accompanying notions of responsibility, adulthood and, above all, citizenship as these are understood in legal, in political, and in cultural arenas. Consent defines modern adulthood within a framework of individualism deeply tied to the location of both political and individual sovereignty. In the modern period and in the west, the idea of consent has centrally implied two linked sovereignties, that of the freely consenting individual whose personal sovereignty in turn legitimized a state sovereignty based on collective political assent. In colonial societies, what could consent mean in coercive settings, in environments in which citizenship itself was still in its infancy and governments were appointed rather than elected? There were, as we have seen, distinctive differences in legislation in a variety of arenas, not only in the substance of the legislation but in local reaction to it, in the debates that preceded promulgation, and in the arguments brought to bear on lawmakers. And when Britain was once again considering these issues in the metropolitan arena in 1908, Home Office officials advanced as a salient argument that Britain lagged behind its colonies in legislating. ‘It would surely not be asking too much of the present Parliament to bring our legislation for the protection of our own daughters up to the level of our Colonies, to say nothing of other nations. It ought not to be too much, considering our moral position, to ask that we should be in advance of them.’36 Even more fascinating as a glimpse of what was at stake here is that the document from which this quotation is taken evinced no interest in the dependent colonies, tabulating only the laws in place in white settler colonies and in Europe and North America. It was taken for granted – and the legal texts also make this clear – that Britain was indubitably ‘in advance’ of its non-white colonies; it was the comparison with white settler environments that bit most deeply. In this respect, another important backdrop for understanding the Indian age of consent act is an instructive one. Faced with an unwelcome lawsuit for restitution of conjugal rights in 1884, a 20-year old

28 Sovereignty and Sexuality

Hindu woman named Rukhmabai contested her husband’s demand, arguing in court that marriage should not be binding on a spouse who had not consented to it, and that since she was too young to exercise discretion at the time she was married, aged 11, to Dadaji Bhikaji Thankur, the marriage could not be truly legitimated. The British judge who ruled against Rukhmabai on appeal in 1887 gave her a month to comply with his order to live with her husband, with a six month jail sentence as the penalty for defiance. The case was widely and lengthily reported in Britain as well as in India.37 Sir Andrew Scoble, who would oversee the passage of the age of consent act in 1891, wrote of it to the governor-general.38 The claim Rukhmabai made in defence of her refusal to join her husband illuminates the complex web which ties together philosophical and legal ideas about consent, the sexuality of women, and the rights of colonial subjects. Consent was at the heart of her argument. The case raised difficult questions about the relation between Hindu and English law, for while child marriage was seen as Hindu, restitution of conjugal rights was solely an English precedent. Barbarity, then, was conveyed not solely by local indigenous practice but by English law. Age of consent laws illuminate the tension between the reluctance to allow women to fashion their own destinies and the increasing pressure of modernization which saw at least elements of women’s self-representation or liberation as fundamental markers of a new and modern sovereign liberty.39 These were, after all, protective and preventive laws which reminded women of the eternally custodial nature of their relationship with men; they dealt either directly with sexual consent or, alternatively, with women’s marriageability, itself another form of consent to sex. The failure of English law quite specifically in the Rukhmabai case put the beneficence and wisdom, as well as the acclaimed modernity, of the English model itself on trial. Britain’s claims to be the arbiter of civilized behaviour meant that early sexual awakening was seen as ‘contrary to the first principles of civilized society.’40 It was a potent point, for British officials as well as the public were fond of castigating the lax morals of the easterner in contrast to a reassuringly solid British decency in these matters. But when it was British law which insisted on returning a reluctant woman, married as a small girl to a husband she barely knew and clearly now disdained, the system was open for questioning. And in the colonies, that was precisely what occurred. One moderate Indian newspaper, for example, thought that ‘[I]f a foreign government is once allowed to interfere with any social custom, there is no knowing where it will stop.’41 While what they were discussing here was age of

Philippa Levine 29

consent laws, with their alleged disruption of Hindu orthodoxy, the echo of Rukhmabai is clear. Playing to the injustice of an imposed and alien law, whether from a reformist or a conservative view, was a powerful political weapon. The idea of British governance as a foreign imposition was hardly the political sentiment Britain hoped to encourage on Indian soil.42 Not surprisingly, as Radhika Singha points out, the Government of India tried hard to separate consent legislation from the debate over restitution of conjugal rights.43 Such a separation was in many respects purely technical, as the subject of rape reveals. Consent in this sexualized arena was frequently defined as something which could only be given once. As a result, rape within marriage was not recognized under English law. Marriage in England signalled immediate and ongoing consent to cohabitation; consent could not be withdrawn and no reiteration was required during a marriage. One of the most controversial aspects of the Indian legislation was that husbands having intercourse with their lawful but underage wives could be convicted of rape. Opponents pointed to this double standard as evidence of the bill’s many failings, while its supporters argued that consent was meaningless in the context of girls married before puberty. Rape, in this context, was for the English in India the opposite of consent, while in England where adulthood accorded women some minimal level of personal sovereignty, marital rape was an oxymoron. The debate over rape, palpably, was not a debate about women but about male competency (as well as rights), and in the Indian context about the allegedly depraved preferences of Hindu men for sexual encounters with small girls.44 The silencing of women effected by these differing legal strategies was common to men in both places. While English law gave women no rights against marital rape, many influential men in India sought to reframe the debate by claiming that the rape of a woman by a stranger was a far graver crime than by a husband. The former would guarantee a woman’s ‘social degradation and … life-long shame … wanting when the husband is the offender.’45 Tanika Sarkar sees colonialism as having tied women ‘to a shastric and custom-based regimen of non-consenting and indissoluble infant marriage,’ and it was this which rendered the distinction between husbandly misdemeanour and a stranger’s felony the more persuasive.46 For women, of course, the end result was depressingly similar; her consent, at whatever age deemed appropriate, was to a possible lifetime of physical coercion. Consent for women was, in effect, a politically passive act, less the opposite of non-consent than a reading of consent as a possibility. Such

30 Sovereignty and Sexuality

a construction certainly reflected dominant readings of female sexuality, and it contrasts with male consent which was at once an active, rational, and thoughtful process, participatory in terms of the polity. And, of course, in denying Indian men the same rights to the married female body as were granted to British men, colonial male consent was implicitly distinguished from and made less than British male consent. Consent was not in any sense, then, an absolute concept; it was stratified along the faultlines of gender and of imperialism. It is one of the ironies of the consent debates that, in arguing about the age at which girls might consent to their husband’s appropriation of their bodies, the larger issue of consent in governance was not seen as its fundamental political parallel. Ultimately, age of consent legislation in colonial settings may be seen as unfurling, if not always consciously, a problematic debate in which consent as a broader political entity tied to sovereignty became contested ground. By limiting consent merely to considerations of female eligibility for what was seen as the defining sexual act of legitimate marriage, this other political debate though always in the background was obscured and, albeit temporarily, silenced. Age of consent legislation not only enshrined the principle of female subjection to a specifically heterosexual male dominance, but left unanswered other and urgent questions about imperial governance in a host of political environments. It is, I would contend, a transnational perspective on gender, empire, and sovereignty which most effectively allows us to foreground a debate which many in Britain in the 1890s were anxious to suppress. After all, in every instance these debates veered uneasily between universalist pronouncements grounded in beliefs about biology or national character, and assertions of the uniqueness of local conditions. The fragility of a nationalist construction is not hard to discern in such instances, and a transnational reading, which compares simultaneous debates in varied colonial settings, makes vividly apparent the implications of this instability for readings of sovereignty as the ultimate and defining impulse of modern politics. Seen through the twin lenses of gender and of imperial rule, the better analytical option lies clearly beyond sovereignty.

Notes 1. P. Charles, ‘The Name of the Father: Women, Paternity and British Rule in Nineteenth-Century Jamaica’, International Labor and Working-Class History 41 (1992), p. 19. 2. A 1916 act in the Union of South Africa was aimed specifically at girls and mentally defective women: see Acting Resident Commissioner, Basutoland

Philippa Levine 31

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

to High Commissioner for South Africa, 11 November 1919, Public Record Office, London [hereafter PRO], DO 119/935. Lord Knutsford to Governor of Ceylon, 22 April 1890, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library [hereafter OIOC], P/3889. R. Barber, ‘The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1891 and the “Age of Consent” Issue in Queensland’, Australia and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 10 (1977), p. 96. Memorial, Ladies Branch of the Calcutta Missionary Conference for the Protection of Young Girls, October 1887, National Archives of India, New Delhi [hereafter NAI], Home Department, 1888. Judicial Proceedings A. July 1888, Nos. 129–132. A.P. MacDonnell, Officiating Secretary to the Government of India to Sir H.St.A. Goodrich, Madras Civil Service, 8 October 1886, OIOC, P/2703. A.P. MacDonnell to Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, 30 December 1887, OIOC, P/2963. For Malabari in London, see A. Burton, ‘A “Pilgrim Reformer” at the Heart of the Empire: Behramji Malabari in Late-Victorian London’, Gender & History 8(2) (1996), pp. 175–96, and idem. At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late Victorian Britain (Berkeley, 1997), Ch. 4. C.H. Heimsath, ‘The Origin and Enactment of the Indian Age of Consent Bill, 1891’, Journal of Asian Studies 21(4) (1962), p. 492. See, for example, Lord Reay to Marquess of Lansdowne, 13 June 1890, No. 40; Lord Reay to Marquess of Lansdowne, No. 43, 4 July 1890; and Earl of Northbrook to Marquess of Lansdowne, 7 August 1890, No. 52, all in OIOC, Mss. Eur. D558/12. Marquess of Lansdowne to Sir S.C. Bayley, No. 164, 10 October 1890, OIOC, Mss. Eur. D558/19. Marquess of Lansdowne to Lord Northbrook, 6 September 1890, OIOC, Mss. Eur. C144/5. See too Lansdowne to The Hon’ble Sir A.R. Scoble, No. 12, 8 July 1890, OIOC, Mss. Eur. D558/19. Barber, ‘The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1891’, p. 96. Note of Sir A.R. Scoble, 6 July 1890, OIOC, Mss. Eur. D558/19. Quoted in Barber, ‘The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1891’, p. 103; T. Sarkar, ‘Rhetoric Against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-Wife’, Economic and Political Weekly (4 September 1993), p.1875; R. Singha, ‘Nationalism, Colonialism and the Politics of Masculinity’, Studies in History 14(1), n.s. (1998), p. 139. P. Uberoi, ‘When Is A Marriage Not A Marriage? Sex, Sacrament and Contract in Hindu Marriage’, in Uberoi (ed.) Social Reform, Sexuality and the State (New Delhi, 1996), p. 335; H. Banerji, ‘Age of Consent and Hegemonic Social Reform’, in C. Midgley (ed.) Gender and Imperialism (Manchester, 1998), p. 22; C. Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (London, 1989), p. 34. B. Malabari, An Appeal to the Women of England and to her Men (n.d.), p. 19, OIOC, L/P&J/6/283. M. Kasturi, ‘Law and Crime in India: British Policy and the Female Infanticide Act of 1870’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 1(2) (1994), pp. 169–93. For a discussion of the broader arena of registration, see R. Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify: Identification Practices in Colonial India’, Studies in History 16(2), n.s. (2000), pp. 151–98, esp. p. 156.

32 Sovereignty and Sexuality 19. D. Gorham, ‘The “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” Re-Examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late-Victorian England’, Victorian Studies 21 (1978), p. 356; pp. 372–3. 20. PRO, HO45/9546/59343. 21. Unidentified magistrate to Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, 21 February 1895, PRO, HO45/9745/A56729. 22. Edward Troup to Sir K. Muir Mackenzie, 28 April 1914, PRO, HO45/10711/244320. 23. E. Macgregor to High Commissioner for South Africa, Letter No. H.C. 209, 15 November 1919, PRO, DO 119/935. 24. J.R. Kincaid, Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Durham, 1998), p. 14. 25. M. Sinha, ‘Nationalism and Respectable Sexuality’, Genders 21 (1995), p. 41. 26. Metropolitan Police internal memorandum, 7 March 1895, PRO, MEPO 2/439. 27. George W. Johnson to Mr. Wingfield, 13 December 1889, PRO CO 54/584. 28. George W. Johnson, 4 March 1890; E. Wingfield, 7 March 1890, both in PRO CO 54/584. 29. Edward Wingfield to Under Secretary of State for India, 17 March 1890, OIOC, L/P&J/6/272; OIOC, L/P&J/6/292; John Bramston, Colonial Office to Under Secretary of State for India, 31 July 1890, and Lord Knutsford to Governor of Ceylon, 22 April 1890, OIOC, P/3889. 30. J. Nair, ‘Prohibited Marriage: State Protection and the Child Wife’, in Uberoi (ed.) Social Reform, Sexuality and the State, p. 165. 31. G. Forbes, The New Cambridge History of India. IV. 2: Women in Modern India (Cambridge, 1996), p. 84; Nair, ‘Prohibited Marriage’, p. 170. 32. Heimsath, ‘Origin and Enactment of the Indian Age of Consent Bill’, pp. 498–9. 33. Marquess of Lansdowne to Sir S.C. Bayley, No. 164, 10 October 1890, OIOC, Mss. Eur. D558/19. 34. Marquess of Lansdowne to Lord Northbrook, 6 September 1890, OIOC, Mss. Eur. C144/5. 35. A. Sen, ‘Hindu Revivalism in Action – The Age of Consent Bill Agitation in Bengal’, Indian Historical Review 7(1–2) (1980–1), p. 179. See, too, P. AnagolMcGinn, ‘The Age of Consent Act (1891) Reconsidered: Women’s Perspectives and Participation in the Child-Marriage Controversy in India’, South Asia Research 12(2) (1992), p. 100. 36. ‘Age of Protection in the United Kingdom, Our Colonies and Foreign Countries,’ PRO, HO 45/19637, 6. 37. For the response of the British press, see A. Burton, ‘Conjugality on Trial: The Rukhmabai Case and the Debate on Indian Child-Marriage in Late-Victorian Britain’, in G. Robb and N. Berber (eds) Disorder in the Court: Trials and Sexual Conflict at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1999), pp. 33–56. For the case more generally, see A. Burton, ‘From Child Bride to “Hindoo Lady”: Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain’, American Historical Review 103(4) (1998), pp. 1119–46; S. Chandra, ‘Whose Laws? Notes on a Legitimising Myth of the Colonial Indian State’, Studies in History 8(2) (1992), pp. 187–211; idem. Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (Delhi, 1998); M. Kosambi, ‘Gender Reform and

Philippa Levine 33

38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46.

Competing State Controls over Women: The Rakhmabai Case (1884–1888)’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 29(1 & 2) (n.s.) (1995), pp. 265–90; Singha, ‘Nationalism, Colonialism and the Politics of Masculinity’, pp. 139–40. Burton, ‘From Child Bride to “Hindoo Lady”’, p. 1120. T. Sarkar, ‘A Prehistory of Rights: The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial Bengal’, Feminist Studies 26(3) (2000), p. 601. ‘Abstract of the Proceedings of the Council of the Governor General in India, assembled for the purpose of making Laws and Regulations under the provisions of the Act of Parliament 24 & 25 Vict., Cap. 67,’ Imperial Legislative Council, 1891, G.H.P. Evans, 19 March 1891, OIOC, V/9/27, 95. Surabhi-o-Patáká, quoted in Report on Native Papers (Bengal), week ending 14 February 1891, OIOC, L/R/5/17, 207. D. Engels makes the important point that the growing role of nationalist politics in the 1890s increased indigenous hostility towards British governance. See her Beyond Purdah? Women in Bengal 1890–1939 (Delhi, 1996), p. 102. Singha, ‘Nationalism, Colonialism and the Politics of Masculinity’, p. 142. See, too, OIOC, Ms. Eur. D558/3, Cross to Lansdowne, 23 September 1890, advising this separation. Singha, ‘Nationalism, Colonialism and the Politics of Masculinity,’ pp. 135–6. Gujarat Darpan, 12 March 1891, p. 83, in Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay Presidency, week ending 14 March 1891, OIOC L/R/5146. T. Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation. Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism (London, 2001), p. 228.

3 After the Nation-State: Citizenship, Empire and Global Coordination in the New Internationalism, 1914–19301 Frank Trentmann Few historical systems have been subjected to such wide-ranging critical reassessment in the last two decades as the nation-state. Social scientists have debated the withering away of the state and the expansion of global networks of power such as transnational society and global civil society.2 Political theorists have turned away from the methodological nationalism bequeathed by the nation-state towards ideas of cosmopolitan democracy.3 Recent historians, too, have problematised the essentialist and bounded nature of the nation-state. Post-colonial studies in particular have criticised insular approaches to the nation and have emphasised the systemic interpenetration of metropole and colony.4 This chapter seeks to extend this critique by exploring earlier transnational moments. Social scientists and post-colonial writers have rightly challenged an insular, even introverted conception of nation-states, but their critique also tends to project into the past a pure, ideal-typical version of the liberal nation-state. The discursive and institutional hegemony of the nation-state between the French Revolution and the Second World War can be exaggerated. The nation-state was never without its internal critics. Its institutional and ideological ascendancy was never secure, nor was it as solid or homogenous as recent critiques tend to suggest. Far from being the novel product of the globalising pressures of the late twentieth century, the ‘crisis’ of the nation-state has a longer history; it may even be considered endemic to the very project of the nation-state. Similarly, transnational ideas of citizenship and coordination have a longer past that developed in dialogue with a critique of the nation-state. This chapter revisits one earlier moment of contestation, that of the First World War and post-war period, when the nation-state suffered a crisis of legitimation. At the heart of the British Empire, a group of ‘new 34

Frank Trentmann 35

internationalists’ emerged who began to challenge the moral and political foundations of the liberal nation-state as a unit of global relations. They questioned the presumed fit between nationality and democracy within a territorial sovereign state. In part, the new internationalism involved a search for new institutions and economic policy in a national and international context, but it also aspired to a more general moral and civic project, locally and globally. Economic and institutional innovations in what today would be called governance were underpinned by a broad sense that the inherited national models of liberal democracy had been overwhelmed by transnational challenges. In domestic affairs, too, parliamentary democracy appeared increasingly overburdened and distant from the concerns of citizens. To survive, democracies needed to find new sources of civic energy and moral persuasion. The ‘new internationalism’ simultaneously sought to civilise global relations by inserting new transnational institutions and to overcome a democracy gap between state and citizen at home. This view of a global shift in the nature of politics and social relations involved a new connection between the local and the global. Yet it also included empire. In fact, the new vision of global coordination was often seen as a global extension, even a historical culmination of the British Empire. Victorian and Edwardian liberalism had popularised an enlightenment notion of the pacifying, civilising force of trade – the ‘douceur’ of commerce.5 Free Trade, in this view, wove bonds of peace and harmony across the world, by making different societies dependent on exchange and by taking politics and aristocratic interests, associated with a wartax state, out of international relations. To be sure, Free Trade never was as politically neutral or internationally benign a force as this moralising vision made it out to be. Free Trade could be grafted onto an imperial vision of governance. By the 1890s and 1900s, some radicals and socialists were questioning whether Free Trade necessarily maximised public welfare. Still, internationalist support for Free Trade remained overwhelming on the eve of the First World War, refuelled by the transnational movement around Norman Angell, who pointed to the growing interconnection of financial markets to warn national leaders that wars no longer paid.6 The First World War led to a profound re-evaluation of these core values and beliefs. Initially an administrative and economic critique, the new internationalism developed into a more general vision of civic renewal and global coordination. It is this broader shift in outlook that is traced in this chapter. Institutionally, war shortages, the shipping shortage, the blockade, and the rise of capitalist trusts prompted a sceptical

36 After the Nation-State

assessment of the capacity of states to act autonomously and pointed to the limits of democratic sovereignty. Progressive and idealist traditions in turn converted these challenges into a foundational critique of liberalism, highlighting simultaneously the declining viability and legitimacy of the nation-state and the failure of Free Trade to automatically foster global welfare and democracy. Driving forward this new internationalist vision was a group of British public intellectuals, administrators, and progressive politicians who had been drafted into the machinery of the British state during the First World War. They had experienced at first hand the limits of national sovereignty in a global conflict. While never a tight intellectual tradition or formally organised group, new internationalists shared a core set of ideas about the defective arrangement of the nation-state and of the limits of an inherited portfolio of liberal values and policies in an age of transnational flux. It is possible to identify an inner group of new internationalists around Arthur Salter, Alfred Zimmern, E.F. Wise, Arnold Toynbee, and E.M.H. Lloyd.7 The crisis of the nation-state during the First World War had brought this group together in a very material sense. They were drafted into key positions of state and allied policy and took a leading role in formulating and executing new inter-allied controls of shipping, food, and other resources which, as the war progressed, increasingly shifted decision-making from national to more transnational systems. It was this wartime experience with inter-allied coordination that prompted them to rethink the nature of global political economy in relation to social democracy at home. After the war, their careers and policy projects diverged. Arthur Salter, who had been instrumental in allied shipping policy, moved to Geneva, where he became director of the Economic and Finance Section at the League of Nations. Alfred Zimmern developed into perhaps the most widely known and influential new internationalist in public life in the inter-war years; after his wartime experience in the Ministry of Reconstruction and in political intelligence for the Foreign Office, he helped found the Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in 1920, ran the League of Nation’s Institute of Intellectual Co-operation in Paris, the parent body of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and combined the life of international public intellectual with holding the first chair of international relations at Oxford. On the Left was E.F. Wise, who had served on the food council, and would resign from the civil service – after a trip to Moscow to study Soviet export plans in 1923 – to become a vocal internationalist spokesperson for the Independent Labour Party. Finally,

Frank Trentmann 37

there was E.M.H. Lloyd, who moved from the Ministry of Food to the League’s Economic and Finance Section, and then to Britain’s Empire Marketing Board. By the 1940s, several of these men had advanced into the new type of international civil servant and international public intellectual associated with the United Nation’s system; Lloyd headed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation agency in the Balkans, Zimmern became UNESCO’s first director. This internationalising shift, however, did not proceed straight from local to global. Empire played an integral role in the intellectual and political trajectory of many of these new internationalists. Zimmern, especially, drew on the British commonwealth to construct his vision of a new international order, while for Lloyd ideas about the international coordination of foodstuffs and raw materials connected with his inter-war experience of Empire marketing and trade arrangements in the white-settler Dominions. Underneath their different careers, however, there remained an affinity of thought. To them, the pre-war liberal order had imagined a world of autonomous nation-states that left problems of global coordination to the commercial mechanisms of Free Trade. The war was a testimony to the bankruptcy of this inherited vision. State and nationality needed to be divorced from each other, not moulded into a nation-state. This separation of political citizenship from national identity, and the creation of new agencies of international coordination would together revitalise democratic culture. Democratic participation and social inclusion would expand above and below the level of the state. In brief, support for the League of Nations was not just a chapter in international diplomacy but a dual project of local and transnational citizenship. The first signs of a new internationalist mindset and machinery of government appeared in the shipping crisis in 1916–7. Bottlenecks resulting from loss of tonnage and the global dispersal of national shipping fleets made it impossible to supply both the home front and armed forces through conventional national channels. By 1917, interallied programme committees had taken control of 90 per cent of world tonnage. Allied shipping policy was complemented by programme committees for major foods and raw materials, eventually covering everything from wool and paper to cereals, sugar, and meat. The pooling and distribution of British ships and food to areas of need abroad – for example in Italy – became an inter-allied decision, rather than a national one. This experiment in international organisations was spearheaded by the Allied Maritime Transport Executive (AMTE) of civil servants from allied states, and the Allied Maritime Transport Council (AMTC) of ministers.

38 After the Nation-State

These bodies would be dissolved in 1919–20, largely under American pressure, as the United States disengaged from international government. For new internationalists, however, the AMTE and AMTC were a defining experience, a prototype of a new international system in the making. At the end of the war, new internationalists within the British state urged that the AMTC be turned into a supreme economic council that, while reporting to heads of governments, would have powers to distribute key resources. It was foolish to believe that Britain’s interest lay in splendid isolation, Wise argued in the summer of 1919. Instability in foreign countries, like France and Italy, where the cost of living was escalating, inevitably had international repercussions. Such challenges lay beyond the power of national sovereignty and, like earlier challenges during wartime, required international coordination, especially in the area of food control. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, international coordination and the League of Nations promised to provide European societies with ordered government that they might be unable to provide on their own. Wise even suggested moving economic ministers of member states into an Economic Council at the League which would supervise economic organisation and be directly responsible to its Supreme Council.8 Lloyd went even further, calling for the League to start regulating petrol, oil, coal, and other key raw materials and international monopolies which, unregulated, threatened to destabilise international relations.9 Far from being viewed as temporary aberrations, the new international bodies and committees emerging out of the First World War prompted a profound debate about the future of citizenship and sovereignty in an age of globalisation. For Ernest Barker, the influential Oxford political theorist who wrote a popular defence of Britain’s role in the war, the First World War demonstrated the defects of an inherited, strong notion of state sovereignty as well as the brutal tyranny of exclusionary nationalism. Barker saw an international confederation as the guarantor of positive liberty. And he rejected the older notion of state sovereignty ‘in the sense of liberty of the State to do as it likes’ as outdated.10 Historically, this was a sensitive issue for liberals and radicals, and no more so than in the field of international economic relations. In the late nineteenth century, Free Traders had been dogmatically opposed to the establishment of international bodies to deal with the escalating regime of subsidies and export bounties for articles like sugar which were creating havoc for the world economy. When, after years of abortive efforts, Britain’s Conservative government finally in 1902 joined the main sugar producing countries in signing the Brussels Sugar Convention, Free

Frank Trentmann 39

Traders saw it as a dangerous abdication of British state sovereignty. Constitutional principles, it appeared, were handed over to a quasi-feudal body of international representatives unaccountable to British citizens and parliament. In 1903, Chamberlain launched an even more comprehensive attack with his protectionist campaign for an Imperial Zollverein. In the Liberal defence, dogmatic commitment to unilateral Free Trade and an idealised patriotic notion of the Westminster model with its supposed purity of politics went hand in hand. Here were two sources of the Free Trade revival which swept across Edwardian Britain and defeated the protectionist forces which had made headway abroad, in the white settler colonies like Canada and Australia as well as in Europe and the United States. The Edwardian years saw an unprecedented expansion of Free Trade in popular culture and politics, from beachside meetings in seaside resorts to visual spectacles and political entertainment. It showed how effectively unilateral Free Trade could be combined in an age of mass politics with a popular belief in Britain’s civilising mission, the rights of citizen-consumers, and an ethics of peace. Emboldened by the Liberal landslide victory in the 1906 general election and the defeat of Conservative protectionists in the two elections of 1910, Free Traders campaigned until, in 1912, Britain formally withdrew from the Brussels Convention. The war, by contrast, provided new internationalists with a language of ‘co-operation’ and ‘co-ordination’ that provided a very different way of talking about sovereignty. It made it possible to view international relations other than in zero-sum terms. As Zimmern put it in a public address at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1927, ‘co-operation’ was not merely an institutional arrangement but ‘the conception applicable to a world of interdependent groups’. It reflected a historic shift away from a world of self-contained units guarding the principle of sovereignty. Whereas ‘sovereignty faces inward and marshals its forces against “the foreigner” …. [c]o-operation looks outward, and transforms what has been strange and “foreign” into elements of working collaboration for recognised common interests.’11 This outward conception of coordination provided an important new sense of identity and democratic legitimacy for the generation of international administrators emerging from the war. Arthur Salter, the director of the Financial and Economic Section of the League Secretariat in the 1920s, even elevated ‘coordination’ into the very paradigm of international relations. Coordination created a shared international mentality and policy above the level of nation-states without denying constitutional sovereignty. To Salter, the wartime AMTE and AMTC

40 After the Nation-State

were prototypes of an emerging international system based on the principle of coordination. Both the AMTE and the AMTC were formally accountable to sovereign states; and neither body had formally independent executive powers.12 Yet by bringing together ministers and administrators from member states in an international body, they fostered a common international outlook above and beyond the particular interests of individual states. The Belgian relief scheme in 1917–8 and allied food programmes suggested how international coordination could tackle problems which sovereign nation-states were incapable of handling on their own.13 For new internationalists ‘coordination’ provided a via media between the extremes of an older Westphalian state system and more radical demands for a world state. The attractiveness of this vision, however, derived from far more than its administrative value for civil servants pulled into emerging structures of international governance. It can also be traced to a diagnosis of democracy in crisis. This crisis was seen to result, on the one hand, from new global challenges to democracy and, on the other, from a pathological over-centralisation of states in the past. At the global level, it was international capitalist trusts especially that posed difficult questions for liberal democratic theory. Trusts and cartels had multiplied since the 1890s, but in pre-war Britain their role in an understanding of politics and economy had been limited. Trusts and cartels were dismissed as unviable, artificial products of foreign tariffs, without any deeper functional connection to changes in capitalism or world trade. There was no reason for Britons to worry: Free Trade safeguarded politics and economy against such apparently costly and inefficient types of modern business. By the end of the First World War, such liberal confidence had disappeared, as consumers, administrators, and progressive intellectuals had come to accept that international trusts were there to stay. Indeed, the war had considerably strengthened the reach of their international operations, not least in the politically sensitive area of food, a development symbolised by the growing world market share controlled by the American meat trust in this period. Individual states, and their citizens, were at the mercy of capitalist corporations. New internationalists articulated this dilemma clearly. International trusts were ‘capable of becoming real and serious rivals to the power of free governments and free peoples’, Zimmern warned towards the end of the war.14 Coupled with this was a recognition of expanding state power, as states sought to monopolise key materials for national defence and national survival – setting off a race to control vital resources and avoid national

Frank Trentmann 41

dependence. The choice, it appeared, was no longer between competitive trade and government control but between international regulation of trade by a syndication of international capitalists or by accountable governments. Already before the First World War, the debate about imperialism had introduced doubts about the naturally peaceful, democratic workings of Free Trade. ‘Underconsumption’ and ‘oversaving’, as the ‘new liberal’ J.A. Hobson famously argued in his Imperialism in the wake of the South African war, could create a competitive militarist search for foreign markets and investment. Still, greater social inequality (via more progressive taxation) would purify the international mechanism of free exchange, it was presumed.15 The First World War produced a more fundamental blow to the Free Trade mindset. The new appreciation of large-scale combinations and economic state power in international relations dissolved the pre-war association between democracy and a free competitive market. The war, and the blockade in particular, Zimmern argued, had demonstrated the naivety of Richard Cobden and his disciples: it was not possible to draw a sharp line between commerce and politics. Control of raw materials was an explosive political subject, as were international trusts. Instead of relying on the natural harmony of trade, politics needed to be put back into the global economy, new internationalists urged.16 In the early and mid-1920s, Lloyd developed his wartime experience of state control into a general model of stabilisation, most notably in his official account of food control during the First World War (for the Carnegie Endowment), a book on trade stabilisation, and, more popularly, in a series of articles entitled ‘Towards an International Policy’ for the progressive Nation and Athenaeum.17 Some of these ideas informed the Living Wage programme of the Independent Labour Party. The rise of trusts and government pools, he argued in 1923, meant that the orthodox ‘laws of supply and demand will become less and less adequate and helpful, either as an account of what happens, or as a guide to constructive action’.18 Democracy and industrial peace had come to depend on price stability and orderly marketing and trade, such as the successful international pooling and distribution of raw materials and foodstuffs. Before the war, Free Trade had been popularly represented as the natural champion of ‘citizen-consumers’.19 Now the civic interests of consumers pointed to rationalisation and international regulation. Regulating trade would stabilise the cost of living and protect communities against the vagaries of trade cycles and unemployment, and resulting social and political upheaval.

42 After the Nation-State

Global capitalists needed to be integrated into this new project. Left to themselves, trusts and cartels could be dangerous. But their energies could also be harnessed to regulate production and distribution, thus stabilising prices and sheltering consumers and producers alike from price fluctuations. Zimmern pointed to Walther Rathenau, the industrial leader who had organised Germany’s raw materials during the war, and Lord Leverhulme, head of Britain’s soap empire, as a new type of organisational genius. This rapprochement between democratic and commercial domains was a direct and conscious volte face from Liberals’ pre-war ideal of a ‘purity of politics’, unspoiled by business, profit and self-interest. ‘Free trade as an international panacea’, Zimmern argued, ‘belongs to the age before the present intimate association between Governments and Big Business were dreamt of’.20 Here was the intellectual background to the 1927 World Economic Conference with its attention to the potentially constructive role of cartels in international stabilisation. Of course, not everyone agreed; Cassel felt monopolies were dangerous and needed to be fought by states. Still, the drift of new internationalist thinking was clear. Salter, Alexander Loveday and Pietro Stoppani felt it was time to encourage industrial ententes as a way of controlling protectionism, improving production, eliminating waste, and lowering costs for consumers.21 Inflationary cycles and the world economic depression only enhanced the international appeal of these business organisations as tools of regulation. Cartels, Salter argued in 1932, rather than being the children of tariffs, ‘may put an end to some of the evils of the present tariff system’ and might ‘provide a vital constituent element in a General World Economic Council’.22 This intellectual turn towards international coordination was one part of a larger debate about the democratic deficit in over-centralised nation-states. In the long nineteenth century, new internationalists argued, nations had succumbed to self-centred ‘national’ policies. These, in turn, had prompted the centralisation of government and facilitated the coming of war. The war, Zimmern argued, demonstrated how central government had become ‘outstripped by the development of modern society, which challenges its authority and diminishes its control’.23 Parliamentary democracy had similarly become overburdened with tasks and expectations of welfare and security. A democratic experiment was needed to overcome the inflexiblity of the centralised nation-state. And it was here that international institutions came in, as a link between local and global communities. The language of coordination was not only important in breaking out of old conventions of sovereignty, but equally for providing an alternative

Frank Trentmann 43

to centralisation. International coordination avoided the scenario of a world state, side-stepping fears of centralised power. As Salter was keen to insist, international coordination was ‘a great effort of decentralization’. Instead of concentrating power, it would shift it ‘from the few overstrained centres of excessive power, and to base it boldly and broadly on the general wishes and will of the peoples of the world’.24 Of course, this was a highly idealised view that did not specify how the wills of the peoples of the world would find expression. But equally it would be too simple to see here merely a self-serving rationale that suited a new class of international civil servants. In addition to giving renewed attention to the place of public opinion in global politics – a strand normally and most famously associated with Immanuel Kant in the late eighteenth century – this reworking of the liberal tradition looked forward more generally to elements of what more recently has been called ‘global civil society’.25 This included not just international experts and firms but social movements as well. The League had done much to create a circle of non-governmental organisations surrounding its more formal, official activities, especially in the sphere of human rights and welfare.26 For new internationalists, international coordination was partly so attractive because it offered a channel of democratic opinion outside the state. By the time of the world depression, Zimmern told the co-operative movement that ‘[i]f we want to have really efficient international government, we must build it up from international voluntary societies, so that at every step voluntary associations watch over the work of the governments in those subjects in which they are dealing.’27 If the institutional nature of such a global network of civil society was left imprecise, there was no doubt about ‘public opinion’ as a crucial ingredient. Instead of representative institutions or the douceur of commerce, the focus here was on democratic, civic education. Zimmern envisaged local ‘centres of knowledge’ connected in international networks without a single sovereign centre. Members of parliament here appeared not as representatives but as interpreters between experts and the man in the street. Increasingly, the political public was located outside constitutional centres of representation.28 This concern with revitalising a political public stemmed from important idealist traditions of thought, and these, in turn privileged civil society as the site for democratic renewal.29 Zimmern’s intellectual trajectory here is telling. A leading public interpreter of ancient Greece before the war, Zimmern acted as the spokesman for ideas of social service and associational life in a variety of public arenas, from Toynbee Hall and the Round Table to the Workers Educational Association.

44 After the Nation-State

From a German-Jewish background – his grandfather had moved to Britain in the wake of the 1848 revolution – he advanced to become the public intellectual face of the new internationalism in the 1920s. Already before the war, he had mused about the prospects of how to reconcile a civic spirit in a commercial and imperial society; in The Greek Commonwealth in 1911 – a popular as well as academic success – he looked to fifth century Athens for insights into the future of social motives in a world of power and riches.30 His was a moral vision of politics in which progress in government meant growing political engagement and the ‘deepening and extension of man’s duty towards his neighbour’.31 For working-class organisations at Ruskin College in 1916, he translated ‘the state’ in Aristotle’s Politics as ‘community’, merely the ‘highest of all forms of association’. The modern pioneers of associational life had been the English, especially the working classes with their corporate lifestyle. The war, and engagement with German nationalism, hardened this view. Prussianism, Zimmern argued, had turned community into a ‘military and economic unity’ and deprived politics of its ethical and associational sources. German ‘culture’ was dangerous because it was cultivated by the state for the state. Britain, by contrast, adhered to the ideal that ‘education is fellowship, is citizenship’.32 Government based on association would cultivate a public spirit of social service and citizenship, one immune to both nationalist chauvinism and individualist materialism. The new internationalism was about embedding this vision of citizenship in a new international framework, linking together local communities of social service and public opinion. The cosmopolitan extension of citizenship and public opinion required, finally, that the connection between nation and state be loosened. The new internationalism offered a vehement critique of the essentialism of the nation-state. Just as Cobden had led liberals down the fallacious road of thinking politics could be taken out of international relations, John Stuart Mill, Zimmern argued, had misled democrats into viewing nation, state and representative democracy as co-extensive. In a world of largescale organisations, small national states were ‘relics of a vanished past’.33 As the war demonstrated, attempts to turn nationality into a political ideal were historically flawed and dangerous, leading to the oppression of minorities and even racial extermination. This strong attack on Mill, a figure so seminal in shaping public discourse and the radical imagination in Victorian Britain,34 was emblematic of the self-conscious way in which new internationalists sought to break with a Victorian liberal tradition on citizenship. To a degree this was unfair. Mill’s views on the subject of nationality were more nuanced

Frank Trentmann 45

and complex. Mill, it has recently been pointed out, did not simply view common nationality and language as a necessary condition for democracy and social stability. Nor did he necessarily view the progress of civilisation in terms of energetic majorities absorbing backward minorities. Some big nations, like Russia, he clearly did not wish to see expand. In other contexts, like the integration of French Canadians, Mill’s ideas resembled constitutional patriotism more than nationalist assimilation.35 Arguably, for Mill, the connection between nationality and citizenship was more ambivalent than critics have tended to present in debates over cosmopolitan citizenship and minority rights, in recent years as much as during and after the First World War. Zimmern turned to one of Mill’s original critics, Acton, who already in 1862 in his seminal essay on ‘Nationality’ had warned that the nation-state was at best a convenient theory, at worst a ‘retrograde step in history’.36 But Zimmern went further, reclaiming a de-politicised form of nationality for modern societies. Nationality was based not in race but in a ‘spiritual force’ of corporate identity. This spiritual force needed to be separated from citizenship as a form of social service that could claim allegiance irrespective of national background. If Zimmern deflated nationality politically, he upgraded it culturally. For Zimmern, nationality was a bulwark of cultural pluralism and collective personalities against commercial standardisation, of good globalisation (involving cultural diversity) versus flat cosmopolitanism (of self-centred individuals, unmoored from their community and heritage). The cultural upgrading of nationality was vital, because it helped to address a central question of globalisation: how to preserve cultural identity and cohesion in a world of flux, migration, and global economic challenges. Individualising cosmopolitanism was as serious a challenge to spiritual nationality as exclusionary, militant nationalism. Indeed, in November 1915, in the second year of the Great War, Zimmern went so far as to argue that ‘the political Prussianism of a militarist government is far less dangerous to the spiritual welfare of its subjects … than the ruthless and pervading pressure of commercial and cosmopolitan standards.’37 Ideas about nationality and civic life here circulated within a transatlantic orbit, as well as reacting to notions of nation-state and power in Central Europe. Zimmern was part of a vibrant transatlantic network of social reformers and public intellectuals in the early twentieth century.38 Through his contacts with Jane Addams, the leading American social worker and suffragette, Zimmern arrived at a view of immigrant America as a microcosm of the problems of globalisation that all societies would have to confront. He recalled immigrants arriving at Ellis

46 After the Nation-State

Island to whom liberty was ‘only an abstract ideal’, for they had ‘no knowledge and no power to weave it into the texture of their lives’. Lack of nationality here endangered social equality and integration. Unless they preserved the cultural knowledge of their common past, immigrants would be steamrolled by American industrialism into ‘the helpless and degraded tools of the Trust magnate and the Tammany boss’.39 The preservation of nationality as a primary social solidarity was a prerequisite, in this view, for a stable personality, self-respect, and communal traditions, and as such a prerequisite for active citizenship. Yet it was a prerequisite only, for active citizenship concerned public affairs above and beyond particular national cultures. Zimmern presented his own German Jewish background as proof that national heritage and citizenship did not have to be co-extensive. In 1915, a time when pronouncements in favour of German culture risked public attack, Zimmern had the courage to acknowledge ‘the debt I owe to the [German] heritage with which I am connected by blood and tradition’.40 Zimmern presented himself as proof that it was possible to share a civic allegiance to one political system with a spiritual, cultural bond to another nation. The European nation-state model, then, had ceased to be a useful paradigm because of two, quite different historic pressures: cosmopolitan flux and anonymity, on the one hand, and over-politicised and selfdestructive, militant nationalism, on the other. While the challenge of central European nationalism has historically received most attention in discussions of liberal thinkers in this period, for Zimmern, the transnational dimension was just as important. The global spread of commerce and people posed a new set of problems for democracy in the shape of uprooted and restless individuals. For Zimmern, Europe was a ‘stuffy little world’, ‘the most backward of the continents’. The laboratories of the future were ‘more modern-minded States’, like the United States and the South American republics.41 It was in this transatlantic world that the solution would be worked out of how to reconcile democracy with the global movement of people, goods, and values. The critique of the nation-state went hand in hand with a turn to the British Empire as a historic building block in the creation of a new transnational framework of governance and cultural solidarity. New internationalists here built on pre-war ideas of the Empire as an instrument of international peace and solidarity. The late nineteenth century had seen a proliferation of schemes for imperial federation. Proposals for an imperial tariff split that movement, but even after Joseph Chamberlain launched the protectionist imperial tariff crusade in 1903,

Frank Trentmann 47

ideas of imperial patriotism and imperial governance remained attractive across the political spectrum. Not all Free Traders were critics of empire. It was in this atmosphere that new internationalists were socialised into thinking about questions of supranational governance before the war. In 1905, for example, Zimmern attacked Chamberlain’s tariff proposals for their undemocratic qualities. Yet, instead of defending an international ideal of global commerce, he also argued for the growing importance of empire in international relations. The future of empire depended on a new kind of democratic patriotism shared by its self-governing units. Ultimately, in the twenty-first century, he hoped, this imperial patriotism would give rise to a global ‘planetary patriotism’.42 With the outbreak of the First World War, the British Commonwealth was called in to legitimate Britain’s civilising mission vis-à-vis German barbarism. The empire threw ‘a girdle of law around the globe’, as Zimmern put it in his contribution to The War and Democracy in 1914.43 The Commonwealth, he believed, would help build the future in two crucial ways. It would facilitate conceptions of international law, while also resolving the problem of cultural homogeneity associated with globalisation. Like many other liberals at the time who turned to lofty ideas of British ‘patriotism’ as opposed to evil foreign ‘nationalism’, this optimistic portrayal of the Empire ignored the everyday violence, prejudice, and power at work. There were clear cultural hierarchies in Zimmern’s comparisons between genuine, national civilisations and uprooted natives who abandoned their ‘traditional’ culture to ape western clothes, language, and ideas, typified, he felt, by the ‘spiritual degeneration’ of Oriental people in the Near East.44 But such portrayals, however crass, did not fit a simple hierarchical model between Empire and the rest. They are best read alongside Zimmern’s attention to the different paths of cultural development taken by western societies with multi-ethnic communities in their midst. Here again, it is important to stress the transatlantic frame of reference. If the Commonwealth had something to offer the world, it also had lessons to learn from other experiments in integration. It was Zimmern’s reception of debates about American slavery and democracy that enabled him to connect the idea of depoliticised nationality to race relations and cultural pluralism more globally. Zimmern praised American arguments for the political integration of former slaves, arguments that valued their distinct racial culture and were sceptical of cultural assimilation. ‘If Nationality can help America’ to integrate descendants of slaves into the ‘American citizen body’, he maintained in 1915, ‘it can help us British citizens also in the many difficult tasks … in dealing with

48 After the Nation-State

native races in our Empire’.45 Instead of being Anglicised, native races needed to become conscious of their own nationality, enabling them to free themselves from the assimilationist pull of cultural and commercial globalisation. The British Commonwealth, Zimmern urged, need to stop seeing itself as carrying the ‘white man’s burden’ and embark on a more reciprocal relationship of cultural learning and respect. The ideal of civic education and local knowledge seen as essential to the rebuilding of democratic life within a community was now raised to a transnational plane. The British had to begin to learn from their subject peoples ‘by joining with them in a voyage of discovery … towards the secret springs of their national life’.46 Initially, then, the new internationalist vision of depoliticising nationality strengthened a commitment to the British Commonwealth as a transnational body just as it weakened the legitimacy of the nationstate. Wartime contrasts with the German empire reinforced a view of the British Empire as based on spiritual ties and mutual social service, a ‘community of citizens’. Its mission was not government but the cultural ‘self-revelation’ of diverse nationalities. This, in a nutshell, was the Third British Empire, a concept Zimmern popularised in the 1920s on both sides of the Atlantic. How did this ‘Third British Empire’ fit into the global network of international coordination and civil society discussed earlier? First, it created a source of historical legitimacy. In particular, the Third British Empire was seen to rest on a philosophy its predecessors lacked: trusteeship. The depoliticised model of nationality enabled new internationalists to present international government as a continuation of imperial history, not a break or challenge. The principle of trusteeship, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the employment of an international police force, all these were pioneered by the British empire: ‘The League’, Zimmern proclaimed, ‘is the deus ex machina of the British Commonwealth’.47 While this was clearly a highly idealised reading of the empire that airbrushed out the realities of race and power, it nonetheless pushed new internationalists to frame imperial policy and imperial interests within the broader terms of international co-operation. Thus, in the 1920s, new internationalists responded to imperial preference not with the pre-war call for unilateral free trade but looked towards the international regulation of scarce raw materials, such as oil and tin. What was imperial in itself became subject to international considerations. ‘Once we have recognised that Burma oil is not ‘our oil and Pahang tin “our” tin’, Zimmern told readers of the Nation and Athenaeum in 1924

Frank Trentmann 49

we shall be faced with the same problem which now faces the Germans, Italians, and Swedes. How are we to ensure for our industrial population a sufficient and regular supply of raw materials? The only solution in harmony with ‘a League of Nations policy’ is that of developing new methods of economic co-operation, if necessary by means of international control.48 As the 1920s progressed, the growth of League institutions and activities suggested that international sentiment and interests were already superseding any imperial framework. Enthusiasm for a Third British Empire was easily transferred to the League. Two years after the Imperial Conference of 1926, Zimmern contrasted the Empire’s failure to produce common institutions with the expansion of the young League. The reason was ‘not that the peoples of the British Empire do not wish to co-operate …. [but] that there is nothing particular for them to co-operate together about’. Earlier ideas of imperial mutual service had by the late 1920s given way to a sense that even the interests of members of the empire were now primarily of an international nature. This included the metropole as much as the colonies. Britain, Zimmern concluded, could no longer look to a ‘Third British Empire’, nor to an insular nation-state: it had become dependent on ‘a co-operative system safeguarded by the League of Nations’.49 This chapter has explored the dialogue between transnational and local conceptions of citizenship during and after the First World War. I want to conclude by highlighting several implications. The new internationalism can be reclaimed as a distinctive chapter in historical narratives of globalisation. The First World War is often seen as a sharp break in the history of globalisation, with barriers and economic nationalism replacing the earlier flow of investment, goods, and communication. But the war also produced a shift in the political imagination that developed new ideas of international coordination. Like many current believers in hyperglobalisation, new internationalists questioned the viability of strong, autonomous central states. Instead of neo-liberal remedies, however, they turned to institutional frameworks of international coordination and regulation. This reformist political project was driven by a symbiotic concern for revitalising democracy in local and transnational arenas. Reappraising this linkage broadens our understanding of the history of citizenship, social justice, and political economy in the first half of the twentieth century. Our histories here have been dominated by the state and state-centred debates and policies

50 After the Nation-State

about welfare and employment. As with the new internationalism, however, many of these subjects, ranging from food and health to economic planning, were understood as part of a larger transnational project of building networks of co-operation and democratic inclusion above the level of the state, as well as enhancing citizenship in local communities; the League’s policy on nutrition in the mid-1930s, proposals for international economic regulation, and campaigns for a Living Wage and higher labour standards are all examples of this.50 Views of empire, too, were deeply affected by the dissociation of nationality from state and citizenship. Metropole and colony were indeed part of one historical system, but its dynamics are imperfectly understood unless we reconnect the new imperial history to transnational developments and appreciate how actors like the new internationalists understood metropolitan and imperial problems as part of a larger transnational system.

Notes 1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Centre for International Studies (Princeton), the Centre for History and Economics, King’s College (Cambridge), and the North American Conference on British Studies. I am grateful to organisers and participants for comments and discussion. 2. From the large literature, see esp. D. Held, A. McGrew, D. Glodblatt and J. Perraton, Global Transformations (Cambridge, 1999); P. Hirst and G. Thompson, Globalization in Question (Oxford, 1999); A.M. Florini (ed.), The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil Society (Tokyo and Washington, 2000); J.N. Rosenau and E.-O. Czempiel (eds), Governance Without Government (Cambridge, 1992); H. Anheier, M. Glasius and M. Kaldor (eds), Global Civil Society 2001 (Oxford, 2001). 3. D. Archibugi, D. Held and M. Köhler (eds), Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Stanford, 1998); D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, 1995); J. Keane, Global Civil Society? (Cambridge, 2003); S. Vertovec and R. Cohen (eds), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford, 2002). 4. See esp. A. Burton, ‘Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating “British” History’, Journal of Historical Sociology 10(3) (1997), pp. 227–48, repr. in C. Hall (ed.), Cultures of Empire: A Reader: Colonisers in Britain and the Empire in Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Manchester, 2000); F. Cooper and A.L. Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire (Berkeley, 1997); C. Hall, White, Male and Middle Class (Cambridge, 1992) and C. Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Oxford, 2002). 5. A. Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England 1846–1946 (Oxford, 1997); F. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Consumption, Civil Society and Commerce in Modern Britain (Oxford, 2007); B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988).

Frank Trentmann 51 6. N. Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to their Economic and Social Advantage (London, 1911, 3rd rev. edn), first published as Europe’s Optical Illusion in 1909. P. Laity, The British Peace Movement 1870–1914 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 136–7. H.S. Weinroth, ‘Norman Angell and The Great Illusion’, Historical Journal, XVII (1974). See also A.J.A. Morris, Radicalism Against War: The Advocacy of Peace and Retrenchment (London, 1972). 7. For Zimmern, see P. Rich, ‘Alfred Zimmern’s Cautious Idealism: The League of Nations, International Education, and the Commonwealth’, in D. Long and P. Wilson (eds), Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford, 1995), pp. 79–99; For Lloyd, see F. Trentmann, ‘E.M.H. Lloyd’, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), Vol. 34, pp. 119–21; for Salter, see A. Salter, Memoirs of a Public Servant (London, 1961). 8. British Library of Political and Economic Science, Lloyd Papers, 3/2: ‘International Food Control’, draft memo by E.F. Wise, 20 June 1919. 9. League of Nations Archive (Geneva), 10/R 305, 10/3494: E.M.H. Lloyd memo to Secretary General, 23 March 1920. 10. Barker ‘The Powers of a League of Nations’, memo n.d. [1918], in AEZ, MS 83, esp. pp. 20f., Zimmern Papers, Bodleian, Oxford. For Barker’s critique of nationalism, and his English version of patriotism, see J. Stapleton, Englishness and the Study of Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker (Cambridge, 1994). 11. A. Zimmern, ‘The Prospects of Democracy’, in Zimmern, Prospects of Democracy (London, 1929), repr. from the Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, May 1928; an address delivered on 8/11/1927, cit. at p. 12. 12. It did however have control over neutral shipping. 13. J.A. Salter, Allied Shipping Control (Oxford, 1921). 14. Zimmern, ‘Some Principles and Problems of the Peace Conference’, first published in the Round Table in December 1918; repr. in Prospects of Democracy, cit. at pp. 187 f. 15. P. Cain, Hobson and Imperialism. Radicalism, New Liberalism and Finance 1887–1938 (Oxford, 2002). For an analysis of Hobson’s own brand of internationalism during and after the First World War, see D. Long, Towards a New Liberal Internationalism: The International Theory of J.A. Hobson (Cambridge, 1996). 16. Zimmern, ‘Capitalism and International Relations’, in Nationality and Government (London, 1918), pp. 278–97. For pre-war critiques of Free Trade, see E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and the Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London, 1995) and Trentmann, Free Trade Nation. 17. E.M.H. Lloyd, Stabilisation: An Economic Policy for Producers and Consumers (London, 1923); 11/11/1922, pp. 226 f.; Nation and Athenaeum, see esp. 11 November 1922 and 9 December 1922. 18. Lloyd, Stabilisation, p. 6. 19. F. Trentmann, ‘Consumption, Commerce, and the ‘Citizen-Consumer’, in F. Trentmann (ed.), Paradoxes of Civil Society (2003 2nd edn), Ch. 13. 20. Zimmern, ‘Fiscal Policy and International Relations’, paper read to the British Institute of International Affairs on 29/1/1924, in Prospects of Democracy, p. 245.

52 After the Nation-State 21. League of Nations Archive, Salter Papers, 10/S132, 295/15: Loveday papers on economic conference (1929) and ‘notes from conversations between Sir Arthur Salter, Mr. Loveday, M. Stoppani and M. Jacobson, on 1 May 1927. 22. J.A. Salter, Recovery: The Second Effort (London, 1932), p. 237. For the failure of commercial diplomacy, see H. James, The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (Cambridge, MA, 2001), pp. 119 ff. For corporatist strategies, see C. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War 1 (Princeton, NJ, 1975). 23. Zimmern, Prospects of Democracy, p. 20. 24. Salter, Allied Shipping Control, p. 255. 25. Keane, Global Civil Society; Anheier, Glasius and Kaldor (eds), Global Civil Society 2001; M. Glasius, D. Lewis and H. Seckinelgin (eds), Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts (London, 2004). 26. See B. Metzger’s chapter in this volume. 27. A.E. Zimmern, Public Opinion, (Manchester, 1931) p. 8. 28. Zimmern in Time and Tide, 8 March 1929, p. 251; Zimmern, ‘Politics as an Idealistic Career’ – a paper to the world committee of the YMCA, repr. in Prospects of Democracy, pp. 263–74; Zimmern, MS 132 ‘What is wrong with the League and how to repair it’. Space does not allow here to compare critically new internationalist ideas to more recent approaches to cosmopolitan democracy, but it might be noted that Zimmern’s idealist view of public opinion and acceptance of cultural pluralism, noted below, anticipates some aspects of the more recent normative theory of cosmopolitan democracy, such as the Habermasian discourse theory of morality and the emphasis on ‘the normative commitment to modes of cosmopolitan democracy which seek to extend the boundaries of political community by institutionalising universal moral principles which embody respect for cultural difference’, Linklater in Archibugi, Held and Koehler, Re-imagining Political Community, p. 122. 29. See J. Harris, ‘Political Thought and the Welfare State 1870–1940: An Intellectual Framework for British Social Policy’, Past and Present 135 (1992), pp. 116–41; S. Den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian Thought (Oxford, 1996). 30. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth (Oxford, 1911). 31. Zimmern, ‘Progress in Government’, lecture to the Woodbrooke Summer School, August 1916, repr. in Nationality and Government, cit. at p. 151. 32. Zimmern, ‘German Culture and the British Commonwealth’, in Nationality and Government, p. 13. Emphases in original. 33. Zimmern, ‘True and False Nationalism’, paper to inter-denominational conference of social service unions, 1915, repr. in Nationality and Government, cit at 71f. 34. S. Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain (Oxford, 1991). 35. G. Varouxakis, Mill on Nationality (London, 2002). For critiques of Mill, see W. Kymlicka (ed.), The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford, 1995) and B. Parekh ‘Decolonizing Liberalism’, in A. Shtromas (ed.), The End of ‘Isms’?: Reflections on the Fate of Ideological Politics after Communism’s Collapse (Oxford, 1994). 36. Acton, ‘Nationality’(1862), repr. in J.E.E. Dalberg-Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, selected and with an introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb (Glencoe, Ill., 1948), pp. 168 f.

Frank Trentmann 53 37. ‘Nationality and Government’ paper read before the Sociological Society 30/11/1915 with Wallas in chair – republished in Sociological Review for January 1916; here at pp. 32–60. 38. D.T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge MA, 1998). 39. Zimmern, ‘True and False Nationalism’, p. 67. 40. ‘True and False Nationalism’, p. 66. 41. Zimmern, ‘The Passing of Nationality’, lecture delivered at King’s Hall, Covent Garden, on 23/11/1917, in Nationality and Government, pp. 87–100. 42. Zimmern, MS 136, ‘United Britain, A Study in Twentieth-century Imperialism.’ 43. Zimmern, ‘German Culture and the British Commonwealth’, in R.W.S. Watson, J.D. Wilson, A.E. Zimmern and A. Greenwood (eds), The War and Democracy, (London, 1914). 44. Zimmern, Nationality and Government, pp. 53 f., 74 f. Zimmern drew here on M. Sykes’ portrayal of changes in the Near East in The Caliph’s Last Heritage: A Short History of the Turkish Empire (London, 1915). 45. Zimmern, ‘True and False Nationalism’, p. 81. His views of American slavery were esp. indebted to an Alabama clergyman, E. Murphy, The Basis of Ascendancy: A Discussion of Certain Principles of Public Policy Involved in the Development of the Southern States (London, 1909). 46. Zimmern, ‘Education, Social and National’, in the Round Table (March 1914), repr. in Nationality and Government, p. 126. 47. Zimmern, Third British Empire (London, 2nd edn, 1927), p. 70. See also Kevin Grant’s chapter in this volume for related expressions of this idea. 48. Zimmern, ‘The British Empire in 1924 – part V’, in Nation and Athenaeum (1924); see also Zimmern, The British Commonwealth in the Post-war World (London, 1926). 49. Zimmern, ‘Great Britain, the Dominions, and the League of Nations’, (1928), in Prospects of Democracy, p. 301. 50. P. Weindling (ed.), International Health Organizations and Movements, 1918–1939 (Cambridge, 1995); F. Trentmann, ‘Coping with Shortage: The Problem of Food Security and Global Visions of Coordination, c. 1890s–1950’, in F. Trentmann and F. Just (eds), Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars, (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 13–48.

4 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years: The League of Nations’ Combat of Traffic in Women and Children1 Barbara Metzger Hardly a single month goes by without a horrific case of traffic in women, men or children hitting the headlines. This sad phenomenon is by no means a recent one. In 1919, the issue of ‘traffic in women and children’ was already considered to be of such importance that the League of Nations was explicitly charged with its combat. Article 23 (c) of the Covenant entrusted the League ‘with the general supervision over the execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and children’.2 In 1921, the Second Assembly of the League of Nations adopted a Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children and created an institutional framework for the League to act as an active monitoring body. Until the outbreak of the Second World War, the League put considerable efforts into encouraging states to address the issue and implement legal, political and social measures to curb international traffic in women and children. However, while the League was made up of sovereign states implementing its policies, its work was heavily substantiated and moved by complex transnational networks that provided the key momentum for the League’s work. These transnational and often informal networks consisting of local, regional, national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), charities, missionary societies and churches fed into the League’s activities from its inception. They formed a powerful second layer of narrative which has often been neglected when the League story is told. This chapter looks at the diverse transnational networks that contributed to the development of the international movement against traffic in women and children in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then examines the League’s institutional framework to show how the new dialogue and co-operation between state and non-governmental 54

Barbara Metzger 55

actors introduced new issues into the international arena, which eventually challenged traditional concepts of sovereignty and mark a step towards the institutionalised human rights frameworks developed after the Second World War. Surprisingly, the campaign against trafficking does not reveal a simple divide between state actors concerned with defending state sovereignty and transnational NGOs pursuing the implementation of transnational standards. Instead, as the sociologist Stephanie Limoncelli has described, the two main strands of transnational organisations – the abolitionists and the social purity activists – took different stands on the role of the state in regulation and the relative importance of the rights of the individual.3

The Victorian campaign against white slavery The international campaign to combat traffic in women and children reaches back to the docks of Liverpool in the late nineteenth century. It was spearheaded by Josephine Butler, whose name became synonymous with the fight against traffic in women and children. A middle-class woman, married to a minister, she became involved in the ‘rescue’ of young girls and women from prostitution at the time, l864–9, when the notorious Contagious Diseases Acts were being implemented in garrison towns throughout Britain. Originally introduced for public health reasons, these Acts aimed to prevent the fast spread of venereal diseases and protect the health of military men by subjecting any woman identified by the ‘Morals Police’ as a prostitute to a ‘surgical examination’. The ‘arbitrary police identification of women as prostitutes’ and ‘coarse brutality of doctors’ created an outrage among British women. In 1869, Josephine Butler organised the Ladies’ National Association to repeal the acts and promote the abolition of state-regulated prostitution.4 From then on, until the final repeal of the Acts in 1886, Butler laid the foundations for a large, multi-faceted, transnational movement which was to reach far beyond British borders. During Josephine Butler’s campaign, the issue of trafficking of women and young girls surfaced. Many of the missing girls for whom Butler and her co-workers sought were not to be found in Britain. Enquiry revealed that they had been trafficked to other countries for purposes of prostitution, especially to countries where prostitution was state-regulated and licensed houses offered lucrative ‘business’ opportunities.5 In 1880, the British Home Office investigated the charges and found evidence ‘for a small international traffic in English girls’ to Belgium, France and Holland for the purpose of prostitution.6

56 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

While the official response was one of caution, the issue of the ‘white slave trade’ began to capture public imagination to an extent not witnessed before. Walkowitz argues that ‘white slavery’ and ‘child prostitution scandals’ in late nineteenth century Britain ‘had all the symptoms of a cultural paranoia’. While there is no doubt that the myths and sensationalist exploitations surrounding the issue shrouded the reality and represent an interesting social phenomenon in their own right, we shall see that investigations by the League of Nations later confirmed the existence of trafficking as a long-standing phenomenon. The emerging public campaign against trafficking in women and young girls was by no means a homogenous movement but comprised two distinctly different strands of thought and competing agendas. Josephine Butler was staunchly abolitionist. She viewed state regulation as a formalised and legalised ‘sexual enslavement of women’. She was critical of any state involvement with the regulation of prostitution and concluded that the abolition of state regulation would curb the trafficking in women. In contrast, the growing ‘social purity’ movement was obsessed with the suppression of prostitution as a means to raise standards of ‘sexual morality’. It accepted state intervention in the name of protection, and purity reformers tended to ally with state officials and framed prostitution in nationalist terms calling for increased state control. From the start these different, competing agendas fed into the campaign against trafficking which continued to shape the debates in the League of Nations. During the 1870s and 1880s, Josephine Butler travelled across Europe to encourage private efforts to promote the abolition of government regulation of prostitution. By the late 1890s, William Alexander Coote, the Secretary of the National Vigilance Association and a representative of the social purity movement, took the campaign against ‘White Slave Traffic’ into the official international arena. By skilfully tapping into the public concern, he succeeded in creating a strong international public interest in the movement and most European countries set up ‘national committees’ to address the issue. He was successful in enlisting highranking officials, cabinet members and aristocrats. Meanwhile, concern grew over the traffic in women and children to the colonies, where mass prostitution was being organised to serve the colonial troops.7 Cases of Chinese girls being trafficked to the United States and Australia were reported in the press in addition to the traffic of women from Austria, Romania, Russia, Greece and France to the Middle and Far East.8 While the national movements grew in size, creating a rich network of local campaigners and activists, moral reformers and social purists, it

Barbara Metzger 57

became evident that the traffic could only be successfully addressed through concerted international effort. In June 1899, the first International Congress for the Suppression of White Slavery was held in London.9 Attended by government delegates and members of voluntary organisations, it resulted in the creation of the ‘International Bureau for the Suppression of White Slavery’, a semi-official body charged with coordinating ‘the work of national voluntary bodies’.10 Its first priority was to work for a diplomatic convention.11 Three years later, the French government, in response to the efforts of these voluntary organisations, took the initiative and convened an international conference on the subject in Paris. Delegates of 16 European nations attended and drew up an ‘International Agreement for the Suppression of White Slave Traffic’, which in 1904 was ratified by 12 states.12 This was the first international legal instrument addressing the issue and committed governments to take action against the ‘procuring of women and girls for immoral purposes abroad’. Signatories were requested to establish a central authority to collect and communicate information about ‘white slavery’. They agreed to have ports and stations watched for procurers, to supervise employment agencies that sent women abroad and to instruct officials to collect information leading to the detection of the traffic. The central offices were authorised to correspond directly with one another.13 By 1910, due in part to steadily increasing public pressure, it became obvious that international co-operation had to be tightened if the trade were to be successfully curbed. The French government convened a second diplomatic conference which drew up a convention legally binding signatories to adjust their domestic legislation to meet international standards. A key feature was that participant states now agreed to punish traffickers if the victim was under 20 years of age, even if she had given her consent. Equally, states had to punish the procuring of any woman by force or fraud. These acts became criminal offences, even if they had been committed across national borders.

The 1921 conference and convention of traffic in women and children The First World War brought international co-operation against traffic in women and children to a halt.14 The last international congress held in London in 1913 was attended by no less than 31 officials representing 24 countries and 500 delegates from national committees.15 The sense of solidarity and purpose created by the movement survived the

58 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

war and the private and official bodies committed to the cause turned their eyes towards the newly created League of Nations. Art. 23 was included in the League Covenant in July 1919 at the initiative of a network of international women’s organisations in Paris. Post-war economic hardship meant that the traffic in women and children was resumed quickly. In November 1919, Annie Baker, the Secretary of the International Vigilance Association informed Rachel Crowdy, the head of the Social Section of the League, that the Dutch national branch was ‘particularly anxious that the question of Traffic should be taken in hand at once as they have information that the Traffickers are already re-organising their pre-war policy’. The Dutch were concerned that the ‘route’ was bound to go through Holland and then from Dutch ports to South America.16 Similarly, information from the Far East revealed that ‘free and extensive’ traffic in girls was being resumed between Japan and Manchuria as well as between China and the various East Indies and Malay State ports.17 The Secretariat of the League was soon flooded with policy statements and suggestions from the many private organisations dealing with the issue of trafficking and decided on an international conference under the aegis of the League. A report examining 34 government replies to a League questionnaire revealed substantial discrepancies in national legislation and highlighted the need for improved and harmonised legislation. For instance, someone convicted of procuring would face a three-month prison sentence in Bulgaria, two to eight years of hard labour in Finland, and up to 10 years of hard labour in Japan. Agreement prevailed in favour of continuing international co-operation in order to implement shared standards.18 In early July 1921, the six-day Conference on Traffic in Women and Children took place in Geneva, the new centre of international relations. To make its scope universal and less Euro-centric, the term ‘white slavery’ was dropped from the title. The language of the social purity movement was toned down and it was acknowledged that trafficking in women was a global phenomenon, not restricted to white women. Thirty-four governments were represented, many sending technical advisers in addition to an official delegate. With six public sessions, the Conference provided a forum for government officials and activists to present their positions, which ranged from pleas for non-interference in domestic affairs to the total abolition of state-regulated prostitution.19 By attracting such a wide range of participants and encouraging such open debates, a new democratic forum was created in the international

Barbara Metzger 59

arena. In his opening speech the Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Hymans highlighted the watershed he saw in the creation of the League. Hitherto treaties of peace have only dealt with questions of frontiers, indemnities and commercial and financial interests. For the first time in the history of humanity other interests are therein included and among them the dignity of human labour and the respect for women and children.20 Many of the recommendations contained in the Final Act of the Conference were submitted by campaigners who were witnessing the shortcomings of existing Conventions. Governments agreed to do more than just hold conferences or pass laws: they committed themselves to hunt down and punish traffickers.21 Based on the Final Act of the Conference, the British delegation introduced a new ‘Convention on Traffic in Women and Children’ to the second Assembly of the League in September 1921.22 This bold initiative prompted heated debate, revealing two opposing positions on the role of the League. While the British delegation saw the adoption of the new convention as an unprecedented opportunity for the League to demonstrate political will and determination, the French delegation was profoundly opposed to this ‘rushed’ and ‘unorthodox’ procedure of introducing a new convention to the Assembly. In contrast Gustave Ador, a Swiss delegate, encouraged the League ‘to strike out upon a new path of bold initiative, however far it might be removed from the usual governmental channels of procedure, and from the trammels of red tape’.23 The British proposal won the vote. The Second Assembly adopted the first Convention drawn up under the aegis of the League.24 Seven countries signed the Convention the following day and twenty had followed by October 1921. Only two years after the Covenant was adopted in Paris, the League had concluded a new Convention that created an institutional framework within which it could fulfil its mandate under Article 23 (c).25

The advisory commission on traffic in women and children The Convention established an ‘Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children’ with a mixed membership of government officials and representatives of NGOs. The Committee became an indispensable body, initiating fundamental changes in the League’s

60 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

positions, and providing a space for government officials and private organisations to constructively complement each other’s work. As the British delegate to the Conference emphasised: we shall not lose the active assistance of those unofficial bodies who have done so much in the past to keep the question before the minds of our countrymen. Government departments left to themselves have been known to fall victims to sleeping sickness, and we need the vivifying influence of individual enterprise even though from want of knowledge of administrative difficulties it may sometimes err in the direction of excessive zeal.26 Under the new Convention governments supplied the international organisation on a regular basis with information regarding domestic legislation and legal practice, allowing the League to monitor progress or shortcomings.27 Through the Advisory Committee, states also cooperated with staunchly independent transnational NGOs which saw state-regulation of prostitution as a ‘modern form of slavery’ violating women’s civil rights.28 Both the social purity movement and the abolitionist movement were represented through the International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and the International Women’s Associations, respectively, bringing competing ideas on the role of the state in fighting trafficking. In March 1922, the Advisory Committee convened for the first time. It was composed of nine government delegates29 and five assessors representing five transnational private organisations.30 The International Labour Office was asked to send a liaison officer when issues of emigration, immigration and employment abroad featured on the agenda. In later years, a member of Interpol attended the meetings in order to facilitate international criminal investigations. Apart from voting, the assessors enjoyed exactly the same rights as government representatives. They could initiate debates and sponsor resolutions as well as add subjects to the annual programme. Over the years, the Advisory body substantially increased in size. In 1936, the organisational structure of the Committee changed and the assessors were demoted to the role of corresponding members. By the outbreak of the Second World War, the Committee included 21 government delegates and corresponding members from 11 voluntary associations.31 The Committee’s role was to advise both the Council and the Assembly on viable strategies to combat traffic in women and children. It had no authority or direct power but could recommend reforms,

Barbara Metzger 61

legislation and new administrative arrangements geared towards meeting international standards. The objective of the Committee’s work was to study the laws in different countries in order to see how far they met international standards and to what extent they were implemented or ignored, and also to find weaknesses in both domestic and international legal systems and to suggest remedies.32 This required the investigation of national economic, social and cultural conditions. In 1924, it was decided that the meetings would, with certain exceptions, be held in public in order to achieve greater transparency and to raise public awareness.33 Every annual meeting started with the presentation of a so-called ‘progress report’ which monitored the general trends and developments with regard to the combat of traffic in women and children. After a general discussion and a look at the ratifications, the international voluntary organisations presented their reports followed by an examination of the information received from Governments. The reports of the international voluntary organisations produced invaluable insights into the practical implementation of legislative measures. As membership was international, the reports contained short paragraphs on a wide range of countries. This allowed government officials to familiarise themselves with the reality of their own and other states’ legislation. The report of the activities of the ‘International Women’s Associations’ in 1924, for instance, included a harrowing description of the public humiliation that women had to endure in licensed houses in Romania. When visiting the dispensary, they had to pass through town under the supervision of agents.34 The International Women’s Association believed this practice ‘incompatible with the dignity of women’. A few years later, the Romanian government delegate informed the Committee that this humiliating practice had been stopped. By creating a forum for constructive debate and exchange of information from governments and NGOs, the Committee took a new step forward in the protection of human rights. The Social Section of the League Secretariat served the Advisory Committee, the General Secretary, the League Council and the Assembly and facilitated the exchange of information between different League bodies, governments and NGOs. The Social Section also played a central role in forwarding relevant information to national administrations involved in drafting domestic legislation. When Agnes Neuhaus, a German Member of Parliament and head of the Catholic Association for the Protection of Women and Children, participated in the drafting of a new legal code for the combat of venereal diseases, her

62 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

secretary asked the League for a broad range of national legal codes to serve as guidelines.35 The League instantly forwarded national legislation from the French, British, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Governments.36 The German law (‘Gesetz zur Bekämpfung von Geschlechtskrankheiten’) was adopted by the German Reichstag in 1927, one of the most progressive pieces of legislation passed during the Weimar Republic. It legalised prostitution, penalised procurement and provided for widespread health services to those in need.37 A central part of the Social Section’s work was to keep in close contact with all voluntary organisations with access to the field information on which the League was dependent.38 Members of the Secretariat made a point of visiting meetings of the major voluntary organisations and also tried to follow up issues raised by them with the other departments of the Secretariat. The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, for example, the most vocal voluntary organisation in the field of indigenous rights, drew the Secretariat’s attention to the plight of women in colonies and mandates not covered by existing legal instruments. It highlighted, for instance, the ‘traffic in, and the degradation of, coloured women by white men’, and other abuses in the Dominions and Dependencies of the Powers. In certain territories, particularly in Africa and the South Seas, the practice is observed by large numbers of white men of cohabitating temporarily with coloured women; these women are often obtained for a consideration through the medium of Chiefs. In the New Hebrides Archipelago the demand for this purpose, as well as for labour, has for years involved either the practice of gross deception or the kidnapping of women, who, in a number of instances, have been, when restored to the Islands, suffering badly from disease, a condition of affairs which has contributed towards the reduction of the population from, it is estimated, something like 600,000 to less than 50,000 in under 40 years.39 As a result, Travers Buxton, the society’s Vice-President, suggested an enquiry into the ‘Colonising Powers’ with a view to ascertaining whether these ‘evils’ prevailed in the respective colonies, and to determine what efforts the Administration was making.40 The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene and the International Women’s Associations, too, pressed the League to make provisions regarding the mandates.41 Rachel Crowdy asked William Rappard, head of the mandates section, for further information. He knew of

Barbara Metzger 63

no reason why the terms of the White Slave Traffic Convention have not been accepted for the mandated territories of Togoland, Cameroons, East Africa and Palestine. I understand that Great Britain has signed the Convention expressly stipulating that the signature should not be considered binding on the British colonies or protectorates or territories administered under Mandate, and that four of the British Colonies in Africa, namely, Nyasaland, Kenya, North and South Rhodesia, later adhered to the Convention.42 Effectively Britain was under no legal obligation to apply the Conventions to its mandates. Rachel Crowdy followed up with an unofficial letter to the British Foreign Office.43 At the Fourth General League Assembly, the British delegate drew attention to the fact that the International Conventions were not yet applied to all territories administered as mandates.44 In November 1923, the Secretary General was authorised to request the mandatory powers to make special mention in their annual reports of the measures taken in application of the Conventions.45 This meant that although the Conventions were not extended to the mandates, the question of traffic in women became a concern of the League’s Permanent Mandates Commission. The Secretariat thus played an important role in taking up issues that originated from an organisation outside of the League framework but fed into the League machinery. The debates in the various League bodies were marked by a growing openness to challenge a state-centred approach to international relations; they gradually began to embrace the notion of international responsibility to protect the individual. Transnational NGOs played a crucial part in this slowly emerging human rights awareness. To underline this point, it is useful to trace the process by which one resolution passed through the various League bodies dealing with trafficking, and to observe the change in language over time. The resolution, first proposed in 1922 by the Polish delegate to the Fifth Committee of the Assembly, concerned the prohibition of the employment of foreign women in licensed houses. The initiative was motivated by the large numbers of Polish women being trafficked to South America and sold to licensed houses there. Delegates to the Fifth Committee of the League Assembly supported it unanimously. The practicalities of the resolution were not even mentioned.46 Inevitably, when the Advisory Committee discussed this initiative at its next meeting it proved highly controversial, and the recommendation and its consequences continued to be discussed at almost every single annual

64 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

meeting of the Advisory Committee until the mid-1930s.47 Staunch protest at the 1923 meeting came from those abolitionist assessors who were opposed to accepting any resolution which even indirectly condoned the existence of licensed houses:48 they refused to agree to a proposal ‘which implicitly recognises the brothel slavery of any woman, foreign or otherwise’.49 The French delegate, by contrast, saw in the proposal an attack on the liberty of women who chose to prostitute themselves. He could not see any justification to discriminate against foreign women.50 The resolution demanded that any foreign woman who engaged in prostitution should be expelled from the country, and the representatives of the International Women’s Organisations insisted this clearly violated ‘the most elementary principle of justice’. Despite this vocal opposition, the resolution was passed by a slim majority.51 Once states started acting upon the resolution, the fate of the individual woman facing expulsion became a major concern for the Committee. In 1926, the Belgian delegate to the Committee reported that since 1923 foreign prostitutes had been expelled whether they were registered or not; the number of these expulsions had amounted to nearly 250 per year. Often the expelled ‘became like wreckage carried on the tide from shore to shore. The delegate felt that this problem ‘had to be considered from the standpoint of humanity and not from the point of view of a particular country’.52 The Uruguayan delegate agreed, as the League was not charged with protecting society against prostitutes but to find means to contribute to ‘the rescue of these women and to prevent this infamous traffic’.53 The subsequent debate focused on whether the League should be encouraging expulsions, which were inhuman and opposed to the ‘spirit’ of the League. A useful side effect was that subsequent annual government reports contained more detailed information regarding expulsions. The issue arose again in 1931 when the International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children, an organisation influenced heavily by the social purity ideology, proposed an International Agreement on the repatriation of any foreign prostitutes. The Committee was highly critical of this proposal. The Director of the Social Section informed the Committee that 34 women’s societies had voted against the proposal. To most members of the Committee neither expulsion nor repatriation offered a solution to the complex problem of trafficking. The Uruguayan delegate, Paulina Luisi, was asked to investigate the issue of voluntary versus compulsory repatriation, and concluded that there was strong opposition to any measures aimed at the compulsory repatriation or expulsion of prostitutes.

Barbara Metzger 65

Indeed, expulsion was ineffective since prostitutes were in many cases abandoned without resources at the frontier and obliged to re-enter the country illegally, either continuing to engage in prostitution or being sent to prison. Luisi saw both expulsion and compulsory repatriation as ‘contrary to what is humanly due to them [prostitutes]’. Measures with regard to prostitutes ought to come within the general provisions of ordinary law, that is, prostitutes should not form a separate category.54 No final conclusion was reached. What is striking, however, is that the fate of women as individuals, within an international context, became a growing concern for the Committee, and began to take precedence over the interest of the state or even the initial goal of curbing international traffic. A related development occurred with regard to the tension between protection and rights, a debate which manifested itself regularly when abolitionists and social purity campaigners crossed swords in the Advisory Committee. Already at the 1921 Conference both Britain and Canada sponsored resolutions that were designed, in the name of protection, to restrict women’s rights to travel. Britain proposed an additional article to the 1904 Agreement that ‘no woman under 21 shall be allowed to leave her country without a passport, and no passport shall be given without due consideration’. It requested that an application for a passport from a woman under the age of 21 should ‘be supported by one or more reputable persons’.55 Canada sponsored an initiative along similar lines.56 These proposals provoked a powerful statement of principle from the women’s organisations: long experience in the past has shown that protection sometimes comes to be a hidden form of slavery, a masked tyranny inspired by the best of intentions – a form of protection, therefore, which is to be mistrusted.57 A few years later, the Uruguayan delegate to the Advisory Committee Paulina Luisi strongly opposed such international legislation as restricting the freedom of women. Luisi stressed the danger of ‘developing laws for protecting women which would impede the freedom of women of full legal age’. She submitted a proposal that governments should be requested to take steps to ensure that laws for the protection of women against trafficking should not impede the personal freedom of women of full age when travelling and that the laws promulgated in this connection should only be general emigration laws equally applicable to persons of either sex.58 Thus a constructive dialogue developed between

66 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

government officials and a diverse range of NGOs representing the abolitionist and social purity standpoints.

The first enquiry into traffic in women and children Although it was generally accepted that ‘traffic in women and children’ was a reality, the work of the Advisory Committee was hampered by a ‘great paucity of facts’. As a member of the Advisory Committee once remarked, ‘little reliable information exists about an evil which by the nature of things necessarily flourishes in secret’. The experience of the legal director of the American Association for Social Hygiene, Bascom Johnson, was by no means unique when he found himself ‘constantly being asked: is there really an international traffic between Europe and this country [the United States]; or is this traffic a figment of an overanxious imagination?’59 There were three reasons for this lack of reliable information. First, as the traffic was international in character, it could only partially be understood through national measures to combat crime. Second, countries rarely had any relevant data available or, for reasons of prestige, were unwilling to publish them. Finally, the rapid changes in political, economic, social and humanitarian situations meant that traffickers could quickly change their strategies. Thus, in March 1923, Grace Abbott, the US Delegate to Advisory Committee, suggested that a systematic investigation be undertaken.60 It was hoped that the investigation would provide a clearer picture regarding the victims of the traffic, consenting adult women as well as young girls and adult women who were imported or exported for the purposes of prostitution by force or fraud. Grace Abbott suggested sending ‘agents of high standing with special training and experience to make personal and unofficial investigations’ and claimed that in the United States such investigations had led to considerable advances in social reform.61 The Committee endorsed this suggestion enthusiastically. Having a keen interest in the results of this kind of international survey, the American Bureau for Social Hygiene offered to fund the League study with $75,000.62 A body of experts was nominated to direct the survey, instruct the investigators and examine the results and was chaired by William F. Snow, the Director of the American Bureau for Social Hygiene.63 The American Social Hygiene Association placed some experienced investigators at the disposal of the Special Body of Experts.64 The first stage of the enquiry was to send out a questionnaire to governments, voluntary organisations and interested individuals to

Barbara Metzger 67

see whether the survey would find the necessary support.65 As the investigations were to be carried out on the spot by no more than two experts travelling at the same time,66 unlimited support from the governments in question was vital, particularly as the information to be collected was highly complex and required undercover operations. Encouraged by the replies,67 an itinerary was decided, which in its first phase covered North, Central and South America. The investigators would then follow up leads in all parts of the world.68 The actual investigations of the First Enquiry were carried out over a period of almost two years. For a study undertaken in the 1920s, its global scope was breathtaking, encompassing 112 cities in 28 different countries. Some 6,500 persons were interviewed, 5,000 of these being actively connected with commercialised vice, either as prostitutes or as souteneurs. Partly by pretending to be financially interested in the traffic, the investigators succeeded in establishing close relations with men and women all over the world who were engaged in exploiting the traffic in human beings for personal profit. The investigators were put in touch by the traffickers in one country with their confederates in another country and obtained both the traffickers’ and the government’s views on the conditions prevailing in any given country. They were able to judge the efficacy of existing laws from the testimony of the very people against whom those laws were directed.69 The investigation produced a mass of verified facts such as had never been available before. The investigators presented their findings to the Committee of Experts at Geneva at the end of 1926. Subsequently, a two-volume report was written up by the Secretariat and the body of experts. The first part of the report contained general observations and traced the patterns of traffic, which in the years to come prompted a variety of policy initiatives. The second part covered observations about the individual countries visited. Not surprisingly, it was this part that provoked strong criticism from governments, particularly from those still supporting licensed houses. These countries expressed strong reservations about the use of information which was obtained through prostitutes and souteneurs. Notwithstanding their criticism, the report was published in almost unchanged form, and reached a large audience with the British author H. Wilson Harris’ conversion of the findings of the investigation into a highly readable book. The shock value was high, and the report was received sympathetically by policy-makers, representatives of voluntary organisations and the general public. The report proved beyond any doubt that traffic in women and children was a reality happening on a considerable scale, and thus deprived

68 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

Governments of the argument that there was no evidence of traffic. In India, for instance, Kanji Dwarkadar of the Bombay Vigilance Association stated that it was due to the report that national agencies understood why Romanian girls were found in Bombay brothels.70 Elsewhere, the report raised awareness of the existing global networks and allowed both international and national agencies to target this traffic more specifically. The Experts’ Report led the League to new conclusions. Even though the report stated that the existing traffic predominantly affected prostitutes, the inhumanity of the trade itself was equally harrowing.71 Further, it revealed that the age-limit introduced in the 1921 Convention did little to protect young women, at least 10 per cent of whom entered licensed houses on forged papers and passports, while allowing women over the age of 21 to be legally trafficked. The report unmistakeably identified economic deprivation as the crucial factor driving prostitution. In the light of economic hardship and lack of professional skills, the argument that women who chose to prostitute themselves should not be protected was substantially weakened.72 The report provided vital ammunition to those challenging the agelimit as the basis for protection. Already, in 1921 the Danish delegate to the Second Assembly had argued against any age-limits at all. To her ‘procuration was a crime in all circumstances, and should be punished accordingly’.73 Similarly, Bascom Johnson claimed that the age-limit in the 1921 Convention only served procurers. In 1922, he could only quote from a limited study undertaken by the Dutch government, but by 1926, thanks to the Body of Experts, there was an entire report describing the practice of getting young women with forged passports into licensed houses.74 It became clear that the question of age-limits had to be reconsidered in order to remove loopholes, and in 1926 delegates argued that the ultimate objective should be that the traffic in women of any age must be prohibited under all circumstances. Germany, Switzerland and the United States quoted from their own penal codes, which no longer contained any age-limits.75 In 1932, the Secretariat finally advocated the elimination of the age-limit by proposing that ‘the law should not permit anyone to derive financial benefits from such traffic’.76 There was concern that governments who were still in support of licensed houses would oppose the proposal. Belgium warned that ‘if the age-limit were done away with, the effect would be that those people who ran licensed houses and recruited for such houses would become subject to legal penalties’. Nevertheless, several countries favoured the

Barbara Metzger 69

elimination of the age-limit, including some with licensed houses. The Secretariat sent the proposal to eliminate the age limit from the 1921 Convention to all state parties and received favourable replies from 31 governments out of 40.77 On this basis, a diplomatic conference concerning the suppression of ‘Traffic in Women of Full Age’ was convened in Geneva in October 1933.78 The outcome was a new convention, immediately signed by eight states;79 and 20 states had joined by the late 1930s. The conclusion of the ‘Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age’ and the elimination of the age-limit was a major accomplishment by the League. The Experts’ Report provided the factual evidence needed to prove that the age-limit did not provide the protection originally intended. Women under age were often trafficked with forged papers, while women over age were basically without any protection. While the report showed that most of the women who were trafficked were prostitutes, the image of the prostitute had changed. No longer was ‘moral degradation’ seen as the root cause of prostitution but rather economic hardship and lack of professional opportunities. This changed perception convinced the international community that everybody had the right not to be trafficked, particularly as it was obvious that most of the women had no idea what was involved. It was accepted that traffic of women regardless of age constituted a criminal offence even if this undermined the whole concept of licensed houses. The League had succeeded in putting together a case that changed existing international law and pleaded to infringe upon sovereignty. The debate on the elimination of the age-limit put the question of abolition explicitly back on the agenda. This was an issue the League had tried to avoid because it touched on state sovereignty, and it lead to heated debates in the Fifth Committee of the Assembly. Through the 1920s, this question had featured regularly on the agenda of the Advisory Committee, mainly because the abolitionist voluntary organisations were pushing the issue. The Experts’ Report had established that the existence of licensed houses was helping traffickers to sell their ‘human merchandise’, and that traffickers were usually in possession of an updated list of licensed houses where they could sell their victims with guaranteed high profits. Many delegates argued that if the League wanted to attack one of the root causes of the traffic, it had to address the system of licensed houses. In 1927, the Eighth Assembly requested the Advisory Committee to examine ‘the question of desirability of recommending to all governments the abolition of the system of licensed houses’.80 In due course,

70 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

the Secretariat collected information on the laws and regulations in countries which had abolished regulation. Fifteen countries in which licensed houses had either never existed or had been abolished were asked to provide information. Members of the League Secretariat conducted enquiries on the spot in Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Warsaw. They concluded that no government had regretted abolishing its licensed houses, and that a health system which treated everyone affected by disease was much more efficient than the one which treated only a limited number of prostitutes.81 The report showed that the absence or abolition of licensed house systems did not lead to adverse effects, either on public health or public order. These findings allowed the international community to question the usefulness of state regulation and enabled the Advisory Committee in 1930 to adopt the following resolution recommending abolition: Having considered the reports on the maintenance of public order and good health received from Governments of those countries where the system of licensed houses has been abolished [the Committee] notes that the fear that abolition would result in an increase of venereal disease or would be prejudicial to public order has been proved to be unfounded, and that the danger of international traffic has been diminished by the closing of the houses.82 The Committee went even so far as to assert that abolition had established ‘equality of rights for both sexes’ and that every woman and girl knew that no one had the right to exploit her. Being aware that in many countries the final decision with regard to the abolition of licensed houses rested with local authorities, the Secretariat requested that Governments circulate copies of the report, and the Secretariat itself made them broadly and freely available.83 A year later, the Swedish Delegate to the Eleventh Assembly was able to claim considerable progress in combating traffic in women and children, mentioning first and foremost the advocacy of abolition.84 During the l930s, progress was monitored annually. In 1938, the Fifth Committee of the Assembly noted with satisfaction that a considerable advance had been made in various countries within the last year: Argentina, Uruguay, France, Mexico, Japan, Belgium and Egypt had adopted abolitionist policies.85 With the promotion of abolition the League had, on the basis of the Experts’ Report, embraced a policy that clearly interfered with the domestic affairs of the nation state and went beyond voluntary co-operation. Internal matters of state had become an issue for international action.

Barbara Metzger 71

In 1937, the Advisory Committee considered a draft Convention suppressing any form of financial exploitation of prostitution, even within nation states. The proposal had been examined by 37 states, which were strongly in favour of an international instrument along those lines. The draft Convention was never adopted and the conference, at which it should have been finalised, scheduled for 1940, never took place. This League draft, however, formed the core of one of the earliest human rights instruments adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others’ in 1949.86 Rachel Crowdy, who had been the Director of the League’s Social Section during the 1920s, was a member of the UN drafting committee.

The second enquiry in the Far East While the first Experts’ Report had produced useful results, cases of traffic in humans continued to be reported, especially in the Far East. As a result, the Advisory Committee recommended the establishment of a Commission of Enquiry on Traffic in Women and Children in the East. In June 1929, the Secretary General communicated with governments in the Near East, Middle East and Far East to ask whether they would give their consent and co-operate with an enquiry in their territories.87 All governments consulted replied favourably, including the United Kingdom, China, France, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Persia, Portugal and Siam.88 The Secretariat also asked representatives of voluntary organisations for their opinion. The Bombay Vigilance Society, for instance, urged that India be included in such an enquiry, promising to ‘offer whole-hearted co-operation to the investigators’.89 The American Association for Social Hygiene granted the League $125,000 and a Travelling Commission of three members was set up which was to spend a year and a half in the Far, Middle and Near East.90 The itinerary of the Commission was extraordinary considering the difficulties of travel and the political tensions in the Far East at the time. The Commission was received by government representatives and highranking local officials who gave them time and help.91 Most of the evidence came from officials belonging to the police, the social welfare, health, labour and educational departments of Government, judges, lawyers, medical practitioners, social workers and representatives of the various religious communities, churches and missionary organisations. The Commission also placed a strong emphasis on the social welfare measures in place to redress the problem. Given that none of the members of

72 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

the Commission were from the region, the enquiry confined itself to the collection of official information. The report of the Commission removed any doubt as to the existence of international traffic in oriental women and girls in the Near, Middle and Far East. The number of women and girls involved in this traffic was large; the bulk of this traffic was in Asiatic women from one country in Asia to another, and most of those trafficked were Chinese.92 It concluded that the political geography of the Far East was encouraging the traffic in the region due to loopholes in the immigration facilities between the various foreign settlements and the Chinese territories, along with a disconcerting lack of co-operation between the various immigration and police authorities.93 The Travelling Commission found, too, that the existence of licensed houses systematically encouraged traffic in the Far East and again concluded that abolition was the only feasible solution. The existence of foreign settlements with different policies towards abolition also helped the traffickers to use licensed houses to enhance their profits.94 The final report was received by a Commission of Enquiry in December 1932 which met for a week to discuss it.95 It was concluded that as many organisations and agencies as possible should study the report and submit written suggestions for communication to the Advisory Committee. A number of selected representatives of private organisations and missions were invited to attend the 1934 session of the Committee in order to present their views.96 Also, both China and Japan were invited to send representatives to the next meeting.97 The report was sent to 72 voluntary organisations and missions, and the responses formed part of the basis for the 1934 discussion.98 The authorities concerned were also asked to send information to Geneva suggesting ‘ways and means of co-ordinating the measures taken by Governments in the East in their campaign against traffic’.99 The report was discussed in 1934 at the meeting of the Advisory Committee and the recommendations were based on a broad consensus. In a study of the history of prostitution in Shanghai, Christian Herriot has criticised the inquiry team for uncritically adopting official views and displaying ‘much naïveté’. Despite that, he argues that the Chinese Nationalist Government in response to the inquiry of experts tried to comply with the international agreements of 1904, 1910 and 1921. In 1933 the Chinese Government designated the Ministry of Interior as the ‘central authority’ in the matter, though Herriot records that in reality control remained in the hand of the municipality.100 League documents indicate that the Enquiry into the Traffic in the Far East had at

Barbara Metzger 73

least some effect. As a result of the Commission’s visit, the authorities had closed all European brothels in Hong Kong and, in co-operation with the Japanese consulates, Japanese brothels as well.101 In Siam, the Government had informed the Commission that an enquiry was being made regarding procurers and the age of consent raised from 14 to 16. In Syria, the mandatory power had announced its intention of raising the age of registration in brothels from 18 to 21. Among its final conclusions, the Commission recommended a conference in the East in order to create a permanent institutional framework for co-operation. Such a body would have had the task of establishing contact between the central authorities of the countries concerned, the missions, private organisations and the Advisory Commission, though ultimately proved financially unviable.102 The League succeeded in calling a 10-day conference in Bandoeng, Java in February 1937 with a wide range of delegates attending including officials from central authorities, representatives of missions and private voluntary organisations and activists.103 It took place only months before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war.104

Conclusion The protection of human rights features prominently in current debates on globalisation, powerfully displaying the tension between the notion of sovereignty and transnationalism. The League’s attempts to combat traffic in women and children show how traditional boundaries in international law were moved as a direct consequence of pressure from transnational movements. The League built its combat of traffic in women and children on two active transnational public movements representing the liberal feminist and social purity ideologies. Both of these movements had their roots in the late nineteenth century and together had led to the adoption of two Conventions before the outbreak of the First World War. When the League was given the mandate to supervise those conventions, the British delegation convinced the Second League Assembly to adopt the Final Act of the 1921 Conference as a new Convention. This was the first League Convention dealing with a human rights issue. With the institutionalisation of the Advisory Committee and the Social Section of the Secretariat, the foundations were laid for a monitoring system and annual reporting that involved both government officials and members of voluntary organisations. The two largescale enquiries of 1926 and 1932 were completely unprecedented and covered vast parts of the globe, establishing a basis of information on which the League could initiate action. The weight of factual evidence

74 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

was sufficient that the League could challenge the principle of national sovereignty by recommending the abolition of the state regulation of prostitution. The adoption of the Convention on Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age in 1933 was a milestone widening the scope of existing international law. The 1937 Draft Convention for the Suppression of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others covered both men and women and no longer required the crossing of international borders to establish a criminal offence. The outbreak of the Second World War made the finalisation of this draft impossible, but in 1949 it formed the basis for the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others.105 By institutionalising international practices, built on a strong transnational movement of NGOs, the League paved the way for the human rights regime established by the United Nations. It also foreshadowed the institutional framework that embodied the contribution of the transnational movements so important in the post-l945 world.

Notes 1. This chapter is based on my unpublished PhD thesis. B.H.M. Metzger, The League of Nations and Human Rights: From Theory to Practice (Cambridge University, 2001). 2. L. Reanda, ‘Prostitution as a Human Rights Question: Problems and Aspects of United Nations Action’, Human Rights Quarterly, 13 (1991), p. 203. 3. S.A. Limoncelli, ‘International Voluntary Associations, Local Social Movements and State Paths to the Abolition of Prostitution in Europe, 1875–1950’, International Sociology, 21(1) (2006), pp. 31–59. 4. J.R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, Women, Class and the State (Cambridge, 1980), p. 67. 5. League of Nations Archives (LNA), LN, International Conference on Traffic in Women and Children (ICTWC), Report of the International Bureau to the Official Conference at Geneva, 30 June 1921, C.T.F.E.10.I. 6. J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, p. 248. 7. C. Enloe, Making Sense of International Politics: Bananas, Beaches and Bases (Berkeley, 1989). 8. E.J. Bristow, Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain since 1700 (Dublin, 1977), p. 178. 9. LNA, LN, ICTWC, Report of the International Bureau to the Official Conference at Geneva, 30 June 1921, C.T.F.E.10.I. 10. LNA, LN, The Suppression of the White Slave Traffic in Women and Children, Memorandum by the Secretary-General, Assembly Document 8, September 1920, 12.4987.647, R636. 11. E.J. Bristow, Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain since 1700 (Dublin, 1977), p. 177.

Barbara Metzger 75 12. The signatories were: Germany, Austria–Hungary, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Spain, France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland. 13. LNA, Traffic in Women and Children, Report presented by the Brazilian Representative, M. Castao da Cunha, and adopted by the Council, 15 May 1920, 12.4423.647, R636. 14. LNA, LN, The Suppression of the White Slave Traffic in Women and Children, Memorandum by the Secretary-General, Assembly Document 8, September 1920, 12.4987.647, R636. 15. LNA, ICTWC, Speech by the British Delegate, delivered on 30 June 1921, C.T.F.E.13. 16. LNA, Memorandum written up by Rachel Crowdy, 31 March 1920, 12.3673.647, R636. 17. LNA, ICTWC. Report of the International Bureau to the Official Conference at Geneva, 30 June 1921, C.T.F.E.10.I. 18. LNA, LN, ICTWC, Report presented by M. Regnault, 4 July 1921, C.T.F.E.36(a), C.223(a).M.162(a).1921.IV. 19. Die Tätigkeit des Völkerbunds im Monat Juli, No. 4, 1 August 1921. 20. LNA, Opening speech by the President, International Conference on the Traffic in Women and Children, 30 June 1921, C.T.F.E.14. 21. LNA, Address delivered by Bascom Johnson to the Pan American Conference of Women, Baltimore, Maryland, 21 April 1922, 12.22452.647, R636. 22. LNA, LN, Third Assembly, Report on Traffic in Women and Children, A.V.26.1922, 12.23470.647, R636. 23. LNA, LN, Third Assembly, Report on Traffic in Women and Children, p. 359. 24. LN, Records of the Second Assembly, Twenty-Third Plenary Meeting, 29 September 1921, p. 528. 25. LNA, Letter Rachel Crowdy to J.L. Laidlaw, The Woman’s Pro-League Council, 17 October 1921, 12.19340.19340, R658. 26. LNA, Letter Rachel Crowdy to J.L. Laidlaw, The Woman’s Pro-League Council, 17 October 1921, 12.19340.19340, R658. 27. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children Committee, Ninth Session, Report by the Secretary, 28 March 1930, C.T.F.E.462. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Form of the Annual Report, Memorandum by Mr. Harris, British Representative, 8 April 1922, C.T.F.E.213. 28. LNA, Recommendation adopted by the 7th International Congress of Girls’ Friendly Societies held at Neuchatel, 26 May 1921, C.T.F.E.7.1921. 29. Representing Denmark, the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania, Spain and Uruguay. 30. Representing the International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children, the International Women’s Organisations, the International Catholic Association for the Protection of Girls, the Federation of National Unions for the Protection of Girls, and the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women. 31. League of Nations Union, The League and Human Welfare, No. 155, 11th edn, (London, 1939), p. 82. 32. The League and Human Welfare. 33. LN, Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children (ACTWC), Minutes of the Third Session, 7–11 April 1924, C.217.M.71.1924.IV.

76 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years 34. LN, Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children (ACTWC), Minutes of the Third Session, 7–11 April 1924, C.217.M.71.1924.IV. 35. LNA, Letter E. Zillken to League Information Section, 5 June 1924, 12.36779.647, R637. 36. LNA, Letter Arthur Sweetser, Director of the Information Section, to E. Zillken, 21 June 1924, 12.36779.647, R637. 37. G. Bock, ‘Keine Arbeitskräfte in diesem Sinn: Prostituierte im Nazi-Staat’, in P. Biermann (ed.), Wir sind Frauen wie andere auch!’ Prostituierte und ihre Kämpfe (Hamburg, 1988), p. 72. See also J. Roos, ‘Prostitutes, Civil Society, and the State in Weimar Germany’, in F. Trentmann (ed.), Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and Modern British History (New York, 2003), pp. 263–82. 38. LNA, Correspondence between Rachel Crowdy and E. Junod, Bureau International pour la Defense des Indigenes, April 1922, 12.20050.20050, R658. 39. LNA, LN, Document presented by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, 15 June 1921, C.F.F.E.5. 1921. 40. LNA, LN, Document presented by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, 15 June 1921, C.F.F.E.5. 1921. See further K. Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (New York, 2005). 41. LNA, League of Nations and Traffic in Women, Memorandum on Prohibition of Foreign Women in Tolerated Houses, The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, n.d., 12.25172X.647, R636. 42. LNA, Internal note William Rappard to Rachel Crowdy, 6 December 1922, 12.25172X.647, R636. 43. LNA, Letter Rachel Crowdy to the Association for Social and Moral Hygiene, 8 December 1922, 12.25172X.647, R636. 44. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Report of the Fifth Committee to the Assembly, 12 September 1923, A.75.1923.IV., 12.30768.647, R636. 45. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Report on Resolutions of the Fourth Assembly, 6 November 1923, C.723.1923.IV., 12.31549.647, R636. 46. LN, Records of the Third Assembly, Minutes of the Fifth Committee, 20 September 1922, pp. 49–52. 47. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Report of the Fifth Committee, 25 September 1922, 12.23661.647, R636. 48. LNA, League of Nations and Traffic in Women, Memorandum on Prohibition of Foreign Women in Tolerated Houses, n.d., 12.25172X.647, R636. 49. LNA, League of Nations and Traffic in Women, Memorandum on Prohibition of Foreign Women in Tolerated Houses, n.d., 12.25172X.647, R636. 50. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Second Session, 22–27 March 1923, C.225.129.1923.IV. 51. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Second Session, 22–27 March 1923, C.225.129.1923.IV. 52. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Fifth Session, 22–25 March 1926, C.233.M.84. 1926.IV., p. 17. 53. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Fourth Session, 20–27 May 1925, C.382.M.126. 1925.IV., p. 15. 54. LN, Traffic in Women and Children Committee, Report on the Work of the Eleventh Session, 4–9 April 1932, C.390.M220.1932.IV., pp. 6–7. 55. LNA, ICTWC, Additional Article to the International Agreement of 1904, proposed by the British Delegate, 30 June 1921, C.T.F.E.17.1921.

Barbara Metzger 77 56. LNA, ICTWC, Additional Clauses for the protection of women emigrants, proposed by the Canadian Delegate, 30 June 1921, C.T.F.E.19. 57. LNA, ICTWC, Statement by Women’s International Associations, 3 July 1921, C.T.F.E.40. 58. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Third Session, 7–11 April 1924, C.217.M.71. 1924.IV, 28. 59. LNA, Letter Bascom Johnson to Annie Baker, 25 July 1922, 12.22452.647, R636. 60. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Memorandum by Miss Abott, 21 March 1923, C.T.F.E.152. 61. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Second Session, 22–27 March 1923, C.225.M.129.1923.IV, p. 27. 62. C. Miller, ‘The Social Section of the League of Nations’, in P. Weindling (ed.), International Health Organisations and Movements 1918–1939 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 170. 63. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Special Body of Experts, 4 April 1924, C.T.F.E./Experts/6(1). 64. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Special Body of Experts, 4 April 1924, C.T.F.E./Experts/6(1). 65. A model questionnaire can be found in ‘LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Special Body of Experts, Report on the Work of the First Session’, 4 April 1924, C.T.F.E./Experts/6(1). 66. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Preliminary Report presented to the Fifth Committee by the Rapporteur, M Sokal, Polish Delegate, 6 September 1923, A.V./3/1923, 12.30759.647, R636. 67. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Special Body of Experts, Report on the Work of the First Session, 4 April 1924, C.T.F.E./Experts/6(1). 68. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children, Special Body of Experts, Report on the Work of the First Session, 4 April 1924, C.T.F.E./Experts/6(1). 69. H. Wilson Harris, Human Merchandise: A Study of the International Traffic in Women (London, 1928), p. 31. 70. LNA, Letter Kanji Dwarkadar, The Bombay Vigilance Society to Eric Drummond, 28 July 1927, 12.61204.647, R637. 71. LN, Verbatim Records of the Eighth Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the League of Nations, Fifteenth Plenary meeting, 12 September 1927, p. 5. 72. LN, Verbatim Records of the Eighth Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the League of Nations, Fifteenth Plenary meeting, 12 September 1927, p. 52. 73. LN, Records of the Second Assembly 1921, Minutes of the Fifth Committee, 19 September 1921, p. 357. 74. LNA, Address delivered by Bascom Johnson on International Efforts for the Prevention of Traffic in Women and Children to the Pan American Conference of Women, Baltimore, Maryland, 21 April 1922, 12.22452.647, R636. 75. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Seventh Session, 12–17 March 1928, C.184.M.119.1928.IV, p. 38. 76. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Seventh Session, 12–17 March 1928, C.184.M.119.1928.IV, p. 38. 77. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Eleventh Session, 4–9 April 1932, C.503.M.244.1932.IV, p. 2. 78. Attended by South Africa, Australia, Austria, Belgium, United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, China, Czechoslovakia, Free City of Danzig, Estonia,

78 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years

79.

80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85.

86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91.

92. 93.

94. 95. 96. 97.

98.

Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Irish Free State, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. LN, Official Journal, December 1932, 1641. Signed immediately by Austria, Belgium, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Czechoslovakia, Free City of Danzig, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. LN, ACTWC, Abolition of Licensed Houses, 15 June 1934, C.221.M.88.1934.IV, IV.Social.1934.IV.7. LN, ACTWC, Minutes of the Ninth Session, 2–9 April 1929, p. 47. LN, ACTWC, Study in Laws and Regulations with a view to protecting public order and health in countries where the System of Licensed Houses has been abolished, Geneva, 20 June 1930, C.T.F.E.466(1), V.390.M.164.1930.IV. LN, ACTWC, Study in Laws and Regulations. LN, Verbatim Records of the Eleventh Ordinary Session of Assembly of the League of Nations, Nineteenth Plenary meeting, 30 September 1930, p. 10. LN, Official Journal, Special Supplement, No. 174, Records of the Eighteenth Ordinary Meeting of the Assembly, Minutes of the Fifth Committee, 18 September 1937, p. 80. UN Centre for Human Rights, Human Rights. A Compilation of International Instruments, Vol. 1, (New York/Geneva, 1994), p. 233. LNA, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Traffic in Women and Children in the East, 3 April 1933, C.T.F.E.594, C.P.E.420. LNA, LN, Extension of the Enquiry on Traffic in Women and Children to the East, Secretary-General’s note, 26 December 1929, C.586.1929.IV. LNA, Traffic in Women and Children Committee, The Bombay Vigilance Society, 3 September 1928, C.T.F.E./403. The Travelling Commission included Bascom Johnson, the Director of the Legal Section of the American Association for Social Hygiene, Dr Alma Sundquist, a Swedish physician, and Karol Pindor, a Councillor at the Polish Legation. LN, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East, Report to the Council, Geneva 1933, C.849.M.393.1932.IV., C.T.F.E./Orient, 39(1), 16. LN, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East, p. 21. LN, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East. Report to the Council, Geneva 1933, C.849.M.393.1932.IV., C.T.F.E./Orient, 39(I), 90. LNA, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Traffic in Women and Children in the East, 3 April 1933, C.T.F.E.594, C.P.E.420. LN, Official Journal, 1933, 1–6, 247. LN, Official Journal, 1933, 1–6, 247. LNA, Joint Meeting of the Traffic in Women and Children and Child Welfare Committees, 4 April 1933, C.T.F.E. Mixed 12th, P.V.5(1), C.P.E. Mixed 9th, P.V.5(1). LNA, Digest of the Comments by Private Organisations on the Report of the League of Nations Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East, 20 March 1934, C.T.F.E.613, C.P.E.448.

Barbara Metzger 79 99. LNA, LN, Traffic in Women and Children in the East, Report by the Secretary, 4 April 1934, C.T.F.E.623, C.P.E.459. 100. Ch. Herriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849–1949, (Cambridge, 2001), p. 319. 101. See also P. Levine, Prostitution, Race & Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (London, 2003), p. 127. 102. LNA, Joint Meeting of the Traffic in Women and Children Committee and the Child Welfare Committee, 9 April 1934, C.T.F.E. Mixed 13th, P.V.2, C.P.E. Mixed 10th, P.V.2. 103. LN, Official Journal, 1936, 1–6, 552. 104. LN, Official Journal, 1936, p. 49. 105. UN Centre for Human Rights, A Compilation of International Instruments, p. 233.

5 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956 Kevin Grant

The League of Nations and the United Nations advocated clear, ethical principles to govern relations between the great powers and developing nations. These principles reflected the different political eras in which these international governments were founded, the first in the high era of European imperialism, and the second in the era of imperial decline that presaged the Cold War and decolonization. The League employed a decidedly imperial discourse, ranking people in a cultural hierarchy that ascended from savagery to civilization. According to the League’s covenant, trusteeship was the fundamental principle that defined an ethical relationship between the civilized and the savage. This ‘sacred trust’ was premised upon paternalism, capitalist development, the intrinsic sovereignty of colonial nations, and the trustee’s commitment to relinquish power when the colonial wards had become civilized and thus capable of governing themselves. By contrast, the United Nations discarded the idiom of civilization and savagery. The preamble of the charter of the United Nations speaks for ‘all peoples’, advocating tolerance, peace, and ‘economic and social advancement’. Moreover, the charter privileges human rights over trusteeship, advocating ‘equal rights and self-determination of peoples’, as well as ‘respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion ….’1 I have suggested elsewhere that historians should assess whether privileges and rights under the United Nations continued to derive from an imperial vision of civilized hierarchy, capitalist development, and the sovereignty of the state.2 Toward this end, I will here examine changes in transnational principles of governance, their relationship to sovereignty, and their influence on international treaties and conventions against slavery. 80

Kevin Grant 81

The international law against slavery was built upon treaties and conventions between the European imperial powers that predate the League of Nations. This essay recounts these agreements and elucidates their adherence to the ‘civilizing mission’ of commerce and Christianity. It further examines the advent of human rights politics in British debates over the so-called new slaveries of European imperialism in Africa. Setting aside these ethics of empire and abolition, the League of Nations instead advocated trusteeship as the predominant principle of international governance. This essay dwells primarily upon the League’s ‘sacred trust’ and the subsequent transition from trusteeship to human rights as the predominant principle of international governance under the United Nations. In the light of this ideological transition from trusteeship to human rights, this essay compares the League of Nations’ Slavery Convention of 1926 to the United Nations’ Supplementary Slavery Convention of 1956. Trusteeship and human rights were not only ethical, but also transnational principles, on the basis of which governments condemned slavery across borders. The enforcement of abolition was another matter. The history of anti-slavery conventions under both the League of Nations and the United Nations demonstrates that neither the ‘sacred trust’ nor human rights had practical application beyond sovereignty. There is a growing body of scholarship on the historical development of human rights and the role of international governments in propagating human rights.3 This scholarship treats the intellectual development of human rights as a transnational phenomenon, while acknowledging that human rights have been limited by sovereignty. This scholarship is built upon a teleological premise that mankind has proceeded, from ancient times, toward the recognition and enforcement of human rights. Human rights have been, in the words of Paul Gordon Lauren, ‘visions seen’; visions that will presumably, someday, be realized. This teleology is problematic in a number of respects. First, histories of human rights commonly project contemporary human rights upon the past, collapsing a miscellany of ideas into a single political genealogy.4 Second, they commonly valorize people who asserted specific rights for themselves, but overlook the fact that these same people intended to withhold these rights from others.5 Finally, these histories commonly discuss historical figures and institutions in terms of human rights, although the figures and institutions did not use the language of human rights to define their main objectives and accomplishments.6 These shortcomings become apparent when one examines the ways in which histories of human rights have treated imperialism, as well as the particular issue of anti-slavery

82 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

politics in the context of empire and international government. Empire is generally cast as an impediment to human rights, an impediment that receded with decolonization after the Second World War. The anti-slavery movement is cast as a long-standing human rights campaign that pursued the consistent goal of global emancipation between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries. These representations do not account for the fact that the anti-slavery movement began and advanced in the context of empire, and that few early abolitionists invoked ‘human rights’. It is telling that Anti-Slavery International now represents itself as ‘the world’s oldest international human rights organization’, although the evangelical Protestants who founded this admirable organization in 1839 (as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society) made no reference to human rights and certainly would have disavowed the secularism of their current successors. Focusing upon the issues of slavery and abolition, this essay illuminates how people understood humanitarianism at different times, and specifically how they understood the limits of humanitarianism in relation to sovereignty. The slave trade and slavery were initially abolished in the nineteenth century under national legislation and bilateral treaties between sovereign states. Great Britain took the lead in opposing both the seaborne slave trade, under the Abolition Act of 1807, and slavery, under the Emancipation Act of 1833. Beginning with the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the British government complemented these acts with a series of bilateral treaties against the seaborne slave trade. British policy makers designed these various abolitionist acts and treaties in accordance with political and military calculations, but it was the strong moral conviction of evangelicals that motivated popular support for abolition and inspired these policy makers. British evangelicals emphasized that grace was available to those who performed good works and, in the most general sense, lived in accordance with Biblical precepts. In contrast to the Calvinist concept of an Elect destined for salvation, evangelicals believed that grace was accessible to all people, regardless of culture and race. Evangelicals, furthermore, acknowledged that the combination of commerce and Christianity promoted the moral and social reform of ‘uncivilized’ peoples in three important ways. First, this so-called legitimate commerce undermined illegitimate commerce in immoral commodities such as slaves. Second, commerce spread a Christian material culture and thus facilitated cultural assimilation to a civilized model. Finally, commerce promoted consumer desire for additional British goods, a desire that drove people to achieve the Protestant virtue of selfdiscipline in their labor for wages to obtain more goods. The savage was

Kevin Grant 83

thus disciplined as both a producer and a consumer, and the abolitionist or missionary thus reconciled his or her role as a paternalistic, moral educator with that of a capitalist competitor. The growing network of bilateral treaties against the seaborne slave trade, coupled with emancipationist legislation in Europe and the United States, set the stage for two important condemnations of slavery by the European imperial powers in the context of the scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century. The first condemnation was included in the General Act of the Conference of Berlin of 1885. The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, had convened this conference with no pretension to philanthropy. Rather, he had seen the conference as a means to negotiate the rules and boundaries of European expansion into west and central Africa. With little at stake in these proceedings, the British Foreign Office proposed a moral declaration against slavery that was eventually incorporated into Article VI of the act. Under this article, signatories pledged to watch over the indigenous tribes and ‘to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being, and to help in suppressing slavery, and especially the slave trade’.7 While the delegates declined to commit their governments to the administration of abolition, they endorsed the civilizing mission of commerce and Christianity as a means to combat the slave trade. They recognized the authority of the Association Internationale du Congo over much of the Congo river basin, because the head of this association, King Leopold II of Belgium, had promised to manage the region as an international free trade zone and to promote the expansion of Catholic and Protestant missions. Both humanitarians and imperial administrators would subsequently treat the Berlin Act as a foundational document in establishing international laws against slavery in the twentieth century, as discussed below.8 The bilateral treaties against the slave trade culminated, in more precise terms, in the General Act and Declaration of Brussels of 1890. The Brussels Conference had been convened in 1889 by Leopold. Its work had centered upon Leopold’s imperial territory, the Congo Free State, but it had also addressed slavery, arms, and liquor traffic in Africa at large. The powers observed in Article 1 that the slave trade would be ‘counteracted’ through ‘progressive organization of the administrative, judicial, religious, and military services in the African territories placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilized nations’. The act also included, in Chapter III, more specific provisions for combating the slave trade in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. In general accordance with the existing network of bilateral treaties, Article XLV stipulated

84 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

that each sovereign state had to authorize each other sovereign state to visit, search, and potentially seize vessels traveling under its flag.9 The Berlin and Brussels Acts invoked a cultural hierarchy of civilization and took a paternalistic view on the development of the savage. For example, Article VI of the Berlin Act commits the signatories to ‘protect and favour all religious, scientific, or charitable institutions … which aim at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilization’. This hierarchical concept of civilization was fundamentally transnational in two respects. First, ‘civilization’ was not defined by citizenship in nation-states or by the sovereignties of nation-states. Rather, ‘civilization’ derived from a classical model, which long preceded the nation-state.10 It articulated universal standards of historical development from savagery to civilization, a process that was commonly likened to the development of a child into an adult. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ‘civilization’ could be defined by a variety of factors, including forms of government, religion, the built environment, modes of agricultural production, commerce, and cultural achievements in fields ranging from the visual arts to philosophy. Although the people of certain nation-states—especially Great Britain— declared that they had reached the top of this hierarchy, no one presumed to hold a national, let alone sovereign, monopoly of civilization. In fact, turning to the second point regarding the transnational nature of civilization, most of the western imperial powers, as well as Japan, invoked their achievement of this universal civilization as a justification of their rule over colonial subjects, on the grounds that civilization entailed a duty and benevolent capacity to ‘improve’ peoples who were as yet ‘savage’ or ‘backward’.11 This would be a gradual process. As Article 3 of the Brussels Act stipulates, ‘The powers exercising a sovereignty or protectorate in Africa … engage to proceed gradually, as circumstances may permit … with the repression of the slave-trade ….’ At the Berlin Conference, the Brussels Conference, and, 30 years later, the Paris Peace Conference, ‘civilization’ was a transnational standard of great power status or, at least, political recognition in international relations. There was a conflict, however, between the transnational standard of civilization and the sovereignties of the nation-states that exercised imperial power. This conflict was clearly exposed by controversies over the brutal exploitation and atrocities perpetrated against Africans by the Congo Free State. The British media, in particular, condemned the Congo Free State for violating the terms of the Berlin Act and for degenerating into what one journalist called a ‘a civilized savagery’.12 Calls for intervention and reform were greeted with diffidence by the British government,

Kevin Grant 85

because the Berlin Act provided no mechanism for the enforcement of its transnational principles across sovereign boundaries. After the First World War, this conflict between transnational principles and sovereignty would be revisited in debates over slavery in the new era of international government, and in the ideological contexts of trusteeship and human rights. At the turn of the twentieth century, the discourse of human rights entered British public debates over imperial policy and politics. The initial advocates of human rights were members of a new humanitarian lobby that began to assert itself in African affairs in the 1890s. This group originated from the Liverpool, London, and Manchester chambers of commerce, and it advocated trade as a means to guarantee Africans’ human rights. The leading spokesman of this lobby, E.D. Morel, popularized the idea that human rights are inextricably linked to property ownership in land, produce, labor, and, ultimately, one’s own body. Morel wrote of the Congo in the Liverpool Daily Post on 4 April 1902: ‘The right of the native to his land and to the fruits of his land; his right to sell those fruits to whomsoever he will; his right as a free man to his freedom—those are the real principles at stake’. The articulation of commerce and human rights marked a shift away from the civilizing mission of commerce and Christianity, because the advocates of human rights took a different view on culture. Theirs was a hierarchical concept of cultural relativism informed by racial essentialism. As Morel declared in April 1903 in the West African Mail, ‘The African, unlike the Asiatic, will never become a manufacturing and commercial rival of the White-man on a scale sufficiently great to constitute a danger. The vast bulk of the African race is essentially agricultural and arboricultural; it is the ingrained characteristic of the race’.13 In view of mounting evidence of brutal exploitation and atrocities in the Congo Free State, Morel and Roger Casement, a British consular official, conceived the agenda of the Congo Reform Association on the bases of commerce, land rights, cultural relativism, and, ultimately, human rights. Casement explained to the British MP, Charles Dilke: It is this aspect of the Congo question—its abnormal injustice and extraordinary invasion, at this stage of civilised life, of fundamental human rights, which to my mind calls for the formation of a special body and the formulation of a very special appeal to the humanity of England.14 During the Congo reform campaign, Morel found political allies among leading figures in the British Labour Party, who subsequently joined

86 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

him in advocating human rights in imperial policy during and after the First World War.15 The war involved imperial subjects and territories around the world, opening the door to numerous demands for selfgovernment, if not independence, in the aftermath of the conflict. A growing number of radicals and Labour leaders began even to question the traditional structure of the British Empire, asking whether imperial sovereignty actually promoted or undermined the rights and welfare of foreign peoples. As an alternative, radicals proposed a new system of international government, ‘a league of nations’, to oversee the anticipated redistribution of Europe’s imperial possessions at the war’s end. Morel and other humanitarians joined these debates over the proposed League of Nations, seeking to determine which system of sovereignty might best combat new slaveries in the post-war era. Morel perceived that imperial competition in Africa was a significant cause of the war. ‘An African cancer’, wrote Morel, ‘the product of bad European administration, infects the political body of Europe. An attempted monopolization of the raw material of Africa by this or that European Power in the interest of its own nationals has its repercussion upon the international relations of Europe’.16 In 1917, he proposed the creation of an unprecedented, international sovereign state in Africa, and he insisted that Germany should participate in the creation of this state. Morel believed that Africa would remain a source of friction for Europe unless all of the imperial regimes agreed to neutralize the greater part of Africa’s tropical and sub-tropical regions under an international administration. The principles of this administration were the same that Morel and others had advocated for the Congo: Protection of human rights through free trade and African ownership of land and labor, and respect for cultural relativism, based on the recognition of essential racial differences. Morel envisioned most of Africa as a peaceful free trade zone in which the economy would be run by African agriculturalists catering to a European export market. ‘These proposals’, Morel explained, ‘are substantially an amplification and precision of the purposes of the Berlin Act’.17 Morel recalled that the Berlin Act lacked a mechanism for reconciling its transnational principles with state sovereignty, and that it therefore lacked the power of enforcement. He proposed an international sovereign state that would have the prerogative to punish violations of Africans’ rights, because these violations would occur within the scope of its sovereignty. Morel did not, however, clearly define the balance of power within the state’s administrative structure. He might have elaborated upon his proposal, but the British government intervened to

Kevin Grant 87

silence him. Morel’s sympathetic view toward the German empire, coupled with his persistent assertions that Britain bore a share of responsibility for provoking the war, rendered him suspect in the eyes of officials. He was arrested on a technicality under the Defence of the Realm Act in September 1917, and he spent the remainder of the war in prison. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the allies undermined the potential of the Brussels Act to justify humanitarian intervention against slavery in Africa and the slave trade at sea. The Convention of St. Germain-en-Laye of 1919 superceded both the Berlin and Brussels Acts, replacing the specific provisions against the slave trade found in the Brussels Act with a general declaration. Under Article 11, the signatories pledged to ‘endeavour to secure the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms and of the slave trade by land and sea’.18 Although the status of specific bilateral treaties remained open to question for years to come, the convention weakened, if not broke, the international legal framework for abolition.19 In the months before Morel’s arrest, the British government had decided to attempt to retain Germany’s imperial territories after the war. However, Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his cabinet had difficulty in legitimizing this seizure of territory in Britain’s current political environment. British humanitarian politics, coupled with the labor movement, had played a significant role in creating a common antipathy to ‘imperialist conquest’. This domestic pressure on the government was compounded in January 1918, when President Woodrow Wilson presented his ‘fourteen points’ to the United States Congress, calling for the political self-determination of small nations. The US had entered the war in April as an associate power, and Lloyd George was intent on building at least the façade of an ideological consensus with Wilson, despite his personal frustration over the president’s meddling in Britain’s imperial affairs. Lloyd George thus felt compelled to define Britain’s acquisition of Germany’s colonies in a manner that would appease both his critics at home and an associate in the on-going fight against Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Given these political imperatives, Lloyd George acquiesced to Wilson’s proposal to create a system of ‘mandates’ to manage the redistribution of European imperial territory after the war. Wilson had derived this idea from a treatise entitled, The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion, by the Afrikaner statesman, Jan Smuts, who was a member of the British Imperial War Cabinet.20 Although the British government was initially resistant to the idea of mandates, as opposed to traditional colonies, it soon realized that it could manipulate the proposed mandates system to serve its own ends.

88 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

Moreover, Smuts subsequently provided the government with a discourse through which it could legitimize its imperial machinations. Smuts described the mandates system as a ‘sacred trust’, and Wilson incorporated this language into Article 22 of the League Covenant.21 Morel subsequently observed, ‘[The mandates system].… is an attempt … to reconcile the altruistic pronouncements of President Wilson with what is substantially a policy of imperialistic grab at the expense of the beaten foe.’22 The principle of trusteeship had a long history and deep resonance in British imperial politics.23 However, this principle had slipped into abeyance for most of the nineteenth century. In its origins in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Britain’s ‘sacred trust’ had been imbued with Protestant theology, and it had entailed the Christian duty to educate and discipline the imperial ‘ward’ for the ward’s own benefit. After the First World War, however, imperial officials conveyed little recognition of the theological origins of trusteeship. Nonetheless, there is evidence to suggest that Smuts, in particular, understood trusteeship in the broader context of his commitment to Christian ethics in ‘native policy’ in South Africa. In a speech in May 1917 in London, Smuts declared that native policy in South Africa had to be guided by two axioms: one moral and one racial. ‘Natives … are almost animal-like in the simplicity of their minds and ways,’ Smuts explained. ‘If we want to make a success of our native policy in South Africa we shall have to proceed on the simplest moral lines and on the basis of the Christian moral code.’24 He further stated, ‘It has now become an accepted axiom in our dealings with the natives that it is dishonourable to mix white and black blood’.25 It was the duty of whites to create a political system and administration with ‘parallel institutions—giving the natives their own separate institutions on parallel lines with institutions for whites’.26 Significantly, Smuts added, ‘[Blacks] are different not only in colour but in minds and in political capacity, and their political institutions should be different, while always proceeding on the basis of self-government.’27 The advocates of trusteeship acknowledged the intrinsic sovereignty of colonial nations, but rather than prioritize progress toward future self-government, they prioritized the imperial ward’s present material welfare. Like the advocates of commerce and Christianity before them, they established their paternal authority over the imperial ward in terms of a transnational hierarchy of civilization, which they used to measure the presumed immaturity of the ward and the ward’s incompetence to manage his own affairs. As Smuts explained: ‘… The German colonies in the Pacific and Africa are inhabited by barbarians, who not

Kevin Grant 89

only cannot possibly govern themselves, but to whom it would be impracticable to apply any ideas of political self-determination in the European sense’.28 This hierarchy would be subsequently reflected in the ranking of A, B, and C mandates, ranging from those peoples who could presumably be educated in the principles and skills of self-government to those whose barbarism was virtually irremediable. It was the duty of the ‘civilised’ trustee to raise the ‘savage’ ward to a comparable level of civilization through paternal tutelage. In principle, the trustee’s authority to manage the ward’s property and sovereignty was to expire at such time as the ward learned to emulate civilized society, but the trustee alone possessed the ability to determine when the ward had achieved a level of education sufficient to justify independence. In practice, trustees were unable to perceive themselves as obsolete. Humanitarians outside the League had every intention of putting the principle of trusteeship into practice. John Harris, the Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society (Anti-Slavery Society), heralded the League as a ‘momentous event in the history of Africa,’ and he applauded the foundation of the mandates system upon what he termed the Christian principle of trusteeship.29 Through tenacious lobbying Harris succeeded in prompting the League Assembly to support a resolution to take action against slavery, which in turn prompted the League Council to invite the Permanent Mandates Commission to appoint a Temporary Slavery Commission. The product of the latter commission’s work was the Slavery Convention of 1926. The text of the convention expresses a desire ‘to complete and extend’ the work against slavery and the slave trade which had been initiated under the Berlin Act of 1885, the Brussels Act of 1890, and the Convention of Saint Germain-en-Laye of 1919. The convention was ostensibly an attempt to make ‘more detailed arrangements’ toward the goals of these previous treaties and ‘to prevent forced labour from developing into conditions analogous to slavery.…’ In fact, the production of the convention belied these claims, as League officials and various governments prevented the establishment of both a transnational system of abolition and a more comprehensive definition of slavery. The Temporary Slavery Commission was dominated by former colonial officials, such as the Belgian chair, Albrecht Gohr, Director General of Belgium’s Ministry of the Colonies, and Frederick Lugard, the former British governor-general of Nigeria. Lugard led the work of the commission, drawing upon many years of administrative experience in Africa that he had recently distilled into an important post-war treatise on empire, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, published in 1922.

90 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

In this text, Lugard made the case for Britons ‘as trustees of civilization for the adequate development of [the natives’] resources, and as trustees for the welfare of the native races.’30 He argued that in some cases slavery could actually facilitate a primitive society’s education in ‘civilized’ commercial exchange. More to the point, the expropriation of indigenous lands provided the imperial regime with a wage labor force. Without rights to the land and the fruits of the soil, Africans would not be able to sustain themselves, trade, or pay taxes, except through labor in the imperial economy. In terms reminiscent of the gradualist approach of the Brussels Act, Lugard observed, ‘The task of the administrative officer is to clothe his principles in the garb of evolution, not revolution .…’31 The principles that Lugard outlined in The Dual Mandate informed his production of the first draft of the League of Nations’ slavery convention three years later. Before submitting his draft of the slavery convention to League officials, Lugard submitted the draft to the British government and the British Crown lawyers for review. Upon receiving a copy of the draft, the Foreign Office promptly convened a meeting in July 1925 that included representatives of the Colonial Office, the India Office, the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Labour, and the Sudan Government Office.32 The discussions of this group focused upon tailoring the draft convention to suit Britain’s sovereign interests in imperial and naval power. The India Office and the Colonial Office were especially concerned that slavery should be defined in such a manner that land tenure and labor conditions in India and Kenya would not qualify. Kenya, in particular, had recently become the subject of intense disputes over labor and land policies that pitted the white settler community against Africans and humanitarian advocates of ‘native welfare’.33 In this and subsequent stages of drafting Article 2, in particular, British officials resisted any specific identifications of ‘conditions analogous to slavery’, fearing that such specifics would entail a legal responsibility to enact reforms.34 The Admiralty received general support for its proposal to treat the slave trade as piracy under Article 3. The draft article read in part: ‘The act of conveying slaves on the high seas shall be deemed to be an act of piracy, and the public ships of the signatory States shall have the same rights in relation to vessels and persons engaged in such act as over vessels and persons engaged in piracy’.35 Slave traders would be processed through the courts of the apprehending country, but they would then be returned to their home countries for prosecution. This provision would have introduced a revolutionary change into international laws

Kevin Grant 91

against slavery by authorizing the transnational enforcement of abolition on the high seas. As Joyce Gutteridge explains, ‘At no time [had] piracy and the slave trade been assimilated in international law, and the rights of visit, search and seizure, [had] always in the case of the slave trade been entirely dependent on treaty provisions. Piracy [had] long been recognized as a crime jure gentium (under the laws of nations) and therefore repressible by any State regardless of the offender and the flag of his ship ….’36 Since the late nineteenth century, the Anti-Slavery Society had supported the equation of slave trading and piracy as a means to transcend sovereign opposition to abolition.37 In introducing Britain’s draft of the slavery convention to the League Council, Lord Robert Cecil cautioned, ‘In the past the attempt to do away with slavery … in an abrupt manner, although noble in its inspiration, has resulted in unforeseen and regrettable hardships for the individuals whose condition it was sought to alleviate, and even in grave social upheavals’. In the future, Cecil added, abolition ‘could only be successfully brought about with due regard to the maintenance of order and the well-being of the peoples concerned’.38 The slavery convention reflected this desire of imperial administrators to reconcile freedom and welfare as a ‘sacred trust’ of the state. In September 1925, the council resolved to submit the draft convention on slavery for comment to the members of the League and other governments. The only major modification to the draft was the deletion of piracy from Article 3 by France and Italy, on the grounds that Britain might exploit this provision and its superior naval strength to harass foreign shipping. The British accordingly replaced the reference to piracy with the following language: ‘The High Contracting Parties undertake to adopt all appropriate measures with a view to preventing and suppressing the embarkation, disembarkation and transport of slaves in their territorial waters and upon all vessels flying their respective flags’. In June 1926, the council resolved to present a final version of the convention to the assembly, and the convention was then opened for signature on 25 September 1926. In 1925, Harris had observed of the draft slavery convention and the work of the Temporary Slavery Commission: ‘It is no exaggeration to say that these represent the biggest advance made by Anti-Slavery forces since 1885’.39 In fact, this was an exaggeration. Despite the grand aspirations announced in the Slavery Convention, this document extended previous international labor legislation in only one significant respect. Article 5 of the convention stipulates that the use of ‘forced labour’ for private gain was illegal. Although this unprecedented legislation against

92 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

‘forced labour’ technically extended the scope of protection for laborers, it was actually specified as a means to legitimize the continued coercion of labor by the imperial state. As Lugard had asserted in The Dual Mandate, forced labor under official supervision was occasionally necessary for public works of the government’s design. Echoing Lugard’s earlier opinion, Article 5 stipulates that forced labor could only be mobilized by ‘the competent central authorities of the territory concerned’ for public purposes. In such a case, coerced laborers were to receive just remuneration and not be removed from their places of residence.40 Aside from this problematic extension of international labor legislation, the Slavery Convention replicated the main provisions of the Berlin Act with regard to labor. Most importantly, the convention featured those two aspects of the Berlin Act, state sovereignty and the subordination of African land rights to state policy, which Morel had criticized and which Lugard had perceived as necessary to the gradual transition of Africans from slavery to freedom. As with the Berlin Act, the convention offered no mechanism for the enforcement of transnational, ‘civilised’ standards of trusteeship. While the convention observed the sovereignty of the imperial powers, it made no mention of indigenous land rights. Morel had asserted several years earlier that the preservation of African land rights would be ‘the acid test of trusteeship’.41 As Lugard and other imperial administrators had wished, the process of abolition under international law was left entirely to their discretion. Article 1 of the convention defines slavery in general terms as ‘the status or condition of a person over whom any or all powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised’. Article 2 refers to ‘slavery in all its forms’, but none of these forms are specified. The privilege of imperial administrators to interpret these generalities was guaranteed under Articles 2, 6, and 9, which stipulated that the convention would be enforced separately by the signatories within their sovereign borders, with no prospect of international intervention by land or sea. The signatories could choose to commit only a partial number of their territories to the convention, and they were permitted to specify which territories would or would not adhere to specific parts of the convention. Finally, the convention did not address the seaborne slave trade. In the early 1920s, there was a clear distinction to be drawn between human rights, as advocated by Morel, and trusteeship, as advocated by Smuts and Lugard. Members of Britain’s political left continued to push Morel’s agenda after his death in 1924, calling for the incorporation of rights into both British imperial policy and the ‘sacred trust’ of the mandates system. They contributed to a change in the principles of British

Kevin Grant 93

imperial administration over the course of the 1930s that ultimately combined trusteeship and human rights into a single, coherent ideology.42 Remarkably, by 1933, even Lugard defined the significance of the Slavery Convention with reference to ‘human rights’.43 By the end of the Second World War, British officials across the political spectrum endorsed political rights and human rights for Britain’s imperial subjects. Stephen Howe suggests that this view was probably produced by revulsion at the Nazis’ language of racial superiority, the crucial participation of imperial forces in the war, and the demands of colonial nationalists.44 The politics of rights subsequently overcame the politics of trusteeship, which finally gave way to the concept of ‘partnership’ in a Commonwealth of Nations.45 The combination of trusteeship and rights in British imperial policy presaged the terms of the charter of the United Nations in 1945. The United Nations took up the principle of trusteeship when it inherited the mandates system from the League of Nations. It replaced the Permanent Mandates Commission with the International Trusteeship Council, much to the chagrin of the British government. British officials had argued that the reconstituted ‘trusteeship system’ should, like the mandates system, prioritize ‘native welfare’, and they opposed political oversight by any UN authority. The US government dictated different terms, prioritizing peace and security and establishing political oversight by the Trusteeship Council under the authority of the UN General Assembly.46 This was consistent with the terms of the UN Charter, which explicitly combined trusteeship and human rights in the international trusteeship system.47 The first UN Trusteeship Council included delegates from governments that were distinctly critical of imperialism: China, Iraq, Mexico, and the Soviet Union.48 As Lauren states of this period, ‘The Trusteeship Division … could not have been more committed to decolonization’.49 In contrast to trusteeship, which the founders of the UN inherited from the League of Nations, the UN’s commitment to human rights came from many sources.50 One of the most remarkable sources was Smuts, who, as the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, was a ubiquitous and influential figure in international affairs in the 1940s. He attended the San Francisco Conference as one of the few influential, elder statesmen who had participated in the creation of the League over 25 years before. In this capacity, he drafted the preamble of the UN Charter, incorporating human rights into his earlier advocacy of the trusteeship of international government.51

94 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

During the Second World War Smuts had perceived a general crisis of sovereignty that had created, to his mind, a need for a new international order. In April 1941, he declared in a national broadcast from Cape Town: ‘It seems to me that the day of the small independent sovereign State has passed’.52 ‘Isolationism’, he added, ‘is as dead as the absolute sovereignty of the national State. Security, reform, better ordering of our world community—all call for an effective common authority’.53 Smuts’ view on race relations and ‘native policy’ created a delicate balance in his combination of trusteeship and human rights. He stated plainly in January 1942, ‘Of course, everybody in [South Africa] is agreed that European and African should live apart and preserve their own respective cultures. But much more than that is called for today in the new Africa’.54 Smuts suggested that rights should be subordinated to trusteeship, and that the advocates of trusteeship should prioritize Africans’ welfare. He argued that South Africans should ‘[get away] from the old political battleground and the fight over equality and superiority, and in a true spirit of trusteeship … attack the practical problems before us, such as education, health, housing, feeding, wages and conditions which are now (with the urbanization and detribalization of the Natives) rapidly becoming acute’.55 Smuts’ view on the appropriate relationship between sovereignty and the transnational concept of human rights became abundantly clear in the first session of the United Nations General Assembly. The Indian delegate, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, called upon the UN to denounce the South African government’s policies of racial discrimination as a violation of the human rights endorsed by the UN Charter. Smuts stood up and asserted that race relations in his country were a matter of ‘domestic jurisdiction’, and that the sovereignty of South Africa was protected under Article 2(7) of the charter. Pandit rejoined that this was a critical ‘test case’ that would determine whether the assembly would give priority to human rights or sovereignty in the future.56 The assembly ultimately supported her resolution, but, fortunately for Smuts, the assembly lacked the power to enforce its moral denunciations. ‘Smuts … could enthusiastically draft the language about rights for the preamble to the Charter,’ Lauren observes, ‘but not if it committed his country to giving equal treatment to blacks’.57 Remarkably, in South Africa itself, Nelson Mandela and other young, black leaders had already laid claim to rights and explicitly rejected trusteeship. In 1944, they published the ANC Youth League manifesto, which declared: ‘While Trustees have been very vocal in their solicitations for the African their deeds have shown clearly that talk of Trusteeship is an eyewash for the Civilised

Kevin Grant 95

world and an empty platitude to soothe Africans into believing that after all oppression is a pleasant experience under Christian democratic rule’. After recounting decades of discriminatory legislation, the Youth League leadership declared that the African had finally lost faith in trusteeship: ‘He has realized that to trust to the mere good grace of the White man will not free him, as no nation can free an oppressed group other than that group itself’.58 At the same time that the British imperial administration and international government was making the ideological transition from trusteeship to human rights, the international campaign against slavery made little progress. After the Slavery Convention of 1926, the League of Nations had pursued the abolition of slavery without conviction. Further lobbying by the Anti-Slavery Society prompted the League to reconvene the Temporary Slavery Commission in 1931. The commission met twice in 1932 and issued a report that was critical of the League’s indecisive approach to slavery. It further recommended the creation of an Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery to assist the League Council.59 The advisory committee was established, and it then held five sessions between 1935 and 1938. The proceedings of the committee were confidential, and its work was all but forgotten after the outbreak of the Second World War.60 ‘In 1946’, comments Suzanne Miers, ‘slavery was the last thing on the minds of politicians. The Slavery Convention was not even among the treaties the UN took over from the League of Nations at its demise.’61 In fact, the convention was overlooked by UN officials until an ad hoc committee referred to it in a report in 1951.62 This is not to say that slavery was ignored entirely during this period. The Soviet Union saw to it that slavery was condemned under Article 4 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.63 In the next several years, the issue of slavery would be revived in the UN through a combination of non-official humanitarian initiatives by the Anti-Slavery Society and the machinations of the Cold War. C.W.W. Greenidge, who succeeded Harris as the Secretary of the AntiSlavery Society, attended the UN General Assembly in Paris in 1948 and lobbied for the creation of a new UN committee of experts on slavery. The Foreign Office resisted this initiative on the grounds that it would produce only another costly bureaucracy—and this for an issue that most in the Foreign Office regarded as settled. The Colonial Office resisted for the traditional reason that it did not want to invite scrutiny of labor in Britain’s own empire.64 Greenidge nonetheless succeeded in winning the support of the Belgian delegate, Fernand Dehousee, a professor of international

96 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

law and a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which had recently drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He also won the support of the French delegate, Professor René Cassin, another professor of international law and member of the Commission on Human Rights. In July 1949, Dehousee and Cassin introduced a resolution that asked the Economic and Social Council of the UN to conduct a study on slavery. The British government now decided to support the UN’s work against slavery for two reasons. First, it felt bound by tradition to do so. Second, as Miers explains, ‘Their main interest … was to expose and attack the “new slavery” in labor camps of the communist bloc’.65 The British further pushed for the study of slavery to include forced labor, debt peonage, and mui tsai, among other forms of labor exploitation, in the hope that they might thus divert attention from chattel slavery in their Persian Gulf satellites and the Aden Protectorate.66 The British government introduced a more specific resolution to create a committee of five experts that would ‘survey the field of slavery and other institutions or customs resembling slavery’ and then issue a report at the end of 12 months. This resolution was carried over Russian opposition, and the council duly appointed an ad hoc Committee of Experts on Slavery.67 Greenidge was a member of the committee, and in 1950 the Anti-Slavery Society was granted ‘consultative status’ to the Economic and Social Council. As with the previous committee of experts on slavery, the work of this committee was largely inconclusive.68 It observed in its 1951 report that slavery still existed in the world, and it condemned specific practices analogous to slavery. It recommended that the UN take up the Slavery Convention of 1926, which the UN finally did under a protocol in 1953.69 It also recommended that the UN create a supplementary slavery convention in order to account for specific practices analogous to slavery, including debt bondage, bride price, the exploitation of children, and serfdom. Building upon the protocol of 1953, Greenidge used the consultative status of the Anti-Slavery Society to submit to the Economic and Social Council a draft supplementary slavery convention that included practices analogous to slavery. The Council collected responses to the draft from 20 member states, including Britain, which submitted an alternative draft convention of its own. This draft underwent months of revision by a variety of governments, UN offices, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), principally the Anti-Slavery Society.70 In 1955, the British initiated arrangements for a final drafting session. They wanted a drafting committee of only 10 delegates, and they lobbied aggressively to ensure the participation of France, the Netherlands,

Kevin Grant 97

and Australia, all governments with colonial possessions. The British were also pleased to see Turkey, India, and Ecuador elected to the drafting committee, believing that these governments would be at least amenable to their objectives.71 Significantly, the British government did not appoint Greenidge as its delegate to the committee.72 Greenidge had alienated British officials by insisting that the UN should create a permanent committee of experts on slavery, but a committee comprised of delegates who were not representatives of nation-states. The drafting committee began its work in January 1956. It responded to criticisms and recommendations from various governments, the International Labour Office, and NGO’s, and to comments by the UN Secretary-General. Debate focused upon four draft articles. The first point of contention was whether Article 1 should call for immediate or progression abolition. Britain favored progressive abolition, but found its position challenged by an unanticipated combination of delegates. ‘To Britain’s disappointment’, Miers observes, ‘India and Ecuador joined the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Egypt to form an anti-colonial block. The committee was thus split five to five, with Turkey voting with the colonial powers, and many issues were decided, not on their merits but by Cold War tactics …. The anticolonial bloc wanted immediate, not “progressive,” elimination of all forms of servitude.’73 The British argued, in terms reminiscent of debates over the 1926 convention, that ‘practices similar to slavery were deeply rooted in the tradition of many centuries in some parts of the world, and that their immediate abolition would cause considerable disorganization’.74 Rights were thus rendered contingent upon welfare, in the spirit of trusteeship. Ultimately the ‘progressive’ approach to abolition was approved by a vote of 5 to 4, with one abstention. The committee also argued over the equation of the slave trade with piracy under Article 3. A majority of delegates rejected this provision as a violation of their sovereignty, prompting the British to withdraw this language once again. Consequently, the 1956 convention, like the 1926 convention, offered no significant provisions to stop the seaborne slave trade.75 In making this concession, however, the British secured support for two important features of the draft. First, the committee agreed to permit governments to exempt particular colonial territories from the convention, as in the 1926 convention. Second, it agreed to require governments to provide the Secretary-General only with reports on laws and official measures taken against slavery, rather than with information on slavery per se.76 In these and other respects, the British lobbied to weaken the convention throughout the final drafting stage.77

98 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

The Secretary-General convened a conference on the draft convention during August and September 1956. The conference was attended by representatives of 51 countries. It made minor revisions to the draft, such as the insertion of a new Article 4, which gave freedom to any slave who took refuge on a ship flying the flag of a contracting state.78 Thirtyfour representatives, including the British delegate, signed the ‘Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery’.79 The preamble of the supplementary slavery convention declares, ‘freedom is the birthright of every human being’, and it invokes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There had been no reference to human rights in the series of treaties and conventions upon which the supplementary convention was built—that is, the Slavery Convention of 1926, the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye of 1919, the Brussels Act of 1890 and the Berlin Act of 1885. One might reasonably ask, therefore, whether this new convention marked a decisive departure from the ethics of empire, upon which these previous treaties and conventions had been based. More to the point of this collection of essays, did the supplementary convention, invoking the transnational principle of human rights, offer a means to abolish slavery beyond sovereignty? The supplementary convention does not provide a mechanism for the enforcement of abolition across borders. Moreover, it does not provide for a committee of experts who do not represent nation-states. Consequently, oversight of UN policies and actions regarding slavery remained in the hands of the national representatives on the Economic and Social Council. ‘Slavery cannot be suppressed without making unpleasant and unvarnished statements about territories in which it exists’, observed Greenidge in retrospect. ‘Unfortunately these may be territories under the control of member-states of the United Nations, and international civil servants are naturally loath to say anything derogatory about their employers.’80 According to Greenidge, the most significant opposition to his proposal for a committee of experts came from the colonial powers, who feared that such a committee, if not controlled by the governments of nation-states, would likely become a forum for anti-colonial criticism.81 The single significant innovation of the supplementary convention is that it lists specific forms of exploitation analogous to slavery. This chapter was inspired, in part, by my desire to consider whether privileges and rights under the UN continued to derive from an imperial vision of civilized hierarchy, capitalist development, and the sovereignty of the state. The production and text of the UN Charter and the Supplementary Convention on Slavery suggest that the imperialist vision

Kevin Grant 99

of civilized hierarchy was supplanted by cultural relativism. The UN trusteeship system included no equivalent of the hierarchical ranking of A, B, and C mandates. Moreover, in 1960 the UN General Assembly approved Resolution 1514, the ‘Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples’. This resolution asserted that political independence from colonial rule was a human right, and it rejected political, economic, social, and educational preconditions for the attainment of independence. In sum, the General Assembly rejected the idea that a people needed to earn its independence by meeting a universal standard of ‘civilization’.82 It is also apparent that in this particular era the UN was not decisively committed to capitalist development. Although the US government wished to push the UN in this direction, its efforts were stifled by the Soviet Union and China. In fact, debates over the would-be supplementary slavery convention were shaped by efforts to use the issue of slavery to expose the perceived flaws and failures of capitalism and communism. For all its advocacy of human rights as transnational, humanitarian principles, the UN remained committed to the defense of sovereignty. It seems untenable, however, to argue that this sovereignty was still cast in an imperialist mold. The Supplementary Slavery Convention was, after all, ratified in the same year as the Suez Crisis, which marked the end of British imperial pretensions in a new world of US and Soviet superpowers. Just four years later, in 1960, the imperial powers witnessed a watershed of decolonization, particularly in Africa. The many new republics born of anticolonial campaigns swelled the UN Assembly after 1960 and introduced a more progressive era of UN resolutions and legislation, as exemplified by Resolution 1514. Yet even the most virulent critics of past and present empires staunchly defended their own sovereignties. The commitment of former colonial nations to sovereignty, and the failed, transnational promise of human rights should prompt one to question the general assertion that empire fostered transnationalism on a global scale. Certainly, for many slaves in the world, there was and is no difference between exploitation in the eras of imperial trusteeship and human rights, as both eras are encompassed by the larger era of sovereign abolitions, which began in the nineteenth century.

Notes 1. Charter of the United Nations (1945), Article 1. 2. K. Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (New York, 2005), p. 173.

100 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956 3. M. Ishay, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (Berkeley, 2004); P. Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (Philadelphia, 2003). 4. For example, Lauren treats the British suffrage movement of the early twentieth century as a human rights protest, though it was not understood in these terms at the time. Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights, pp. 77–8. 5. For example, Lauren observes that the barons of England forged a foundational human rights document in the Magna Carta in 1215. Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights, p. 13. 6. For example, Micheline Ishay presents Woodrow Wilson as an advocate of human rights, although he never attempted to incorporate human rights into US domestic or foreign policy, or into the covenant of the League of Nations. See Ishay, The History of Human Rights, p. 178. 7. For the text of the Berlin Act (1885), in Sir Edward Hertslet (ed.), The Map of Africa by Treaty, 3rd edn, repr., vol. 2. (London, 1967), pp. 468–86. 8. In August 1885, six months after the conclusion of the Berlin Conference, Leopold unilaterally dissolved the Association Internationale du Congo and met no opposition in declaring his personal sovereignty over a vast African territory, which he named L’État Indépendant du Congo, or the Congo Free State. 9. J. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention, 1956’, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 6(3) (July 1957), p. 457. For the text of the Brussels Act (1890), see S. Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade (London, 1975), pp. 346–63. 10. A. Pagden, Lords of All the World (New Haven, 1995), pp. 11–62; J. Ohlemeyer, ‘ “Civilizinge of those Rude Partes”: Colonization within Britain and Ireland, 1580s–1640s,’ in N. Canny (ed.), The Origins of Empire: The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 124–47. 11. W. Bain, Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power (Oxford, 2003), pp. 19–20. 12. Grant, Civilised Savagery, p. 4. 13. West African Mail, April 3, 1903, p. 2. 14. Casement to Dilke, February 1, 1904, Rhodes House, Oxford, Anti-Slavery Papers, Mss. Brit. Emp. S22, 261, vol. 2, APS. Regarding the Congo Reform Campaign, see Grant, Civilised Savagery, pp. 38–78. 15. Grant, Civilised Savagery, p. 136. 16. E. Morel, ‘The African Problem and the Peace Settlement’, UDC pamphlet no. 22a (July 1917), p. 5. 17. Morel, ‘The African Problem and the Peace Settlement’, p. 15. 18. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, pp. 457–8. 19. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, p. 458. 20. J. Smuts, The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion (London, 1918). Also see G. Curry, ‘Woodrow Wilson, Jan Smuts, and the Versailles Settlement’, American Historical Review, LXVI(4) (July 1961), pp. 968–86. 21. D. Hunter Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Vol. 1 (New York, 1928), pp. 101, 105, 109. For a general discussion of trusteeship at the Paris Peace Conference, see Bain, Between Anarchy and Society, pp. 78–107. 22. E. Morel, The Black Man’s Burden (London, 1920), p. 228. 23. Grant, Civilised Savagery, pp. 6–21.

Kevin Grant 101 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

J. Smuts, Toward a Better World (New York, 1944), p. 10. Smuts, Toward a Better World, pp. 9–10. Smuts, Toward a Better World, p. 11. Smuts, Toward a Better World, p. 12. Smuts, League of Nations, p. 15. J. Harris, Africa: Slave or Free? (London, 1919), p. 230. Harris’ views on trusteeship were similar to those of his contemporary, J.H. Oldham, a leading figure in international missionary movement. Regarding Oldham, see John Stuart’s chapter in this volume. Lord Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 5th edn (London, 1965), p. 391. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, p. 194. Robert Vansittart to various departments, 2 July 1925, Public Record Office, Kew, FO371/10617 (A3225/531/52). See Stuart’s chapter in this volume for the role of Oldham in the Kenya controversies. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, p. 450. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, p. 455. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, p. 465. Note that Gutteridge refers here to the 1956 convention. Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade, p. 172. League of Nations, ‘The Question of Slavery’, September 26, 1925, A.130. 1925.VI. (Geneva, 1925), p. 2. J. Harris, ‘Freeing the Slaves’, Contemporary Review (December 1925), pp. 743–50. Humanitarians and European imperial officials recognized that states could exploit forced labor to an inhumane extent. The League of Nations accordingly passed the Forced Labor Convention of 1930, which proved an ineffectual document. See S. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century (Walnut Creek, CA, 2003), pp. 134–51. Morel, Black Man’s Burden, p. 170. Grant, Civilised Savagery, pp. 170–172. Lord Lugard, ‘Slavery in All Its Forms’, Africa, 6(1) (January 1933), p. 9. S. Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics (Oxford, 1993), pp. 325–6. For an example of how one colonial nationalist appropriated the concept of trusteeship, see Kevin Grant and Lisa Trivedi, ‘A Question of Trust: The Government of India, the League of Nations, and Mohandas Gandhi’, in R. Douglas, M. Callahan, and E. Bishop (eds), Imperialism on Trial (Lanham, MD, 2006), pp. 21–43. Bain, Between Anarchy and Society, p. 116. Regarding differences between US and British interpretations of trusteeship, see Bain, Between Anarchy and Society, pp. 108–21, and W. Louis, Imperialism at Bay (New York, 1978). Charter of the United Nations (1945), Chapter XII, Articles 73 and 76. Lauren, Evolution, p. 207. Lauren, Evolution, p. 240. See Lauren, Evolution; W. Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York, 1998); I. Burgers, ‘The Road to San Francisco: The Revival of the Human Rights Idea in the Twentieth Century’, Human Rights Quarterly,

102 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery, c. 1885–1956

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

14 (1992), pp. 447–77; M. Johnson, ‘The Contributions of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt to the Development of International Protection for Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly, 9 (1987), pp. 19–48. W. Hancock, Smuts: The Fields of Force, 1919–1950 (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 431–2. Smuts, Toward a Better World, p. 244. Smuts, Toward a Better World, p. 246. Letter from Smuts to M.C. Gillet, 23 January 1942, in Jean van Der Poel (ed.), Selections from the Smuts Papers, Vol. VI (Cambridge, 1973), p. 345. Selections from the Smuts Papers, pp. 344–5. Lauren, Evolution, p. 205. Lauren, Evolution, p. 192. It was South Africa’s recent, discriminatory legislation against its Indian community that initially inspired India’s delegation to criticize the South African government’s racial policies. See Hancock, Smuts, pp. 467–72. http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/ancylman.html, accessed 3 April 2006. C. Greenidge, Slavery (New York, 1958), p. 185. K. Zoglin, ‘United Nations Action against Slavery: A Critical Evaluation’, Human Rights Quarterly, 8(2) (May 1986), pp. 309–10. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 319. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 325. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 319. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, pp. 319–20. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 320. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century. Greenidge, Slavery, p. 192; Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 321. Greenidge, Slavery, pp. 192–4. I. Brownlie (ed.), Basic Documents on Human Rights (Oxford, 1981), p. 43. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, pp. 326–7. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 328. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 328. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, p. 463. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, pp. 467, 469. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 330. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, p. 329. Greenidge, Slavery, p. 197. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, p. 463. For the text of the Supplementary Convention, see Brownlie, Basic Documents, pp. 44–9. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’, p. 463. Gutteridge, ‘Supplementary Slavery Convention’. Bain, Between Anarchy and Society, p. 135. For the text of the declaration, see Brownlie, Basic Documents, pp. 113–5.

6 Beyond Sovereignty?: Protestant Missions, Empire and Transnationalism, 1890–1950 John Stuart

There have so far been few overt signs of intersection or overlap between the long-standing field of mission studies and the relatively new field of transnational studies. Missiology, the study of the theory and practice of Christian mission, is strongly informed by theology and has developed as a discipline at some remove from broader studies of mission history and of the relationship between missions, state and empire.1 For historians seeking to move beyond the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘national’ histories, missions are likely to be problematic entities because of the perceived closeness of their links with the nation-state and with empire. As a result, they may be overlooked.2 That missionaries possessed nationalistic and imperialistic longings there can be no doubt; recent mission scholarship, especially of the ‘high imperial’ period from 1880 to 1914, makes this plain.3 But such longings were in the main untypical. In the longer term, as the historian of British Protestant missions and empire Andrew Porter has recently argued, Christian mission’s theological emphasis made it not only a solvent of imperial authority but also a stimulus to ‘anti-imperialism’, religious and secular.4 It might be argued that in theological terms missions were inevitably ‘beyond sovereignty’. The reality was more complicated and more ambiguous. The ambiguity of the relationship between mission, the state and empire has been of intense interest to historians, including, lately, those concerned with colonial discourse and post-colonialism.5 How best, then, to consider missions from the perspective of transnational studies? Might missions be compared with modern-day non-governmental organizations (NGOs)?6 In 1899, British Protestant mission agencies deployed some 10,000 individuals overseas. The annual outlay of those missionary societies came to about £2 million, equivalent to the amount spent annually by government on civil service salaries.7 The production 103

104 Beyond Sovereignty?

of missionary literature and of denominational histories of mission constituted an industry in itself. During the ‘partition’ of Africa, British missionaries deemed it expedient on occasion to lobby for imperialistic intervention by government. But some brethren cavilled at such actions. Today, in the early years of the twenty-first century, when evangelical Christianity is perceived to influence American foreign policy, Christian theologians worry that the term ‘mission’ may be put too readily to political use: ‘mission’, they argue, ‘is about an eschatological reality’.8 Yet evangelical missions, in their modern role as NGOs, undoubtedly play an important social role in former colonial territories, sometimes at the request of western governments suspicious of ‘local’ state corruption. American missions are at the forefront in this respect. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the United States provided over half of the world’s Protestant missionaries. The number of Americans – more than 40,000 – dwarfed that of British missionaries of the 1890s.9 Mission in the twenty-first century may indeed be linked with certain western ‘national’ interests. But the picture is complicated; in Latin America the work of NGOs overlaps with that of indigenous, church-based agencies advocating ‘liberation theology’.10 In any case, western missions have only ever been one means through which Christianity has spread, to the extent of becoming, now, a predominantly non-western religion.11 The ‘Pentecostal explosion’ has had a decisive impact.12 The practice of Christianity in Europe is on the increase, due partly to the influx of Christians from Africa and elsewhere and their invigorating effect upon the life of the ‘local’ church.13 The appointment of a black Ugandan to the archbishopric of York is merely one manifestation of a broader, worldwide phenomenon, as are the travails of the Anglican Communion regarding homosexuality in the clergy. Churches, and not merely those with roots in western mission, are increasingly acting as their own agents of evangelization, being now, as mid-Victorian missionaries intended, self-financing, self-governing, self-propagating institutions, with many of the attributes of transnationalism.14 Given that the reach of Christian mission before, during and after the imperial era has been international, even global in extent, it is not surprising that the concerns of historians of mission and of the Christian church prefigure in certain respects those of the exponents of transnational studies. The late Adrian Hastings is one example of this tendency amongst historians of church and mission, especially given his interest and expertise in questions of ethnic, religious and ‘national’ identities.15 Through examination of concepts such as ‘universalism’

John Stuart 105

and ‘supranationality’, Hastings has subjected to scrutiny the relationship between mission, empire and nation. His verdict essentially is that a complex set of relationships has often existed and continues to exist (most notably in the shape of American evangelicalism) between forms of white imperialist nationalism and certain aspects of missionary Christianity.16 But their relationship with empire has formed merely part of missions’ histories. Many of the Protestant missionary societies that originated in Britain during the ‘evangelical revival’ of the 1790s have proved sufficiently adaptable to survive intact, if much changed, beyond the British imperial era. Their bicentennial histories are very different in form and content from their nineteenth-century predecessors. These histories typically acknowledge that ‘local people were as much missionaries as were members of the mission society. They were often the driving force in the work of evangelization …’17 A.G. Hopkins has argued that in focusing on the receptivity of local, indigenous peoples to Christianity and, more importantly, their ability to shape Christianity to serve their own particular needs (or indeed to discard it), histories of mission and empire may usefully contribute to debate on transnationalism and the future of the ‘national’ idea in a global context.18 This chapter examines some of the ways in which the transnational dynamics of Protestant missions challenged the concept and practice of imperial, colonial and national sovereignty during the period between 1890 and 1950. It considers how, in the era of ‘high imperialism’, missionaries engaged in ecumenical, transnational institution-building as one means of redefining their relationships with national and imperial states. The First World War subjected those relationships, and relations between missions of different nationalities, to considerable strain and caused missionaries to question anew the nature and value of their links to the nation. In 1917, they devised a concept of ‘supranationality’, which meant being, by dint of religious affiliation, above or beyond those constraints that national governments, for reasons of war or other exigencies, might seek to impose upon mission work. To this end they enlisted the support of not only legal experts, but also post-war transnational agencies such as the League of Nations. They also set up in New York in 1921 their own transnational, ecumenical organization, the International Missionary Council (IMC). Its first secretary was the Indian-born, Scots layman, Joseph Oldham (1874–1969). He would exert very great influence in ecumenical and British colonial affairs, notably through his interest in African education and through his efforts to ameliorate the inimical effects of colonization on African peoples. Oldham

106 Beyond Sovereignty?

played an important role in articulating British notions of imperial ‘trusteeship’ in Africa in the 1920s and 1930s.19 Yet he was also aware of the extent to which such notions were being questioned in places such as India: the First World War challenged western Christianity, just as it challenged western assumptions of racial superiority.20 Making use of his close personal friendship with leading Indian Christians, Oldham promoted inter-racial relationships and indigenous leadership in the ecumenical movement in South Asia, most notably through the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). The rise of totalitarianism presented, however, a still greater challenge to Christianity, and not merely in the West. In the mid-1930s, church and mission representatives of various nationalities combined to seek new ways in which ‘global order’ might be restored. Building on their long-standing networks of information and communication, missionaries such as Oldham’s successor at the IMC, William Paton, strove to bring to the attention of governments in Britain and the United States the pressing need to secure in the aftermath of war a ‘just and durable peace’ in the world. The concept of religious freedom was crucial to the realization of this aim, and it was much discussed by mission, church and lay Christian representatives working towards the formation of a World Council of Churches (WCC). The influence of these discussions was felt beyond church and mission circles. Discussion on religious freedom contributed to wider debate during the 1940s on the subject of human rights, especially in the United States. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was notably receptive to such ideas. Freedom of religion was the second of the ‘four freedoms’ that Roosevelt announced in his State of the Union Address of 1941, in which he also asserted ‘the supremacy of human rights everywhere’.21 This concern for human rights also informed Roosevelt’s contribution to the Atlantic Charter, later in 1941. In 1948, world commitment to the ‘freedoms’ envisaged by Roosevelt, and also by missionaries, found full expression in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1 Mission was dependent upon international co-operation, and brethren of various nationalities contributed towards the work of British missions. This latter characteristic was one of the most striking aspects of mission activity. Recruits from Germany supplied most of the early staffing needs of the Anglican evangelical Church Missionary Society (CMS), set up in

John Stuart 107

London in 1795.22 The urge towards co-operation transcended national and denominational boundaries, and this tendency was especially evident in missions’ opposition to the slave trade.23 During the mid-nineteenth century, missionaries organized several interdenominational conferences in Britain and the United States. These efforts culminated in an ‘Ecumenical Missionary Conference’, held in New York in 1900.24 Such co-operative ventures, like many others of the nineteenth century, were of an exploratory nature and mainly transatlantic and particularly Anglo-American in character. At the same time, there were new developments in missionary work that promised to transcend sovereign boundaries. The development from the mid-1860s of ‘faith missions’, which rejected institutional, much less ‘national’ ties in favour of peripatetic preaching, represented one set of attempts by missionaries to take account of resurgent Islam and the expected Second Coming of Christ.25 Of greater overall international significance was the stimulus to mission provided by Christian youth organizations, such as the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM), originating in North America. Comparable groups developed, with much success, in Britain and other countries as well.26 The early twentieth century saw a significant increase in international collaboration among Protestant missionaries. Conversely, British missionaries were increasingly turning away from empire.27 The Boer War (1899–1902), with its widely reported atrocities, split missionary opinion. The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 revealed the extent of (long-running) anti-Christian and anti-mission sentiment in China. Incipient nationalism, especially in Asia, was but one of many new factors that missionaries had to take into account. Attempts to promote ‘imperial Christianity’ within Anglicanism, such as those made by Bishop H.H. Montgomery of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), foundered on denominational and theological objection and on missionary recognition that empire might not be in the best interests of indigenous peoples.28 There were also more prosaic reasons for missionary co-operation, not least the sharing of resources and expertise in publicity, recruitment, training and missionary education. The most important and influential result of early twentieth century collaboration occurred in 1910, when a World Missionary Conference convened in Edinburgh. It is often seen as representing the beginning of the ‘modern’ ecumenical movement, with its objective of Protestant church unity.29 The missionary delegations to Edinburgh were overwhelmingly western. They debated a wide range of issues, including missions’ relations with governments and with indigenous peoples. On the subject of

108 Beyond Sovereignty?

government, there were many differences of opinion. Yet missionaries seemed well aware of the failings of western colonial powers, most notably in the Congo Free State. Their criticism of forced labour, with its ‘virtual enslavement’ of indigenous peoples, presaged post-1918 missionary efforts to hold governments accountable in the interests of ‘trusteeship’.30 Oldham would be the mainstay of those efforts. The conference set up a ‘continuation committee’ to pursue further opportunities for collaboration and co-operation. The work of this committee, with Oldham as secretary, would provide the impetus for the formation of the IMC. Oldham was an ideal choice to fill the position of secretary, due to his personal friendship with leading American evangelists, and his familiarity with India and Germany, where he had studied at the University of Halle with Gustav Warneck, the foremost mission scholar of his day. From this point on, Oldham would play an influential role in the ecumenical movement.

2 The war that broke out in August 1914 was truly a ‘world’ event, because so many of the belligerents possessed overseas territories. Missions were immediately affected. German missionaries in British colonial territories and India became subject to internment or repatriation. This policy aroused tremendous resentment in German church and mission circles, but there were also repercussions in neutral countries: colonial authorities often proved incapable of distinguishing between Germans and German-speaking Swiss nationals, such as those stationed at the Basle missions in Cameroon. This case, and many others like it, challenged missionaries’ freedom to practise their work during wartime. Freedom to operate in foreign countries, or in the colonies of foreign powers, had long preoccupied missionaries. The treaty system governing relations with China in the 1840s had stipulated that missionaries, like other westerners, should benefit from the concept of ‘extraterritoriality’, through which they were subject to the laws not of the ‘host nation’ but of their own countries.31 Subsequently, missionary representations were taken into account at the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884–5, which made arrangements for the ‘partition’ of West and Central Africa. But imperial or other considerations could certainly override missionary interests. India had always been something of a complex, special case, and government in Sudan placed limits on Christian proselytizing in the predominantly Muslim north of the country. Anomalies persisted nonetheless. German missions in South

John Stuart 109

Africa suffered losses through military action during the Boer War and then failed in their attempts to obtain recompense from the British government. Protestant missions of any nationality were subject to official discrimination in the Congo Free State, which favoured Roman Catholic missions. Given the extent to which international ecumenical co-operation among Protestants had developed by 1914, German mission authorities expected to receive support for their on-going religious work from their counterparts in Britain, and from Oldham in particular. Although Oldham was sympathetic to German requests for assistance, he could not be openly supportive of ‘enemy’ interests. This reticence was to be the cause of much ill-will. Nonetheless, Oldham did work discreetly to arrange for the work of German missions to be continued by brethren of other nationalities, usually British, American or Scandinavian. He also intervened personally to prevent the sequestration of the assets of the Basle mission in Cameroon. At war’s end he utilized his influence with Foreign Office staff to prevent German missions being penalized in the treaty-making process in Paris.32 In the midst of the war, European church and mission leaders realized that this or future conflicts might eventually subject overseas missions to intolerable, possibly fatal strain. During 1917, the British press reported that Britain intended after the war to exclude German missionaries, perhaps indefinitely, from British overseas territories. This possibility alarmed church and mission representatives in Britain and neutral Europe, who feared retaliatory action by Germany. In December 1917 Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish churches publicly asserted that governments should treat missions in accordance with the principle of ‘supranationality’. This idea was quickly taken up by Protestant missions of other nations in a concerted attempt to distance themselves from the state.33 The term ‘supranationality’ first appeared in print in English in October 1919, in the ecumenical periodical, International Review of Missions. It was an indistinct concept, and it remained so despite the efforts of lawyers working in Europe on behalf of American missions to give it firmer definition.34 It was nevertheless indicative of the efforts that Protestant missionaries were now prepared to make to ensure the freedom they required in order to resume their evangelistic work after the war. Religious freedom was closely linked to the German mission question and, especially in Africa, to race. British and American mission representatives lobbied the League of Nations to ensure that proper provision was made for religious freedom in those former German colonial and Ottoman territories that were now to be administered by mandatory

110 Beyond Sovereignty?

powers on behalf of the League. Such lobbying, together with the efforts to secure German missions during the war, revealed that missionaries expected to be able to resume where they had been forced to leave off in 1914. Little or no effort had been made to train Africans for church leadership, notwithstanding missions’ reliance on African clergy and lay catechists.35 In this respect post-war missionary attitudes towards the indigenous church in Asia and Africa were undoubtedly characterized by what Hastings has described as ‘antinationalism’.36 The desire to restore western authority was stimulated in part by certain wartime occurrences, most notably the Chilembwe uprising in the British colony of Nyasaland (now Malawi). This had been fuelled by white maltreatment of Africans. But African millennialist sentiment had also been influential; so too, as Oldham acknowledged, had ‘certain extreme and irresponsible’ agents of Christian mission in the colony.37 Given their disregard for or even antipathy to government, such agents could prove damaging to the cause of mission as a whole. African unrest was also the most likely consequence of colonial oppression; and during 1920–21 Oldham intervened to useful effect in a controversy over the use of forced labour in Kenya.38 By this time, influenced by the necessity of having to deal increasingly with government and with new international organizations such as the League, and anxious also to build on the legacy of Edinburgh, Oldham, with many other ecumenically minded Christians, became ever more convinced of the need for new collaborative, institutional structures that would facilitate mission strategy and active engagement with social and political issues.39 In October 1921, the IMC was formed, with Oldham as secretary. Representatives from a range of countries, including India, China and Japan, attended the inaugural meeting. There were no German delegates. They had decided not to attend because German missionaries had still not received official permission from British authorities to resume work in British and other allied territories. Such problems inhibited attempts to achieve official recognition of the ‘supranationality’ of missions.

3 Oldham wrote in 1920: ‘For the Christian nationality is not the ultimate loyalty. His highest allegiance is to the Christian fellowship.’40 The war, however, had been a shattering experience, even for those involved in church and mission affairs. The atavistic nature of European nationalism had been revealed to the non-European world. Attuned as he was

John Stuart 111

to opinion overseas, not least in India, Oldham could not help but take note of the implications for Christian missions – and for empire. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, British missionaries played an increasingly active role in Indian society. Some involved themselves with ‘social’ issues, such as child marriage, temperance and the use of opium.41 But missions, and mission education, were not the only means through which Christian ideas and values percolated through late nineteenth-century Indian society; other ecumenical influences were also at work. As in the West, the YMCA gradually at first and then more notably made its presence felt in regions such as Bengal and the Punjab. Set up by and for Europeans from the late 1850s onwards, local YMCA branches provided the means through which Indian Christians exchanged influences and ideas with their counterparts in Europe and in other parts of Asia, where branches were also being established. By the 1890s, the Christian youth movement in Asia was also being influenced by the American-inspired evangelistic ideas of the SVM and the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), founded in 1895. In global terms, however, the YMCA was slow to acknowledge the leadership potential of Asian Christians.42 Locally, in India, the YMCA did provide some leadership opportunities; so too did new organizations set up with more explicitly evangelistic intent, such as the National Missionary Society of India, founded in 1905. Among its members were K.T. Paul, later YMCA general secretary in Calcutta, and V.S. Azariah, who would become the first Indian Anglican bishop in 1912. They did not dispute imperial rule, but looked beyond it to the unifying possibilities of a ‘supranational’ Christianity. Addressing a major WSCF conference in Tokyo in 1907, Azariah informed his audience that ‘the nineteenth century can well be called the missionary century of the Occident … Shall we make the twentieth century the missionary century of the Orient? … Let us go forth to make Jesus King of Asia!’43 Given the subsequent growth of Christianity in India, it would be an exaggeration to suggest that such aims were fatally undermined by the First World War; but war, and its immediate aftermath in the Punjab, certainly forced Indian Christians to reconsider their trust in empire and in mission. With other Indians who were prominent in the ecumenical movement, Paul served in France during the war, not in the armed forces, but in the YMCA, providing canteen and library facilities for allied troops. It proved to be a sobering experience, which led him to question more openly the expectation among those in the West that they should continue to rule over Asia. Such doubts had of course existed among

112 Beyond Sovereignty?

Indians long before 1914, as reflected in the earlier debates and campaigns of the Indian National Congress, founded in 1885. Some British Christians in India shared in the mounting unease. The most notable was C.F. Andrews, an ordained Anglican missionary who in 1904 took up a post at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, which possessed strong links with the SPG and Cambridge University. Andrews would exert considerable influence on pre-war Indian nationalism, establishing friendships with Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Gandhi, among others. In 1912 Andrews wrote, quoting S.K. Rudra, principal of St. Stephen’s: ‘India’s children would gain in Christ the full fruition of their newfound national consciousness. A great Indian Church would become possible, and therefore a great Indian nation.’44 Rudra typified those educated Indians who accepted British rule as ordained by divine providence.45 War made such acceptance more difficult, however, and further strains would follow. In April 1919, British-led troops of the Indian Army fired upon a peaceful protest meeting in Jallianwallah Bagh, Amritsar, leaving 400 people dead and more than 1,200 wounded. ‘My faith is shattered’, Paul subsequently wrote in a letter to his friend, Oldham, explaining that he had lost his trust in imperial rule.46 As it seemed to Paul, Britain had relied too long on ideas of racial superiority to maintain and justify its rule in India. The same, he now thought, might even be said of western missions; they had begun to resemble a strain of ‘western bacilli’, infecting and ‘denationalizing’ India. Missionaries, he argued, were eager to claim ‘rights’ for themselves, such as that of religious freedom in ‘alien’ territories, but were less inclined to do so on behalf of the non-white races.47 As Gerald Studdert-Kennedy has noted in his study of British Christian attitudes to India, even well-intentioned individuals such as Andrews proved unable to move beyond their own assumptions about India’s past – and its future. They played a mediating role, not an empowering one.48 Oldham did make efforts to alter this state of affairs. During 1919, he was in regular contact with Paul (who visited England that summer) and other Indian YMCA representatives. He was also aware of and impressed by Tagore’s pronouncement on nationalism: ‘I am not against one nation in particular, but against the general idea of all nations’.49 Oldham subsequently revisited India, his intention being to ‘minimize as rapidly as possible the disadvantages of the [missionary] movement arising from its foreign character, and [to get] the main direction and control into Indian hands’.50 The necessary feat of what Oldham’s biographer, Keith Clements, has described as ‘ecumenical engineering’ was completed early in 1922, with the formation of the National Christian

John Stuart 113

Council of India (NCCI). Half of its governing body would be Indian. Its first secretary would be an English Presbyterian clergyman, William Paton, who had a background in the WSCF and the YMCA. The formation of the NCCI was important in ecumenical terms, because it demonstrated an increased willingness on the part of westerners to think of evangelizing responsibilities more in terms of indigenous ‘church’ than of foreign ‘mission’. Ecclesiastical authority remained overwhelmingly, however, in western hands. Paul, for one, could no longer remain completely sanguine about India’s relationship with Britain or with western missions.51 The NCCI and other ‘national’ Christian Councils were affiliated with the newly founded IMC in the same way as were ‘national’ bodies representing Protestant missionary societies. The most important of these latter organizations were the Foreign Missions Conference of North America (FMCNA), founded in 1893, and the Conference of British Missionary Societies (CBMS), formed in 1912. The IMC fulfilled an advisory, consultative function; it did not make ‘policy’. It operated, with a small secretariat, on a financial shoestring, supported, ultimately, by the missionary societies. It provided Oldham and, later, Paton, who joined the IMC in 1927 and subsequently, in 1938, succeeded Oldham, with access to important networks of transnational, ecumenical communication. Such networks overlapped, moreover, with those of a secular, and sometimes academic nature; and much of the synergy generated as a result was due to Oldham’s – and Paton’s – success in establishing and nurturing a very wide range of personal contacts outside the religious sphere. Speakers at the IMC conference in Jerusalem in 1928 included the sociologist Harold Grimshaw of the International Labour Organization, and R.H. Tawney, the author of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926). The IMC subsequently, in 1930, created a department of social and industrial research to examine the implications for Christian churches of industrialization and urbanization, notably in Africa.52 Interest in ‘sociological’ issues reflected a broader mission and ecumenical concern with the problems of post-war colonialism. Oldham, probably more than any other individual, typified that concern. Having lobbied against the use of forced labour in 1919–20, he championed the interests of indigenous African peoples in British colonies against those of other races, European and also Asian, incurring in the process the displeasure of Andrews. The most notable outcome was the imperial government’s ‘Devonshire Declaration’ of 1923, which committed Britain to the cause of African ‘paramountcy’ in east Africa. The irony of this

114 Beyond Sovereignty?

public commitment to imperial ‘trusteeship’ being made at a time when white settlers in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were being granted virtual self-governing powers was not apparent at the time.53 But through his ideas and writing on race, on empire and on African education Oldham nevertheless contributed much to contemporary thinking about the West’s obligations towards indigenous peoples of colonial and mandated territories. Supportive of the idea of a ‘sacred trust’, he was not yet ready in the 1920s to suggest that ‘rights’ be accorded to indigenous peoples. His aim was to prevent injustice being done, and to inform, from a Christian perspective, western attitudes towards non-western peoples. His most influential book, Christianity and the Race Problem, was published in 1924.

4 The primary aims of mission were to spread Christianity and to build up the church throughout the world, even beyond the sovereignties of empires. Missionaries differed in how they should pursue those aims, and the inter-war period was one of theological controversy, not least surrounding the extent to which Christian missions should be encouraging and supportive of other, non-Christian faiths in the face of a worldwide shift towards secularism.54 Yet other, greater pressures drew ecumenically minded Christians closer together. These pressures were directly related to international and world affairs. The economic depression, which greatly affected funding for missions, increased the need for further co-operation and collaboration. Also, by 1933 political change in Germany began to have a direct effect upon mission; Hitler’s administration imposed restrictions on the remittance of funds overseas, threatening with extinction German missions that had only in the mid-1920s been permitted by British (and Indian) authorities to resume work in Britain’s overseas territories. British church and mission representatives came to the aid of their German counterparts; they had no reason to suspect German missions of having links with Nazism.55 The Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 posed a different sort of threat: the possibility of a new colonial regime supportive of Roman Catholic mission and hostile to Protestants.56 Abyssinia caused anxiety for other reasons also. The invasion inspired ‘Pan-African’ protests in colonies within and outside Africa, and also in Britain and the United States.57 Not all such protests were of a ‘radical’ or ‘anti-colonialist’ nature; the West African Students’ Union, based in London, organized religious services in support of the Abyssinian people. Yet missionaries feared that European

John Stuart 115

aggrandizement might provoke colonial peoples to violent reaction. British missionaries had specific concerns, and lobbied their government on two matters: the (unlikely) possibility of Germany being allowed to repossess her former colonies; and the possibility (considered likely) that South Africa might be permitted to take control of the British ‘High Commission Territories’ (now Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland).58 Neither eventuality materialized. Oldham envisaged mission as having a major role to play in facilitating western Christian commitment to the non-western world. The IMC, with its myriad connections outside mission, was intended to allow missions a discrete ‘distance’ from imperial and colonial states. This balancing act proved difficult to achieve; overextended and underfinanced, missions placed ever greater reliance on government funding for their education work. Their brethren and staff became ever more defensive and preoccupied with routine, administrative tasks. During the 1930s, mission became more inward-looking; the ‘transnational’ attributes from which it sought to derive strength were weakened by nationalism, sectarianism and racism.59 Christianity as a whole seemed by the mid-1930s to be losing ground not merely to secularism but to totalitarianism’s negation of Christian thought and teaching. British missionaries’ hopes for the League of Nations were finally dashed by the Abyssinian crisis. British imperial ‘trusteeship’ offered little better, either to missions or to the indigenous peoples of colonial territories: in 1935 riots broke out in the Zambian Copperbelt, and the West Indies were wracked by unrest and disorder. By 1939, missionaries had begun to reassess, with increased urgency, the relevance of mission to world problems. War, paradoxically, would stimulate fresh opportunities for reassessment. Paton, now IMC secretary, renounced the pacifism that he had espoused in 1914. Oldham’s interest and energies had by now shifted away from mission and towards broader ecumenical affairs. He became actively involved in the ‘Life and Work’ movement (like the IMC, a belated progeny of ‘Edinburgh, 1910’) and was the main organizer behind an influential conference, held in Oxford in July 1937, at which discussions took place that would lead ultimately to the formation of a WCC. In December 1938, the IMC also held an important conference, near Madras (now Chennai), India, at which delegates from the ‘younger’ churches of the non-western world outnumbered those from the missionary societies. This greatly encouraged Paton, who believed that the IMC should reflect, as well as encourage, a shift towards church-based rather than mission-based evangelism.60

116 Beyond Sovereignty?

5 War, when it came, prompted ever more detailed reconsideration by British missionaries of their evangelistic task, and of the means by which they might continue to carry it out.61 Freedom to travel overseas would undoubtedly be curtailed, and new arrangements would be necessary to ensure the remittance of funds to overseas brethren and institutions. In addition, the demands of the wartime state might well prove onerous. Would British missionaries, especially those who were not ordained, be required to undertake National Service? What was to be the policy towards German missionaries? It seemed essential that a modus vivendi be established. The government had no wish to interfere overtly in mission affairs. It was thought that British missionaries, by dint of their international, ecumenical contacts, could be relied upon for sound advice on the potentially delicate question of German or other ‘alien’ missionaries working in the British Empire. There was no wish to repeat what were now seen as the mistakes of 1914, when neutral opinion had been outraged by the summary incarceration by imperial and colonial governments of German-speaking Swiss nationals. Also, in maintaining their evangelistic, educational and other work in colonial territories, missionaries, it was hoped by government, might exert a ‘stabilizing and tranquilizing influence … upon native populations’.62 By such reckoning, they had a small but potentially useful role to play during wartime, and the government had every expectation of their support in this respect. Supportive they were undoubtedly prepared to be, but British missionaries were also extremely wary of the demands that the state, in response to wartime exigencies, might feel compelled to make of them. Given their interest in and involvement with non-Christians they were especially suspicious of any tendency on the part of the state to portray the war against Nazi Germany in explicitly religious terms as a Christian ‘national’ or even ‘imperial’ struggle. The Ministry of Information (MOI) sought to allay concerns about propaganda, about restrictions on travel and currency exchange and about German missionaries. The MOI also conceded, in principle, that missionaries, or those in training for mission, should be exempted from National Service.63 The Colonial Office, meanwhile, was in the process of instituting legislation on the subject of colonial welfare and development. This would come into effect in 1940, with £5 million pounds per annum of public funds pledged by the secretary of state to ‘the physical, mental [and] moral

John Stuart 117

development of the colonial peoples’.64 Missionaries, however, feared a negative impact on their educational work; government, they felt, would inevitably be more concerned with ‘technical efficiency’ than with spiritual well-being.65 This growth of the state, under pressure of war, into an omnipresent, omnicompetent entity was worrying, not least for the place of religion in society. The long-standing concerns of lay Christian intellectuals in Britain such as the educator A.D. Lindsay and the political scientist Ernest Barker increasingly overlapped with those of missionaries such as Paton and also Canon Max Warren, who in 1942 became general secretary of the CMS.66 Committed to the ecumenical movement, Paton and Warren believed that churches and missions should commit themselves not merely to national, but to international co-operation, especially at a time of world crisis. Paton, the pre-eminent British missionary of the war period, worked closely with William Temple, the Archbishop of York and subsequently, from 1942 to 1944, the Archbishop of Canterbury. They collaborated on a wide range of issues relating to the WCC (yet to be formally inaugurated) and the British Council of Churches (BCC), founded in 1942. They also collaborated in the formation of a Peace Aims Group, which was intended to stimulate debate among Christians on world issues and make appropriate suggestions to government through interested civil servants and unofficial advisers. The group was connected, through Paton and Temple, to Christian groups in the United States who by 1940 were also giving detailed consideration to the post-war world situation.67 The ground for such consideration had been prepared at Oxford in 1937 and at Madras in 1938. Not the least notable aspect of the ecumenical movement during the inter-war period had been its ability to attract influential laypeople interested in the positive contribution that churches and missions might make to national and international affairs. John Foster Dulles, a Presbyterian, a lawyer, a Republican Party activist and later U.S. secretary of state, was one of these; he had been a participant at the Oxford conference and also at the last pre-war WCC conference, held in Geneva in July 1939. There existed within American Protestant churches and missions a considerable store of goodwill towards their counterparts in Britain and Europe. Organizations such as the Federal Council of Churches (FCC) and the FMCNA considered it imperative that the plight of the churches in Europe and Asia should be brought to the attention of the American government and people. It was to their American counterparts that British missionaries first turned for wartime financial assistance. Written requests by Anglican mission agencies for financial aid drew a sympathetic response from

118 Beyond Sovereignty?

leaders of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Lambeth Palace (official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury), the Foreign Office and the MOI co-operated to make arrangements for the general secretary of the SPG to undertake a fund-raising tour of the US in late 1940. This was a tremendous success; the Americans were generous and pledged immediately the equivalent of £60,000 for Anglican overseas mission work, with more funds to follow. The Episcopal Church would ultimately contribute more than half-a-million dollars to Anglican missions during the course of the war.68 This denominational giving complemented the much larger-scale contribution of over four million dollars made by American religious organizations to the IMC ‘orphaned missions’ fund, set up to maintain those German missions whose brethren had been interned or repatriated.69 In the spring of 1940, Paton made the first of two wartime visits to the United States, again with government assistance. He had earlier argued to colleagues and government that Protestant missions in Britain, unlike their Roman Catholic counterparts (with recourse to the Vatican), lacked specific ‘diplomatic’ representation of the kind that he could provide. In February 1940, at a conference held in Philadelphia, American church and mission representatives had met to discuss the international situation. In December the FCC decided to set up a Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace (CJDP). Dulles, as chairman, would play a major role in its work, and in the publicizing of its influential manifesto, Six Pillars of Peace (1943). The commission collected information on international affairs from a wide range of sources with the intention of submitting proposals to government on the subject of the post-war world order. This commitment among American churches and missions, at a time when the United States was still a neutral country, was indicative both of unease with domestic isolationism and dissatisfaction with the prewar failings of the League of Nations.70 The FCC commission was determined to promote the idea of a world governmental organization. The possibilities for international, ecumenical consultation, cooperation and influence on world affairs held tremendous interest for Paton, and he gave an address at the commission’s March 1942 conference, held in Delaware, Ohio. The idea of a world governmental organization did not necessarily accord with British imperial interests. Paton realized this. But imperial ‘trusteeship’ was by now widely perceived as flawed.71 Certain wartime occurrences would damage it further, notably the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 and, in very different fashion, the imperial

John Stuart 119

military collapse at Singapore in February 1942. Paton, working at a relentless pace, shared with his contacts in secular organizations his reservations about ‘trusteeship’ and his increasing interest in ideas of ‘international supervision’ of colonial territories.72 As his interests widened, and his responsibilities increased, Paton nevertheless reminded colleagues constantly of the continuing and ‘fundamental duty’ of the church to evangelize, while also maintaining close engagement with important matters in the ‘semi-secular sphere’.73 The fate of Europe’s Jews was one such matter. News of this growing catastrophe forced missionaries, including Paton, to reconsider their attitudes to Judaism and to the conversion of the Jews.74 The missionary commitment to their conversion was gradually abandoned.75 Christians too were continuing to suffer under Nazi rule, and after 1942 religious persecution and religious freedom became an increasing focus of ecumenical thought and action, especially in the United States. In that year, the FCC and the FMCNA set up a Joint Committee on Religious Freedom. Americans took and maintained the initiative; they had resources of time and money far in excess of their counterparts in Britain. Paton, exhausted by overwork, died in August 1943.76 The CBMS and BCC did not form a British joint committee until March 1945, with Ernest Barker as chairman and Max Warren as secretary. The impetus behind the work of these committees, and that of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, was, as John Nurser has argued, founded upon an ecumenical belief ‘that the next stage of evolution of the historical process needed to be post-national. Hence the strategic goal of a supranational post-war “global order” was formed.’ Its bases would be a United Nations Organization and, subsequently, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.77 In April 1946, a UN commission chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt began drafting a human rights declaration. The commission invited representations from interested NGOs.78 Submissions from Protestant churches and missions in Britain and the United States were routed through the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), set up in August 1946. The American theologian Frederick Nolde played a particularly influential role. On 10 December 1948, the U.N. General Assembly, meeting in Paris, voted to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included the right ‘to freedom of thought, conscience and religion’. Four months earlier, the WCC had finally been inaugurated in Amsterdam and had made, on behalf of Protestant churches and missions, its own declaration on religious liberty.79

120 Beyond Sovereignty?

6 In 1941, the moral philosopher John Macmurray wrote, ‘the fate of democracy after the war depends upon the Christian religion; upon its vitality and its capacity for creative transformation. For the Christian religion is the only possible force which can conceivably create the condition of a transnational, non-racial democratic polity ….’80 For missionaries such as Paton, long conscious of the shortcomings of imperial ‘trusteeship’, a world governmental organization undoubtedly offered the best means by which religious freedom might be secured and the interests of indigenous peoples advanced. Protestant churches and missions, with their extensive, transnational networks of communication, were well placed to influence such an organization. The founding of the United Nations influenced in turn the direction that world church and mission affairs would take after 1945. Missionaries rightly perceived the U.N. as receptive to the concerns of NGOs, irrespective of nationality. British missionaries welcomed the founding of the United Nations. They made good use during the 1940s of its openness to NGOs. Kenneth Grubb, an Anglican layman and president of the CMS, worked closely with Nolde at the CCIA, which became the main agent for contact between Christian churches and the UN. Between 1945 and 1948 the British joint committee on religious freedom continued its work under the direction of Barker and Warren. Their objective was to present to the CCIA a British church and mission interpretation of religious freedom, which would then be considered by the Roosevelt commission on human rights.81 The deliberations of the joint committee were influenced by certain important developments in imperial affairs. Indian Christians worried that the prospective independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 might adversely affect their religious freedom.82 Missionary concern on this issue was exacerbated by the more problematic case of South Africa.83 There, the National Party came to power in 1948 under the leadership of a Christian theologian, Daniel F. Malan. The Malan government began promptly to institute policies in support of apartheid. In none of these situations did the British government have any obligation or legal right to interfere. Missionaries were unsure how to act, but they believed that a universally agreed declaration on human rights would have more than symbolic value, it would be a means by which governments might be held to account by world opinion.84 Church and mission support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not motivated by a desire to secure special privileges for Christians at the expense of other faiths. Nor was there any question of

John Stuart 121

Christians coercing those of other faiths, with the aim of securing nominally ‘Christian’ territories.85 Mission, like faith, was not explicable in mere territorial terms, either ‘imperial’ or ‘national’. As Keith Clements argues, the First World War had already been instrumental in convincing Oldham and his contemporaries in the ecumenical movement that ‘the ‘Christian-nation’ idea of the West was bankrupt, and that western Christianity itself – that which was sending missionaries to the ‘mission fields’ in their thousands – had all but lost its credibility and its moral authority for engaging in such an enterprise’.86 Dissatisfaction with empire and nation had varied consequences. It influenced the search for ‘supranationality’, the, admittedly belated, encouragement of indigenous leadership in the non-western churches, the loss of faith in imperial ‘trusteeship’ and, ultimately, in 1948, the vesting of Christian hope in the concept of human rights, universally agreed and understood. In 1950, missions had yet to experience the full effect of rising African nationalism. It was a phenomenon about which they were uncertain, and of which they were initially wary.87 Yet British missionaries, despite their ambivalence about aspects of African nationalism, were already in 1950 more attuned to the value and importance of human rights than were imperial and colonial governments. They were dismayed by the state’s subsequent recourse during the 1950s to violence against Africans in colonies such as Kenya and Nyasaland, and they protested accordingly to government.88 Their commitment not to the state, but to transnational, inter-racial Christian fellowship, ensured that missionaries ultimately outlasted empire, to play a role in the ‘post-imperial’ growth of Christianity as a primarily non-western religion.

Notes 1. N. Etherington, ‘Introduction’, in N. Etherington (ed.), Missions and Empire (Oxford, 2005), pp. 1–18; D. J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, 1991). 2. As in A. Burton (ed.), After the Imperial Turn: Thinking With and Through the Nation (Durham, 2003). 3. A. Porter (ed.), The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880–1914 (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2003). 4. A. Porter, Religion versus Empire?: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester, 2004). 5. For example, J. Cox, Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–1940 (Stanford, 2002), and A. Johnston, Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–60 (Cambridge, 2003). 6. N. Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London, 2003), pp. 122–3.

122 Beyond Sovereignty? 7. A. Porter, ‘Religion and Empire: British Expansion in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780–1914’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 20(3) (1992), p. 372. 8. A. Richards, ‘Mission and Polity’, Political Theology, 4 (2001), pp. 11–12. 9. J. Hearn, ‘The “Invisible” NGO: US Evangelical Missions in Kenya’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 32(1) (2002), pp. 37–8. 10. A. Bebbington, ‘NGOs and Uneven Development: Geographies of Development Intervention’, Progress in Human Geography, 28(6) (2004), pp. 733–7. 11. K. Bediako, ‘Africa and Christianity on the Threshold of the Third Millennium: The Religious Dimension’, African Affairs, 99(395) (2000), pp. 306–8. 12. P. Gifford, ‘Some Recent Developments in African Christianity’, African Affairs, 93(373) (1994), p. 517. 13. G. Ter Haar, Halfway to Paradise: African Christians in Europe (Cardiff, 1998). 14. On these attributes, A. Portes et al, ‘The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(2) (1999), pp. 219–23. 15. A. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge, 1997). 16. A. Hastings, ‘The Clash of Nationalism and Universalism within Twentieth Century Mission Christianity’, in B. Stanley (ed.), Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2003), pp. 15–33. 17. K. Ward, ‘Introduction’, in Ward and B. Stanley (eds), The Church Mission Society and World Christianity, 1799–1999 (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2000), p. 7. 18. A.G. Hopkins, ‘Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History’, Past and Present, 164 (1999), pp. 226–7; A.G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History (London, 2002) makes occasional reference to missions. 19. K. Clements, Faith on the Frontier: A Life of J.H. Oldham (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 185–250. Also, N. Owen, ‘Critics of Empire’, in J. Brown and W.R. Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Twentieth Century, Vol. IV (Oxford, 1999), pp. 188–211. 20. F. Füredi, The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race (London, 1998), pp. 37–41. 21. K. Grant, ‘Trust and Self-Determination: Anglo-American Ethics of Empire and International Government’, in M. Bevir and F. Trentmann (eds), Critiques of Capital in Modern Britain and America: Transatlantic Exchanges, 1800 to the Present Day (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 151–73. 22. P. Jenkins, ‘The Church Missionary Society and the Basel Mission: An Early Experiment in Inter-European Cooperation’, in Ward and Stanley (eds), The Church Mission Society, pp. 43–65. The CMS adopted its new name in 1995. 23. R. Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition (London, 1975), pp. 91–235. 24. W.R. Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations: A History of the International Missionary Council and its Nineteenth Century Background (New York, 1952), pp. 15–97. 25. Porter, Religion versus Empire?, pp. 191–224. 26. W.R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago, 1987), pp. 91–124.

John Stuart 123 27. J.G. Greenlee and C.M. Johnston, Good Citizens: British Missionaries and Imperial States, 1870–1918 (Montreal, 1999). 28. S. Maughan, ‘Imperial Christianity?: Bishop Montgomery and the Foreign Missions of the Church of England, 1895–1915’, in Porter (ed.), Imperial Horizons, pp. 32–57. 29. Clements, Faith on the Frontier, pp. 73–99. 30. B. Stanley, ‘Church, State and the Hierarchy of “Civilization”: The Making of the “Missions and Governments” Report at the World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910’, in Porter (ed.), Imperial Horizons, pp. 80–2. Also, K. Grant, A Civilized Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (New York and Abingdon, 2005), esp. pp. 39–78, 135–66. 31. J.C. Thomson, Jr, P.W. Stanley, J.C. Perry, Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia (New York, 1981), pp. 37–41. 32. M. Gannon, ‘The Basle Mission Trading Company and British Colonial Policy in the Gold Coast, 1918–28’, Journal of African History, 24(4) (1983), pp. 503–15; Clements, Faith on the Frontier, pp. 147–55. 33. N. Söderblom, ‘Christian Missions and National Politics’, International Review of Missions (IRM), 8(32) (1919), p. 498. 34. Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations, pp. 185–6. 35. M.L. Pirouet, ‘East African Christians and World War I’, Journal of African History, 19(1) (1978), pp. 117–30. 36. Hastings, ‘Clash of Nationalism and Universalism’, p. 19. 37. J.H. Oldham, ‘Co-operation: Its Necessity and Cost’, IRM, 8(30) (1919), p. 179. Oldham was implicitly referring to the influence of the radical, independent English missionary, Joseph Booth. 38. J.W. Cell (ed.), By Kenya Possessed: The Correspondence of Norman Leys and J.H. Oldham, 1918–26 (Chicago and London, 1976). 39. J.H. Oldham, ‘A New Beginning of International Missionary Co-operation’, IRM, 9(36) (1920), pp. 481–94. 40. J.H. Oldham, ‘Nationality and Missions’, IRM, 9(35) (1920), p. 381. 41. G.A. Oddie, Social Protest in India: British Protestant Missionaries and Social Reforms, 1850–1900 (New Delhi, 1979). 42. H.R. Weber, Asia and the Ecumenical Movement, 1895–1961 (London, 1966), pp. 91–111. 43. S.B. Harper, In the Shadow of the Mahatma: Bishop V.S. Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2000), p. 43. 44. S.K. Rudra, quoted in C.F. Andrews, The Renaissance in India: Its Missionary Aspect (London, 1912), p. 251. 45. H. Tinker, The Ordeal of Love: C.F. Andrews and India (Oxford, 1979), p. 32. 46. Tinker, Ordeal of Love, p. 157. 47. K.T. Paul, ‘How Missions Denationalize India’, IRM, 8(32) (1919), pp. 510–21. 48. G. Studdert-Kennedy, Providence and the Raj: Imperial Mission and Missionary Imperialism (New Delhi, 1998), pp. 49–50. Andrews did undertake work on behalf of Indian interests in Africa and Fiji. 49. Sir R. Tagore, Nationalism (London, 1917), p. 110. 50. Clements, Faith on the Frontier, p. 193. 51. K.T. Paul, The British Connection with India (London, 1927). 52. J. Merle Davis, Modern Industry and the African (London, 1933).

124 Beyond Sovereignty? 53. R. Robinson, ‘The Moral Disarmament of African Empire’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 8(1) (1979), p. 92. 54. Hutchison, Errand to the World, pp. 146–75. 55. On the ambivalence of German missions towards Nazism, W. Ustorf, ‘“Survival of the Fittest”: German Protestant Missions, Nazism and Neocolonialism, 1933–45’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 28(1) (1998), pp. 93–114. 56. School of Oriental and African Studies, London (SOAS): CBMS/IMC papers, box 262, ‘Foreign Office’ file, Rev. W. Paton to M.D. Peterson (Foreign Office), 25 May 1936. 57. S.K.B. Asante, Pan-African Protest: West Africa and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 1934–41 (London, 1977), pp. 45–51. 58. Lambeth Palace Library, London: Lang papers, box 131, Archbishop (of Canterbury) C.G. Lang to Cardinal Archbishop (of Westminster) A. Hinsley, 7 October 1938; box 163, J.H. Oldham to Lang, 15 June 1934. 59. D. Hudson, The Ecumenical Movement in World Affairs (London, 1969), pp. 86–101. 60. W.A. Visser’t Hooft, The Genesis and Foundation of the World Council of Churches (Geneva, 1987). 61. A. Porter, ‘War, Colonialism and the British Experience: The Redefinition of Christian Missionary Policy, 1938–52’, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 5(2) (1992), pp. 269–88. 62. The National Archives at the Public Record Office, London (TNA): PRO INF/1/401, unsigned memo for MOI, 13 September 1939. 63. TNA: PRO INF/1/401, minutes of meeting between Protestant mission representatives and MOI officials, 14 September 1939. 64. U.K. Parliamentary Debates (House of Commons), Vol. 361, column 47, 21 May 1940. 65. Rev. H.D. Hooper (CMS), ‘The Church and Colonial Development’, in Conference of British Missionary Societies, Report for the Year 1939–40 (1940), p. 62. 66. On Lindsay and Barker, see J. Stapleton, Political Intellectuals and Public Identities in Britain since 1850 (Manchester and New York, 2001), pp. 63–78. 67. E.M. Jackson, Red Tape and the Gospel: A Study of the Significance of the Ecumenical Missionary Struggle of William Paton (1886–1943) (Birmingham, 1980), pp. 259–75. 68. Lambeth Palace Library: MC/COU/M/2, Missionary Council of the Church Assembly minutes, 29 April 1941, and 8 February 1944. 69. K.S. Latourette and W.R. Hogg, World Christian Community in Action: The Story of World War II and Orphaned Missions (New York and London, 1949). 70. J. Nurser, For All Peoples and All Nations: Christian Churches and Human Rights (Geneva, 2005), pp. 57–62. 71. Grant, ‘Trust and Self-Determination’, pp. 160–7. 72. SOAS: CBMS/IMC papers, box 202, ‘Colonial Settlement – Post-War’ file, Paton to C.W. Judd (League of Nations Union), 4 June 1941; ‘Needs of Colonies’ file, Paton to C.W.W. Greenidge (Anti-Slavery Society), 26 February 1943. 73. W. Paton, ‘The World-Wide Church in Time of War’, Conference of British Missionary Societies, Report for the Year 1940–41 (1941), p. 51; University of Birmingham: Church Missionary Society papers, CMS G/O 2/6, Paton to Rev. W.W. Cash (CMS), 11 July 1941.

John Stuart 125 74. Jackson, Red Tape and the Gospel, pp. 265–71. 75. J.S. Conway, ‘Protestant Missions to the Jews, 1810–1980: Ecclesiastical Imperialism or Theological Aberration?’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1(1) (1986), pp. 135–42. 76. Temple died in October 1944. 77. J. Nurser, ‘The ‘Ecumenical Movement’, Churches, ‘Global Order,’ and Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly, 25(4) (2003), p. 852. 78. W. Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘A Curious Grapevine’ (New York, 1998). 79. Nurser, For All Peoples, pp. 202–3. 80. J. Macmurray, Challenge to the Churches: Religion and Democracy (London, 1941), p. 59. 81. The joint committee published an explanatory pamphlet, Human Rights and Religious Freedom, March 1947. 82. R.B. Manikam, ‘The Effect of the War on the Missionary Task of the Church in India’, IRM, 36(142) (1947), pp. 175–90. Manikam was secretary of the NCCI. 83. SOAS: Conference of British Missionary Society papers, box 567, ‘British Joint Committee on Religious Liberty’ file, Occasional Bulletin, December 1948. 84. For a critical view of the Universal Declaration, A.W.B. Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention (New York, 2001), p. 11. 85. Nurser, For All Peoples, p. 173. 86. Clements, Faith on the Frontier, p. 135. 87. D. Maxwell, ‘Decolonization’, in N. Etherington (ed.), Missions and Empire, pp. 290–3. 88. J. Stuart, ‘Scottish Missionaries and the End of Empire: The Case of Nyasaland’, Historical Research, 76(193) (2003), pp. 411–30.

7 A Shadow Nation: The Making of Muslim India Faisal Devji

The ‘Muslim community’ in India emerged during colonial rule as a new kind of sociological category. This emergence was linked to the designs and exigencies of British rule, including the deployment from the early years of the nineteenth century of new forms of classification like the census, which for the first time defined India’s Muslims as a minority. More interesting, however, was the way in which the colonial state provided Muslims the opportunity to redefine themselves as a group. In this chapter, I will argue that rather than being territorialized by British rule as a demographic or religious minority, Muslims adopted forms of selfdefinition that ended up deterritorializing both India and Islam. They did so by abandoning the idea of territorial nationality, which defined them as second-class subjects in a state where they were unfree instead of free, a minority instead of a majority. What resulted from this abandonment of territoriality was a Muslim community that occupied an imagined space situated at an angle to the sovereignty of the state. Like a shadow, this community was spread by the territorial notion of nationality, while at the same time being quite distinct from it. Perhaps the most important such redefinition of Muslimhood emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century from the ‘modernist’ or ‘reformist’ gentlemen of the Aligarh Movement, who urged India’s Muslims to abandon ‘irrational’ or ‘superstitious’ beliefs and practices and to accept English education with British rule. Named after the town in northern India that housed its most prominent institution, the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, later Aligarh Muslim University, the Aligarh Movement was also primarily a North Indian phenomenon, but one whose intellectual influence extended beyond the borders of India. This movement was founded by a group of men who belonged to a class of professional or salaried gentry, shurafa, which had furnished 126

Faisal Devji 127

administrators to pre-colonial states and now attempted to do the same for colonial India. Sayyid Ahmad Khan, a minor aristocrat, was the founder and acknowledged leader of the Aligarh group, which called itself a party or school in English, and a movement or tahrik in Urdu, and whose important activities, the college apart, comprised the Muhammadan Educational Conference and voluminous writings, including a journal, the Tahzib-ul Akhlaq or Refinement of Morals. It was this ‘modern’ group, then, rather than any ‘traditional’ Muslim organization, that gave rise to a deterritorialized idea of Muslimhood. In what follows, I will trace the development of this new idea in the nineteenth century, concluding with its transformation into a critique of the nation-state by the early years of the twentieth century.

Genealogy to geography Here is an initial definition of the new Muslimhood by Sayyid Ahmad Khan: But the word qawm (nation) is such that it is necessary to reflect on its meanings to a certain degree. For a length of time whose beginning is prior even to the historical period, nations were accounted for by descent from a certain ancestor or by residence in a certain country (mulk). Muhammad, the undisputed Prophet of God (you are my father and mother, O Prophet of God!), demolished this national differentiation, which was only a worldly one, and founded a spiritual (ruhani) national relationship that was established on the firm foundation of (the credo): ‘There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God’. All national genealogies (silsile), all national relationships (rishte), everything was annihilated before this spiritual relation, and a new spiritual, indeed divine, national relationship was raised up. Islam doesn’t ask anyone if he is Turk or Tajik, if he is an inhabitant of Africa or Arabia, if he is a resident of China or Tibet, if he was born in Punjab or (gangetic) India (Hindustan), if he is black or white. On the contrary, whoever grasped firmly this binding rope of monotheism became (a member of) one nation, indeed the son of a spiritual father. Because God has said, ‘The faithful are brothers, so close the gaps between brothers for God’s blessing.’ Who is that person who does not know two brothers as the son(s) of a single father? So when God Himself has announced all Muslims to be brothers, then what doubt can there be that we are all the offspring of one spiritual father?1

128 A Shadow Nation

This passage, from a speech made at Ludhiana on 23 January 1884, is remarkable in several respects. Apart from the fact that Sayyid Ahmad Khan felt it necessary to define a Muslim collectivity in the first place, we should note that he calls it a qawm rather than a ummat or millat, terms used for specifically religious groupings that could not be located in time or space: groups that were not, in other words, communities in the modern sense. The word qawm, of course, had been used in reference to religious groups before, but not in any national sense, which is to say in any sense in which a natural belonging together was implied. So in the introduction to his translation of the Upanishads, the seventeenth-century Mughal prince Dara Shukuh typically describes Hindus and Muslims both as qawms, referring thus to groups of adepts rather than to populations as such.2 The tribal or genealogical origins of the word are translated here into a notion of group specialization, which is why Dara Shukuh interchangeably uses qawm and jamat, congregation. In this way he describes specialized associations of learning, rather than simply groups of people identifiable by their descent or appearance, beliefs or practices.3 And while our prince might have been exceptional in the breadth of his religious or intellectual sympathies, his language belonged entirely to the Muslim scholarship of his time, in the terms of which religion did not inhere in a population, but was a choice for which people could be held responsible, individually and collectively. Dara Shukuh’s religious use of the word qawm, however, was derived metaphorically from its more standard genealogical usage, which also appears in his introduction to the Upanishads. Here he both quotes and paraphrases Quranic passages, stating that there was neither an ummat, an ecumene, nor a qawm, a descent group, to which revelation had not been vouchsafed.4 And it is this latter meaning of qawm, familiar from its Mughal usage in the description of groups like the Iranis, Afghans and Rajputs, that Sayyid Ahmad Khan simultaneously relied upon and questioned in redefining a collective idea of Muslimhood in colonial India. In view of the fact that he opposes narrow ties of blood and soil in the quotation above, Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s use of qawm, which suggests a kind of natural belonging together, is more than curious. It is as if he is trying to retain some empty notion of a genealogical or filiative identity in the affiliative community he has created. This might also explain Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s, Christian invocation of God-the-Father as a focus for Muslim identity; replacing one form of genealogical filiation with another. But the word qawm was not simply atavistic; connoted filiation and thus suppressed Muslim difference. Rank is the most glaring omission

Faisal Devji 129

in Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s list of social differences abolished by Islam. This marked his complicity in the attempt by the North Indian shurafa, or gentry, to coerce lower-standing Muslims into a community led by them, and thus to cause the distinct status of the old landed aristocracy, or umara, to fall into abeyance. Indeed the community’s Muslimhood was nothing more than an effort to universalize genteel or sharif values as Islamic ones, something that could only be done by extirpating the lure of the nobility from the hearts of the gentry itself. So the Aligarhist poet and biographer Altaf Husayn Hali, in his long narrative poem on the Flow and Ebb of Islam,5 something like an extended Muslim version of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach, and perhaps the most popular Urdu poetic work of the nineteenth century, blamed Muslim decadence on aristocratic values and warned the younger generation against their seductive power.6 Rank was not the only division obscured by Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s invention of a Muslim qawm; so was region, for the only specifically Indian divide Islam was said to overcome was that between Punjab and Hindustan. In other words, while he spoke in terms of ‘the Muslims,’ Sayyid Ahmad Khan privileged ‘the gentle-born North Indian Muslims.’ Indeed, it is here that the restrictive word qawm assumed its full significance, as a community of North Indian Muslims claiming foreign descent that had arrogated the whole of Islam to itself. It is important, however, to remember that this restriction was deliberately played down, rendering the community ambiguous. Thus in a speech made in December 1883 to the Islamic Association of Rae Bareilly, Sayyid Ahmad Khan juxtaposed the inclusive, religious term, ummat, and the exclusive term, qawm: My ancestor, the pride of the world’s beings, Muhammad Mustafa (may God’s peace be upon him), had in his last moments the utterance ‘my ummat, my ummat’ on his blessed lips. Although I am among the descendants of that reverend sir, for which I am without doubt proud, I, too, am part of his community (ummat). My wish is this, that in my last moments the utterance should be on my lips: ‘my qawm, my qawm.’7 Significantly, Sayyid Ahmad Khan linked ummat and qawm through filiation. In other words, the term qawm was allowed to stand as distinct even when it was coupled with an ummat that it could in fact relate to only genealogically. Yet despite his attempts to suppress Muslim difference within an ambiguously filiative terminology, Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s use of the word qawm at last betrayed its genealogical

130 A Shadow Nation

associations by its exclusive, sharif composition. But this exclusivity by the same token implied a parochialism, for the term qawm in the nineteenth century could obscure only local differences and was unable to extend sharif hegemony outside Upper India. This would be its undoing. Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s nation was also absolutist in that it recognized no Muslim communities apart from or outside itself; it apparently maintained no formal relations with any other kind of qawm. In the Mughal Empire different polities, including Muslim qawms like the Afghans, Iranis or Turanis and Hindu ones like the Rajputs, had interacted with one another through the mediation of the emperor.8 By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, most of these Muslim polities had been collapsed into a single qawm (classically made up of Sayyids, Shaykhs, Mughals and Pathans), and no Mughal Empire existed in which this qawm could interact with any others. Moreover, the very formation of this community from two religious categories (Sayyids being descendants of the Prophet and Shaykhs descendants of his companions) and two ethnic ones (Mughals being Chagatay Turk by ancestry and Pathans Afghan), made it into a hybrid that redefined the concept of nationhood altogether. The new qawm, then, was neither completely religious-affiliative nor entirely ethnic-filiative, but put together two formerly incommensurable categories to emerge as a community in a peculiarly modern sense. It was a group that could not belong in an old fashioned empire as a qawm like any other, but one that constituted itself as something absolute and unique. This was done precisely by abstracting the terms Sayyid and Shaykh from the ethnic qawms upon which they had been predicated, and by putting them together with the two traditional nations of Muhgals and Pathans. This subverted the old aristocratic and monarchical politics of the latter, while retaining their genealogical principle in the name of an affiliative religion. Although this fragmentation of the old order was largely due to the establishment of the colonial state, the constitution of a Muslim community had more to do with the will to power of the gentry. So while each of the old qawms had its sharif or genteel classes, the new Muslim nation was composed of their remnants and dominated by the shurafa as a unified entity for the first time. Unless they specifically mentioned the umara or landed aristocracy, for instance, Aligarhists invariably addressed themselves to the united gentry as qawm, a habit that was soon taken up by groups who were not Aligarhist, but nonetheless sharif, such as the ulama, or clergy.

Faisal Devji 131

Now given the fact that this gentry was constantly bemoaning its fortune and attempting to rationalize its practices in order to advance its position in the world, we can guess that the shurafa, who worked either for or with the colonial administration, were constituted as a community precisely to recoup the losses incurred by colonial dispossession, particularly by the elimination of a Muslim judiciary and the reservation of higher administrative posts for Europeans.9 In this sense the conservatism of much of the clergy and the liberalism of the Aligarhists came down to the same thing, a sharif effort to overcome the ravages of colonialism by exploiting that space opened up by the destruction of the Mughal Empire to emerge as a separate community. Aligarh’s poet laureate, Hali, for instance, was clear about the instrumental character of this new form of nationhood: Whoever wants to attain respect in this country Whoever wants to remain close to the state Whoever wants to retain his family’s honour Whoever does not agree to religion’s disgrace Whoever loves his ancestors and descendants For him is the nation’s consolation obligatory.10 The poet makes a virtue out of his political status by defining nationality as a pedagogic project that was empowering only in a colonial situation, as a learning from or relating to it: This is now time’s speaking command That whatever is in the world is education This is now the foundation of governance It is here that is hidden the secret of empire.11 But this colonial model of Muslimhood did not simply arise out of a position of sharif weakness that led to an uncritical adoption of colonial ideals. Instead, a critical distance from British rule emerges out of Hali’s pragmatic and even ironic participation in the pedagogy of colonization: It both constrains and liberates Creates freedom as well as loyalty.12 As an ideology, then, which is to say as realpolitik free of blood and soil bluster, Muslimhood depended upon the colonial state, even though it did so in a pragmatic rather than a naturalized way. Indeed sharif

132 A Shadow Nation

institutions such as the Muhammadan Ango-Oriental College at Aligarh, or the seminaries of Deoband and Nadwat ul-Ulama, were only possible in British India and could not exist in Muslim princely states such as Hyderabad or Bhopal, where the aristocracy was still powerful enough to keep its gentry in check. The many graduates of Aligarh hired by these princely states had uncritically to fit themselves into the states’ aristocratic culture as the price of their employment. Similarly, Muslim majority areas like Sind, the Punjab, Kashmir, Bengal and the NorthWest Frontier Province did not give rise to sharif institutions or even values, probably because they were dominated by large rural interests to the detriment of an urban, wage-earning gentry. Yet this new nation, emerging as it did from a very particular group and in a very particular part of the country, came eventually to define being Muslim for millions of others. To delineate the history of this Muslimhood, more is required than a discussion of the national form it took; for the location that this nation occupied, or did not occupy, is as important a subject. The absolutism of Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s qawm, for instance, was only possible in a certain kind of space, the homogenous, neutral, depoliticized geography of India as a foundational category. Only during the second half of the nineteenth century did polities give way to such geographies as the foundations for administrative discourse, with words like Hind and Hindustan gradually losing their regional reference and coming to represent the country as that area encompassed by the colonial state. And yet the old meanings did not lose entirely to the new geography. Instead, such words as mulk, or country, took on a duality that rendered both the entities it signified ambiguous. In the old order of the Mughal Empire there was no neutral, objective word for country or state. Kishwar could mean anything from region to continent, as could mehan and watan, the words for homeland, while dawlat, saltanat, hukumat, nizam and mulk referred to royal power or possession. Furthermore, there was no way of conceptualizing the country as a stable unit, for not only did rulers lay claim to territories beyond their reach, and not only did the capital move with the monarch and indeed as the monarch, but the empire itself was spoken of as a plurality. The terms Hind and Hindustan referred to regions that were united only as the mumalik-e mahfuza, protected realms. In fact, traditional cartography could not even represent the kingdom as a unit or, indeed, as such. The colonial state, therefore, was radical because it was premised upon the cartographic idea of India as place. This was a novel conception even among Europeans, because it was only in the nineteenth century that

Faisal Devji 133

‘India’ replaced ‘the empire of the great Mogul,’ ‘the kingdom of Oudh,’ etc. And this substitution, let me add, was not due to the fact of increasing British power so much as it was tied to a larger European shift from person-oriented dynastic states to space-oriented national states. By representing India as a place, and not as a polity or set of polities, the British dismissed the old order as superficial to India. But the emergence of India as a geographical state trapped Aligarh’s Muslim community in a bounded space within which it could only be juxtaposed with other communities. Indeed, the gentry’s relationship to this new country was highly ambivalent. Sayyid Ahmad Khan, for example, in an essay dating from 1884, defined territorial belonging in the following manner: You must have seen or heard in old histories and books, and (indeed) we see even today, that (the word) qawm refers to the inhabitants of one country (mulk). The different peoples of Afghanistan are called a (single) qawm. The different peoples of Iran are called Irani. Europeans are of different beliefs (khayalat) and religions. But all are counted as (part of) one qawm, (and) although people from other countries come and live among them, (still) they mingle and are called one qawm. Indeed from antiquity the word qawm (has) referred to the inhabitants of a country even if they possess many distinctions. O Hindus and Muslims! Do you live in any other country but India (Hindustan)? Do you not both live on this land (zamin)? Are you not buried in this earth or cremated on its ghats? If you die and live on this (land), then remember that Hindu and Muslim are religious terms, otherwise Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, too, who live in this country, constitute a single qawm for this reason.13 Not the least problematic aspect of this passage on belonging is the fact that the words for country (mulk, zamin, Hindustan) are all deployed ambiguously; one does not know if they refer to country as region, country as state, or both, because they are in fact caught in a transition between the two. Given this, it is not surprising to discover that belonging here simply means habitation, with no nativism implied: thus Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s inclusion of immigrants into the country-nation, something that referred indirectly to the supposedly foreign ancestry of sharif Muslims. Yet this fundamentally anti-nativist Indianness that included (presumably European) Christians, as well, had to derive its identity from such a filiative term as qawm. What does this mean? Perhaps nationality was here made ambivalent. Or maybe the old idea of qawm provided the only way in which a new political identity could

134 A Shadow Nation

be thought. In either case, belonging as qawmiyyat or nationhood, presumes the prior and separate existence of nations not tied to territory, which is thus vitiated as the foundation of a positive political identity. After 1886, therefore, when the autonomy of Aligarhist politics was threatened by the Indian National Congress, it was easy for Sayyid Ahmad Khan to discard the notion of belonging as qawm, retaining only the idea of Indianness as habitation (which is to say belonging to an India defined by the colonial state). It was the subordination of people to a conquered land, best expressed, perhaps, by the colonial census and its invention of majorities and minorities as categories of spatial identity,14 that led in no small part to a new and widespread notion of the qawm as a community simultaneously trapped in and alienated from India: What especially has caused the decline of the unfortunate Indian Muslims has been their adoption of India as a homeland (watan), and their forsaking of their original (asli) homes. When the Muslims arrived in India they were very robust, rosy complexioned, strong and healthy. Their natures (tabiat) were free as well. There was some spirit (josh) in their hearts as well. They were ignorant of the ties of custom (rusum). But when they made India their homeland and joined with those nations (qawm) that were inferior to them in strength, courage, freedom, knowledge and livelihood, (nations) in whose veins flowed restrictions, slavery to custom, and narrowmindedness, then they, too, became so. Their true condition was completely transformed. The blood of Abraham that was in our veins was transformed. That bone which was made of Ishmael’s blood was transformed. That heart which harbored the Hashemite spirit was transformed. Skin too changed. Colour changed. Appearance changed. Life changed. The heart changed. Imagination (khayal) changed. So much so that religion changed as well. All that energy (josh) which arose in the sandy wastes of Arabia to revive and delight Iran and the whole of Central Asia, arrived in India only to be washed away in the Bay of Bengal.15 Nawab Muhsin ul-Mulk, Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s lieutenant and successor at Aligarh, conveyed this passage in a lecture given at the Mirzapur Institute on 22 October 1873. His lament on the decline of the Indian Muslim plays to the vision of a tropical corruption, whose pre-eminent victims are the Hindus. But more than this, it betrays both a humiliation that sought to dissociate itself from the scene of colonial conquest,

Faisal Devji 135

and a Muslimhood that found its being only as a being lost in India as a profoundly alien political space. The novelty and importance of such an idea of the qawm was remarked upon by another Aligarhist, the mathematician and historian Muhammad Zakaullah: I cannot bear to hear Indian Musulmans speaking without reverence and affection for India. It is a new fashion, unfortunately springing up, which did not exist in my younger days.16 His was the proverbial voice crying out in the wilderness, for even if many among the gentry spoke of India, but more especially of their watan, or home districts, with affection, the community’s imprisonment in a new India continued to provide them with a peculiar mode of being cut off from any traditional sense of polity. So Hali, in a poem of 1888 entitled the Shikwa-e Hind, or Complaint to India, represented his country as the typical, cruel beloved of the ghazal lyric, one whom he interrogated as a lover who had been seduced by her only to be destroyed. And this novel use of the beloved familiarized the new India in terms of an old problematic, that of desire and seduction, thus establishing for the country a kind of continuity with the past while simultaneously illustrating the sheer novelty of its situation, which could not be otherwise grasped. Hali’s attitude towards India here, therefore, is far more complex than that of Muhsin ul-Mulk: Farewell O India! O autumn-less garden! We have remained your foreign guests for many a day.17 You have turned lions into sheep, O soil of India Those who were hunters arrived here to become prey.18 We knew that absorption would come surely That you would finally devour us like this, O soil of India.19 Just as the Greek army turned away from your border If only we too had turned away from your door unsuccessful.20 But time will retain the memory until Judgement Day Of the treachery you have done us, O India!21 In the way that the snake charmer remains distant from the snake Your rulers will likewise keep their distance from you.22

136 A Shadow Nation

This last couplet plays upon a literary theme regarding the seductive power of alienness and the fear of going native, but in a way very different from similar sentiments in English literature. On the one hand, Hali was trying to build a relationship of conquering peoples with his rulers, a relationship mediated by the sexualized figure of a female India; but, on the other hand, he recognized that Muslims had themselves become feminized as Indians who were now to be husbanded by Englishmen. The community was subordinated to a conquered territory as woman, and objectified, or sexualized, with it. After all, the Shikwa-e Hind, which I have translated as a Complaint to India, can just as well mean the Complaint of India, thus collapsing together the poem’s subject and object in a way that I do not believe is accidental. Hali’s uncertainty regarding India, however, was due to more than a simple unease in the face of the colonial state. In fact his novel personification of the country as a cruel beloved indicated a struggle to place value on this new India. Valuing is something very modern, in that it replaces metaphysical relationships with positivistic ones, because only an autonomous object can be valued by the equally autonomous subject who knows it.23 We have already seen, with respect to Mughal administrative terminology, that India did not exist as such and so could not be a site of value. While we have not inquired into the metaphysical character of traditional polities, it is quite evident even from a superficial reading that terms such as dar ul-islam, the Abode of Islam, are metaphysical and not value-based. Hali’s personification of India might have been an attempt to establish a value-relationship with an alien space by humanizing it. But humanizing India as a cruel beloved, with the relationship of seduction and humiliation this implied, was more than slightly troubling. Hali’s India was not the asexual Mother India of Hindu nationalists, but a powerful, sexualized woman with whom it was very difficult to establish a positive relationship, or rather a masculine relationship of dominance. In effect, the emasculation of the gentry before a potent and seductive India as woman suggested that she could exist in a proper relationship only with an Englishman. Sayyid Ahmad Khan made use of a different image of India, as a bride whose two eyes were the Hindu and Muslim communities.24 In employing this image to foster religious harmony, he suggested that Hindus and Muslims were only related in terms of an India that somehow existed apart from them and in whose material weight they were in fact imprisoned, only in this way being forced into a relationship. Now this vision of India as a body politic is rather curious. For one thing,

Faisal Devji 137

traditional conceptions of bodies politic had always been masculine. India’s femininity, then, emphasized her character both as prostitutecommodity and as seductive fetish. In addition, the old political bodies had been constituted only by the activity of their organs. Here, on the other hand, we see an inanimate, colonized India as object or commodity. In fact the image of the body politic was marginalized within the new cartographic reality of India as a kind of allegory, but an allegory that was, nevertheless, effective. For instance, given the fact that Indians themselves constituted or were trapped in India as bride, who could possibly be her groom? Sayyid Ahmad Khan never identified anyone directly, but we might say by implication that this groom could only be an Englishman. As with Hali, therefore, Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s attempt to establish a value-relationship with India as a sexualized woman ended up quite inadvertently in a feminization of the sharif man, for only Englishmen had the pleasure of a dominating relationship with India; the native could merely look on voyeuristically, or in fact participate in this sexual act as the ambivalent object of a homoerotic desire. The invention of India, in other words, was not simply the creation of a new political space and new political relations, but the invention of a whole new way of thinking and being.

Cartography of conquest We have seen that the Muslim community’s place in India as a uniformly vanquished landscape, a depoliticized landscape, implied much more than a simple shift from genealogy to colonial cartography. Even as an epistemological shift, however, this situation was not merely something that occurred as an uncomplicated reaction to British rule, but something thought through historically by the gentry. Let us go on, then, to examine the peculiarity of this new nationality in terms of the Muslim gentry’s conceptual and historical movement into India as a colonial space. Pre-colonial polities, I have said, were not based on the concept of a foundational space, let alone a homogenous or neutral one. But they certainly did include metaphysical ideas of place, whose transformation into the space of India made way for the new Muslim community. Pre-modern space, we might say, was composed of different kinds of places that were related to one another by evocation and not simply juxtaposition. The space of the Mughal miniature, for example, was not just non-perspectival, but made up of precisely such places, which were hierarchically ordered and thus evocative of each other. So the separate places of the king, his consorts, children, nobles, retainers,

138 A Shadow Nation

and subjects were unthinkable without each other and were connected morally. But perhaps the most interesting such use of space was mapped out on the land itself; the highly ordered vision of royal dominion manifested in the moral city and the formal garden being opposed by the Sufi or mystic glorification of wilderness. And this latter place, which ironized and evoked both divine and royal spaces, constituted what Michel Foucault calls a heterotopia, in this case the wilderness as an anti-city and an anti-garden.25 It was because they were heterotopoi that Sufi hospices were invariably situated on the edges of the moral city, and that Sufis frequently established mystic domains and hierarchies that evoked, ironized and cut across princely ones. The relationship between these two forms of space was canonized in stories about kings who wanted to appropriate mystic spaces and Sufis who withstood courtly blandishments. There exists a famous twelfth-century tale about Sultan Alauddin Khalji and Shaykh Nizamuddin Awliya, for example, in which the saint refused invitations to court, and, when the king planned to visit him, sent back a message saying that if the sultan entered his front door he would exit by the back.26 We might say that pre-modern space was a kind of palimpsest, with different domains attempting to write themselves over others, in much the same way as agricultural land was a kind of palimpsest written over by the differing realms and rights of the king, the governor, the landlord, the saint and the peasant.27 The homogenization of space, then, might well have indicated the colonial transformation of land into property. Whatever the case, it certainly meant the elimination of a whole range of previously mappable domains, such as the spiritual, which now came to be nothing but abstractions. The colonial invention of India meant its subordination to what Yves Lacoste calls geographicity, a foundational space devoid of human relations.28 But such a landscape was not created overnight. It was thought through in ways that retained older geographies as a set of vernaculars. Deputy-Collector Nazir Ahmad, for instance, a prominent Aligarhist writer, published in 1873 a novel, Banat un-Na’ash, Daughters of the Bier, promoting girls’ education. In it he preserved traditional conceptions of space within the new geographicity; a preservation that was only possible within the circumscribed pedagogy reserved for women, and which retained masculine meaning only as a domestic vernacular. Yet the novel’s very particular inclusion of older spaces seems to have posed a threat to geographicity that was barely obscured by its vernacular domesticity. Ahmad’s lesson on geography for girls, for example, began with a representation of the Arabian Peninsula that simultaneously emphasized and

Faisal Devji 139

vitiated its geographicity by describing it as an inhuman emptiness filled with meaning simply because it happened to be the site of divine revelation.29 God, then, gave meaning to geographicity in a way that put its role as a foundation into question, without at the same time contesting it. Another contradiction arose in Ahmad’s attempt to relate geographical names and places. The litany of place-names that one of the novel’s characters reels off (Hindustan, Chin, Afghanistan, Arab, Iran, Turan, etc.) has its own non-cartographical logic, even though it is read off a modern map.30 Such a list was not only ordered in terms of homophony rather than cartography, it also included places like Arabia, which had religious rather than cartographic meaning, and Turan, which was a cultural area that did not fall within political boundaries. This naming, however, derived meaning from the very geographicity it called into doubt. So when one of the book’s students tries to find Delhi on a world map, she is looking not for its location but its name. And her teacher emphasizes this dislocation of place and name by telling her charge that the map’s scale is too great to include this word. Delhi, in other words, does not appear as a cartographical point on a map that presupposed such a location.31 What I have been trying to demonstrate here is that the making problematic of geographicity itself depended upon geographicity in a contradictory way. In other words India as a landscape stood in perfect object-hood before the Englishman even as it trapped Indians within the object-hood defined by his gaze. The Muslim nation that was created in this space was both alienated from and imprisoned within it. But not quite, for the new India that opened up before the gentry was also a landscape of suspense, a faintly menacing country which had to be mapped by exploration, rather than be navigated by a guide.32 India had become something that could not only be represented, but something that had to be represented in order to eliminate the risks of the unknown. Such a grasping, however, was as contradictory as geographicity. It, too, depended on the systematic particularization or rendering vernacular of its opposite in a way that allowed representation to be thought of as an instrument rather than as a norm. In his introduction to the first edition of the Musaddas, for example, Hali describes his youth as an aimless wandering in a deceptively pleasing landscape.33 At the age of 40, the poet comes to realize that he is in the same place where he had started, and suddenly a new landscape of anxiety opens up before him as a domain to be grasped: Raising my eyes, I saw on either side, ahead and behind, a spacious arena (maydan) within which numberless paths opened up in every

140 A Shadow Nation

direction …. I wanted to set forth and explore (sayr) this field, but that step which for twenty years had not moved from one attitude to another, and whose range had been bounded by a yard or two of earth, was not easily put to work in such a wide space. Apart from this, the useless wandering of twenty years had made shirkers of hands and feet, which had also expended their strength. But because there was (some) movement in my feet, sitting still became difficult. For some days such a situation subsisted that one foot would step forward and the other step back. But suddenly I saw a servant of God, who is a man of this arena, proceeding upon a difficult path. Many people who were walking with him would tire and fall behind. Many others were falling and rising along with him. But their lips were blistered and their feet calloused …. However that honored man who was their guide appeared so fresh as to be neither weary from the road nor concerned with the loss of his companions.34 Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who is the leader here referred to, goes on to take Hali by the hand and guide him in a more or less traditional way through this landscape that is yet grasped as a totality. Exploration, in other words, is here forestalled by a guiding that nevertheless has meaning only in terms of the former. And how could it be otherwise when the colonial landscape still surrounded and fixed its Muslim subject in a way that allowed its objectivity to exist only as a presumption? Or, as Hali put it, paraphrasing a couplet of Hafiz to describe this new space: I don’t know where the final destination might be It exists to the extent that the caravan-bell sounds back.35

A homeless nation By the twentieth century the community created by Aligarh had become identified with Muslim India as a whole. For Aligarh’s idea of Muslimhood had come to be represented in the categories of colonial jurisprudence, while at the same time serving as a model for the identification of Muslims elsewhere in the empire. Aligarh’s success, however, was achieved at the cost of the shurafa or gentry that had brought it into being. With the founding of the All-India Muslim League in 1906, a range of new elites from differing regional and ethnic backgrounds claimed to represent the qawm much beyond its North Indian origins. As India’s first Muslim political party, the League sought to take advantage of the limited electorates that were introduced by the

Faisal Devji 141

Morley–Minto Reforms of 1909. Its role was to protect and advance Muslim interests all over the country, something that was considered necessary, given the community’s plight as a supposedly backward minority. While this is not the place to discuss the founding of the Muslim League, I want to conclude this essay by pointing to some of the ways in which it expanded and transformed the Aligarhist qawm. Muhammad Iqbal, the celebrated poet and philosopher who was undoubtedly the most important Muslim thinker in twentieth-century India, had this to say of the League’s definition of Muslimhood in the Hindustan Review of July 1909: The essential difference between the Muslim community and other communities of the world consists in our peculiar conception of nationality. It is not the unity of language or country or the identity of economic interests that constitutes the basic principle of our nationality. It is because we all believe in a certain view of the universe, and participate in the same historical tradition that we are members of the society founded by the Prophet of Islam. Islam abhors all material limitations, and bases its nationality on a purely abstract idea objectified in the potentially expansive group of concrete personalities.36 Rather than seeing in this statement the mark of some perverse religiosity, or some incomplete nationality, we should recognize it as a thoroughly modern criticism of all blood-and-soil belonging. It is a criticism that poses the most radical challenge to the sovereignty of the national state. Iqbal’s definition of Muslim nationality differed from that of Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s, with which I began this chapter, precisely in its final dissolution of the nation’s givenness, so as to render impossible any natural foundation for the sovereignty of a territorial state. Sayyid Ahmad Khan, let us recall, had smuggled a naturalized idea of nationality (indicated in his very use of the word qawm) into an otherwise anti-nativist concept of Muslimhood. Once the North Indian gentry that constituted this nation became a minority in the polity it had created, however, its nationality became available for another kind of occupation. So for Iqbal the particularity of the community did not contradict the universality of Islam because this latter, seen as an artifice of civilization rather than a fact of nature, could only be instantiated by the former, whose particularity therefore became something accidental. As such this Muslimhood stood alongside other fully ideological systems like Liberalism or Communism, while denying the nationalism

142 A Shadow Nation

that generally underlies these. It was not that Muslimhood sought to destroy what was given, only to denationalize it, refusing its role as a foundation for the state. So Iqbal attempted to rethink the entire vocabulary of political identification, from property and territory to class and state, in order to accomplish this denationalization intellectually. It was in this process that Aligarh’s language of community achieved its end. The process of denationalization in the early Muslim League is both important enough, and forgotten enough, to merit some reflection, especially because it survives as a strong undercurrent in the ideology of Pakistan, as well as in the Pan-Islamism of many religious movements on the Subcontinent today. I want to end this chapter, then, by reflecting on such a denationalization as it was thought in the work of Iqbal, who is today acclaimed as the spiritual father of Pakistan. In particular I want to concentrate on the following hemistich from his poem entitled Wataniyyat or Patriotism: To abandon the homeland is to follow the example of God’s beloved. This line refers to the Prophet’s emigration from Mecca. Its author suggests that Muhammad abandoned his home not because it was the home of idolatry so much as because the very idea of a homeland was idolatrous. Being Muslim, then, meant following the Prophet’s example by abandoning the familiarity of Mecca for an alien Medina. That this abandonment had nothing to do with a rejection simply of worldly attachment is evident from the poem’s title, invoking as it does national movements whose ideal of patriotism, as the belonging to a state, Iqbal so actively opposed. Elsewhere, moreover, Iqbal made it clear that he rejected any homeland defined by the state as a manifestation and guarantor of property in all the relations of modern life, relations that he considered both degrading and violent.37 But Iqbal’s intricate analysis of patriotism and property does not concern me here. What interests me is the sentiment of homelessness he wrote about. By abandoning the familiar for the alien, Iqbal abandoned the homeland of which he had in fact already been dispossessed by colonial rule, for a state of being that was free because of its very dispossession. And this loss allowed Iqbal to abandon that entire politics of identification within which the familiar and the alien are opposed, since these terms have undergone a reversal here, with the familiar becoming alien and the alien familiar, in a travesty of identification as an act of recognition.

Faisal Devji 143

Indeed, Iqbal’s emphasis on the act of departure over that of arrival, in the line quoted above, puts being itself into question by abandoning all belonging. Belonging, that is to say, as a patriotism that had come to be defined wholly by the territorial state over which India’s nationalists and imperialists fought in Iqbal’s time. What is it to be without belonging in a national state? How is it possible to belong independently of this state? Such were the questions that for Iqbal characterized the sentiment of homelessness as a denial of national belonging. A complicated sentiment that is too often simplified into the archaic religiosity, minority disaffection or class interest that supposedly became Muslim separatism in colonial India. Yet this sentiment did not subsist in some facile rejection of the homeland, but rather in an engagement with it, almost as an imponderable. So in Iqbal’s hemistich abandonment itself comes to belong in the homeland of tradition, the founding event that was the Prophet’s emigration from Mecca to Medina. This means that the familiar and the alien here posit and destroy one another in a vicious circle, making of Muslimhood itself a kind of nation in suspense. Iqbal’s concept of nationality, of course, emerged from a history in which Muslims came to be a minority unable to form a national movement of the usual sort; one that naturalized its homeland as a territory defined in every sense by some state. But being Muslim cannot therefore be reduced to such a history, not least because the questions concerning being and belonging posed by Iqbal’s nation in suspense opened up a space more generally for a politics not defined in terms of a national homeland, among Dalits and Dravidians, for example.38 Muslimhood, in other words, was not confined to the realm of minority history, but participated in a wider tradition of skepticism regarding nationality as the belonging to a state, one that ran parallel to the tradition of Indian nationalism itself. Neither was Iqbal’s homelessness exhausted in the Pakistan Movement, for his rejection of belonging made of Pakistan a rather problematic homeland in comparison to the one claimed by India. The nation of the homeless, moreover, also existed outside the Pakistan Movement, constituting, therefore, a certain way of being Muslim. Indeed, it is because this way of being Muslim differs from citizenship in a state that I reserve for it the word Muslimhood, seeing in the term an interdiction of that opinion and that interest which are said to be the political expression of citizenship. Such a citizenship, after all, did not exist in colonial India, where opinions and interests could neither quite form within, nor quite be mediated by, representative institutions.

144 A Shadow Nation

Precisely this lack of adequate representation, I think, made a noncitizenal politics out of being Muslim, a politics predicated as much upon these Muslims’ lack of representation in a state as upon their refusal to be represented in one. The word transnationalism is often used to refer to the very recent movement of persons and practices, ideas and commodities, between nation-states. It is sometimes also seen, therefore, as a sign of the weakening of national identities or state boundaries in the process of globalization, itself a word closely linked to transnationalism. I have argued here that a critique of the nation-state emerged in the colonial world even before its sovereignty was established there. Such a critique, I have tried to show, owed as little to the movement of kin and kind between nation-states as it did to the weakening of their boundaries. It was, instead, a critique produced at the same time as the sovereignty of these states. Rather than constituting some kind of reaction, ‘traditional’ or otherwise, to the sovereignty of the nation-state, the Muslimhood whose development I have described might be seen as a form of transnationalism coeval with nationalism itself. If such Muslimhood was in the nineteenth century a shadow cast by the nation-state, it had by the twentieth already spread its penumbra well beyond the territorial sovereignty of this state.

Notes 1. S.A. Khan, ‘Taqrir Mutalluq Qawmi Ta‘alim, Qawmi Hamdardi, awr Bahami Itifaq’, in S. Panipati (ed.), Khutbat-e Sir Sayyid, vol. 1 (Lahore, 1972), p. 403. 2. M. Dara Shukuh, in T. Chand and S. Naini (eds), Sirr-i Akbar (Tehran, 1957), pp. 3–6. 3. Dara Shukuh, Sirr-i Akbar, p. 5. 4. Shukuh, Sirr-i Akbar, p. 4. 5. A.H. Hali, ‘Musaddas dar Madd-o Jazr-e Islam’, in Kulliyat-e Nazm-e Hali, vol. 2 (Lahore, 1970), pp. 5–45. 6. Hali, ‘Musaddas dar Madd-o Jazr-e Islam’, pp. 100–4 and 126–35. 7. S.A. Khan, ‘Taqrir Bajawab Address-e Anjuman-e Islamiyya Rae Bareilly’, in Panipati (ed.), Khutbat-e Sir Sayyid, vol. 1 (Lahore, 1972), p. 365. 8. See, for example, Abu’l-Fazl Allami, in Blochmann (trans), The A‘in-i Akbari (Delhi, 1965), p. 2. 9. See, for this, W.W. Hunter, The Indian Mussulmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen? (Delhi, 1969). 10. A.H. Hali, Musaddas-e Hali (Lahore, n.d.), p. 122. 11. Hali, Musaddas-e Hali, p. 116. 12. Hali, Musaddas-e Hali, p. 117. 13. S.A. Khan, ‘Ta‘alim awr Itifaq’, in Panipati (ed.), Maqalat-e Sir Sayyid, vol. 12 (Lahore, 1963), p. 161.

Faisal Devji 145 14. See, for this, B. Cohn, ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’, in An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (New Delhi, 1990), pp. 224–54. 15. M.A. Khan, Majmuah-e Lectures-o Speeches, vol. 1 (Lahore, 1904), p. 33. 16. C.F. Andrews, Zaka Ullah of Delhi (Cambridge, 1929), p. 111. 17. A.H. Hali, ‘Shikwa-e Hind’, in Kulliyat-e Nazm-e Hali, vol. 2 (Lahore, 1970), p. 182. 18. Hali, ‘Shikwa-e Hind’, p. 186. 19. Hali, ‘Shikwa-e Hind’, p. 186. 20. Hali, ‘Shikwa-e Hind’, p. 187. 21. Hali, ‘Shikwa-e Hind’, p. 195. 22. Hali, ‘Shikwa-e Hind’, p. 196. 23. See, for this, M. Heidegger, ‘The Word of Nietzche: God is Dead’, in W. Lovitt (trans), The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York, 1977), p. 71. 24. S.A. Khan, in Panipati (ed.), Maqalat-e Sir Sayyid, vol. 15 (Lahore, 1963), pp. 41–2. 25. See M. Foucault, ‘Other Spaces: The Principles of Heterotopia’, Lotus International Quarterly Architectural Review, 48/49 (1986), pp. 9–17. 26. S.M. Ikram, Ab-e Kawsar (Lahore, 1990), p. 235. 27. I am indebted to Sudipta Sen for this analogy. 28. Y. Lacoste, Paysages Politiques (Paris, 1990). 29. N. Ahmad, Banat un-Na’ash (Lucknow, 1967), pp. 185–6. 30. Ahmad, Banat un-Na’ash, p. 188. 31. Ahmad, Banat un-Na’ash, p. 189. 32. I take this distinction from Lacoste, Paysages Politiques, pp. 5–15. 33. Hali, Musaddas-e Hali, pp. 1–2. 34. Hali, Musaddas-e Hali, pp. 2–3. 35. Hali, Musaddas-e Hali, p. 5. 36. M. Iqbal, ‘Islam as a Moral and Political Ideal’, in L. Sherwani (ed.), Speeches, Writings, and Statements of Iqbal (Lahore, 1977), p. 104. 37. See, for instance, the discussions on capitalism and communism in M. Iqbal, ‘Javed Namah’, in Kulliyat-e Iqbal Farsi (Lahore, 1990). 38. This was frequently acknowledged by Dalit leaders such as B.R. Ambedkar and Dravidian leaders such as Ramaswamy Naicker.

8 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’: Sikh Recruitment for Colonial Police and Military Thomas R. Metcalf

During August of 1873 Captain T.C.S. Speedy, sometime lieutenant in 10th Punjab Regiment, recruited some 200 Sikhs and Pathans in the Punjab on behalf of the Mantri of Larut, a petty chieftain in Perak (Malaya), who planned to use them to subdue the growing power of the Chinese clans in the state. The next year, with the advance of British authority into Malaya after the Pangkor Engagement, Speedy was appointed assistant resident at Larut, and his force was taken into government service as the Perak Armed Police. Subsequently reorganized as the Perak Sikhs, and then, after the creation of the Federated Malay States in 1896, as the Malay States Guides, this force remained the premiere body of armed police in Malaya until 1919, when it was disbanded. In Hong Kong as well, the late l860s and early 1870s saw the recruitment of Sikhs for the colonial police. Together with Punjabi Muslims, these Sikhs constituted the predominant element in the colony’s police until the mid-20th century. In 1922, there were 435 Indians in the Hong Kong police; and 774 by 1939.1 The same tale of recruitment and policing can be told of the Chinese Treaty Ports, of the Straits Settlements, and, with the British conquest after 1890 of East and Central Africa, of Nyasaland, Kenya, Uganda, and Somaliland. By the end of the nineteenth century, across a great arc ranging from Zomba to Tientsin, from Zanzibar to Singapore, Indian, predominantly Sikh, contingents patrolled and policed the British Empire. For Africans and Asians, the turbaned Sikh, as much as the Englishman with his sun helmet, made visible their colonial subjugation. This essay asks why and how Indians were recruited for service in colonial police forces; why Punjabis, above all Sikhs, were singled out for such recruitment; and how this transport not only of men, but of the shaping ideas and institutions of the late Victorian Raj to colonial 146

Thomas R. Metcalf 147

territories around the Indian Ocean, produced a distinctive imperial policing strategy connecting India with the colonies, from the 1870s to the First World War. Such a deployment, as we shall see, makes clear the limits of sovereignty, and of the bounded nation-state, in an imperial world. For Indians, the empire opened up opportunities that ranged far beyond the subcontinent, and for many encouraged a vision, usually unfulfilled, of themselves as citizens of a beneficent empire as well as of a putative Indian nation. For the British, policing the boundaries of the sovereign state was always subordinate to the larger enterprise of extending, and maintaining, imperial authority, for the empire alone gave Britain its predominance around the globe.

Singapore and Malaya We can conveniently begin with Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy (1836–1910). Born in Meerut, son of James Speedy, a lieutenant in the 3rd Regiment of Foot, Tristram Speedy was commissioned into the Indian Army in 1854. By 1860, posted first in Meerut then in Peshawar, Speedy had risen to the position of adjutant in the 10th Punjab Regiment. In that year, restless, he gave up his commission, and commenced a life of wandering adventure. This took him first to the court of King Theodore of Abyssinia, where he also served for a time as British vice-consul in Eritrea; then to New Zealand, where he enlisted in the local militia fighting the Maori; and ultimately back to Abyssinia, when Lord Napier summoned him to act as interpreter and adviser for the 1867–68 campaign that was to culminate in the siege of the fortress of Magdala and the death of King Theodore. Returning to India, Speedy secured the post of district superintendent of police in Sitapur (Oudh). In 1872 he moved on to the Straits, as superintendent of police in Penang. After little more than a year, in July 1873, he resigned this post to take up service with the Mantri of Larut. A month later he was on his way to Lahore.2 For a man like Speedy, obviously, the boundaries of individual states had little meaning. On the edges of the empire, as well as within it, opportunities for the ambitious were limitless. Speedy’s recruiting strategy was simple enough. Returning to an area, the Punjab, with which he was familiar from his army days, he signed up, within a few weeks, some 200 men; some were residents of Wazirabad and Gujranwala, others Pathans and men from the hill tribes. As the district superintendent of police in Lahore later wrote of Speedy’s activities, ‘He would not enlist residents of towns or cities, but villagers only. Each man received one rupee on enlistment as bounty,

148 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

and was to receive three annas a day until the date of leaving Calcutta, their [sic] pay would then be Rupees 20, 25, and 30 respectively; they were informed that they were going across the water; that the Government were going to abandon the Andamans as a penal settlement; and that some other “tappoo” or island had been selected; and that they were being enlisted for service there. … The men were dispatched from Lahore in small parties daily, and their expenses paid to Calcutta.’ (Whether deception was employed is an open question. Clearly the financial incentives were substantial, and the senior police authorities doubted that Speedy had in fact implied that the Andamans were to be abandoned. Still, as he was recruiting on behalf of the unknown ruler of an unfamiliar state, Speedy may have found some judicious ‘bending’ of the truth helpful.) In Malaya, Speedy’s troopers received an enthusiastic welcome, and not only from the Mantri of Larut. After the 1874 extension of British authority into the region, and even more after the 1875 Perak uprising, the British were anxious to secure the presence in Malaya of a force sufficient to control the Chinese tin miners and secret societies, and, more generally, to sustain the authority of the Malay sultans in whose name the nominal sovereignty of the country still resided. Since units of the regular Indian Army could not be stationed permanently overseas, Speedy’s militia pointed the way to a solution. As the colonial secretary in Singapore wrote to Calcutta in November 1874, ‘Great difficulty has been found in procuring in the Straits men properly qualified to serve as guards for the Residents and as military police, but a number of Siekhs [sic] serving for some time in Perak … have given so much satisfaction … that Sir Andrew Clarke [the Governor] considers it would be very beneficial for the service if a well selected body of men of that class could be procured from India.’3 The resulting request for 100 men met with the sanction of the Indian government. These recruits, however, scattered across the country in small groups, and lacking, after Speedy’s transfer to civil employment, an officer who could communicate with them in their own language, remained ill-disciplined and so of little use. Hence the new Governor of the Straits, Sir William Jervois, proposed to procure a new force of some 200 men from India, from among ‘Sikhs of good character who have been discharged from Punjab regiments,’ and to employ these men as sentries at residencies, jails, and public offices. Once the decision had been taken to employ Sikhs in Malaya, there remained the question of discipline. Above all, Jervois insisted, the force had to be ‘under the superintendence of an officer who can speak Hindustani and who can understand their habits and prejudices,’ and

Thomas R. Metcalf 149

who could also speak Malay. The choice fell upon Lt. Paul Swinburne, an officer of the 80th Regiment of Foot who had served in both India and Malaya.4 A cousin of the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, Lt. Swinburne took charge of the Perak Armed Police in December 1876, and set out to discipline it on an Indian military model. Despite the imposition of discipline under an Indian-trained officer, the Perak Sikhs, like their counterparts in the Hong Kong police, did not fit easily into colonial society. They were not meant to. The disaffected Emily Innes, whose husband, in Perak service, had been exiled to the obscure post of Durian Sabatang, described the police there, Sikhs and Pathans, as ‘too sacred to be made of use in any way that was not strictly military. These lordly beings therefore confined themselves to marching up and down below the house, gun in hand, as sentries, and begging for brandy whenever they saw me, under pretext of drinking my health.’ Somewhat more sympathetically, the traveler Isabella Bird, from the comfort of the Perak residency, described the Indian police she met, ‘splendid looking men with long moustaches and whiskers’ wearing ‘large blue turbans, scarlet coats, and white trousers,’ as ‘to all intents and purposes soldiers, drilled and disciplined as such.’ Their joy, she wrote, ‘would be in shooting and looting, but they have not any scent for crime. When off duty they wear turbans and robes nearly as white as snow, and look both classical and colossal. They get on admirably with the Malays, but look down on the Chinese, who are much afraid of them.’5 A near total linguistic isolation reinforced this social distance. The overwhelming majority of the Indian police, Punjabi speakers, in Malaya as in Hong Kong, with little incentive to learn Malay or Chinese, could communicate with no one apart from their comrades and commandant. These social barriers did not much trouble the British. The solving of crime was the task of the Malay police, some 220 strong, on land and water, in 1878; while rural policing fell to the lot of the village headman (penghulu). Similarly, in Hong Kong the 177 Indians on the force in 1874 were complemented by some 110 Europeans and 204 Chinese constables. The Indians were there in large measure to overawe and intimidate the local population, in part by their sheer physical size. Isabella Bird told of seeing ‘a single Sikh driving four or five Chinamen in front of him, having knotted their pigtails together for reins.’6 Many resident Europeans, especially among the non-official community, considered the Perak Sikhs as a ‘useless extravagance,’ while their arrogance excited widespread comment. Even a senior official like Hugh Clifford could write of the Sikh that ‘he is possessed of as absolute a conviction of his own superiority to the men of any other race – Europeans alone excepted – as is the White Man

150 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

himself. He is quite frank about this opinion, and he is accustomed to act upon it at all times. To other Asiatics he is as arrogant and overbearing as can well be conceived, and he displays none of the tact which helps to make a European less hated for his airs of superiority than he might be.’7 Despite, perhaps indeed because of this behavior, the usefulness of the Sikh policeman remained unimpaired. As time went on, the arena open to Sikh employment in Malaya widened, and their numbers increased. In 1884 a contingent of 40 men was formed for Perak’s southern neighbor, the state of Selangor. When initially established in 1875, the Selangor police had consisted primarily of Malays. For years its superintendent H.C. Syers resisted the employment of Sikhs or other Indians. Similarly, unlike his neighbors in Perak, Syers did not concentrate his force as a strategic reserve at the residencies, but rather dispersed most of it throughout the interior to check crime. In part, no doubt, this strategy reflected the fact that, unlike most of his police contemporaries, Syers had never served in India or in the Indian Army. Hence he did not possess their unwavering confidence that Sikhs alone could be disciplined into an effective force. Nevertheless the pressure to employ Sikhs was unrelenting. As early as 1879, F.A. Swettenham as resident was arguing that ‘it would be more advisable … to employ as in Perak a proportion of Sikhs.’ Behind this preference lay also a belief on Swettenham’s part that to place police on civil duty in villages would undercut the village headmen by setting up a rival source of authority. In the end a compromise was reached, in which Syers agreed to accept Indians as ‘semi-military guards’ for the residency and other public buildings, while retaining his force of some 300 Malays.8 By 1894 the Sikh Contingent in Selangor comprised some 210 men. In 1889 a Sikh contingent of 100 men followed the extension of British authority across the Malay peninsula into the eastern state of Pahang. On this occasion both the incoming Resident, J.P. Rodger, and the Pahang sultan opposed the introduction of these men into the state. The sultan, Rodger wrote, ‘strongly objects to the importation of Sikhs into Pahang saying that they are rough and ignorant of Malay customs,’ while Rodger concurred that Sikhs were ‘out of place in a purely Malay state’ such as Pahang. None of this altered the governor’s conviction that a Sikh Guard was required in Pahang as elsewhere. Putting the best face on the decision, Rodger concluded that ‘the main, if not the only, objection to the Sikhs is that so few of them can speak Malay, but the Pahang force is called upon to perform a comparatively small amount of purely police work.’9

Thomas R. Metcalf 151

In the Straits Settlements too, after a long and agonizing debate, a Sikh contingent of 165 men joined the force in 1881. Through the 1870s, the Straits police consisted of almost equal numbers of local Malays and Klings (South Indians). As the inspector-general reported in 1876 with satisfaction, ‘the present force is one recruited without expense from the population of the Straits Settlements, and the wages paid do not exceed the ordinary rates of household servants and coolies. They all speak Malay, the common language of the inhabitants of these settlements.’ Nevertheless, as the evidence given before the 1879 police commission made clear, there existed much dissatisfaction with Malay and Kling alike. What was required to secure an effective force, the commissioners argued, their views shaped by the conventions of colonial racial ideology, was a way to join ‘the truthfulness and sobriety’ of the Malay with the ‘greater intelligence and activity’ of the Kling. The Chinese, distrusted because of their ties to the secret societies, were perceived as ‘too dangerous’ to employ in any number, and so were excluded from the force altogether except as detectives. Hence, guardedly, the 1879 commission recommended introducing a ‘certain number’ of Sikhs. Within a year of their arrival, the inspector-general, impressed by the Sikhs ‘very remarkable aptitude for acquiring a knowledge of military exercises,’ was already, despite their possession of an ‘overbearing’ disposition, clamoring for an enlargement of the Sikh contingent.10 By the late 1890s over 300 Sikhs were employed in a Straits police force some 2,000 strong. Throughout these years, who was to be recruited, and where, sparked continuing debate. From the earliest post-Mutiny years, there existed always a consensus that Sikhs, as members of a ‘martial race,’ were to be preferred as soldiers and policemen. From the 1880s onward, as Indian Army recruiting shifted to the Punjab and Nepal, the theory of ‘martial races’ became elaborated in recruiting handbooks that described the various ‘classes’ deemed worthy of army service.11 By contrast to India, however, where army officers claimed intimate knowledge of the ‘essential character’ of the various groups described in these handbooks, in distant colonies a term like ‘Sikh,’ set apart from its Indian context, often existed as little more than a floating signifier indicating martial ability. In much of Southeast Asia a ‘Sikh’ was anyone of the appropriate physique who wore a turban and called himself a Sikh. As the British commissioner of police in Siam noted in 1905, ‘“Sikh” is, in this part of the world, a grand name for all kinds of Indians. I have seen Madrasi Pariahs and Gonda Barwars masquerading as Sikhs.’ Perhaps the most extreme instance of this uncertainty was found in far-off Africa, where in 1892 H.H. Johnston, requesting the service of a contingent of Sikhs

152 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

to aid in the conquest of Nyasaland, acknowledged that ‘I am afraid I derive most of my ideas of the Indian Army from the works of Rudyard Kipling.’12 [!] To confound confusion further, Sikhs, and North Indians more generally, were popularly known in Malaya as ‘Bengalis’ because they embarked at Calcutta – and so were turned upside down the carefully constructed ethnic stereotypes of British India that saw Bengalis as effeminate and northerners as ‘martial.’ In Perak, the Straits, and Hong Kong, a police force was initially constituted by officers and men brought from India. In subsequent years, however, the local authorities preferred to do their recruiting from among those who offered themselves for enlistment. In this way, recruits could be secured much more cheaply and as easily as in India. Those who were turned away rarely returned to India, but rather took up employment as ‘carters, gharrymen, syces, and watchmen’ in Malaya, or struck out in search of greener pastures in Borneo, Sumatra, or China.13 State boundaries mattered little, either to the wandering Sikh or the Southeast Asian colonial official. Each sought to capitalize on the reputed ‘martial’ ability of a community marked out by the wearing of beard and turban.

Central and East Africa The apparent success of Sikh police in Southeast Asia inspired the British, as they moved into East and Central Africa after 1890, to request Sikh police and military units of their own. The Indian government, anxious to preserve the recruiting grounds of the Punjab for its own use, was not pleased to see this new demand for Sikhs spring up on the far western side of the Indian Ocean. But the pressure was unrelenting. As Rennell Rodd, the Consul General in Zanzibar, wrote in 1893, pleading for Indians, ‘The utter debacle of the [Imperial British East Africa] Company has rendered the situation all along the coast extremely critical …. I am at my wits end where to find men; the Arab irregulars cannot be relied upon as recent events at Kismayu have shown; the Swahili troops are unseasoned … and not very courageous.’ A.S. Rogers, sent from the Punjab police to supervise the proposed Indian force, concurred. ‘A force of one hundred sepoys,’ he wrote, ‘is more valuable than three or four times their number of Swahilis.’14 Confronted with such insistent pressure, reinforced by the backing of the Foreign Office, the Indian government reluctantly gave way. Meanwhile, to the south, Harry Johnston was engaged in establishing his own protectorate, that of Nyasaland (now Malawi). Isolated in the

Thomas R. Metcalf 153

heart of Africa, confronted with hostile Arab slavers, and dependent on the Portuguese in Mozambique for trade and transit rights, Johnston lost no time in requesting an Indian force, of some 70 men, to bulwark his fledgling regime. Unlike the ongoing recruiting operations in Southeast Asia, and for the Company in East Africa, Johnston sought his troopers directly from the Indian Army rather than through open recruiting in the Punjab countryside. This decision was prompted in large part by the fact that, as Johnston told his commandant Capt. C.M. Maguire of the 2nd Hyderabad Lancers, ‘The duties of the men will be chiefly fighting.’ Those recruited, in other words, had to be available for immediate deployment in campaigns of conquest and pacification. For such purposes, only ‘trained and disciplined men’ would do.15 Time did not permit the luxury of an extended period on the parade ground. There remained the vexed question of whether Johnston should be permitted to recruit Sikhs. The India Office insistently urged, on this and other occasions, that colonial recruiting should be directed toward other classes, most notably South Indians and Hindustanis from the Gangetic plain. Yet, in the end, no such proposal could succeed, for the Indian military were trapped by their commitment to the idea of ‘martial races.’ The Army, that is to say, had to permit recruitment of Sikhs and Punjabis, for, as one official wrote, ‘assuredly no other natives of India will be fit for the work.’ Hindustanis, or men from Southern India, were ‘predestined to failure in a service of the kind proposed. It was found in the case of the Burma Military Police that the Hindustani with his pots and pans, his prejudices, and his prostration as soon as removed from his own country, his own diet, and his native “ab-o-hawa” [climate], proved himself not only a lamentable failure but a grave difficulty to the administration. And if he failed in Burma, how much more, and more disastrously, would he fail in Africa? The same objections, but intensified, would exist to taking men from Bombay, Madras, or the Hyderabad Contingent.’16 In June 1891, Maguire set sail for Africa with 49 Sikhs chosen from two pioneer battalions, and a further 22 cavalrymen selected from his own old unit, the Hyderabad Lancers. No sooner had they arrived in Nyasaland than Maguire’s troopers went into action on and around Lake Nyasa. These initial encounters were not wholly successful. On one occasion, attacking a shore fort from the lake, Maguire himself was shot and drowned while trying to climb back aboard the steamer, while three Sikhs were killed and ten wounded. The cavalrymen too, unused to such combat, were ineffective; and they were ultimately sent back to India after their horses had

154 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

all died of tsetse. Still, Johnston remained convinced that Sikh forces were essential for the pacification of Central Africa. As he wrote the Indian commander-in-chief in July 1892, requesting a further one hundred soldiers, ‘Great Britain can only maintain her supremacy in these countries of Central Africa by the employment of Indian troops.’ When, he continued, ‘our skirmishing force of Zanzibaris was repulsed by the enemy or temporarily disappeared, the Indians always saved the day.’ If we cannot, he said, ‘for the next few years, be allowed to maintain a force of one to two hundred Indian soldiers, we had better retire from Nyasaland altogether and allow the slave trade to go on unopposed.’17 Nor was it, in Johnston’s view, at all surprising that India should be called upon to garrison eastern Africa. Something of an imperial center in its own right, India had, he wrote, by degrees ‘become the dominant factor in the lands bordering the Indian Ocean within the tropics, and toward India all Eastern Africa turns as the mainspring of commerce and the source of power.’ What India lost by the provision of troops it gained by opportunities for profitable trade and outlets for its manufactures.18 Confronted with this array of arguments, the Indian government sanctioned the continued enrollment of Sikh Contingents for Central Africa. One hundred men, twenty volunteers from each of five regiments, sailed in February 1893. A further one hundred, to relieve Maguire’s now depleted force, whose two-year tour was approaching its end, followed a few months later. Of critical importance in securing these volunteers was the pay differential compared with that of the Indian Army. By contrast with the army’s Rs. 7 a month, with rations to be paid for out of this sum, the African colonies offered ordinary sepoys Rs. 18, with free rations, and a Rs. 100 gratuity payable at the end of the term of service. NCOs received pay on a scale ranging from Rs. 25 for naiks up to Rs. 100 for subahdars, with correspondingly higher bonuses ranging up to Rs. 1,000. The Indian commander-in-chief estimated that ‘a prudent Sikh who serves three years in British Central Africa may contrive to save out of his pay about 35 pounds – a sum in India sufficient to start a man as a landholder and cultivator.’19 Once in Central Africa, the Sikhs joined a mixed force, whose different elements were assigned different tasks. As the country became more settled, the Sikhs undertook garrison duty at forts scattered across the protectorate. Their role was frequently that of ‘stiffening’ African troops. The 185 Sikhs in Nyasaland in 1898, for instance, comprised one company in the British Central Africa Rifles. The other six companies, totaling 800 men, were formed from the local Atonga, Yao, and Marimba peoples. The Sikhs, Johnston’s successor Alfred Sharpe reported, were ‘distributed to the

Thomas R. Metcalf 155

various companies so that each garrison of a fort is able to move out a complete force of Sikh and native troops to any point. About one hundred Sikhs are stationed in Zomba [the colonial capital] ready to march out at a few hours’ notice.’ Perhaps the Sikhs’ greatest contribution, in Sharpe’s view, was the example they set of effective military discipline. Native soldiers, so Sharpe reported, ‘in drill, marching, good behavior, and also fighting qualities … compare very favourably with the fighting races of India.’ They could not yet, however, he continued, be trusted to exercise command functions. Hence, it was necessary to employ trained Indian soldiers ‘to supply the senior NCOs for the native companies, to act as drill instructors, to keep the accounts of stores and rations issued to the men, and also to take charge of all escorts, guards, detachments, posts, and forts in the absence of British officers.’20 In 1895, following the bankruptcy of the Imperial British East Africa Company, the Imperial government took over the governance of East Africa. Before the year was out, a contingent comprising 300 Punjabi Muslims drawn from some 19 regiments had been formed, on the same terms and conditions as the Central African force, and shipped off to Mombasa. This contingent joined some 250 Sudanese and 575 Swahili, Arab, Somali, and other locally recruited troops; together, as the East Africa Rifles, they formed the garrison of the new protectorate.21 In 1897, a mutiny among the Sudanese troops posted to Uganda enforced upon the British authorities once again the value of Indian troopers. Hence in 1898, once the mutiny had been put down, and the regular Indian Army units withdrawn, a contingent of some 400 Indian troops, half Sikh and half Punjabi Muslim, was raised for service exclusively in Uganda. There, together with 700 locally recruited Swahilis and 700 ‘loyal’ Sudanese, they formed the Uganda Rifles. On the model of the Central and East African contingents before them, the Uganda force was raised for a three-year tour of duty, with base pay of Rs. 18 for ordinary sepoys. As the commander Lt.-Col. J.R.L. Macdonald reported to Salisbury at the Foreign Office, ‘Without these [Indians] the Soudanese cannot again be considered a reliable force, as there have been grave symptoms of disaffection even among those who have not joined the mutiny; but, with an independent force of Indians in the country, the Soudanese would probably prove a useful manageable body of soldiers.’22 ‘Divide and rule’ as a strategy of imperial governance took no account of national boundaries. It sought to bring people together not as citizens with a shared allegiance to a sovereign state, but as demarcated communities taught to remain ever distrustful of each other. Together the three Indian contingents in Africa comprised by 1900 a total of some 940 men, and they helped enforce British rule across

156 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

hundreds of miles of territory stretching from Zomba to Mombasa to Kampala. Apart from a brief period in Somaliland, no attempt was made to raise special contingents for other African regions. Nevertheless, Indians formed small, but critical, components of the forces deployed elsewhere across Britain’s African empire. In Rhodesia, confronted twice in a decade by massive native uprisings, the British South Africa Company, following a proposal by Alfred Sharpe, in 1898 abandoned the attempt, in the region north of the Zambezi [later Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia], to use white mounted policemen in favor of recruiting a force of 40 Sikhs placed over a contingent of 350 Africans. Whites were ‘unsuitable’ on grounds of expense and susceptibility to fever, while a wholly African force ran the ‘risk’ of a repetition of the ‘evil results’ of the previous employment of Native Police.23 In far-off West Africa too, the ongoing campaigns of Frederick Lugard’s West African Frontier Force during 1899 and 1900 opened up a window of opportunity for members of the Indian military, both British and Indian. As a soldier trained in the Indian Army, Lugard wasted no time in turning to India for the men he needed. Among the British officers he recruited, the most eminent was James Willcocks. A Sandhurst graduate, and officer in a British regiment posted to India, Willcocks served in frontier campaigns during the 1890s from Baluchistan in the west to Manipur in the east. Joining Lugard, he took up command of the West African Frontier Force in 1899, where he gained a knighthood (KCMG) in 1900 for the relief of Kumasi. In 1906 he returned to India as a major general, where he commanded the Northern Army, and then, in 1914, the Indian Army Corps in France. Willcocks’s career, better perhaps than most, illustrates the importance of India as a reservoir of experienced military personnel for service anywhere in the British Empire.24 But Lugard required for his force not just British officers, but Indians as well. First to be called to West Africa were a group of 20 Madras sappers, required initially for the construction of houses and barracks. Lugard argued that the climate of West Africa was not ‘very dissimilar’ to that of South India, while Madrasis, so he claimed, ‘have a very remarkable facility in acquiring languages, and would probably become adepts in Hausa in a marvelously short time.’ More to the point, however, Lugard continued, ‘For the same total outlay a far larger number of them than of Europeans can be obtained,’ while Africans by contrast required ‘constant supervision’ if the ‘maximum of work’ was to be got out of them.25 For fighting troops Lugard turned to the Sikhs of the Central African Regiment. Serving under Willcocks’s command, 73 Sikhs and 267 African troops from Nyasaland reinforced the West African Field

Thomas R. Metcalf 157

Force in the relief of Kumasi, and subsequently at Obassa, where the Indian-trained Willcocks, trusting the military qualities of the Sikhs, placed them in the center of the line, in the face of withering fire, during the assault on the Ashanti stockade.26 Although the Indian soldiers were all returned to duty with their regiments after the successful end of the campaign, nevertheless the almost reflexive turning to India, and to Indians, by such men as Lugard and Willcocks testifies to the power of the ‘idea’ of India as a center of crafts, and skills, and peoples who could be drawn upon to make empire more efficient and economical.

Controversy and crisis Throughout the 1890s, and into the new century, the Indian Government continued to grapple with the twin problems of military pay and the presumed ‘depletion’ of its Punjabi recruiting grounds. At the same time, Sikhs remained in great demand as armed police from Africa to Asia. Yet by 1920 colonial Indian contingents had ceased to exist outside Hong Kong and the Chinese treaty ports. This section examines the changing nature of colonial recruiting, and its eventual demise, during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Indian government was always reluctant to place stringent limits on colonial recruitment. For Britons, the ‘transnational’ of the empire was, in an important sense, not transnational at all. Rather the empire was the nation – of Great Britain – writ large. Employment in India, or in a British colony, defined the interests of officials who saw themselves as responsible for the welfare of these territories, but it did not circumscribe their loyalties. Hence the officials of the Indian government could not easily spurn the requests of their colonial colleagues. The availability of Indian soldiers and police for service in its far-flung territories, they all agreed, advanced the empire’s power and effectiveness. The Indian authorities saw too in the opportunity for overseas service a way to ‘enhance the popularity of the Indian Army by giving highly paid openings to well conducted men of adventurous spirit.’27 Yet the disparities of pay, and consequent fears of ‘depletion,’ remained. The various African colonies, as we have seen, offered attractively high pay to the members of their volunteer contingents. The Hong Kong Regiment, at Rs. 15 and rations, offered somewhat less than its African counterparts, but those hired locally by the various colonial Southeast Asian police forces fared the best of all. The Hong Kong Sikh policeman, for instance, at Rs. 30, received close to five times the pay of the ordinary army sepoy in India, while those serving in Malaya, in units such as the Perak Sikhs, earned from Rs. 18 to 22 per month.28

158 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

A despairing military department official, after surveying these pay scales, conceded that, although the Sikh was a ‘homely man’ who would rather serve with his regiment in India, he was ‘naturally eager to take work for higher pay where he could put by a nice little sum – not altogether forgetting the chances of a little fighting and other excitements at the same time.’ With a vast force under arms the Indian Army could not hope to match the colonial terms, but to offset the pay differential to some degree, the army raised its monthly base pay to Rs. 9 in 1895. The additional two rupees, it was hoped, ‘will have the effect of keeping at home many men who would not have enlisted on Rs. 7.’ The army further began promoting the extension to the Southeast Asian colonies of the system of recruiting already established for Africa, with its tighter controls on pay and service. But these measures offered no solution to the problem of ‘depletion.’ This anxiety was deeply embedded in the Indian official mentality by the mid-1890s. As the commander-in-chief grumbled in 1893, on behalf of the Indian army, ‘it is absolutely impossible to obtain Sikhs and Punjabi Muhammadans of the old class, and it will be suicidal to admit further demands from Africa and elsewhere on our exhausted recruiting grounds.’29 Despite their shared commitment to seeing the ‘transnational’ empire flourish, neither colonial nor Indian officials were keen on subordinating their own interests to those of others. But the question remains: how serious was this alleged ‘depletion?’ In an extraordinary statistical exercise, the Indian military authorities endeavored to calculate the numbers of Sikhs and Punjabi Muslims in military employment as a percentage of the total populations of these groups as revealed by the census. One such calculation in 1898 indicated that something approaching one-tenth of the entire Sikh male population of military age, or 39,598 men of 482,500, was employed by the Indian military; of these 28,146 were Jats, 2,452 Mazbis, and the remaining 9,000 were of other classes. Among Punjabi Muslims, 21,000, or some 2 percent of those eligible, were in Indian military service. On colonial service, including both volunteers from the Indian Army and those recruited independently, the government counted a total of some 5,000 men. Of these 2,554 were Sikhs (scattered from Hong Kong and Malaya to Central Africa and Uganda); 1,548 were Punjabi Muslims (serving mostly in Hong Kong and East Africa); while a further 893 of other communities were employed in Hong Kong, North Borneo, Ceylon, and Mauritius.30 Some officials chose to read from these numbers the message that, although other classes might continue to be recruited for colonial service,

Thomas R. Metcalf 159

‘we should not be called upon to supply Sikhs except in very small numbers.’ Others, especially in the military department, regarded the whole furor as ‘exaggerated,’ and pointed to the very small number of Sikhs who signed up for overseas service each year. One 1896 calculation produced an annual total of no more than 100; a later count, of Sikh migrants to eastern Asia, came up with a total of 600. But assessing the extent of ‘depletion’ inevitably involved facing several troubling questions: what did it mean to be a Sikh, or, more to the point, who was to be counted as a Sikh? What kinds of Sikhs were suited for military service? As we have seen, Sikhs, for various reasons, stood at the heart of the Indian ‘martial races’ theory. Further, there was a general consensus, clearly visible in the military recruitment figures, that Jats made the best soldiers. As Curzon wrote in 1902, they are ‘the fighting race.’ The Jat Sikhs were as well, or so the British were convinced, of a higher social status than other Sikhs by virtue of their adherence to the defining features of the Sikh religion as laid down in the khalsa. The ‘value of a Jat Sikh,’ then, was twofold – in the fact that he was a khalsa Sikh and in the fact that he belongs to a ‘naturally hardy, independent, and robust race.’31 Much in this construction of the ideal of the ‘Jat Sikh’ was, as many British officials were themselves aware, an exercise in self-delusion. Those close to the recruitment process realized that the Indian Army itself played an important role in maintaining Sikhism by its enforcement of the rules and rituals associated with the khalsa. As Colonel Beauchamp Duff, on the commander-in-chief’s staff, bluntly put it in 1902, ‘that religion [Sikhism] only retains its vitality on account of our demand for Sikhs as soldiers. If we ceased enlisting Sikhs, that religion would absolutely die out in a few generations.’ Consequently, any shortfall in the numbers of Sikhs signing up for military service could be countered simply by creating more Sikhs. In 1900, Duff noted, one regimental commander, recruiting non-Jat Lobanas, ‘enlisted them first and made them Sikhs afterwards.’ ‘The more Sikhs we employ in India,’ he continued, ‘the more Sikhs there will be in the country …. Even the demand for Sikhs in the Far East has the same tendency. So long as it pays to be a Sikh, so long Sikhs will increase and multiply.’ The ‘small drain’ of Sikhs to colonial service could never be ‘in any way injurious to us.’ Of course, not everyone agreed with this sanguine analysis. As A.P. Palmer, military secretary to the Indian government, wrote in reply, ‘By taking short Sikhs, Lobanas, Brahmin Sikhs, etc., we have lately tapped a fresh source of supply, but the proper stamp cannot be held to the unlimited extent that Colonel Duff would seem to imply. There is a limit to fecundity.’32

160 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

One way out of the ‘depletion’ dilemma, then, was to increase the recruitment of non-Jat Sikhs and restrict that of Jats. As one official vigorously argued, ‘A Sikh is a Sikh, whether he be Jat, Khatri, or Muzbee.’ For colonial recruitment, however, especially that toward Southeast Asia, where men presented themselves at local depots, there was a further difficulty. As we have seen above, officials in the colonies had difficulty telling one Sikh, or even one Indian, from another. Hence to encourage them to recruit only certain classes, and not others ‘would be very difficult to enforce. To them [the colonial authorities] all upcountry natives are Sikhs, and they would never appreciate the difference between a Jat and a Lobana or a Khamboh or a Kalal. They simply take the finest looking men that offer themselves for enlistment and neither know nor care what class they belong to.’ Echoing Duff, the military secretary A.H. Bingley further pointed out that, once recruited, such men might well in time become ‘real Sikhs,’ for there was ‘nothing to prevent them becoming so, as indeed they do when they join corps such as the Malay States Guides.’33 This controversy, whatever its larger implications, did not slow the recruitment of Sikhs for colonial service in the years around the turn of the century. As each tour of duty came to an end, the African contingents were regularly resupplied with Indian troopers. On 1 January 1902, the forces of all three protectorates – Nyasaland, East Africa, and Uganda – were amalgamated to form the King’s African Rifles, under the command of an Indian officer, Lt.-Col. W.H. Manning, who had come over to Africa with the 1893 Central African contingent. The Sikhs of the old Central African contingent were attached to whichever battalion was on garrison duty in Nyasaland, while the Indian contingents in the other protectorates together formed a separate Indian battalion (5 KAR) as one of five making up the new force. In 1905 a further contingent of 400 Punjabi Muslims was raised in India for service in British Somaliland as part of a new 6 KAR. Meanwhile, far away in Southeast Asia, another controversy was brewing. This time the focus of British anxiety was not just that, by leaving the country, Sikhs were ‘draining’ India of potential troops, but that, by taking service with foreign powers, they posed a threat to Britain’s empire itself. As most British colonies in Southeast Asia recruited their police from among those who presented themselves locally, and there was always an ‘ample supply’ of applicants, by the 1890s, not surprisingly, the Straits authorities were reporting ‘increasing numbers of Sikhs’ moving out of British territory, as disappointed job seekers, to Sumatra, Borneo, and Siam. By 1902 Sikhs were reported taking service with the Siamese at

Thomas R. Metcalf 161

Bangkok, with the French in Tonkin, and with the Germans in Kaiuchou. Indeed, a few Sikhs were even spotted heading for Russian Asia, where they found employment at Port Arthur and on the Manchurian railway.34 The boundaries of Britain’s transnational order were being breached. The fears aroused by this Sikh migration fed upon themselves. As Curzon wrote in 1903, unleashing his imagination, ‘We may have at any time to fight one or other of these [continental European] powers, perhaps more than one in combination. I think it is a most serious thing that we should possibly be confronted by our Indian subjects whose brothers and cousins and kinsmen are in the ranks of the Indian Army. If men are to be enlisted from India to fight against us, the solidarity of India as a political factor in the East is gone; and I would take any steps however strong to prevent so ruinous a consummation.’ Indeed, Britain’s very success in mobilizing thousands of Indian troops to fight abroad, visibly demonstrated during the suppression of the Boxer rebellion in China, had, so the British conceived, aroused the envy of their rivals, who now sought Indians for themselves, so that what had formerly been a minor ‘evil’ had now become a ‘growing one.’35 An array of measures was put forward to shore up the British Empire against this imaginary threat. Most far-reaching was a proposal to end local recruitment altogether. Under this scheme, the Southeast Asian colonies would be required to follow the practice established for Africa, in which the military authorities controlled recruiting, and the recruit’s term of service ended with repatriation back to India. Unlike the African arrangement, however, this proposal did not involve taking Sikh soldiers from their regiments, but simply making the army’s recruiting agencies in India the sole entry point for those seeking police and military service outside India. There would then be no longer any occasion for Sikhs to wander through the Far East in search of employment, while those whose terms of service had expired would be safely back in India, out of reach of foreign recruiters. In 1903, and again in 1905, the Indian government insisted that ‘the surest means of arresting this flow of fighting men’ was to enforce recruitment in India with compulsory repatriation. On occasion, the Indian authorities even claimed that such repatriation was in the interests of the men themselves. As Kitchener, the commander-in-chief, wrote, patronizingly, in 1904, ‘it will save them from the risk of being left out of work, and perhaps destitute, in a distant country.’36 Of course, the only interests truly served by this proposal would be those of the British themselves. Such schemes evoked little enthusiasm in the colonies. As the governor of Hong Kong reported in 1908, after a year’s trial, the colony had

162 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

spent some Rs. 8,152 on recruitment in India, while there had been during this time ‘no decrease at all’ in the number of those who offered themselves locally. It was, he concluded, ‘of no practical value for this Government to refuse to enlist men locally so long as hundreds of eligible recruits reach the colony and seek employment on the railway or in private capacities such as watchmen.’ Swettenham in the Straits Settlements concurred. There was no point, he said, in upsetting a system that had worked well ‘for a good many years’ in favor of one that was more costly and less efficient. Further, he pointed out, repatriation was no boon to the Indian policemen, many of whom, encouraged to bring their families, had made their homes in Malaya during their years of service, and hence had no desire to leave upon its termination.37 The Chinese treaty ports posed a special problem. There, restrictive regulations threatened that which had prompted the proposal in the first place – the security of the British Empire. In Shanghai, for instance, in 1903, some 40 percent of the international population was British, and the municipality employed 200 Sikhs in its police force. Seventy percent of these, mostly from Lahore district, had previously served in the Indian Army. In addition, there were 180 Sikhs employed as watchmen by private firms and individuals, and a further 40 in search of work. If municipalities and other employers were forced to resort to the expensive hiring of police in India, so the Foreign Office worried, they might well not employ Indians at all, but residents of other countries instead, ‘to the possible detriment of British interests.’38 The loss of Indian police in such cities as Shanghai, that is, could adversely affect Britain’s predominance in China. Indeed, as the political situation within China deteriorated, the provision of a ‘sufficient’ Sikh police force to protect the foreign settlements became ever more urgent. A 1905 Shanghai riot, which shook the European community, impelled the foreign-controlled Municipal Council, unwilling to rely on Chinese constables in a contest with their own people, to request an increase in the Indian branch of the police from 250 to 1,000, with the men to be volunteers from the Indian Army.39 Following the usual agitated discussion over whether Sikhs or some other community should be supplied, the Indian Army agreed to supply the necessary men. Even the skeptical Duff admitted that ‘we have undertaken an obligation to British administrations and cannot now repudiate it.’ In the end, however, the negotiations collapsed over the question of discipline. The Indian government insisted that these troops must be kept under military discipline, as was the case with the Indian contingents in Africa, by embodying the Indian Articles of War

Thomas R. Metcalf 163

in the Shanghai Police Code. The British authorities in China, by contrast, anxious not to give cause for suspicion to the Chinese or the other European powers, wished to make clear that this was ‘strictly a police force, not a small standing army that does police work.’ Hence, they wanted the civil courts of the Shanghai International Settlement to exercise jurisdiction over the disciplining of the force. In May 1907, the Indian government, disgruntled, withdrew its offer. Ordinary recruitment in Shanghai, together with one batch of 120 men recruited in India in 1906, sufficed to bring the Indian portion of the force up to some 500 by 1908. (The force also included 800 Chinese and 120 Europeans.)40 The British had, nevertheless, begun rethinking their exclusive reliance on Sikh manpower for colonial policing. In addition to their ever present worries over ‘depletion’ of the army’s recruiting grounds, by the early twentieth century the British found the style and manner of the Sikh policeman ever less attractive. Initially, as we have seen, what the British saw as Sikh ‘arrogance’ toward other races, especially in eastern Asia, was at worst an annoyance, and may even have enhanced their appeal. As this arrogance grew, however, its disagreeable features became ever more apparent. As the Indian government wrote in 1908, on behalf of a proposal to widen the base of recruitment for the African contingents, ‘The political effect of allowing the Sikh to imagine that he is indispensable has been unfortunate, and the high rates of pay he receives abroad has made him discontented at home and inclined to grumble and be troublesome, while imbuing him and the Punjabi Musalman with an exaggerated idea of their own superiority to other classes.’41 In the discussions regarding the supply of troops to China, one Indian officer even argued that ‘From a political point of view we might do well not to encourage soldiers of the Indian Army to go abroad and mix with the heterogeneous and democratic crowds in our colonies and elsewhere.’42 While the army might be able to damp down unrest among soldiers kept in barracks in India, and even to secure their loyalty by such measures as the award of land grants in canal colonies, overseas experience, in part perhaps because of the high pay and heightened expectations it brought with it, could well generate a sense of nationalist resentment at colonial rule. The streets of the great Asian cities were far from the dusty parade grounds of India. But to reduce the army’s dependence on Sikhs, in favor of a more balanced class composition, the Indian military had to finally confront the hoary ‘martial races’ theory. This, increasingly, Indian officialdom was now willing to do. As the commanding officer at Peshawar wrote in 1907, ‘the practice of calling for volunteers [for colonial service] from

164 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

certain classes of men only is invidious, and is regarded as a slight by those excluded, while other classes, like Sikhs, get an exaggerated idea of their superiority.’ Stretching, but not abandoning, the ‘martial races’ idea, the Indian government in 1908 proposed opening up colonial service to Rajputana Rajputs and Jats from all provinces. The Sikh Jat had, of course, long formed the ideal soldier, so inclusion of other Jats involved but a small step; while Rajputs had won praise as ‘trustworthy’ and ‘well liked’ for their service in the Boxer rebellion. By a ‘judicious selection’ of volunteers from these two groups, the governor-general argued, ‘we shall obtain a more extended training ground for our fighting material.’ More to the point perhaps, such recruitment would ‘increase the fighting strength of those classes which we know to be most loyal to the British Government.’ ‘Loyalty,’ in sum, now mattered as well as ‘martial spirit.’43 The Secretary of State in London, in reply, saw no reason to stop short with merely these two additional classes. So in 1909 a vastly extended list of eligible communities was promulgated, including U.P. Rajputs, Hindustani Muslims, Deccani Marathas and Muslims, Konkani Marathas, and Dogras. In effect, colonial service was now opened up to every class in the Indian Army with the exception of Madrasis, Gurkhas, and Pathans. The exclusion of these three groups involved suitably tortuous reasoning. Madrasis, long disparaged as insufficiently ‘martial,’ were simply dismissed as not ‘suitable for service in African contingents.’ Gurkhas were allegedly ‘not suited to the African climate,’ but they had in fact, because the restrictions on their use imposed by the Nepal darbar, almost never been supplied to colonial contingents. Pathans amply fitted the ideal of a ‘martial race;’ in the Boxer campaign they were reputed to have ‘kept the Chinese in holy fear.’ But they had to be excluded on political grounds. To send them abroad ‘would result in an eventual increase of the fighting strength of the border tribes by a considerable number of well trained soldiers possessing ample money for the purchase of arms.’44 In the immediate term, these changes had little effect. Nevertheless, an era was coming to an end. For some years, the East African governments had been gradually reducing the size of their Indian contingents on grounds of expense. Furthermore, as time went by, with frontier campaigning and African risings largely things of the past, the Indian contingents were used primarily for garrison and guard duty. Under such circumstances, the conviction grew up among the officers of the KAR that these units were immobile and ‘cumbersome,’ and not worth the expense – estimated at £13,000 a year in Uganda alone – of maintaining

Thomas R. Metcalf 165

them. The intention of the Indian government to replace Sikhs with mixed forces drawn from across India was perhaps the last straw. In 1912, expressing confidence in the reliability of their African troops, the Nyasaland and Uganda governments determined at last to do without an Indian force.45 The last Nyasaland contingent left for India in December 1912, almost exactly 20 years after the first had arrived; while the last Uganda contingent was withdrawn two months later, in February 1913, and replaced by a new company of Baganda. The 140 Punjabi Muslims who made up the Indian contingent in the more unsettled Somaliland Protectorate alone remained in place. In Southeast Asia as well, the days of predominantly Indian police forces were fast running out. In 1919, the crack Sikh force, the Malay States Guides, was abolished. Increasingly, in the years that followed, the colonial authorities encouraged Malays to join the police and military forces of the country. In so doing the British initiated a process of accommodating, and sustaining, a growing Malay nationalism. Although Sikh immigration to Malaya did continue, during the interwar years the newcomers sought opportunities in commerce and entrepreneurship rather than in government service.46 Change came more slowly in eastern Asia. As China collapsed into a chaotic civil war, the British, precariously perched along its rim in vulnerable trading ports, anxiously sought the reassurance provided by an Indian force. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Indians still comprised some 35 percent of the Hong Kong police. Still, the disruptions of the war, and then in 1947 Indian independence, set in motion a slow process of attrition that brought all recruitment of Indians for colonial police service to an end by the 1960s.47 As Sikhs, with indentured laborers and others, were dispatched – for a half-a-century and more – across the Indian Ocean and beyond, neither state sovereignty nor territorial borders defined the ‘transnational’ imperial world in which they lived. Two kinds of sovereignty, and two kinds of borders, however, did matter. One was that of the space occupied by Britain’s rivals beyond the edge of the empire. The British patrolled these borders, as Sikh military employment by such states posed a potential threat to the empire itself. The second was the selfassertion of the emergent colonial nation-state. However fluid the boundaries within the empire might be, the insistent determination of an Australia or a South Africa to wall off its territory, and to exclude Indians, could not be denied. Though Britain itself endeavored to stand apart from such exclusionism until the 1950s, in the end the sovereignty of the ‘nation’ brought down the entire ‘transnational’ order the Sikh policeman had so powerfully embodied.

166 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’

Notes This chapter draws upon a larger research project regarding Indians in the British Empire. For further discussion, see Thomas R. Metcalf, Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley, 2007). An extended version of this chapter, with a slightly different title, is included as chapter 4 in Metcalf’s book. 1. See N. Miners, ‘The Localization of the Hong Kong Police Force, 1842–1947,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 18 (1990), pp. 296–315. 2. For an account of Speedy’s life see J.M. Gullick, ‘Captain Speedy of Larut,’ Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 26 (1953), pp. 4–103. 3. Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements (hereafter Col. Sec. SS) to Secretary, Government of India (hereafter GOI) 26 November 1874, National Archives of India (hereafter NAI) Foreign Military (hereafter Mily) B Proceedings (hereafter Progs.) July 1875, No. 11–11A. 4. Jervois to Lord Carnarvon, Secretary of State (hereafter S of S) for Colonies, 19 August 1876, National Archives, London, CO 273/84. For Swinburne’s appointment, see Jervois to Carnarvon 18 October 1876, CO 273/85. 5. E. Innes, The Chersonese With the Gilding Off (Kuala Lumpur, 1885), reprinted 1974, vol. II, p. 74; I. Bird, The Golden Chersonese (Kuala Lumpur, 1883), reprinted 1967, p. 283. 6. Bird, The Golden Chersonese, p. 283. 7. Speech of W.G. Gulland, 18 November 1884, Proceedings of the Straits Settlement Legislative Council (hereafter Progs. SS Leg. Co.) for 1884, p. B140; H. Clifford, Studies in Brown Humanity, Being Scrawls and Smudges in Sepia, White, and Yellow (London, 1898), p. 128. For the controversy over the relative utility of employing Chinese and Indian police in Hong Kong, see the report of the 1872 Police Commission cited in Miners, ‘Hong Kong Police Force,’ pp. 303–5. 8. J.M. Gullick, ‘Syers and the Selangor Police, 1875–1897,’ Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 51 (1978), esp. pp. 1–33. 9. J.P. Rodger to Col. Sec. SS 13 October 1888, and Governor SS to Colonial Office, 15 October 1888, CO273/155; and Pahang Annual Report for 1889, Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP), 1890–1, vol. 57, p. 351. 10. ‘Report of a Commission appointed to inquire into the desirability, or otherwise, of introducing Chinese as Ordinary Members of the Police Force,’ 16 June 1873, Progs. SS Leg. Co. for 1873, pp. cii–cvi; Memo by Maj S. Dunlop, inspector-general police, 15 September 1876, CO273/85; ‘Report of the Police Commission, 1879,’ Progs. SS Leg. Co. for 1879, pp. cclxxviii–cclxxx; report of inspector-general police for 1881, Progs. SS Leg. Co. for 1882, pp. 95–8. 11. D. Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940 (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 10–29; H. Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester, 2004), esp. pp. 93–101. 12. Note by Eric Lawson, commissioner of police Siam of 20 February 1905, NAI For. Extl. A Progs., May 1905, No. 175–7; commissioner Central Africa to Commander-in-Chief of India 8 August 1892, NAI Mily B Progs, No. 2107–46. At the time Johnston wrote, Kipling, still a young man, had only begun to gain fame in England, and could hardly have been widely read in Central Africa. 13. Perak Annual Report for 1887, PP. 1888, vol. 73, p. 748; Swettenham to J. Chamberlain 12 August 1903, NAI Rev. & Ag. (Emigration) A Progs. December 1904, No. 1–2.

Thomas R. Metcalf 167 14. Rennell Rodd to H.M. Durand 3 September 1893, NAI For. Sec. E. Progs. January 1894, No 480–6; A.S. Rogers to IBEA Co. 26 January 1893, PP. 1893–4, vol. 62, pp. 532–3. 15. S of S India to viceroy 23 April 1891, and Mily Dept. KW note by E.H.H.C. of 24 April 1891, For. Extl. B May 1891, No. 46–7. 16. KW note by W.B.W. of 1 May 1891, For. Extl B Progs. May 1891, No. 46–7; Maguire note of 8 May 1891 and W.G. note of 8 May 1891, For. Extl B Progs. October 1891, No.131. 17. Johnston to C-in-C India 8 July 1892, Mily B Progs. May 1893, No. 2107–46. For an account of the operations in Nyasaland see H. Moyse-Bartlett, The King’s African Rifles: A Study in the Military History of East and Central Africa, 1890–1945 (Aldershot, 1956), pp. 17–23. 18. Johnston to Foreign Office, 26 April 1894, NA, FO2/66. 19. For pay and conditions of service in African contingents see adjutantgeneral note of 27 August 1895, Mily Progs. February 1896, No. 2501–67; C-in-C India to Johnston enclosed in Johnston to FO 12 April 1895, FO2/117. For Indian army pay and incentives see Omissi, Sepoy and the Raj, pp. 54–61. 20. Report on the Administration of British Central Africa for 1896–97, by A. Sharpe, PP. 1897, vol. 62, p. 28; Sharpe to C-in-C India 7 May 1897, FO2/143; Report on the Administration of British Central Africa for 1897–98, by W.H. Manning, PP. 1899, vol. 63, pp. 253–4. 21. Gov. Gen. to S of S India 5 February 1896, Mily Progs. February 1896, No. 2501–67. See also reports in Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (hereafter OIOC), L/MIL/7/1442, collection 323. 22. Jackson to Salisbury 26 September 1897, PP. 1898, vol. 60, p. 424; Macdonald to Salisbury 17 January 1898, ibid., p. 450. 23. British South Africa Company to FO 14 March 1898, and CO to FO 14 April 1898, FO2/170. 24. For requests by Indian officers to transfer to West Africa, see the petitions in L/MIL/7/15787, 15791, and 15806. Lugard praised Willcocks as an ‘officer of exceptional Indian experience’ in a letter to Chamberlain of 31 August 1899, L/MIL/7/15798. He subsequently criticized Willcocks’s ‘expectation’ that his Frontier experience equipped him to ‘run the show’ in West Africa. M. Perham & M. Brill (eds) Diaries of Lord Lugard (London, 1963), vol. 4, p. 417. 25. Lugard to CO December 1897, L/MIL/7/15788. See also A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, ‘Indian Troops with the West African Frontier Force,’ Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 42 (1964), pp. 17–20. 26. On the Ashanti campaign see Willcocks to Chamberlain 25 December 1900, PP. 1901, vol. 48, p. 557; and Moyse-Bartlett, The King’s African Rifles, pp. 37–40. 27. Govt of India to S of S India, 27 October 1898, NAI Mily Progs. December 1898, No. 1314. 28. See NAI Military Dept. Note no. 48 of 1896. 29. KW note by C-in-C of 4 October 1893, For. Sec. E January 1894, No. 480–6. See also Mily Dept. Note 48 of 1896. 30. Govt. of India to S of S India 27 October 1898, Mily A Progs. December 1898, p. 1314. For the class composition of the Indian Army see Omissi, Sepoy and the Raj, p. 20. 31. Curzon to Hamilton 3 September 1902, and Mily Dept. note of 20 September 1902, enclosed in Curzon to Hamilton 24 September 1902, OIOC Hamilton Papers Mss.Eur.D.510/11.

168 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’ 32. Notes by Col. B. Duff of 23 September 1902, and A.P. Palmer of 26 September 1902, Mily B Progs. April 1903, No. 1512–6. See also R.G. Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making (Berkeley, 1985), ch. 8, esp. pp. 140–3. Duff subsequently became chief of staff (1906), and C-in-C India (1914–6). 33. Notes by A.H. Bingley of 1 August 1902, Mily B Progs. April 1903, No. 1512–6; and of 28 February 1902, Rev. & Ag. (Emig.) Progs. April 1902, No. 34–5. Khatris were commonly an educated urban caste, and Mazbis were of untouchable origin. For discussion of the difficulties the British encountered in classifying Sikhs, see Fox, Lions of the Punjab, pp. 110–3. 34. Col. Sec. SS to Sec. Govt. India 27 October 1894, Rev. & Ag. (Emig.) Progs. March 1895, No. 7; Note by A.H. Bingley of 31 March 1902, Rev. & Ag. (Emig.) Progs. April 1902, No. 34–5. 35. Notes by Curzon of 25 February 1903, and by E.G. Barrow of 19 January 1903, Mily B Progs. April 1903, No. 1512–6. Curzon’s phantasm did, of course, materialize some 40 years later, in a form unimaginable in 1903, with the formation under the Japanese of the Indian National Army. 36. GOI to S of S 21 June 1892, Mily Progs. July 1892, No. 338; Gov. Gen. to S of S 9 April 1903, Mily B April 1903, No. 1512–6; Kitchener note of 8 August 1904, enclosed in Gov. Gen. to S of S 8 June 1905, Mily B Progs. June 1905, No. 1450–62. 37. Gov. Hong Kong to CO 11 February 1908, Mily (Army) B Progs. July 1909, No. 1329–32; Swettenham to Chamberlain 12 August 1903, Rev. & Ag. (Emig.) Progs. December 1904, No. 1–2. 38. FO to IO 4 June 1903, and Minister Peking to For. Sec. 12 September 1903 enclosing note by Sec. Shanghai Municipal Council of 31 August 1903, Rev. & Ag. (Emig.) Progs. December 1904, No. 1–2. 39. Chairman, Shanghai Municipal Council to Sec. GOI 19 January 1906, Mily (Police) B Progs. April 1908, No. 1221–68. 40. Minister, Peking to FO 17 September 1906 and 13 October 1906, with enclosures and notes, and Gov. Gen. to S of S 14 May 1907, Mily B Progs. April 1908, No. 1221–68; Minister Peking to Sir E. Grey 27 October 1908, Mily B Progs. July 1909, No. 1329–32. 41. Gov. Gen. to S of S 31 December 1908, Mily B Progs. March 1909, No. 381. 42. Minister, Peking to FO 13 October 1906, and KW note by A.R. Martin of 3 May 1907, Mily B Progs. April 1908, No. 1221–68. 43. GOC Peshawar to adj.-gen. 16 November 1906, and Gov. Gen. to S of S 31 December 1908, Mily B Progs. March 1909, No.381. 44. S of S to Gov. Gen. 26 February 1909, and Gov. Gen. to S of S 1 July 1909, Mily B Progs. July 1909, No. 1127–9; Gov. Gen. to S of S 31 December 1908, Mily B Progs. March 1909, No. 381. For an earlier though similar view of Pathan recruitment, in this case for the Uganda contingent, see C-in-C to Govt. India 12 December 1897 in Gov. Gen. to S of S 10 March 1897, FO2/170. 45. Gov. Uganda to S of S Colonies 12 January 1912, CO534/15. See also MoyseBartlett, The King’s African Rifles, pp. 158–9. 46. For a general account, see K.S. Sandhu, ‘Sikh Immigration into Malaya during the Period of British Rule,’ in J. Chen and N. Tarling (eds), Studies in the Social History of China and Southeast Asia: Essays in Memory of Victor Purcell (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 335–54. 47. Miners, ‘Localization of the Hong Kong Police Force,’ esp. pp. 309–12.

9 Valleys of Fear: Policing Terror in an Imperial Age, 1865–1925 Robert Gregg

… Colonial sovereignty remained the naked version of modern sovereign power, the raw ‘truth’ and racist underside of the modern state. Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, Sovereign Bodies1 In The Valley of Fear, Arthur Conan Doyle returned to a theme he had explored in his first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, namely, the linkages between crimes in London and events occurring elsewhere in the world. The precipitating events of these two novels occurred in the United States. A Study in Scarlet revolves around the emergence of Mormonism in Utah, and The Valley of Fear builds upon the Molly Maguires episode in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. However, there was a noticeable change of tone between the earlier work, written in 1887, and the later work, Doyle’s last Holmes novel, written on the eve of the war in Europe, then serialized in The Strand after the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914.2 In A Study in Scarlet Holmes initially bemoans the lack of any real crime to investigate: ‘There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.’3 The murder, when it happens, turns out to be a consequence of a tragedy originating in the American west, but the events in the novel do not appear to speak to a larger predicament of western civilization. In The Valley of Fear, by contrast, the threat from the terrorists seems quite clear, especially given their connections with that masterful personification of international corruption, Professor Moriarty. What Doyle now illuminated was not merely the workings of a terrorist brotherhood in a remote corner of Pennsylvania, 169

170 Valleys of Fear

but rather the beginnings of secret societies that threatened what he saw as civilized society. In the light of the growing nationalist movements in the British Empire, witnessed at first hand by Doyle in South Africa during the Boer War (1899–1902), but now also evident in Ireland and India, the fear of turmoil brought on by the war was troublesome. The valley of fear was fast growing indeed. Sovereignty and police seem at first glance to be inextricable – the latter would seem to help determine, or at least patrol, the boundaries of the former. If sovereign states are inviolable, one would think, it must be in part because they each have established a police apparatus to help ensure their continued existence. In this context, the police can also play a role in helping to define a particular national identity. One thinks immediately of the friendly English ‘bobby’ on his beat, the constable on patrol or on the take in New York City, or the French gendarme at the ready with his sub-machine gun. And, yet, such self-contained images and the assumptions on which they are based are false. The nature of the imperial predicament and the anxieties it induced forced police to step beyond boundaries and notions of sovereignty in order to defend what they saw as the essence of the state. If the groups they policed were increasingly co-operating to share methods and resources accross sovereign boundaries, then the police would need to do likewise.4 The trail from crime to its explanation, from identifying criminals to locating their co-conspirators, was a process by which dots were joined to form a real and imaginary image of a particular society and the way it was both linked up to other societies. The words ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ are both operative here, because while the connections existed and while ideas really did flow back and forth between different groups, the anxiety that these connections fostered created in many minds organized networks out of brief contacts and disparate, frequently desperate, acts. Either way, such linkages, real and imagined, appeared to challenge the boundaries of established nations and provide avenues for nationalists to make a case for their own rights to sovereignty. Moreover, even where such connections were tenuous at best, policing required that order be brought to chaos, and the police frequently provided the organizational ability to create coherent movements that could be more easily destroyed (or used if necessary). In the process, reality came to resemble the feverish imagination, particularly once martyrs were created who stood for sovereign entities other than those of the states that were policing their boundaries. Often, then, a connection between ideas in one society and those in another would not need to be made by the terrorists themselves; they

Robert Gregg 171

would be made by the police, desperately trying to keep up with the latest technologies and sending out agents to infiltrate terrorist groups. Some of these connections were clear to Doyle in the work of Fenians in the United States and of Irish terrorists attempting to bomb London. But these terrorist methods were being taken up by other potentially threatening groups. Such groups would use Calcutta, London, and New York as centers for organization and sites of political action, and they would elicit responses from police forces that were similarly informed by methods exchanged accross sovereign boundaries. The widespread knowledge among Scotland Yard authorities of the workings of the Molly Maguires (a terrorist organization believed to be working in the depths of Pennsylvania’s mines and loosely affiliated with the Order of Hibernians), and the techniques used by the Pinkerton organization to destroy them, provided an object lesson for those advocating stronger, secret policing initiatives. Transnational fears of what Foucault terms “feudal” pockets (greatly exacerbated by the advent of revolution in Russia in 1917) would thus drive new transnational policing practices.5 It is no coincidence, then, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would emerge out of the First World War, and that it would develop practices hitherto considered unwarranted for any American police force, other than private forces like the Pinkertons. Such practices were in some ways a continuation of the efforts undertaken by Scotland Yard’s secret police prior to and during the war. They also paralleled what the British Government was doing in its Empire, particularly with the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, commonly known as the Rowlatt Act, which was passed in order to control dissent in India in 1919. They were also a by-product of the British Government’s huge propaganda machine, established to control opinion in the United States, as well as of the sharing of information and methods on the front in France in order to stamp out threats of mutiny, control potential racial mixing, and to limit the spread of Bolshevism. In the process of reforming themselves to meet wartime needs, police forces manifested transnational characteristics that were sometimes no different from those of the people against whom they remained vigilant. The idea of sovereign entities policing themselves was one that would be readily sacrificed whenever necessary. Indeed, the coming of the League of Nations in 1919 represented not simply a method of keeping the world at peace; it also had clear implications for the ways in which police operated.

172 Valleys of Fear

The Fenian model You either push up, or they will push down. Sean Connery as ‘Black Jack’ Kehoe, in The Molly Maguires In 1885, Bombay-born Amrita Lal Roy, a former student at Edinburgh University medical school, was residing in New York City, where he met a young Irish bootblack who offered to shine his shoes for free. This young man would have proved Oscar Wilde’s observation that there was ‘no opening for a fool’ in America. ‘They expect brains even from a bootblack,’ Wilde wrote, ‘and get them.’6 In a travel memoir published three years later, Roy informs his Calcutta readership, ‘New York boot-blacks and newsboys are an exceedingly clever race, much handsomer, more polished in talk and manners, and perhaps a great deal more wicked than the street “gamins” of London.’ They were, moreover, greedy readers of the ‘penny dreadful.’ This particular bootblack, a young boy named Bill Martin, wished to find out more about this dark skinned man whose shoes he was shining: ‘What are you? A “Spaniola”?’ he inquired. When informed otherwise he retorted: ‘Hindu! What’s that?’ I explained that I came from India. India! Why, man, I have seen Hindus in Barnum’s Show, but they ain’t dressed like you. I know India. I have just been reading about it (probably in some ‘penny dreadful.’) Ain’t it in your country that some feller called Nana gave hell to those d——d English blackguards. Ha! Ha! I’m glad! Let’s shake hands! Served them right, the b——dy sons——! Such politically charged, anti-British comments must have surprised Roy, and he felt that his Indian readers required some explanation. He continued: The reader will not be surprised to hear such sentiments from a New York street boy when he is told that the Empire City is the paradise of the Irish-Americans. It is from their offices in New York that Patrick Ford, of the Irish World, and O’Donovan Rossa, the Fenian, send out moral dynamite, and Heaven knows what other kind of dynamite, that keeps Scotland Yard in a permanent state of excitement and the Coercionists of the English Government in no enviable mood of mind.7

Robert Gregg 173

At the time Roy was in New York City, numerous bombings were taking place in London, planned by an organization believed to be Clan-na-gael, a secret society founded by American Irish in 1870. This organization, according to a member of the Special Irish Branch of Scotland Yard, ‘was the most violent secret society in America, and its methods were brought over to England.’8 In response to these revolutionaries, police forces needed to be equally transnational. Many of their techniques were developed in the United States by British and Pinkerton agents. In the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, when large numbers of Irish Union soldiers were looking for a way to transfer their fight against despotism from the American South to Ireland, the leadership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood had developed plans to invade and conquer Canada and then use it as a chip to negotiate with the British. The plans, which received covert assistance from President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, were foiled by a British agent, F.F. Millen, who was sent by the Irish back to Ireland to organize a rebellion among the Irish soldiers serving the Empire. On his arrival in Ireland, Millen alerted the British to the plans laid by the various Irish factions in New York, plans that he had in fact helped to solidify.9 The Pinkertons used similar approaches to undermine labor unrest in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. What is clearly evident from Allan Pinkerton’s account of the events is that the Molly Maguires had little if no formal existence before McParlin, the agent hired by Pinkerton in Philadelphia, arrived on the scene.10 McParlin was an agent provocateur who pushed disgruntled laborers toward outright terrorism. He was involved in organizing the killings of policemen and mining officials, and even when McParlin warned officials that such acts were about to occur, they were allowed to proceed so that a stronger case could be made against the miners. Indeed, a strong argument can be made that the Molly Maguires would not have existed without the Pinkertons’ assistance.11 Pinkerton’s account became a very appealing testimony to the effectiveness of these methods, so appealing that the British decided that they should use his agency to meet their policing needs in the United States for the next 20 years.12 Meanwhile, back in the British Isles, the Special Irish Branch began to employ many of the same methods used by the Pinkertons in the United States in their efforts to stamp out the Molly Maguires. This involved use of the informant and agent provocateur to infiltrate the secret societies, as well as the accumulation of a wealth of information about known revolutionaries and anarchists, in conjunction (especially

174 Valleys of Fear

with regard to Irish nationalists) with the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan police. Once the Irish threat had been decreased and Scotland Yard saw that the Special Irish Branch was effective, the ‘Irish’ was dropped from the branch’s name. The Special Branch was deployed more generally in the defense of the Empire, infiltrating anarchist, socialist, and working-class organizations, or confronting revolutionaries head-on, as in the 1911 Siege of Sidney Street, when the Scots were called in to battle a small group of Latvian anarchists. After undermining the Irish militant campaign, the Special Branch had settled into the role of keeping a watch over its resident revolutionaries. Provided such people were building bombs that would be thrown in cities outside the Empire, this was someone else’s problem. Scotland Yard sometimes responded to requests from other nations to watch a particular individual, but an early version of the Cold War logic of ‘any enemy of my enemy is my friend’ kept these police initiatives at a minimum. This approach changed in response to increasing labor turmoil, renewed threats from Ireland, and the work of Indian nationalists. The Special Branch’s duty to protect British government officials necessitated increased intervention once hit lists of such officials began to circulate among anarchist groups.

Civilization and its discontents The central figure in the novel is one of those impecunious ‘students,’ the outcomes of whose turbulent brains have often been a curse where they were intended to be a blessing to their country. Oscar Wilde, ‘A Russian Realistic Romance’13 The London career of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, in particular, triggered a renewed commitment to secret policing by the Special Branch. Savarkar was one of many Indians in London at the turn of the century who came to take the Indian Civil Service (ICS) exams or, as with Gandhi, to train for the bar.14 With growing political agitation for change in India, many of these students became part of a revolutionary coterie at India House, a hostel in Highgate, established by Pandit Shyamji Krishna Varma, a disciple of Herbert Spencer and a confidant of Tilak. It had become the center of all nationalist campaigning and debate among ‘Friends of India.’ Things took a more radical turn in 1905, with the formation of the Home Rule Society and the establishment of a new journal, Indian Sociologist. Savarkar arrived in London in July 1906, sent by Tilak to further his education and to contribute to

Robert Gregg 175

this new movement of radicals in the Empire’s capital.15 Savarkar took up lodgings in India House and created a branch of the Abhi Nava Bharat Secret Society (ANB), to which he had been contributing in Bombay and Nasik. The society’s goals were twofold: first, to promote the use of assassination as a weapon against British imperialism, and, second, to propagandize for Indian independence. It is hard to know exactly which was considered more of a threat to the British Empire at this time, but the Special Branch took both very seriously. Attempts were made by Scotland Yard to infiltrate India House with spies, to acquire information about assassination plots or the smuggling of weapons to Bombay, and about any attempts to publish information dangerous to the public welfare (such as Marathi translations of Mazzini’s autobiography, or new, ‘unbiased’ histories of the so-called Indian Mutiny). Such spies were necessary because Indian students conversed and wrote in a number of Indian languages and Scotland Yard had no idea what they were up to. An unfortunate man named Kirtikar, who had worked as a translator in the Bombay High Court, was sent to India House under the guise of being a dental student. Every day he sent a secret report to Scotland Yard until he was discovered by one of Savarkar’s lieutenants. After being relieved of several of his teeth, he was kept on at India House, and his reports to Scotland Yard were closely monitored. In Britain, 1 May was observed as a thanksgiving day in honor of the British victory in 1857, and Savarkar determined that his group should pay public homage to the Indian martyrs by holding meetings, observing fasts, and displaying memorial badges on their chests. Shortly after that date, on 10 May, scuffles broke out between the Indian protesters and indignant Englishmen when the Indians took their protests to the streets.16 Things began to get even more intense as talk of assassination turned to action. On 30 April 1909 a bomb was thrown in Muzaffarur, India, killing two English ladies, but missing the colonial official at whom it was directed. In London, Savarkar’s disciple, Madanlal Dhingra, assassinated John Morley’s political secretary, William Wyllie. Meanwhile, an attempt was made to assassinate Viceroy Minto, who was undertaking a crackdown on all seditious utterances in India. Finally, a member of the Free India Society assassinated A.M.T. Jackson, the British Collector of Nasik, on 21 December, in the Vijayanand Theater. Two of these acts, the killings of Wyllie and Jackson, were directly related to Savarkar’s attempts to publish his own nationalist history of events in 1857. The book, eventually published under the title, The War

176 Valleys of Fear

of Independence of 1857, was originally written in Marathi in 1908.17 A few select chapters were reproduced in English in speeches given by the author at the weekly meetings of the Free India Society.18 Soon the work drew the attention of the British Intelligence Department, which declared the text ‘revolutionary, explosive and treasonous.’ Wyllie himself had been ordered by Morley to keep India House under his watch, and the pressure that this placed on Savarkar and his associates, especially in the form of informants infiltrating the organization, possibly led to the decision to assassinate Wyllie. Meanwhile, the manuscript was sent by the author and his friends to India, but most printing houses in the Bombay Presidency were too scared to publish it. A printing firm whose owner was a member of the ANB took the risk, and, despite a raid on numerous printing houses by the Indian police, the text remained hidden and was sent back to Savarkar. A number of ‘Maratha youths’ in London, members of the ANB and candidates for the ICS Examination, volunteered to translate the work into English, and the text was sent to Paris. Even there, thanks to the recent signing of the Entente Cordial, the work was suppressed. The ANB finally persuaded a Dutch printing firm to publish it, while indicating to the police that the work was being undertaken somewhere in France.19 Losing touch with the manuscript and unable to suppress it, the British and Indian Governments took the unprecedented step of proscribing the book even though they knew it had not yet been printed. Following publication, the ANB smuggled hundreds of copies of the work into India wrapped in covers entitled ‘Don Quixote,’ ‘Scott’s Works,’ or ‘Pickwick Papers.’ This action prompted the British and Indian Governments to launch a violent campaign of persecutions and prosecutions ‘with a view to crushing the ANB Secret Society.’20 Several revolutionaries were hanged, and several transported for life. Hundreds were sentenced to terms extending from 10 to 14 years of rigorous imprisonment. Savarkar’s brother, Babarao, was arrested on grounds of sedition and was sentenced to transportation for life. It was to avenge this act that the ANB assassinated the English official in Nasik. The Governor of Bombay, Sir George Clarke decided to prosecute Savarkar, whom he would later describe as ‘one of the most dangerous men that India had produced.’21 Savarkar’s warrant was based on the Fugitive Offenders Act of 1881, which was certainly curious, given that Savarkar had gone to London under a regular passport and was being arrested in 1910 for the seditious utterances he had made back in 1906.22 A number of journalists commented upon the speciousness of these charges,

Robert Gregg 177

and in ridiculing the British Government they brought about a serious rift between Morley and his Governor in Bombay. Rather than waiting for extradition, Savarkar decided to return to London, where he was arrested. Once in the hands of the police, he was charged both with complicity in the murder of Wyllie and for the shipping of guns back to India.23 He was deported to India, although not before attempting an escape at Marseilles. Re-arrested almost immediately by the French police, Savarkar completed his arduous journey to Bombay. Savarkar’s attempted escape caused considerable difficulties for British authorities. Hearing about the actions of the French police, his friends filed suit at the International Court of Justice at The Hague on the grounds that, as a political prisoner, Savarkar should have been offered asylum by the French, not restored into the hands of the imperial police. The British Government was willing to play fast and loose with the question of whether Savarkar was a political prisoner or a common criminal, and they claimed before the Court that he was a criminal being returned to India to face trial for murder.24 He quickly became a cause celebre, with many Europeans recognizing the illegitimacy of the charges. Even Sir Henry Cotton, according to Savarkar, ‘hoped that the [Court] would restore me to France and thus save itself from being the instrument of trampling under foot every man’s bare right to hold his own opinions without any molestation from the State.’25 Auguste Briand’s man on the spot managed, however, to persuade other officials to decide the case in favor of Great Britain.26 In Bombay, Savarkar was charged with ‘waging war against the King’ and was sentenced to forfeiture of his property and transportation for life to the Andaman Islands. To show overwhelming proof of his guilt, the special tribunal which sentenced him did so by quoting a statement Savarkar had made in London in 1908, when he had asserted that India’s independence struggle would continue until ‘our Motherland stands free!’27 His guilt was fabricated on political grounds, and Britain’s cherished ‘rule of law’ was suspended, as it would be again when the Empire was threatened in the First World War.28

The world’s worst propagandists Admittedly the English are the worst propagandists in the world. With a righteous cause and every sound material argument in their favour they will still fail, for some reason, to make their motives or position clear. Charles Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman 29

178 Valleys of Fear

In Memoir of an Indian Policeman, Charles Tegart recounted the process by which a youth came to rebel against the British Empire. ‘A Hindu boy of good caste at the age of about twelve years,’ Tegart noted, ‘was approached by an older youth in his teens whom we will call Naren. Naren had always been a hero to the small boy, Biren Dutt, for Naren was exceptionally advanced intellectually for his age, was a clever talker and the Secretary of the local “Samity” or Society.’ This Improvement Society busied itself with many praiseworthy activities, including physical culture and philanthropic work for flood and poor relief. Consequently, Tegart maintained, little Biren Dutt’s parents, aunts and uncles had always cited Naren to him as an example. They had expected him to pass his matriculation well, ‘just like Naren,’ and to imitate Naren’s character and behavior. Tegart continued: Biren’s feeling for Naren resembled that of a British schoolboy for his county cricketer, so it was hardly surprising that when one day Naren came to Biren, told him that he had noticed what a keen and honest lad he was and how in consequence he had chosen him to take custody of some books which for certain reasons Naren no longer wished to keep in his own house, young Biren’s heart swelled with pride. He was instructed to show the books to no-one else, but later on Naren suggested he should read them and discuss their contents with him afterwards. Biren accordingly read ‘Ananda Math’, the lives of Mazzini and Garibaldi, the ‘History of Nihilist and Bolshevik Movements in Russia’ and ‘The history of the Russo-Japanese War’, as well as accounts of the heroic deeds of Rajput Princes such as Rana Pratap and Jai Singh and of Bengali Princes such as Pratapaditya and Sitaram Roy, all written in Bengali. If the case of Biren’s enlistment had occurred after the Irish rising books such as the ‘Life of Micheal Collins’ and Dan Breen’s ‘My Fight for Irish Freedom’ would also have been included in the reading curriculum.30 Clearly, the English policeman in Bengal was attuned to all the influences that were making their way into India, and the connections between all the different nationalist and radical groups. The Tegart memoir conveys the English policeman’s perception of Indian nationalist ideology: Biren’s mind became imbued with patriotic fervor and when it was heated to a stage of extreme malleability, Naren began to hammer it into the shape he required. He told Biren that … India, once

Robert Gregg 179

fabulously rich, was being drained of her wealth by an alien power; that British rule was responsible for starvation of the poor and for the introduction of malaria, plague and venereal disease, that early British Governors amputated the thumbs of Bengal weavers competing with Manchester …, that whatever the British brought in the way of railways, telephones, hospitals, universities, meteorological stations … and so forth, had been brought and installed from selfish and exploiting motives.31 This, according to Tegart, comprised Biren’s political education until he passed his matriculation and went to Calcutta University: Here he came into contact with a Terrorist Party Centre, which welcomed him to its ranks and as he had never read or heard anything to controvert the doctrine with which he was now familiar he became an ardent recruit …; and at private meetings of the terrorist group instruction was given in revolver shooting and in the making and throwing of bombs.32 The important point for Tegart was that at this stage Biren was still unknown to the police and so he was particularly valuable to the terrorist party. He could easily carry arms and explosives without detection. As Biren undertook more of this work he gained in confidence. He would begin to harbor terrorists who had gone underground when they came under suspicion.33 Later, Tegart asserted, Biren would join the gangs committing dacoities and murders. Political crime, in Tegart’s view, was usually the product of organization. ‘Only in the rarest cases,’ he asserted, ‘is a political crime the unsupported work of a fanatic. Nearly always it is the result of a conspiracy involving a number of people. This was certainly the case with Indian terrorist crimes. Catching the assailant, preparing the evidence against him and putting him up for trial formed only a small part of subsequent police work; unraveling the conspiracy of which the crime was a manifestation was the most complicated part of the proceedings.’ He continued: Often members of several groups or societies were involved in one conspiracy and trying to follow up the clues and trace the extent of the trouble was like trying to trace an underground growth of bindweed. One root splayed into twenty branches, the ends of which were lost sight of or broke off before the earth could be dug away

180 Valleys of Fear

from them; one growth overlapped or intertwined with another. Only too often the surface fibres were dug out while the source of the growth escaped eradication.34 According to Tegart, the Indian revolutionary movement extended all over India and to America, France, Germany, and Japan. This was never more apparent than after the outbreak of the war in Europe in August 1914. The war caused an intensification of revolutionary activity. During the very month that war broke out revolutionaries in India made a fine haul of pistols and ammunition. Fifty Mauser pistols were grabbed, and the Rowlatt Committee reported three years later that these pistols (which were all numbered) had been used in no fewer than 54 attempted or accomplished dacoities and murders. Before the report was issued, however, the police had recovered 31 of the stolen weapons.35 This intensification of revolutionary activity forced the British into a position where they had to rely on the kindness of relative strangers and encroach on the sovereignty of other nations, while allowing, before the end of the war, fairly substantial rights to the Americans to encroach on their own sovereignty. Revolutionary leaders in India and Europe realized that Britain had a desperate struggle ahead of her in Europe; and they realized that the war provided them with a great opportunity to gain their independence. In 1915, Tegart learned that revolutionary leaders had decided to get in touch with Germany to ask for consignments of arms for distribution in Bengal. Bengali leaders had decided that the time was propitious for a general rising all over India. The war had been going badly for Britain, and no troops could be spared to quell a rebellion in India. At the same time the ranks of revolutionaries were growing in number, discipline, and organization. The only things lacking were money, rifles, and ammunition, all of which Germany seemed only too willing to provide.36 Unfortunately for the revolutionaries, the British had managed to crack the German codes, and all of Germany’s attempts to foster rebellion in the British Empire were known to the British authorities. Consequently, Tegart was able to follow the progress of N. Battacharji, who had adopted the nom-de-guerre of C.A. Martin, and who journeyed to Batavia to coordinate arms shipments paid for by the Germans and bought in the United States. The plan was for a German ship to land on the Andaman Islands, release the prisoners there, capture the islands, and destroy the wireless station. On receiving weapons from a dump on

Robert Gregg 181

the Nicobars, the convicts and revolutionaries, along with Germans of military age who were stationed in Thailand and the Dutch East Indies, were to move to a training camp near the Burma border. After their invasion of Burma was successful, the plan was to move into Bengal and take over that province.37 In Batavia, Martin learned that 30,000 rifles were already on their way in the Maverick across the Pacific, via Java to Karachi. Remittances were also being sent to the bogus company, Harry and Sons, in Calcutta. But Tegart knew of the remittances, and Harry and Sons remained under close scrutiny while the police pieced together the elements of the conspiracy and planned to meet the Maverick. At every stage, the conspirators were foiled. In Balasore, the police discovered that a brother of the manager of Harry & Sons had started a shop which bore the modest title of Universal Emporium. In point of fact it sold only gramophones and gramophone records, but its interest to the police lay in the fact that the manager was a friend of the energetic Mr C.A. Martin, whom he had met some weeks previously and in whose company he had made a journey to a remote habitation in the jungle. Further, they discovered on the premises some seditious literature which the manager was unable to connect either with commercial activities or a love of music.38 As the plans for the invasion fell apart, Martin left Batavia for the United States, where he took on the name of M.N. Roy and became intimately connected with the Indians around Stanford University, before moving on to New York City, where he made connections with the Wobblies (the International Workers of the World), Irish and German Americans, and other Indian radicals, like Lala Lajput Rai. He was closely watched by British Intelligence, which was busily gathering the names of anyone in the United States who was threatening to British interests. When the Americans joined the war in 1917, the list of names was handed over to American authorities, who began arresting the accused on charges of breaking American neutrality laws. M.N. Roy managed to escape to Mexico just before his own arrest.39 The greatest coup for British intelligence, celebrated by Basil Thomson of Scotland Yard as a success comparable to his foiling of the Easter Rising and securing the conviction and execution of Sir Roger Casement, was their work with the California police to convict leaders of the Mutiny Party. During the trial one of the accused smuggled a pistol into the courtroom and pulled it out to shoot the Sikh informant working for British Intelligence, whereupon a deputy sheriff pulled out his automatic and shot the assailant dead.40

182 Valleys of Fear

‘War is the health of the state’ The official, reputable expression of the intellectual class has been that of the English colonial. Certain portions of it have been even more loyalist than the King, more British even than Australia …. [T]he English colonials in university and press took command at the start, and we became an intellectual Hungary where thought was subject to an effective process of Magyarization. Randolph Bourne, ‘War and the Intellectuals’41 The Special Branch came into its own during the First World War, under the leadership of its renowned ‘spy catcher,’ Basil Thomson. Entrusted with the duty of investigating any rumors relating to spies, the Special Branch kept tabs on any soldiers likely to cause trouble at the front, and, as we have seen, generally coordinated efforts abroad in tracking those who might be undertaking work likely to undermine the nation’s ability to prosecute the war. But the war presented problems for the Special Branch, precisely over the question of how much leeway could be given to officials from allied nations. This was particularly the case when the Americans entered the conflict as an associate power. The Special Branch was concerned about policing these foreign troops and controlling any compromising information that might travel back to the United States through these troops. From Thomson’s perspective, however, the Americans were quick to work with their British counterparts: We had been buying our experience at great cost for nearly four years, and we were prepared to give it all freely to our new allies. They, on their part, came over to learn, and when they had learned all that we were able to teach them they began to make their own discoveries for themselves. Never during the whole course of the War or afterwards was there any difference between my American friends and myself. We worked as one organization …42 Aided at the front by the emergence of the American Legion, which harassed any soldiers who might espouse radical ideas like racial equality or fighting the war to make the world safe for a real democracy, Thomson’s ‘American friends’ acquired all the knowledge that their position as combatants demanded. Colonial knowledge was easily passed on in this Magyarization of the American military police. Thus, methods undertaken by the Special Branch against radical groups only intensified in the face of uncertainties brought on by the war. There

Robert Gregg 183

were various aspects of these developments, such as keeping sections of the Empire loyal to Britain and endeavoring to sway opinion in the United States to the side of the Allies. These were all very much related and British success in these ventures greatly affected the way in which the Americans themselves came to view the war and prosecute it in their turn. While the continuities between British imperial and American policing of the war and postwar society should not be overstated, effective propaganda and policing practices certainly spread equally between authorities, as much a viral infection as the ‘diseases’ of communism, nationalism, and anarchism that they were intended to combat. In the process, ideas about immigrants and their danger were mobilized in the establishment of a Bureau of Investigation, with branches in every city in the United States, of which any Scotland Yard official would have been proud. Indeed, by the 1930s, Thomson grudgingly referred to ‘the undoubted efficiency, within its limits, of Mr. Hoover’s organization.’43 In the immediate aftermath of the war, however, both Britain and the United States faced problems of police strikes in sympathy with disaffected workers. The main concern for the British Government was, however, the turn for the worse that had occurred in imperial relations with India. These now needed to be safeguarded, and if heavy-handed police methods had been so effective in squashing dissent during the war, then perhaps the same methods could be applied to troublesome colonials. What had been learned was a new approach to policing Empire, one concerned less with the identities and the cultural proclivities of each group and more with efficient policing and trumpeting the rule of law.44 From the perspective of the British imperialist, this may have been a grave mistake, because the kinds of policing methods that had been considered legitimate under the exigencies of war could not be justified so easily during times of peace. The basic terror that underlay imperialism would be laid bare in a way that could be easily exploited by those who wanted Home Rule or even independence.

A. Mitchell Palmer and progressive anxiety The Americans had established an excellent system of intelligence throughout Europe, and, as we had been closely associated before, we agreed to pool our information. At that time there was not much happening in the underworld of Europe and America that we did not know. How admirably the Americans had profited by their experience probably few know so well as I. Sir Basil Thomson, The Story of Scotland Yard 45

184 Valleys of Fear

It is not surprising that when the ‘red scare’ reached the United States it should have taken the form of anxiety over immigrants, laced with heavy doses of the language of decay and corruption. As Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer would note, communism and anarchism were not about ideology; few were the adherents of Marx or Proudhon, Palmer believed. Thus while men like Huxley might talk of anarchism as a philosophical approach to government, for Palmer and his eager assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, anarchy was merely about ‘disorder and crime.’46 One of the opponents of the Department of Justice’s activities against immigrant radicals, Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post, pointed out quite correctly that many of the department’s victims were being accused of quite remarkable ideological flexibility. One particular deportee, Post wrote, could not ‘be both an anarchist and a socialist, since the former term denotes an anti-governmentalist and the latter a governmentalist, two directly opposite states of mind.’ But for Palmer and Hoover, working in an ideological vacuum, such things did not matter. They would have agreed with their counterpart in London, Thomson, when he noted that Bolshevism should be seen more as ‘an infectious disease rather than a political creed – a disease which spreads like a cancer, eating away at the tissue of society until the whole mass disintegrates and falls into corruption.’47 Anxiety was at the heart of the matter. ‘I am not an alarmist or even a pessimist,’ Palmer wrote. ‘But I have my eyes open and I know what a chance of national bankruptcy and industrial paralysis the world would certainly face today were the evidences of precaution against it only a little less hopeful and numerous.’48 Just because the United States appeared to be dominant and prosperous now – indeed, it was the only major world power not bankrupted by the war – did not mean that Americans could remain complacent about the communist and anarchist conspiracies. Since ‘red radicalism’ was being advanced by a foreign element, it was only necessary to combat the disease by using immigration laws enacted during the war. The congressional statute, familiarly known as the ‘Deportation Statute,’ approved on 16 October 1918, amended immigration laws so that (1) aliens who disbelieve in or advocate or teach the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States shall be deported; (2) aliens who are members of or affiliated with any organization that entertains a belief in, teaches, or advocates the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States shall be deported.49

Robert Gregg 185

This language, initially designed to combat a threat from German spies, was now turned on a new foe, the Soviet Union, and any people who might be linked, however loosely, to its advancement. A very tenuous connection with any one of many revolutionary organizations would be enough to warrant deportation without any potential for a legal defense; even publicly proclaiming that the United States should not be participating in the war against the Bolsheviks in Russia would be sufficient cause for extradition. Since immigrants were not citizens, they did not get the protections guaranteed by the Constitution and could be deported at the whim of the Attorney General. And to quarantine this infection further, Palmer asserted that immigrants who were citizens already needed to have their naturalization papers canceled so that they too could be deported with their comrades.50 A few aspects of the work of the Department of Justice’s newly formed Bureau of Investigation should be highlighted here: First, the techniques they developed to build an archive on radicals and their movements; second, the manner in which they tied immigrants to the communist and anarchist organizations; and third, the manner in which they used their archive for propaganda purposes to promote the sense of a crisis, which validated the work that they were undertaking. They themselves were no doubt anxious about the dangers that existed to the republic, but they needed to make the threat seem real to members of Congress and to the public to ensure that they would receive the funding necessary for their operations. Collectively, this work showed the degree to which the members of the Bureau had learned from their collaboration with the British during the war, and had themselves become obsessed with the threat to sovereignty that immigrants and radicals might represent. Indeed, in the process of carrying through this work, Jackson H. Ralston remarked to the House Committee on Rules, the Bureau of Investigation had ‘sunk to the level of the police government that existed under the Czar of Russia.’51 He might have made the comparison with the kinds of policing undertaken by the British in their empire, especially with the Rowlatt bill then being enacted, but the Czar was a less problematic traget. The Radical Division of the Bureau of Investigation was ‘formed with the view of collecting together evidence and data upon the revolutionary and radical movements not only in the United States, but in the world, in order that there might be an intelligent handling of the radical situation.’ The first requirement was to establish a card-index system in August 1919. This index grew rapidly to over 100,000 cards. These cards gave detailed data not only about individual agitators connected with the radical movement, but also about ‘organizations, associations,

186 Valleys of Fear

societies, publications, and special conditions existing in certain localities.’ According to the Division’s report to Congress, ‘This card index makes it feasible to determine and ascertain in a few moments the numerous ramifications of individuals and their activities in the United States, thus facilitating the investigations considerably.’ The index, along with a reviewing system of reports by special agents, became part of a clearing house of information available to all US police departments, necessary because of one of the disease-like characteristics of the radicals, namely their ‘migratory nature.’ Once the archive was in place, strategies to deal with the radical problem were also developed. Agents infiltrated radical organizations, so that they could gather names for arrest warrants. Once alien members were identified, they were to be dealt with according to the provisions of the ‘deportation statute.’ In some instances, Post felt, it was clear that these agents had acted as provocateurs, even going so far as to create branches of the Communist party where there had been none. These charges brought a testy but contradictory response from Attorney General Palmer: There is not a single employee of the Department of Justice at this time or at any time under my administration who has in any way actively participated in the councils of the Communist Party, the Communist Labor Party, or any other revolutionary organization under investigation in a manner which would stamp him as an agent provocateur.52 Whatever the exact dimensions of their work, the agents were a vital link in bringing radicals to justice. Since the Department of Justice’s newly formed Bureau of Investigation only needed to show affiliation in order to be able to recommend deportation, it was necessary merely to locate a revolutionary organization’s meeting place, go inside and arrest every alien who happened to be in the building. This was the first technique used by the Bureau of Investigation in conjunction with the New York City police department. On 17 November 1919, Agent Frank Francesco, working with Sergeant Geegan of the New York bomb squad, and about 25 detectives from the New York Police Department, entered the Russian People’s House, located at 133 East Fifteenth Street. Some people inside the building began hurling a torrent of abuse at the agent and police, calling them, if Francesco is to be believed, ‘sons of b——; but it did not matter. Without much ado, all the inhabitants, including 25

Robert Gregg 187

men who, with a teacher, were engaged in some form of study in a classroom, were filed out of the building into the police department’s patrol wagons and sent to the office of the Bureau of Investigation at 15 Park Row.53 Having been instructed by fellow agent Charles J. Scully ‘to obtain evidence, such as books, records, and cards of the organization known as the Union of Russian Workers,’ Agent Francesco set about searching the building. In a small room on the top floor he found a quantity of books and cards, which were confiscated and brought to the Bureau’s office, and he even found typewriters with seemingly incriminating Russian keyboards! As a special service to the community, on leaving the building Francesco indicated to the crowd of about 100 people gathered outside that there would be absolutely no objection to their entering the building. Needless to say, everything, including the dastardly typewriters, was destroyed by the mob. But, no matter; the Russians would not need the building anymore. Along with ‘380 of the worst offenders of the Russian anarchist group,’ they were forwarded to Ellis Island for deportation. At Ellis Island they were placed aboard the Buford, and on 22 December sent back to Russia along with the notorious Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, ‘who had for over a score and a half of years been circulating their pernicious doctrines of not only anarchism, but also of atheism, free love, birth control, and other immoral teachings throughout the length and breadth of the land.’54 This was a very effective short-term approach to the ‘problem,’ but it was likely to have negative repercussions in the long term as local police authorities and their wagons were being used to carry out a federal mandate. Palmer and Hoover, therefore, felt it necessary to have one major push against the ‘subversives.’ Ordering their undercover informants to schedule meetings for the Communist Party and Communist Labor Party on the evening of 2 January 1920, the Bureau coordinated raids in 33 cities across the country, netting as many as 3,000 immigrants. Unfortunately for Palmer, the plan backfired. The Department of Immigration was overwhelmed with the cases that came before it, and the Department of Labor, led by Post, began to question the legality of these actions. In response to growing opposition, Palmer immediately released information to the press on a scale that threatened to exacerbate fears of ‘red conspiracy.’ Palmer sent to many magazines and editors throughout the country his own published pamphlet entitled ‘Red Radicalism’ along with copies of many of the documents the Bureau had collected, showing ‘the history of the communist and communist-labor movements in

188 Valleys of Fear

America and the presence of criminal anarchists in our country.’ While this increased fears about Communism around the United States, it also furthered the claims of Palmer’s opponents, who felt that the scare had its origins, not in the threat of communism, but in the political aspirations and fertile imagination of Palmer and his aids. Twelve attorneys (including Felix Frankfurter) filed statements against the Department of Justice. ‘For the Attorney General to go into the field of propaganda against radicals,’ the twelve argued, ‘is a deliberate misuse of his office and a deliberate squandering of funds entrusted to him by Congress.’55 Under closer scrutiny the materials Palmer brought to light seemed to reveal at worst the wishful thinking of Soviet leaders and their supporters in the United States, rather than a clear threat to the nation. Even so, many Americans shared the anxieties that Palmer and others had about immigrants, and in 1924 Congress passed the Reed–Johnson Act, which would effectively cut-off most immigration until the 1960s. Certainly the Bureau of Investigation and Hoover were to become part of the American political landscape.

***** Any resemblance to global concerns post-September 11th, 2001 in the foregoing discussion of the policing of terror in the imperial age is intentional. While new issues have arisen and new ‘threats’ to sovereign nations have emerged, the discourses deployed to characterize them are of an older vintage. At one and the same time, transnational threats will provoke an ardent defence of sovereignty and innovative, transnational methods of policing that operate beyond sovereignty. More than this, the expectations of those who would contain or eradicate ‘the threats’ have not changed much. The cry for more ‘human intelligence,’ the demand for surveillance, even at the expense of cherished constitutional rights, arise out of anxieties that parallel earlier fears of anarchy and revolution at home and in overseas colonies. Indeed, in order to destroy Moriarty we may not object if we should become him, or, failing that, if we should plunge together into the Reichenbach Falls.

Notes 1. T. Hansen and F. Stepputat, Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World (Princeton, 2005), p. 20. 2. A. Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear (Oxford, 1993), introduction and notes by O. Edwards.

Robert Gregg 189 3. C. Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (Oxford, 2000), p. 22. 4. For a comparative analysis of police forces, see R. Gregg, ‘Uneasy Streets: Police, Corruption and Imperial Progressives in Bombay, London and New York City,’ in W. Jordan and E. Krieke (eds), Corrupt Histories (Rochester, NY, 2004), pp. 337–85. 5. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York, 1979), pp. 192–205. For a discussion of policing ‘feudal’ elements, see Gregg, ‘Uneasy Streets,’ pp. 348–64. 6. Wilde in O. Edwards (ed.), The Fireworks of Oscar Wilde (London, 1989), p. 71. 7. A. Roy, Reminiscences English and American (Calcutta, 1888), pp. 53–6. 8. B. Thomson, The Story of Scotland Yard (New York, 1936), pp. 182–5; J. Wilkes, The London Police in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1977), p. 38. 9. J. Cole, Prince of Spies (London, 1984); http://www.bivouacbooks.com/ bbv2i3s6.htm 10. A. Pinkerton, The Mollie Maguires and the Detectives (New York, 1973). 11. K. Kenny, in Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (New York, 1998), disputes this notion, but in the end all the extant sources suggesting that the Mollies did exist are those that were created directly and indirectly (in court transcripts) by people endeavoring to destroy the labor movement in Pennsylvania. 12. R. Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence (New Haven, 2002). 13. Edwards, Fireworks of Oscar Wilde, p. 263. 14. J. Hunt, Gandhi in London (Delhi, 1993), and A. Burton, At the Heart of the Empire (Berkeley, 1998). 15. V. Savarkar, My Transportation for Life (Bombay, 1950), p. 29. 16. G. Joshi, ‘The Story of this History,’ in Savarkar, The Indian War, p. xx. 17. V. Savarkar, The War of Independence of 1857 (Bombay, 1947). 18. For an account of Savarkar’s sometimes stormy relations with other Indians in London, like Mohandas K. Gandhi, see Hunt, Gandhi in London, pp. 89, 124–7. 19. Joshi, ‘The Story of this History,’ p. xii. 20. Joshi, ‘The Story of this History,’ p. xiv. 21. G. Clarke, My Working Life (London, 1927), p. 247. 22. Clarke, My Working Life, p. 74. 23. S. Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India (Delhi, 1961), p. 230. 24. Savarkar had escaped from custody once already in London, as a result of a collaborative effort of Irish and Indian nationalists. Fryer, Staying Power (London, 1980), p. 87. 25. Savarkar, My Transportation for Life, pp. 11–2. 26. Savarkar, My Transportation for Life, p. 98. 27. G. Joshi, ‘The Story of this History,’ p. xx. 28. S. Hay (ed.) Sources of Indian Tradition, volume II: Modern India and Pakistan (New York, 1988), pp. 289–90. 29. K. Tegart, Charles Tegart: Memoir of an Indian Policeman (London, 1937), p. 58. 30. Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, pp. 51–2. 31. Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, p. 52. 32. Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, p. 53.

190 Valleys of Fear 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, p. 54. Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, p. 78. Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, pp. 101–2. Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, pp. 104–6. Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, pp. 107–9. Tegart, Memoir of an Indian Policeman, pp. 114–5. In Mexico he became instrumental in fostering the growth of Mexican nationalism, before moving on to the Soviet Union and returning to India after the war. B. Thomson, Queer People (London, 1922). R. Bourne, War and the Intellectuals (New York, 1964), p. 6. B. Thomson, The Story of Scotland Yard (New York, 1936), p. 60. Thomson, The Story of Scotland Yard, p. 224. This was one of Basil Thomson’s intellectual contributions as an anthropologist of Fiji and the Pacific Islands before the war. He had trumpeted a modernization theory that described the process of decay of cultures, which created problems for a modern empire that needed to establish disciplinary alternatives to the lost customs. See The Fijians. Thomson, The Story of Scotland Yard, p. 280. U.S. 66th Congress: Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer on Charges against the Department of Justice by Louis F. Post and Others: Hearings before the Committee on Rules, House of Reps. (Washington, 1920), p. 167. Thomson, My Experiences at Scotland Yard (Garden City, NY, 1928), p. 328. U.S. 66th Congress, p. 19. U.S. 66th Congress, p. 321. U.S. 66th Congress, p. 29. U.S. 66th Congress, p. 3. U.S. 66th Congress, p. 49. U.S. 66th Congress, p. 100. U.S. 66th Congress, p. 169. U.S. 66th Congress, p. 208.

10 Screening Empire from Itself: Imperial Preference, Represented Communities, and the Decent Burial of the Indian Cinematograph Committee Report (1927–28) Madhavi Kale On 7 July 1896, within weeks of the first moving picture being screened by the Lumiere brothers in Paris, the same film was shown in Bombay at Watson’s Hotel by their cameraman, Maurice Sestier.1 Two years later, films were being shown in tents set up on the city’s new Oval Maidan, as well as in Madras and Calcutta, where daily screenings were advertised in local papers. By the end of the century, H.S. Bhatavdekar had filmed a wrestling match, several photography journals had begun to cover moving pictures, and cinema societies had sprouted in the major port cities of India. Bhatavdekar moved from wrestling matches to historical events of somewhat greater national significance, producing and screening short films on subjects like the Delhi Durbar of 1903, which marked the enthronement of Edward VII as emperor of India. In 1912, Coronation Cinematograph released Pundalik, about a Hindu saint, shown in a double feature with a foreign film entitled, A Dead Man’s Child, and the next year, D.G. Phalke released Raja Harishchandra, the first self-consciously ‘swadeshi,’ India-made film. In the decade following, more than a dozen studios and film companies were formed in India. These firms produced about 1300 films in the silent era, exceeding British production and, indeed, all other empire production combined.2 In the same period production and distribution exploded in the United States, leading to the consolidation of Hollywood studios’ undisputed dominance over their European rivals, who struggled in the aftermath of the First World War. Also in those years, debates over sovereignty and the nation state, and over self-determination and justice, were fueled by war (including First World War), the acceleration of anti-authoritarian 191

192 Screening Empire from Itself

movements (including the Bolshevik revolution), ferocious authoritarian repression, and the founding of the League of Nations. This paper explores the production and intersection of raced and gendered discourses on national culture and sovereignty in debates over the uses and abuses of cinema in the British Empire in India during this period. It centers on the genealogies, production, and deployments of the foundational archive on film in India: the proceedings, data and report of the Indian Cinematographic Committee (ICC), published by the Government of India in 1928. The ICC highlights the awareness among contemporaries that cinema was something new and quintessentially modern. The cinematic possibilities for propaganda, as well as for drama, literature (sacred and profane), and science were enthusiastically explored, discussed and debated in all fields and at all levels of expertise and authority. In the 1920s, as politicians’ speeches, newspaper editorials, and social welfare activists’ letters make abundantly clear, the significance and possibilities of cinema were still unpredictable, even unimaginable, and excitingly and alarmingly unmanaged. Who would use it, who would control it – and how? Who would exercise oversight – the state, the industry, civic and religious organizations, artists? While the specific terms and grounds of the debate may have been cinematic, its contexts and implications were far broader, involving political conflicts over civilization, national culture, empire, and sovereignty. The ICC also casts into relief some of the difficulties that the ideals and realities of sovereignty posed for governance within the British imperial framework in 1926 for rulers and ruled alike. Anthropologists John Kelly and Martha Kaplan have treated interventions such as the ICC as sites of ‘dialogic engagement,’ in contrast to the dialectical model or history and historical practice, ‘dialogic engagement.’ Such sites, they argue, provide imperial origins and a colonial and an anti-colonial intellectual and historical genealogy for our twinned apprehension of modernity and nation-state. Kelly and Kaplan reject the prevailing wisdom cast by Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and those Cold War analytical frameworks for understanding decolonization and its political milieux, which culminate in The End of History.3 In place of such a trajectory, they argue for attending as well to the emergence of ‘communities’ in the contested course of colonial governance and imperial integration, in which dominance, but not hegemony, was precariously secured.4 They argue that what is of concern ‘is not imagined communities but represented communities … renewed in their existence not only by representation in the semiotic sense, but also … in the political, institutional sense.’

Madhavi Kale 193

Methodologically, they argue, this involves ‘examining conditions of possibility for effective political representation, crises in claims to the proper organization of spokesperson standing in confrontations and negotiations – strikes, boycotts, legal cases, elections, commissions – and their relationship to the ontics of community existence.’ (emphasis added)5 Building on the theoretical framework proposed by Kelly and Kaplan, I cast the ICC – the committee’s back-story along with its published report – as an instance of colonial governance in the service of imperial preference that was hijacked to unintended ends by nationalist critics of both the Raj and empire. The committee and report produced under the leadership of Diwan Bahadur T. Rangachariar, along with the debates in the Legislative Assembly and Council of India over its appointment and findings, simultaneously used and interrogated the racialized assumptions and projections of community, nation, and sovereignty underlying the modalities of colonial rule in India. Further, they challenged attempts to implement metropole-centered visions of imperial commonwealth in the wake of the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles, and the establishment of the League of Nations. In 1921, a government-sponsored report warned of dire consequences if the British government did not exercise adequate control over film distribution, exhibition, and production in India. The report noted, ‘It has been found by practical experience that the power of the cinematograph for evil is so great that it cannot be entirely obviated merely by the control of exhibition.’ It continued, ‘There is at this present moment both in India and elsewhere a small but highly profitable market for films of an indecent or otherwise undesirable type.’ Playing off entrenched suspicions about the loyalty and moral fiber of the nominally independent princely states remaining in the subcontinent, the report’s author observed, ‘[These states] provide the most profitable markets for indecent films. At present these films are smuggled in clandestinely from France and South America and are believed to fetch a very high price. As soon as film production in India becomes better organized there is every reason to fear that this illicit trade in indecent films may increase [and indeed] there is considerable risk lest India should by degrees become the principal centre for the production of films of an indecent or an undesirable kind …’6 Later that year, voicing a related but distinct concern, the Westminster Gazette, a London newspaper, suggested: One of the great reasons for the hardly-veiled contempt of the native Indian for us may be found in the introduction and development of

194 Screening Empire from Itself

‘moving pictures’ in India. A visitor to an average cinema show in England will be treated to a more or less sensational drama in which somebody’s morals have gone decidedly wrong ..., and, of course, will be afforded an opportunity to appreciate (or not) our marvelous sense of humour as displayed by Charlie Chaplin squirting inoffending people with soda-syphons or breaking innumerable windows. Now imagine the effect of such films on the Oriental mind …. Like us, the Indian goes to see the ‘movies,’ but is not only impressed by the story of the film, but by the difference in dress, in customs, and in morals. He sees our women on the films in scanty garb. He marvels at our heavy, infantile humour – his own is on a higher and more intellectual level. He forms his own opinions of our morals during the nightly unrolled dramas of unfaithful wives and unmoral husbands, our lightly-broken promises, our dishonoured laws …. It is soaking into him all the time, and we cannot be surprised at the outward expression of this absorption. It is difficult for the Britisher in India to keep up his dignity, and to extol, or to enforce, moral laws which the native sees lightly disregarded by the Britons themselves in the ‘picture palaces.’7 Similarly, a Miss Constance Bromley, secretary and manager of the Opera House in Calcutta, noted in the Times Cinema Supplement on 21 February 1922: To the writer’s own knowledge, the serial film (American made) showing acts of outrage on white women by Mexicans, and the like, has proved the worst possible ‘dope’ on which to feed 300,000,000 natives, mostly illiterate, to whom ‘pictures’ are as a universal tongue, though imperfectly understood. The abduction by natives of an officer’s wife at Rawal Pindi some time ago illustrates my meaning. The censorship still remains a vague and indefinite organization. Bromley concluded with a flourish that revealed the full anxiety associated with movies and their destabilizing potential: Scores of unsuitable serial films still find their way on to the screens in hundreds of native cinemas, a first-class handbook to the teachings of Mr. Gandhi … Why do we allow foreigners to flood India with travesties of English domestic life, sordid sex films, and serials based on crime? Sown in such fertile soil, there can be but one harvest!8

Madhavi Kale 195

The men and women who wrote to The Times and other metropolitan papers, as well as to the India Office and their local MPs, were moved by a variety of factors: the campaign for imperial preference by the British film industry, rumor, or distaste for American films. Their letters also reflect a conviction that ‘unsuitable’ films were more likely to influence lesser races than even British youth. Much of the concern focused upon white womanhood, sexualized, desired, provocative, vulnerable, and freely available for personal delectation on a screen near – and more alarmingly, far from – home. Further anxiety, evident in concerned citizens’ letters to newspapers and civil servants, and indeed, shared by imperial administrators, swirled around cinema’s political effects on colonial subjects’ loyalty to constituted authority. In 1926, the Secretary of State for India forwarded to the Viceroy in Delhi an article from The Times entitled ‘The Cinema in the East. Factor in Spread of Communism,’ in which the Correspondent warned: Whatever may be the effect of Communist agents in the Far East there can be no doubt that the relations between Europeans and natives, especially in the large towns, are very different from what they used to be …. There is little now of the genuine respect towards Europeans that was formerly the rule in the East, and one cannot help feeling that the European no longer holds the same place in the mind of the native and that he has, in some way, suffered degradation …. It is possible that this regrettable change of spirit may, in large measure, be due to the persistent propaganda of those organizations which are bent on upsetting the present social fabric …. There can be no doubt that the way for Communistic influence has been greatly facilitated by a powerful and novel element which … has entered into the lives of semi-civilized people in all parts of the tropical world. That element is cinema.9 Goaded regularly by members of Parliament, who demanded stricter censorship and better enforcement of existing laws in Britain’s empire in Asia and in Africa, the India Office and the Colonial Office bombarded colonial governments with requests for information on what His Majesty’s colonial subjects were seeing on the silver screen. They also solicited suggestions about how films could be controlled for the moral and financial benefit of Britons in the colonies and in the metropole. It is worth noting, here, that Bromley’s sensational account of cinema’s effects in India in 1922 was reprinted, with minor variations, in the Leeds Mercury on 20 August 1926, just before the Imperial Conference

196 Screening Empire from Itself

convened, and on the eve of deliberations undertaken by its subcommittee on cinema in the empire. Bromley’s account was reprinted under the title: ‘FILMS THAT LOWER OUR PRESTIGE IN INDIA. IMPERILLING THE SAFETY OF WHITE WOMEN. PICTURES UTTERLY UNSUITED TO THE NATIVE MIND.’10 The ICC was conceived at the Imperial Conference, which was attended by the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the white settler colonies (by then autonomous dominions within the commonwealth of the British Empire), as well as by the secretaries of state for the colonies, and for India, whose status at the Conference reflected the liminal position of its populations, arrested in development somewhere between subjects and citizens. The ICC was then appointed in 1927, and its proceedings, data, and report were made public in 1928. The ICC was effectively charged with policing cinematic representation and cinematic technologies within a framework of imperial sovereignty that presumed and perpetuated a hierarchical and rigid cultural – and racial – fixity to and among the various peoples included in the empire. Among the Imperial Conference’s resolutions was one to encourage the distribution, exhibition, and consumption of ‘empire films.’ In promoting the category of ‘empire films,’ the conference accepted the British film industry’s argument that formidable competition from ‘foreign’ film industries, and particularly from the Hollywood-dominated American industry, threatened to cripple the film industry in the British Empire. ‘Empire,’ in this usage, was conflated with Britain: the films to be protected were those produced primarily in Britain, by British filmmakers, even though, as the ICC Report pointed out two years later, more feature films were produced in India than in the United Kingdom at the time. Both ‘empire films’ and imperial preference resonated with ‘protectionist’ agendas in other domains as well; cinema (and particularly Hollywood films) seemed to crystallize recurrent anxieties about sexuality, race, class, gender, and empire. Through newspapers, letter campaigns and lecture tours throughout the empire that preceded and followed the Imperial Conference’s recommendations, British ‘social hygiene’ activists (sometimes generously supported financially and logistically by British film producers) warned that the very ubiquity of American films, which eclipsed British-made products even at the heart of the empire, challenged the sovereignty of British cinema on its home screens. Worse, they suggested, American films represented notions of ‘whiteness’ that threatened Britons’ authority and safety in the colonies, where they were outnumbered, and gravely compromised Britain’s civilizing mission.

Madhavi Kale 197

In the case of ‘empire films,’ the public campaign was waged in the idiom of burgeoning immorality, its modalities (i.e., American film) and consequences. The concerns voiced in newspaper articles and letters to the editor by such parties as the British Social Hygiene Committee, the Mothers Union, various churches, executives of Pathé film companies, and the British association of film producers were heard in the House of Commons, where MPs regularly asked questions – and precipitated mountains of correspondence and documentation – on film distribution, exhibition, and censorship in India. All of this discussion crystallized in the recommendation by the Imperial Conference of 1926 that the conditions of production, distribution, and exhibition in India be investigated by a government-appointed committee, with the primary purpose of strengthening the institutions and provisions for censorship.11 The subcommittee on cinema noted The Cinema is not merely a form of entertainment but, in addition, a powerful instrument of education in the widest sense of that term …. It exercises indirectly a great influence in shaping the ideas of the very large numbers to whom it appeals …. It is a matter of the most serious concern that the films shown in the various parts of the empire should be to such an overwhelming extent the product of foreign countries …. In foreign cinema pictures the conditions in the several parts of the Empire and the habits of its peoples, even when represented at all, are not always represented faithfully and at times are misrepresented. Moreover, it is an undoubted fact that the constant showing of foreign scenes or settings, powerfully advertises (the more effectively because indirectly) foreign countries and their products.12 The subcommittee suggested that it would be well to encourage the production of films in other parts of the empire ‘illustrative of the conditions and resources of those countries or of the activities of Government departments.’ It observed, ‘Films of this kind attracted considerable attention at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley,’ adding that it also hoped greater support would be given to ‘educational films which would familiarize children with the life and character of the different parts of the Empire.’13 Through judicious censorship and investments of government resources and money, then, Indians were to be guided into producing wholesome cinematic primers for the edification of indigenous consumers throughout the empire, while British films should be shielded

198 Screening Empire from Itself

from American competition in India – that vexed and vexing entity caught between a state of perpetual tutelage (or subjecthood), and exercising sovereignty (and rights of citizenship) like the dominions represented at the 1926 Imperial Conference. It was a routine set of procedures: industrial interests mobilized public demand for government intervention, resulting in the appointment of a committee of investigation or inquiry, which resulted, in turn, in recommendations favorable to the original mobilizing interests. Thus a small subsection of British industry, acting upon fundamentally commercial interests, prompted the government to develop its policy on censorship, which in India covered not only sex scenes, but also criticism of the colonial government and British Empire, or anything likely to inflame ‘communal’ feeling and conflict. Interlocking anxieties about imperial security, national culture, national bodies – and how much of each, was seen by whom – served to promote the interests of a handful of financial concerns and investors associated with film production in Britain, as caustic Indian observers were to point out.14 Even before the subcommittee made its recommendations, Indian attitudes toward censorship had been varied, and sometimes deeply skeptical. In 1925, the journal Vilas had called for entirely dismantling the Bombay Board of Film Censors (composed of both Indian and British censors) on the grounds that it discriminated against Indianmade films. The journal stated: We have noticed with regret that the moral sense of any Censor has not been shocked by shameless films like Salome and Cleopatra which are imported …. On seeing the word ‘Prostitute’ used in an Indian film the sense of morality of a certain Censor was so much roused that he compelled the Company to omit that word and to use the term ‘Dancing Girl’ in its place …. As there is nobody to speak up on behalf of Indian film companies, various sorts of tricks are being played with Indian films …. It is the duty of the Government to abolish the Censors’ Board with a view to place the infant industry of Indian film-manufacture on a sound basis … It does not follow that with the removal of the control of the Board, the Indian Companies will manufacture obscene films; if any do so, action can be taken against them under the Penal Code.15 In introducing in the Council of State the resolution to appoint the committee recommended by the Imperial conference, H.G. Haig, the home secretary, assured his colleagues that the proposed committee

Madhavi Kale 199

would have a ‘non-official’ majority. Rejecting rumors accusing the Indian Government of complicity in a ‘nefarious official plot to further the trade interests of Empire at the expense of India,’ Haig insisted that the Government of India did not have ‘any trade interests in view.’ At most, he said, ‘Their interest in the matter, so far as they have any … is simply that the proportion of films showing Empire conditions, Empire manners, should be increased,’ as the Imperial Conference had agreed. Haig reiterated that the Government of India had ‘no conclusion on this matter,’ and that they preferred to ‘remit the problem for the consideration of a Committee with a non-official majority and themselves express no opinion.’16 The question of representation on the committee was to be raised repeatedly and pointedly in the legislative and popular debates preceding the ICC’s appointment and following publication of its findings. Indian members of the Legislative Council – and subsequently, of the ICC as well – explicitly situated the problems of cinematic representation (to which both the Imperial conference and the Indian government had tried to limit debate) within the political framework of colonial occupation and imperial sovereignty. In the course of debating the Imperial Conference recommendation, Muhammad Yamin Khan, ‘Nominated: Non-Official’ member of the Legislative Council, challenged anxious pronouncements about Indians as impressionable consumers of American cinema. ‘I go to the cinematograph,’ he said, ‘and I have a talk with many of the people who go regularly …. I can say that they do not think a bit about whether it is representing Western life or not, but they want only some kind of fun.’17 He furthermore protested American films’ representations of India, in effect turning the tables and returning the gaze, a tactic that other members of the Legislative Assembly tenaciously pursued. Invoking an ‘outcry’ provoked by an American film about First World War entitled The Big Parade, C. Duraiswamy Aiangar (representing ‘Madras ceded districts and Chittoor: Non-Muslim rural’) quoted a Madras Mail editorial that had argued that the outcry was ‘directed not against any actual details of presentation, but against the underlying assumption of the film that America won the war.’ Aiangar added, ‘If the British resent this simple thing, how much more must we resent it if our religion is sought to be exposed even to the extent of being humiliated by foul and perverse stories.’ Under the circumstances, he moved that the Government of India should ensure that ‘non-official Indian’ representation on the proposed committee be such ‘as to make it a majority.’18 Colonel Crawford (representing ‘Bengal: European’) endorsed Aiangar’s amendment to the resolution on the grounds, he

200 Screening Empire from Itself

said, that ‘a Committee of that description is likely to know exactly what type of film is wanted for Indian audiences.’19 Ironically, perhaps, Crawford was to be appointed to the ICC, and to join in the three European members’ dissent from the recommendations proposed by their three Indian colleagues. In his observations on the proposed committee, Lala Lajpat Rai, the nationalist leader and Legislative Assembly member who was soon to be killed in the course of a demonstration against the Government of India, challenged the government to explain how its recent interventions in cultural production promoted the best interests of His Majesty’s colonized subjects in India. He asked why the government limited itself to exploring only cinema’s educational value. Referring to Katherine Mayo, whose research for the recently published Mother India (a highly controversial representation of the condition of Indian women) had been facilitated by the government, Lajpat Rai noted, ‘Authors of books are being encouraged to come to this country and Government officials co-operate with them so that they may write books which are extremely humiliating to the Indians, full of lies and insulting to the manhood and womanhood of this country.’ Under the circumstances, he continued, ‘I do not understand this parental solicitude to protect the morals of the people of this country’ from American films’ pernicious effects. ‘If an American author can be imported into this country and helped in the work of degrading the people of this country, I can see no reason at all why American films should not be exhibited in India. The European community is very anxious not to let films into this country which depict a degraded view of European life. But are those films entirely false?’ Turning to depictions of Indians in American and European films, Lajpat Rai said, ‘I have seen several films in England and elsewhere in which the most disgraceful and humiliating scenes representing Asiatic life are shown,’ including ‘nauseous details of a rajah’s life or a nabob’s harem, which are produced simply to prejudice the English and other people against Asiatics in general and Indians in particular.’ Linking this review of pictorial and narrative representations of Indians and Europeans on film and in print to political representation of Indians and Europeans in both India and the empire, Lajpat Rai observed that the Legislative Assembly had not been consulted about India’s representation at the recent Imperial Conference, where the resolution under consideration had been launched. ‘I find that the real object of this Resolution is practically to afford a kind of protection to films produced in the British empire,’ he said. ‘As regards the encouragement of the Indian industry,’ he added, ‘it is all eye-wash.’20

Madhavi Kale 201

Nonetheless, on the recommendation of the Council of State, the Governor-General in Council resolved on 6 October 1927 to appoint a committee to examine cinema censorship in India, to survey the state of distribution, exhibition and production of films through the land, to consider whether the state should protect circulation of ‘films produced within the British Empire generally and the production and exhibition of Indian films in particular,’ and finally to make recommendations for further consideration.21 Aiangar’s amendment proposing an absolute Indian majority notwithstanding, the committee consisted of six members. The chairman was Diwan Bahadur T. Rangachariar, judge of the High Court in Madras, and member of the Council of State. A second member of the Council of State appointed to the ICC was Khan Bahadur Sir Ebrahim Haroon Jaffer. Three members of the Legislative Assembly were also appointed: Mr. K.C. Neogy, Judge in Calcutta High Court; J. Coatman, Director of Public Information; and Colonel J.D. Crawford. The sixth appointment was A.M. Green, member of the Indian Civil Service and the Bombay Board of Film Censors. The ICC met for the first time on 18 October 1927, at which time the chairman delivered a speech that is appended to the final Report. Rangachariar noted that the committee ‘is believed in some quarters to have been called into existence to find ways and means for keeping up the White man’s and the Policeman’s prestige and glamour in the eye of the Oriental,’ and that the ICC was ‘to be the indirect means adopted to slyly introduce the most vexed question of preference for British Empire goods.’ He assured the public that the ICC’s ‘function is to examine the materials placed before us, and to make recommendations to the Government according to the best of our lights with regard to the interests of India and the interests of India alone.’ He was clearly addressing critics who had objected to his appointment as chairman, because he appeared, in Rajpat Rai’s words, ‘a favourite of Government.’22 Rangachariar concluded his speech by rallying his colleagues to the duty they had been called upon to perform. ‘Now let us begin our work,’ he said, ‘with love of country and in fear of God, but without fear or favour of man, official or non-official, and may God help us to come to sound conclusions.’23 In the year since the Imperial Conference had issued its recommendations, the ground of the debate on cinema had already shifted from promoting empire to promoting India. By the time the ICC’s conclusions were published a year later, the racial discourse on empire, nation, and what constituted national sovereignty within the empire that had been interwoven into the ICC’s back story would all but displace cinema from view.

202 Screening Empire from Itself

Between its first meeting on 18 October 1927 and its meeting to draft its Report on 10 April 1928, the ICC solicited, amassed, collated, and evaluated four volumes worth of hard data on film production, distribution, and exhibition, as well as transcripts of interviews, hearings, and questionnaires. Historians of Indian film have made extensive use of these sources. For the purposes of this volume, the rest of this chapter takes a different tack, following Kelly and Kaplan to consider the ICC Report and its receptions as sites of the ‘dialogic engagement’ that, in lieu of prevailing dialectical or simply developmentalist ontologies, may engender a reconsideration of ‘the nation’ and the singular notion of sovereignty that sustains it. The ICC found that while the majority of films shown in India were foreign, and that American films constituted 80 percent of films imported into India, film exhibition and production in India since the end of the war had grown exponentially. Demand for Indian-produced films was far exceeding existing supply, and profits from exhibiting Indian films were greater than profits from exhibiting foreign films, Hollywood’s domination of Indian cinema screens notwithstanding. It also found that distribution was ill-organized. Where exhibitors were indeed obliged to take all of a distributor’s wares (as critics had charged was the case with Hollywood films), enforcement of contracts was sufficiently lax to permit exhibitors to make adjustments to accommodate their clients’ preferences. On the production front, 70 films had been produced in India (excluding Burma) in 1924–5, 111 in 1925–6, and 108 in 1926–7, compared to 34 in Britain in 1925, 26 in the following year, and 48 in 1927. The ICC further reported that the proportion of Indianmade to imported films examined by a censor board in 1924–5 was 11.83 percent (16.5 percent if Burmese production was included); in 1925–6 it was 16.05 percent (21.7 percent including Burma); in 1926–7 it was 15.26 percent (21.6 percent with Burma); and in 1927–8 it was 14.92 percent (21.2 percent, with Burma).24 The committee applauded Indian film producers for having made these strides ‘without the advantage of any thorough training,’ although it also regretted that the films they made ‘are generally crude in comparison with Western pictures, and are defective in composition, acting, and in every respect.’25 The ICC concluded that, documented growth in production and exhibition notwithstanding, the greatest obstacle to further development of the industry was a shortage of cinema houses. According to the report, despite ‘a population of 246 millions, the market for Indian films is limited … because in the whole of British India there are only about 300 cinema houses … due to the fact that the bulk of the people can only

Madhavi Kale 203

pay small admission fees and cannot afford to visit the cinema frequently.’ These factors confined exhibitors to towns with populations of at least 20,000, of which there were fewer than 300 (a number that corresponds with the number of cinemas that the committee counted). 85 of those cinema houses were controlled by a single company, Madan’s, which– albeit Indian – showed primarily imported films or their own productions. The ICC concluded, ‘the result is that there is at present not a large outlet for Indian films.’26 However, the ICC split over how these findings should be interpreted. The Indian members (Rangachariar, Jaffer, and Neogy) recommended that the government establish exhibition quotas for Indian films in Indian cinemas to promote indigenous film production, while the European members (Crawford, Green, and Coatman) insistied that their research and findings did not support the recommendation or provide an adequate proposal for its implementation. They worried that their ‘colleagues’ scheme would … encourage the production of inferior films … and would confirm the present producers in the very weaknesses which they rightly deplore.’27 In veering decisively into alternative narratives of cinema in India, the ICC effectively disorganized the mechanisms whereby the commission operated as an instrument of governance. Viewed in the context of its genealogies, the ICC highlights how governance and knowledge-production were deployed not only by the state, but also by other agents within imperial civil society, from industrial and consumer associations to critics and reformers of social and political institutions and media. Preserved by the very mechanisms they were supposed to bolster, the ICC cast into relief the ways that, through multifarious interventions in archival production, the governed alongside the governors could and did make their own versions of history, derailing the engines of imperial progress and preference to their own ends, in the very language being deployed to consolidate the state’s privileges and authority. As Laura Ann Stoler has argued, ‘commissions were quintessential “quasi-state” technologies, both part of the state and not, at once a product of state agents but constituted invariably by members outside it. If modern states gain force in part by creating and maintaining an elusive boundary between themselves and civil society … such commissions exemplified that process.’28 Cast in terms of American films’ inappropriateness for Indian audiences, the campaign for imperial preference and the Imperial Conference’s recommendations supporting it galled the Rangachariar committee’s Indian members, because it highlighted the racial and

204 Screening Empire from Itself

cultural bases of His Majesty’s Government’s discrimination against imperial subjects in social, economic, and political contexts. India had been represented at the Imperial Conferences, but by proxies appointed by the colonial government, rather than by the kinds of elected officials – Prime Ministers, for the most part – who represented Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. Here, too, the politics of representation were thoroughly mixed into questions of sovereignty. In between these two thoroughly fissured bulwarks was the civil service, the denizens of which had their own interests in and concerns about defending their own administrative authority and institutional sovereignties. This is most evident in the correspondence between the Government of India and the India Office that led up to the appointment of the committee of inquiry. It is also evident in the delicate manner in which the committee addressed the issue of which entities within the government machinery should have authority and responsibility for cinema’s management, and through what chains of command and control. Newspaper reports had made much of incidents of violence or disorder allegedly precipitated by cinematic representations of sacred subjects. Should regulation be centralized and standardized, or should local authorities – those with greater and more intimate experience of the local mix of prejudices and sensitivities and greater claim to anticipating reactions to particular kinds of scenes in films – be entrusted with censorship and, implicitly, with minimizing the risk of unrest and disorderly conduct? Associations of exhibitors, distributors, and producers also weighed in, not only in India, Britain, and in other parts of the empire, but also in the United States, where the outcome of the conference recommendations were closely monitored, by government and industry observers alike.29 Resisting the monopolist tendencies of imperial preference on commercial grounds, some exhibitors, distributors, producers, and consumers in India also highlighted and challenged the political implications of a policy of industrial protection predicated on racialized assumptions about Indian audiences. Both the Rangachariar report and debates among members of the Legislative Assembly preceding and following its publication make clear that, for many observers in India, pronouncements about Indian audiences’ receptions of cinematic representations – childlike and gullible, adolescent, or downright criminal – were also arguments about Indian subjects’ fitness for representing themselves, both in India, and in the empire,

Madhavi Kale 205

whether at Imperial Conferences, or as fully enfranchised citizens of commonwealth nations to which they had emigrated. More than the sum of its large number of parts, the ICC spoke directly and eloquently to the question of governance, which is at the heart of the question about sovereignty: who is governed, by whom, to what ends, and through what modalities? The report’s authors hijacked the mechanisms and protocols of imperial governance to assert their case for Indian sovereignty against the founding objectives of the committee’s conveners. Lajpat Rai had been skeptical about Rangachariar’s appointment as chair of the ICC, noting that, his sterling qualities notwithstanding, he did not ‘inspire any enthusiasm in Nationalist circles.’30 Had he survived to read the report, Lajpat Rai might have been moved to applaud the chairman’s work. The report published in 1928 read the voluminous criticism of Censor Boards’ procedures as deeply invested deployments of key words, phrases, and images about sexuality, race, class, and gender, for the purpose of establishing trade preferences for British-made films in British India. Like a number of speakers in Legislative Assembly debates and Indian newspaper editorials, the Rangachariar report questioned the anxieties that had fuelled calls for stricter film censorship in India as fundamentally contrived, effects of race-inflected, cultural taxonomies that underwrote both the political economy of the British Empire in 1926, and its Indian members’ objections to their subordinate place within the empire.31 Noting that there may have been instances in which they would have cut a scene or two, the report added: [We] wish to make it quite clear that we regard these cases hardly as lapses of the censorship, but rather as instances in which a difference of opinion is honestly possible and sometimes inevitable, or as the occasional errors to which all human institutions must be liable. Our only recommendation therefore to the present or any future censoring authorities, as touching this matter, is that suggestive impropriety in dress, conduct and love-making should be somewhat more jealously discountenanced. We say this not because such scenes harm European interests or Indian morals in particular, but because they may have a tendency to corrupt the morals of adolescents of all communities. Nor must we be understood to suggest that all scenes of low life, even all repellent scenes, should be banned.32

206 Screening Empire from Itself

More troubling, to these members’ minds, was the close articulation of public calls for stricter censorship. The report noted that a fortnight after an article in the London Times in 1923 drew attention to the ‘objectionable’ nature of American films, the Times had printed a letter from the General Secretary, British National Film League, stressing the same point. Early in 1926 the Federation of British Industries urged that American films are ‘detrimental to British prestige and prejudicial to the interests of the Empire, especially in the Dominions which contain large coloured populations.’ The Times of India’s comment on this was that ‘American films should certainly be fought by business competition, but to try to suppress them by a hypocritical plea for Imperial welfare is merely ridiculous.’ These and similar instances explain to our mind the genesis of much of the criticism of the cinema in India. Further, a careful study of the facts has satisfied us that much of this criticism had its origin outside India, and sprang from persons who were either not conversant with Indian conditions or who had fixed convictions not based on fact.33 The Rangachariar report also noted that as far as censorship of films and the effectiveness of existing protocols went, ‘too much tenderness’ was perhaps being ‘bestowed on communal, racial, political and even colour considerations.’ They questioned whether a historical film that depicted incidents from the French Revolution would incite audiences to attempt to overthrow the Government in India, and they deprecated the idea that a film might be banned ‘on the ground that the subject-matter may by over-subtle analogy be interpreted as having a possible reference to current questions ....’ They continued, ‘We hardly think that the Christian community should object to a film which shows some Christians as hypocrites, that Hindus should object to a film discountenancing in a sober manner infant marriage or that Muslims should object to Nur Jehan being pictured without a veil. If such extreme tenderness were countenanced, the Indian producing industry would be impossibly handicapped.’34 Insofar as the three Indian members of the ICC were skeptical that India’s diverse population was variously, acutely and disruptively sensitive to cinematic depictions of revered figures and events, they also resisted the larger discursive drive to view India as a congeries of distinct and mutually hostile religious communities, proposing instead an understanding of India as a nation, comprised – like others that had been accorded sovereign status within the imperial

Madhavi Kale 207

commonwealth – of a multiplicity of different and distinctive cultural communities, but not reducible to them. In the process, the report highlights the racial polarization engendered by the 1926 Imperial Conference’s intervention in Indian affairs. Both the polarization and the political implications of the ICC’s genealogy were evident in Assembly debates following the Report’s release. Crawford moved that the Assembly should approve and endorse adoption of only those recommendations on which the ICC had been unanimous. Kumar Ganganand Sinha (representing ‘Bhagalpur, Purnea and Sonthao Parganas; Non-Muslim’) noted that what was being called the ‘Minority Report consists of all the non-Indian Members of the Committee, consisting of two officials and one non-official, a Colonel of the British Army, who is also a distinguished Member of this House … So, I would rather term [them] the Indian Report, and … the non-Indian Report.’ He added, ‘the objections of the minority or non-Indian section of the Committee have been very effectively answered by the Indian section of the Committee … I think the Indian section of the Committee have got the Indian interests at heart much more than the non-Indian section.’ Finally, he argued that the Assembly should give ‘greater weight’ to ‘the views of the Indian Members, especially the Chairman, who was referred to so highly by the Honorable Home Minister’ when the Assembly had debated appointing the committee the year before.’ ‘If the Government do not do that,’ he concluded, ‘its bona fides will be doubted.’35 In dissenting from the Indian members’ recommendation that Indian exhibitors be required by law to show a proportion of Indian-made films, the ICC’s European members precipitated further elaboration of the ‘distinct cleavage of opinion on racial lines’36 about cinema exhibition and production in India, but also about India’s place and standing in Britain’s empire. While the evidence heard and perused by the ICC indicated to the Indian majority that Indian productions were increasing in number and popularity and needed government quota requirements – and guaranteed markets – to further encourage Indian producers to make films, Crawford and his fellow-dissenters had seen the opposite, obliging them to object to the majority’s quota recommendation.37 Worrying that Indian audiences would be further alienated from Indian films by their demonstrably inferior ‘technique,’ Crawford provided ‘one little example of that’: Up in Assam one of the tea planters, who is a labour member there, has introduced film exhibitions for the entertainment of his coolies.

208 Screening Empire from Itself

For a long time he gave them nothing but pictures of the life of the coolies, his weddings and his melas and that type of thing, till at last the coolies came to him and said, ‘Sahib, we have had enough of these Indian pictures; we want to see some European pictures.’ [Indian filmmakers] lack technique and the technical experience which will enable them to provide their Indian public with what the Indian public is every day more and more demanding – a better class of picture and a better film. Building on this anecdotal evidence from a source he considered authoritative, Crawford went on to explain that the ICC’s research had indicated that, ‘a film in India has a provincial limitation. That a film made in Bombay, where the characters are dressed in Bombay dress, was not popular in Bengal and also not popular in Madras. We found that Muhammandans [sic] wanted to see a Muhammandan [sic] story. They were not willing or anxious to go and see a Hindu story.’ He added that the data and testimony showed that, ‘European audiences who are accustomed to the high technique of European and American films … would not see a film produced by Indian producers.’ He and the other two dissenters had concluded that for the government to require all cinemas to show an increasing proportion of Indian-made films would not only cripple exhibitors faced with heterogeneous audiences, but also retard the development of Indian-made films. Echoing the recommendations made by the Imperial Conference subcommittee two years earlier, Crawford concluded by noting that the Government of India would do well to produce films, ‘for propaganda work in the nation-building department.’ He explained, ‘The cinema habit is growing in India,’ and if the Government could use the medium to disseminate information about ‘agriculture, sanitation and health throughout the country, they would undoubtedly be assisting the growth of the cinema sense and the desire for cinema which would enable producers to find an ever increasing field for entertainment.’38 Galled, perhaps, by the tenor of the debate to date, B. Das (‘Orissa Division: Non-Muslim’) drew the Assembly’s attention back to the ‘unwanted child of the Government of India … the ICC.’ Das’s speech is worth quoting at length, and not only for its evocative imagery. Drawing explicitly on the correspondence, reports, and press stories on film exhibition and production in India generated and compiled by the Indian and imperial governments over the preceding decade, Das challenged their claims to exercising benevolent and solicitous stewardship over India.

Madhavi Kale 209

This child probably came into existence by a command from that grand Moghul who sits in the India House in a dark room, the Secretary of State, and issues commands to his harem here, the Government of India … and I am now inclined to think that this Report will probably be thrown on the shoulders of the Industries Department to consider it for a while and then give it a decent burial in the archives of the Government of India, where so many things which make recommendations for the betterment of the people of India are pigeonholed … I looked for the genesis of the cinema inquiry, and I find [in the pages of the ICC] Report that: ‘early in 1926, the Federation of British Industries urged that American films are detrimental to British prestige and prejudicial to the interests of the Empire, especially in the Dominions which contain large coloured populations.’ I want the Indian section of the House to note the words ‘coloured populations!’ On the bases of press coverage, along with evidence invoked in Assembly debates leading up to the committee’s appointment, and the analysis contained in the majority ICC Report, Das argued that the Assembly should accept the recommendations of the committee’s majority and reject the Imperial Conference’s call for protection of British films in India. Picking through the proliferation of commentary on the deleterious effects of American cinema on Indian morals and British prestige in the subcontinent, Das’s speech cut to what, on his review, was at the heart of the matter: I do not think that India at present can be any part to those Imperial Conferences where we have no status. When I have equal status, when I am an equal partner in the Empire, I am ready to discuss these questions – whether I give preference to South Africa, or England, or Canada. At present I am treated as an inferior and I am not going to consider whether I will take part in any of the economic discussions when I have no right to discuss political issues and have a say of my own.39 Das’s prediction about the fate of the fractious ICC Report turned out to be substantially fulfilled, despite repeated queries from British members of Parliament and Indian members of the Legislative Council. On 2 September 1929, repeating the question he had asked on 28 January, Khan Bahadur Sarfaraz Hussain Khan rose in the Legislative Assembly to

210 Screening Empire from Itself

ask whether the Government of India had considered and come to any decision on the recommendations made by the ICC. Two days later, C. Neoghy (who had served on the ICC) again asked how long the government might be in reaching their final conclusions on the topic, while E.L. Price wondered if the government was aware ‘that the introduction of the “Talkies” has altered the whole situation?’ The response was that the Government of India had received Local Governments’ opinions on the report and its recommendations. They were in the process of reviewing them, and had not yet arrived at any final decision. Indeed, they never really did.40 The British Quota Act of 1927 had already protected ‘empire films’ made in Britain with British capital, British stories, and British actors against imports from Hollywood.41 Any decisions about cinema that the Government of India subsequently made focused on questions of censorship, rather than the film industry’s further development, and fell far short of the protectionist expectations of both the 1926 Imperial Conference and the ICC’s Indian members. The 1926 Imperial Conference had adopted a resolution recognizing that ‘the group of self-governing communities composed of Great Britain and the Dominions’ (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the Irish Free State) were ‘autonomous communities within the British empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.’ Underlining this point, they asserted, ‘Every self-governing member of the Empire is now the master of its destiny. In fact, if not always in form, it is subject to no compulsion whatever.’42 At the same time, India’s dependent status among the administrative, national bodies was formally reaffirmed, and Indians’ demands for political representation among those sovereign nations were magisterially rejected. This was the crucible in which the ICC was cast. Appointed to promote a British industry’s interests against foreign – primarily American – competition within the British empire, the ICC is on first encounter a classic example of what Bernard Cohn has dubbed the investigative modality of colonial governance, having been charged with producing data and policy recommendations intended to establish the parameters within which the new medium of cinema would be managed, as well as for whose benefit and profit.43 This commission of inquiry was appointed by the Government of India through the relatively new modalities of partially participatory representative government (the Legislative Assembly and the Council of Government) to

Madhavi Kale 211

implement the recommendations of the Imperial Conference at which India’s assumed and established subordination was staged anew, despite its appointed representatives’ assurances that Indian subjects were not content to be denied the perceived privileges of imperial citizenship and sovereignty extended to the European-descended populations of Great Britain and the nations of the commonwealth. Not only was representation of images and actions at stake in the ICC; The ICC also addressed political representation and the regulation of who was to be represented by whom, in what ways, where, and how. The ICC Report disappointed those who had hoped it would help to shield the British industry – and imperfectly schooled Indian gazes – from American cinema’s wonton disregard for the integrity of imperial claims to markets and sovereignty in India and the dominions. Haunted by specters of violence, crime, and sexual disarray, – (‘White women in drunken brawls, tearing their gorgeous dresses to shreds while white men look on and applaud’44) the ICC simultaneously projected and screened both imperial power and imperial anxiety in kaleidoscopic, dizzying ways, even as it did the purposeful work of colonial governance, at least until its report was published. By then, Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer had been released, introducing sound to cinema and changing everything.

Notes 1. S. Chabria, Light of Asia: Indian Silent Cinema 1912–1234 (Delhi, 1994), p. 3. 2. Report of the Indian Cinematograph Committee, 1927–1928 (Calcutta, 1928), p. 29; Chabria, Light of Asia. 3. F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992). 4. R. Guha, ‘Dominance without Hegemony and its Historiography,’ in Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies VI (Delhi, 1989), pp. 210–309. 5. J. Kelly and M. Kaplan, Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization (Chicago, 2001), pp. 22–3. 6. Oriental and India Office Library, London (hereafter OIOL), L/P&J/6/1747: 2601/21: no. 4766, 2 Nov. 1921, Secretary to the Advisory Publicity Committee, Government of India to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department: forwarding copies of resolution on Mr. W. Evans’ report on films, ‘passed at the meeting of the Advisory Publicity Committee held on 1 October 1921.’ 7. OIOL, L/P&J/6/1747: 2601/21, Enclosure in Public No. 159, 8 December 1921, Edwin S. Montagu (Under-Secretary of State for India) to the GovernorGeneral of India in Council from Westminster Gazette, 17 November 1921. 8. OIOL, L/P&J/6/1747: P&J/25, enclosure in correspondence about censorship, Constance Bromley, ‘Censorship and Propaganda: Influence of Foreign Films,’ Times Cinema Supplement, 21 February 1922.

212 Screening Empire from Itself 9. OIOL, L/P&J/1747: P&J/26, typescript of newspaper article entitled ‘The Cinema in the East. Factor in Spread of Communism,’ enclosure in private letter from the Secretary of State for India to the Viceroy, 30 September 1926. 10. OIOL, L/P&J/1747: P&J/26, enclosure, Constance Bromley, ‘Films that Lower our Prestige in India. Imperilling the Safety of White Women. Pictures Utterly Unsuited to the Native Mind,’ Leeds Mercury, 20 August 1926. 11. OIOL, L/P&J 1747, P&J 336/1925; P&J 3141 (1926); L/P&J 1747, P&J 2509/1927, nos. 223–4; P&J 1613; P&J 864/1927; P&J 3141. 12. 1926 Imperial Conference, 13th Report, ‘Exhibition w/in the Empire of Empire Cinematography,’ Films (see section XXI (a) of Cmd. 2768), p. 404. 13. Exhibition w/in the Empire of Empire Cinematog, p. 406. 14. OIOL, L/P&J/1747 15. OIOL, L/P&J/1747, P&J 1703/1925, enclosure, Vilas (89), 11 April 1925 16. OIOL, L/P&J/1747, P&J 2509/1927, no. 224, Council of State Debates, 15 September 1927, pp. 1204–7. 17. OIOL, L/P&J/1747, 1927 no. 230, Legislative Assembly Debates, 14 September 1927, pp. 4372–3 18. Legislative Assembly Debates, Aiangar, p. 4367. 19. Legislative Assembly Debates, Crawford, p. 4372. 20. Legislative Assembly Debates, p. 4369. 21. Report, xii; Resolution of the Government of India, Home Department, (Political), 6 October 1927, No. D-4169. 22. OIOL, L/P&J/1747, 1927 no. 230, Legislative Assembly Debates, 14 September 1927, Lala Lajpat Rai, p. 4370. 23. Report, Appendix A (1), Chairman’s opening speech at the first meeting of the Committee on 18 October 1927. 24. Report, pp. 29–30. 25. Report, p. 32, p. 35. 26. Report, p. 39. 27. Report, ‘Minute of Dissent,’ p. 169. 28. A. Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance,’ Archival Science 2(1–2) (2002), pp. 103–4. 29. Report of the Indian Cinematograph Committee, 1926. 30. OIOL, L/P&J/1747, 1927 no. 230, Legislative Assembly Debates, 14 September 1927, p. 4370. 31. OIOL, L/P&J/1747: Vilas, 11 April 1925; ‘Government should abolish Bombay Cinema Censors’ Board,’ Forward, 18 October 1925; ‘Film Censorship,’ Bombay Chronicle 9 October 1926; ‘British Film Scheme,’ Bombay Chronicle 4 February 1926; ‘In Swadeshi Film-Land’ in P&J 3141/1926, Times 6 July 1927; ‘US Films in India: Government and Censorship’ and Forward 13 May 1927 in P&J 1613/1927; Council of State debates 21 March 1927 and Legislative Assembly Debates, 14 September 1927. 32. Report, p. 115. 33. Report, pp. 115–6. 34. Report, p. 120. 35. OIOL, L/P&J/1747, Legislative Assembly Debates, 30 January 1929, pp. 287–8. 36. OIOL, L/P&J/1747 P&J 809/29, Legislative Assembly Debates, 30 January 1929: Minute paper by R.S. Brown for Council of Government on Legislative

Madhavi Kale 213

37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42.

43. 44.

Assembly debates, 12 March 1929; B. Das, Legislative Assembly debate, 12 March 1929. Report, ‘Minute of Dissent,’ pp. 162–4. OIOL, L/P&J/1747 P&J 809/1929, Legislative Assembly Debates, 30 January 1929, p. 271. OIOL, L/P&J/1747 P&J 809/1929, Legislative Assembly Debates, 30 January 1929, pp. 282–6. OIOL, L/P&J/1747, Legislative Assembly Debates, P&J 4415 [2601/13], 2 September 1929 and P&J 4415 [2601/12], 4 September 1929; P&J 4415, Parliamentary notice for 25 November 1929. P. Jaikumar, ‘British Cinema and the End of the Empire: National Identity in Transition, 1927–1947,’ (PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 1999). Jaikumar’s study pursues in the context of Britain the problems of empire and nation sketched in this paper in the confines of the ICC complex. Imperial Conference 1926: Inter-Imperial Relations Committee, Report, Proceedings and Memoranda (National Archives of Australia) see: http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/cth11_doc_1926.pdf B. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge (Princeton, 1996). OIOL, P&J 809, 1929, 2601/24, B. Das quoting from Captain Malins in Cinema, 11 August 1927, Legislative Assembly Debates, 30 January 1929, p. 282.

11 The Persistence of Privilege: British Medical Qualifications and the Practice of Medicine in the Empire Douglas M. Haynes

Introduction The transnational movement of people has been a preoccupation of discussions about the nature of globalization during and since the Cold War era. This has been a leading explanatory framework for tracking the presence of Commonwealth doctors of color in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). Their relation to the NHS and the domestic medical profession has generally been framed as a set of post-Second World War conjunctures, defined and reconciled by the symbiosis of the needs of the developing world and opportunities in the developed world. The needs referred to the dearth of advanced training resources for professionals from developing countries such as India and Pakistan, among others. The opportunities reflected the persistent medical staffing deficiencies within the NHS together with the availability of coordinated medical training in established and emerging specialities. Meanwhile, the career disparities experienced by Commonwealth doctors within the NHS have been analyzed mainly through the lens of immigration in two related ways: the experience of racism within the medical establishment, or the uneven cultural and professional competencies of black doctors. As an optic for understanding the relationship between race and the medical profession, the immigration framework has certainly attended to the physical presence of doctors of color from the Commonwealth. At the same time, it has tended to foreclose the possibility for interrogating the historical ties of the empire to the national profession. Underlying the discussion of the post-war encounter between immigrant and native professional is the assumption that the British profession followed a historical pattern of development that did not intersect with its empire.1 214

Douglas M. Haynes 215

The post-war movement of Commonwealth doctors marks only one pattern, however. Another that both preceded and paralleled it involved the growing stream of colonial subjects who traveled in and out of the empire in search of medical education and licensing in North America in the 1950s. Both echoing and complicating the theme of this collection, I am interested in illuminating how such transnational patterns were imperial consequences of the making of a national medical profession in Britain between 1850 and 1950. One paradox of the transnational effect of imperialism was to fetishize and to police the boundaries of national social formations such as the British medical profession. In light of the insularity found in the historiography of the making of the British medical profession, such transnational patterns would at first sight appear to be tangential. But, as I will argue, the movement of people in and through the empire in the twentieth century was symptomatic of the intersection of empire and nation in constituting the British profession. The very different conditions of movement for British nationals and for colonial subjects not only reflected the uneven landscape of power and opportunity within an imperial medical profession but also produced countervailing transnational tensions within and challenges to it from without. The intersection of nation and empire was not an unintended consequence but, rather, an integral component of the landmark legislation begun in 1858 that defined a national medical profession in the United Kingdom. The Medical Act of 1858 mandated common standards of entry into the profession for all graduates of universities and corporate medical bodies in England, Ireland, and Scotland and entitled them to practice in the empire without having to submit to further examination or licensing requirements. These and other provisions of the Act and of future legislation enabled diploma- and licensing-granting bodies in Britain to regulate access to the imperial medical market. They also made possible the political construction of the boundaries of the British medical profession in relation to the status of British qualifications in the empire. The co-terminous boundaries of nation and empire then created a privileged space for shaping and policing the territorial jurisdiction of British medicine in the empire. Over time the privileged status of British qualifications highlighted and reinforced stark variations in the availability of medical education in the empire, not to mention access to the expanding market place for qualified practitioners, including positions in the state services in both the periphery and the metropole. In colonies with medical schools and other licensing bodies, the higher status of British qualifications was a

216 The Persistence of Privilege

source of resentment and generated calls for reciprocity with respect to the recognition of local qualifications. Colonies without medical schools were dependent on British medical schools as the main source of both training and of qualified practitioners. While the General Medical Council (GMC) – which governed medical education and maintained the Medical Register of qualified practitioners beginning in 1858 – extended reciprocity to a select few universities and medical societies, this was not so for colonies in British Africa and the West Indies that either lacked schools or possessed schools that did not enjoy reciprocity. Throughout the century British medical schools and medical bodies trained colonial subjects who were formally or informally sponsored by colonial governments, though their numbers remained small. Even as decolonization loomed after the Second World War, medical schools conceived of British nationals as their chief responsibility. These restrictive conditions spurred colonial subjects to migrate to North America for medical education and licensing. The United States with its numerous medical schools together with government-sponsored exchange programs was the destination of choice. Still, overseas graduates had to complete their licensing in Canada for recognition in British colonies. Several Canadian provincial medical societies, which had enjoyed reciprocal arrangements with the GMC since 1902, admitted holders of US diplomas to their final examination. Those who passed and later completed an approved year-long hospital internship were entitled to be registered in Britain and thus also able to practice in their home colonies as well as in the United Kingdom. British officials were aware of these structural hurdles in supplying practitioners in the dependent empire. They were anxious as well about public attention that linked the dearth of health care resources in the empire to the privileged status of British qualifications at a time of rising criticism of British colonialism. Ultimately, officials adopted a political solution that shifted the discussion away from the structural conditions that impaired the supply of medical personnel in the territories to the need to preserve national standards of excellence. By stressing the need for caution in the selection of schools by colonial subjects, the advice of the British government effectively characterized professional training outside of Britain as inherently suspect. Even the rhetoric used by critics of uneven access to medical education and training for colonial subjects reinforced the dominant discourse. Foreign education not only stamped colonial doctors as ‘outcasts’ in relation to the national profession, but also the very process of foreign education was viewed by lay and professional critics as a ‘back-door’ route to registration.

Douglas M. Haynes 217

Defining the boundaries of professional qualification: Recognition of and reciprocity for colonial diplomas and licenses (1858–1900) The passage of the Medical Act in 1858 laid the foundation for a national British medical profession. It created common entry requirements for legally qualified practitioners, namely the successful completion of an approved medical education from a select list of universities or medical corporations in England, Ireland and Scotland.2 Under provisions of the Medical Act and supplementary legislation in 1886, graduates were eligible to place their names on the Medical Register, a public – and voluntary – listing of qualified practitioners administered by the GMC. Before and after mandatory registration in 1886, the possession of at least one qualification was required for an appointment in Britain’s expanding medical and public services, including the Army and Navy and for India and the various colonies in the dependent empire. All registered practitioners were also entitled to practice medicine in the British archipelago and the empire without undergoing local examination.3 These provisions simultaneously laid the foundation for a single national medical profession while enhancing the authority of medical bodies to regulate access to the medical market in the periphery and the metropole. To be sure, degrees or licenses bestowed by colonial licensing bodies were recognized locally by statute. But, doctors trained in the colonies did not enjoy the same rights and privileges as those who qualified in Britain. Technically, such doctors could not practice in other colonies covered by the Medical Act or in Britain without having to submit to further examination. They could not as a right recover fees in the courts of law. Nor did they satisfy the eligibility requirement for an appointment in the colonial or imperial services. At most, metropolitan medical bodies granted exemptions for different mandatory examinations. These exemptions usually applied to those diplomas awarded by colonial universities whose general education examinations fulfilled the GMC’s voluntary general education standards. King’s and Queen’s College of Physicians in Ireland admitted graduates from Melbourne, Australia and Trinity College, Toronto to its final examination in medicine. The Royal College of Surgeons of England admitted a far large number of diplomas-holders, from a variety of imperial sites. A Royal College of Physicians of London by-law waived re-examination of candidates for its license and membership in subjects that were part of the course of study and examination from reputable institutions on a case-by-case basis.4

218 The Persistence of Privilege

However accommodating, these provisions did not amount to reciprocity. If anything, they amounted to a projection of the imperial authority of metropolitan institutions. Colonial practitioners still had to conform to the conditions of British and Irish medical bodies. Before being placed on the register, they had to pass the final professional examination, usually in medicine, surgery and midwifery, and pay the incidental fees. The 1858 Medical Act did give discretion to the GMC to admit colonial and foreign graduates to the register, but the provisions were vague. The GMC had no representative from colonial institutions.5 In fact, reciprocity proved to be a contentious subject, precisely because it would have placed colonial or foreign qualifications on an equal footing with their British counterparts and would have bestowed the right to practice in the United Kingdom and empire without further examination. One of the earliest conflicts over this division took place in 1868 when representatives from provincial medical licensing societies in Canada persuaded the Colonial Secretary, the Duke of Buckingham, to introduce legislation to permit graduates of Canadian institutions to serve as ship surgeons on British merchant vessels.6 Within weeks, the British Medical Association successfully lobbied for the withdrawal of the bill. In and out of Parliament, opponents denounced the proposed legislation as precedent-setting, establishing a double standard whereby holders of British qualifications had to undergo examination to be registered, but practitioners trained in the empire as on well as the continent did not. ‘It is a strange piece of cross purposes for the Duke of Buckingham, as Colonial Secretary, to be pushing forward a Bill to deprive British graduates of their privileges in the colonies,’ declared an editorial in the British Medical Journal.7 The matter was far from over. The question of reciprocity soon became entangled in a wider set of conversations about who was entitled to become a doctor and the appropriate standards for entry into the profession. As a concession to Canadian and Indian requests, the GMC supported the extension of reciprocity to colonial or foreign graduates on a case-by-case basis in a bill before the House of Commons to amend the Medical Act in 1870. But in response to the looming possibility of women with foreign degrees seeking admissions, the Council reversed itself two years later. Bars to female admission to medical school in Britain formed a constitutive feature of the national medical profession. One strategy that women and their male allies pursued to gain entry into the profession was to obtain foreign medical qualifications and apply directly to the GMC for admission to the medical register. In 1872, William Cowper-Temple proposed legislation which authorized the GMC to recognize foreign degrees for

Douglas M. Haynes 219

purposes of registration. The bill was defeated. In rejecting this provision, the Council used the pretext of its practical inability to inspect foreign institutions to justify patriarchy in medicine.8 Colonial qualifications re-emerged for debate again when the Select Committee on the Medical Acts in 1877 and Royal Commission on the Medical Acts in 1882 considered a proposal for the adoption of a single national conjoint examination in medicine, surgery and midwifery.9 Since the 1858 Medical Act, each medical body awarded a diploma or license that permitted holders to practice medicine. But not all medical bodies provided comprehensive training or at least sufficiently highquality training in the eyes of reformers on the GMC. Supporters argued that a single examination would introduce more uniformity in training and better equip future practitioners by testing for a wider range of competencies. Critics viewed the proposal as an unwarranted extension of the power of the GMC, which threatened the authority of medical bodies and the entitlements of their qualifications in Britain and the empire.10 This threat was illustrated in relation to the uneven basis of admission to the Medical Register between graduates of colonial and British medical bodies. British graduates would have to undergo up to two examinations while holders of colonial diplomas, if approved by the GMC, did not. During testimony before the Royal Commission on the Medical Acts, in 1882 Sir George Murray Humphry, a Cambridge University Professor of Anatomy and local president of the British Medical Association, sharply pointed out the hypocrisy of the position of the GMC. ‘If we distrust the examining bodies in the United Kingdom, over whom we have control and whose examinations we can test, so far as to require the members who pass those examinations to pass the further examination of a conjoint-board, then I think that all foreigners who have passed examinations, of which we really have not much knowledge, and over which we can exercise no control, should also certainly be required to pass such an examination.’ Echoing the Council’s rationale in 1872 regarding foreign degrees and licenses, Humphry further doubted that the Council could practically visit and inspect medical schools or corporations in the United States or the empire.11 Royal Commission chair, the Earl of Camperdon, pushed GMC member Sir James Paget, a distinguished former president of the Royal College of Surgeons and advocate for a single national conjoint examination, to justify waiving the examination requirement for colonial graduates. ‘A man brings a diploma of the University of Madras, and you are satisfied that it is a good university, and you register him, and

220 The Persistence of Privilege

allow him to practice. The next day a man brings you a diploma showing that he has taken a first class degree and you will not allow him to practice?’ He added. ‘Does it not appear to you extraordinary that a proposal should be made that a foreign or colonial university known to be inferior to our universities, or the majority of them, shall have its diplomas recognized so as to entitle the holder of it to practice in this country without examination?’ Paget’s assurance of the ‘constant and careful supervision of the Medical Council’ was no guarantee against the practitioners who came from ‘not only the United States, but great colonies of England with English-speaking people, and very often English-born people, who might come over and practice in this country, not in inconsiderable numbers, if they had advantage over our own native-born subjects?’ Paget invoked the ties of nation and culture to reconcile the application of a double standard. ‘It was felt that with regard to them that they were practically Englishmen.’ Camperdon queried ‘why should a man taking his degree in Melbourne and who, you say, is practically, an Englishman, have an advantage over a man taking a degree in the University of Edinburgh, who I will assume to be actually an Englishman?’ Paget replied ‘when the Englishman, who has been educated and examined after the English fashion, comes here, it seems hard to say “you shall be examined.” ’ 12 When Parliament finally amended the Medical Act in 1886, it protected the interests of British medical bodies and the profession. To be sure, legal registration guaranteed competency in the knowledge and skills for the practice of medicine, surgery and midwifery. But, future practitioners could obtain these competencies either by passing the subject examination in medicine, surgery and midwifery individually or the existing and new conjoint examinations. Similarly, the Act authorized the GMC to extend reciprocity to colonial and foreign institutions that provided ‘a sufficient guarantee of the possession of the requisite knowledge and skill for the efficient practice of medicine, surgery and midwifery.’ Yet reciprocity emphasized, rather than muted, differences between the medical schools and practitioners in the periphery and the metropole. Residential requirements dictated that all British-born applicants with colonial degrees had to have resided outside the United Kingdom for at least five years and those born in the colonies had to have obtained their degree while not resident in the United Kingdom. Although provision was made for successful applicants to be placed on the Medical Register, they were listed in a separate section detailing foreign and colonial doctors.13

Douglas M. Haynes 221

By the early twentieth century, the Council had extended reciprocity to 13 colonial universities or medical bodies in Australia, Canada, India, Malta and New Zealand.14 Even though reciprocity entitled colonial doctors to practice in the United Kingdom and the empire, there is little evidence that they availed themselves of the right to work in Britain in large numbers. As Anne Digby has documented, the medical market in Britain was hardly paved with gold.15 As a matter of fact, between 1880 and 1900 British graduates in growing numbers migrated to the empire to escape a metropolitan profession that was palpably over-crowded.16 Although British graduates sought opportunity in white settler colonies, it is likely that most colonial graduates practiced in Australia, Canada and New Zealand where they could make the most of local networks of family, community and profession and where the same language was spoken as in Britain.17 Private practice was available to the thousand or so graduates of Indian schools in westernized urban communities. Ceylonese graduates, who served in the native or subordinate government medical service, were entitled to private practice as well.18

Barriers and hurdles to the practice of medicine Reinforcing the privileged standing of British qualifications in the empire was the uneven provision of medical education. It is noteworthy that outside the colonies recognized by the GMC in the early 1900s, the opportunity to become a fully qualified practitioner was non-existent either in the West Indies or in sub-Saharan Africa. The training that was available there instead prepared colonial subjects to become efficient medical assistants to British government doctors. Seen within the imperial structure of the British medical profession, the scale and scope of the provision of medical education in the dependent empire both reinforced the privileged status of British qualifications and enabled the racialization of professional authority. In 1877, in Cape Colony, members of the Colonial Medical Committee, which oversaw the profession, rejected a plan by Dr. J.P. Fitzgerald of Grey’s Hospital to provide preliminary medical instruction in the eastern Cape for indigenous black Africans. Fitzgerald’s proposal was part of a larger project to civilize the Xhosa in hopes of diminishing the power of the diviners of the Xhosa chiefs. It involved subsidizing the travel of African assistants from Grey’s Hospital to complete their training in Britain before returning as qualified district surgeons to the eastern frontier of British Kaffraria. For its part, the Committee feared that the existence of a British-qualified

222 The Persistence of Privilege

African doctor would transgress, if not subvert, the racialized occupational boundaries of a colonial profession whose members included a large number of graduates of British medical bodies. ‘When returned home here with European Licenses [or qualifications], they would be Physicians with the fullest Privileges, competent to practice in any country,’ the Committee warned. ‘No Kaffir young man educated in Europe, would be content to settle down on a small stipend, and pass his life in a Hut in a Kaffir Village; and … therefore it would be unwise to Educate Kaffir youths, fully for the Medical Profession at the Public Expense.’ 19 In East and West Africa, the medical training likewise reinforced the racial hierarchy of colonial authority. Subject populations received training as assistants or auxiliaries at the Makerere Medical School in Uganda and the Yaba Medical Training College in Nigeria, established, respectively, in 1923 and 1930. The certificates they awarded neither entitled the holder to private practice nor enjoyed the sanction of the GMC.20 These graduates served as medical assistants to European medical officers or staffed remote dispensaries. In north Africa, by contrast, the Kitchener Memorial Medical School in Sudan and the Medical School at Qsar al-Aini in Egypt provided a more complete course of medical training. But their graduates could only practice medicine locally. They were employed by the government, in positions largely reserved for them, such as railway health supervisors and port inspectors in Egypt, or in the Sudan Medical Service as medical officers working in a subordinate capacity to Europeans.21 Even in territories with medical schools, the training was rudimentary at best. Advanced medical training in specialties was available in Britain or Europe, but British officials made no provision for travel for students or graduates of the Kitchener Medical School. H.C. Squires, a member of the Sudan Medical Service, described the rationale for local medical training. ‘The objective was to give the Sudanese students a complete medical education and to fit them in due course to undertake all kinds of medical work in their own country. But it was not felt necessary to follow too closely the British model as there was no suggestion at this stage that graduates of the Kitchener School would wish to take higher qualifications or diplomas in the United Kingdom.’22 Another official echoed Squires’ justification for making no provision for travel: ‘It would have involved removing them from the influence of their homes, customs and traditions, and exposing them to intellectual and moral influences which they are not yet ready to meet.’23 In the absence of governmentsponsored travel to augment their training, diploma holders beginning

Douglas M. Haynes 223

in 1939 received at most only partial recognition by the Conjoint Board of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons. The conditions for full recognition reflected the power of the colonial state to shape the career destiny of colonial doctors. Unlike graduates of British medical schools, Kitchener graduates had to complete at least two years of hospital duty and receive the approval of the director of the Sudan Medical Service before traveling to Britain. Thereafter, like all applicants for the conjoint qualification, they had to complete a yearlong hospital internship before sitting and passing the final examination.24 The limitations on medical education and training locally, especially postgraduate, reinforced the stratification of knowledge and power in the colonial setting. In Sudan, postgraduate training was an afterthought at best, according to H.C. Squires. ‘It had always been understood that postgraduate courses would be held at the Kitchener School for doctors who have been qualified for ten years or more when this could be arranged. With the small teaching staff available it was going to be a problem as to how these courses could be fitted in. But in 1937 there was no intake of new students and so a six months’ course for six senior doctors was arranged from October 1939 until March 1940. This course proved very successful but it was never repeated.’25 The dearth of opportunities for advanced training ensured that medical and surgical specialists would be overwhelmingly British or foreign medical professionals.26 In Egypt, graduates of the School of Medicine at Qasr al-Aini received a diploma of Proficiency in Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery.27 The curriculum did not provide for advanced training or specialization. While training in Europe had long been subsidized under the Khedive and during the first five years of British rule, it was discontinued in 1887. Given these conditions together with the presence of foreign specialists, students demanded a curriculum that did more than train for primary care. As in Sudan, British officials justified the training available in terms of the presumed limitations of the subject population, that is to say, the subordination of the pursuit of knowledge to material acquisition. In response to student demands, a 1909 Interior Ministry report defended the curriculum as both appropriate and consistent with the advice of indigenous notables. Few Egyptian students adopt medicine purely as a branch of scientific study and thought, and that with a few remarkable exceptions they are inspired with the idea of acquiring a stock-in-trade or knowledge which will enable them as quickly as possible to earn a livelihood or

224 The Persistence of Privilege

make a fortune; it is this attitude in which they approach their medical education and subsequent career … it is largely for these reasons that it has been found desirable to insist on a routine system of specialized study which has been advocated by some influential Egyptians.28 For colonial subjects, the alternative to medical training in the empire was study in Britain. But, here too, the very conditions – from selection to the range of career opportunities – had the effect of curtailing the number of qualified practitioners. Access to preparatory education and financial resources limited travel to those with independent means or who were sponsored.29 In 1845, the East India Company and client prince Shri Dwaraka Nath Tagore subsidized the training of four Indian graduates of the Calcutta Medical College, who were accompanied to Britain by Calcutta Anatomy Professor Henry Hurray Goodeve. Three of the four graduated from University College, London and two were subsequently elected to membership, one to each, of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians. They all returned to India.30 So did three mission-educated West Africans who were sponsored by the Army Department to study medicine in 1855: Samuel Campbell, William Broughton Davies and James Horton. Ill health caused Campbell to return to Sierra Leone before he commenced his studies in earnest. Davies and Horton passed the licensing examination of the Royal College of Surgeons and qualified for medical degrees from St. Andrews University and Edinburgh University, respectively. Like other sponsored medical students, these practitioners returned to West Africa where they received commissions as assistant surgeons.31 Even those who qualified in Britain faced de jure or de facto discrimination in government service. In 1855 the Indian Medical Service was opened to all who passed the London-based entry examination. By the outbreak of the First World War, only 55 Indians had been appointed out of a total of 1,500 positions. A far greater number of the graduates turned out by medical schools in India served in the subordinate services where they carried out routine medical duties.32 This was also true for Ceylonese practitioners who graduated from the colony’s medical school.33 In Sudan, Syrian government doctors practiced medicine like their British counterparts, but their positions were always subordinate to those of British doctors.34 In 1902, the newly established West African Medical Service (WAMS) prohibited blacks from serving as medical officers.35 In Guiana, the Government Medical Service adopted a white

Douglas M. Haynes 225

doctor policy and appointed Afro- and Indo-Creole physicians when British doctors were not available.36 Colonial subjects were acutely aware of the arbitrary nature of entry into the profession and practice in the empire. E. Mayfield Boyle, a Sierra Leonean who received his medical training at Howard University in Washington, DC pointed out the hypocrisy of the white-only policy in the WAMS. West African Scientific Doctors are the reflectors of medical schools in Great Britain and Ireland. Their education was obtained not only at great costs but at the feet of the masters of those very Europeans recommended to supersede West Africans in West Africa. Unless the processes of training of West Africans abroad differ from those of Europeans—Englishmen in particular—or unless the Departmental Committee is prepared to show by some new process of reasoning or evidences of scientific research that the ‘sable livery’ of Africans is indicative of inferiority, Your Majesty will, in the face of the declarations of the schools which have conferred upon West Africans degrees of proficiency to pursue their professional calling, admit that the report is but a culmination of an infernal scheme of selfish aggrandizement long fomenting in the circles of European negrophobists.37 Harold Moody, the Jamaican-born founder of the League of Coloured People, who graduated from King’s College, London and qualified as a doctor in 1912, deplored the barriers to qualification. The lack of residential housing was cited as a reason why so few West Indian and Africans enrolled, much less completed, medical and nursing programs. But racism made the restrictive credentialing requirements all the more arbitrary. In a reply to an explanation regarding the finite supply of housing available for British nationals, much less colonial subjects, Moody wrote to Dr. Stanton, a medical adviser to the Colonial Office, ‘it is most certainly not at all unreasonable “to expect that this country can provide facilities for undergraduate training for the whole of the British Empire” because this country compels us to have a British qualification—you were good enough to remind me in our interview that the British Medical Council recently tightened up regulations in this direction—before we are allowed to practice in any part of H.M. possessions now under the control of the Colonial Office. If proper facilities cannot be provided for us, whereby we can obtain the necessary qualifications,

226 The Persistence of Privilege

then we must ask that the embargo now placed upon French, German and other non-British qualifications shall be removed.’38 As Moody implied, British-born nationals were privileged above others. Although there was a modest historical record of training colonial subjects, there was no question about who was the primary beneficiary of medical education in Britain. Between the First and Second World Wars, representatives from the Commonwealth and Empire accounted for a small number of students in medical schools. In 1938–39 they were 2.5 percent or 279 of all enrolled medical students.39 Assessing the sources for medical staffing when planning for a comprehensive system of health care, the priority for British nationals was made explicit in the 1944 Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Medical Schools. ‘The primary obligation of the medical schools in Great Britain must be to students born here, but in so far as the fulfillment of this obligation allows, the schools, as in the past, will welcome suitably qualified students from abroad, and particularly from various parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire.’ The emphasis on serving British nationals was complemented with the burden being placed on colonies and dominions to provide for their own medical education. ‘In making this point,’ the Inter-departmental Committee chair, Sir William Goodenough, added, ‘we are not overlooking the responsibilities of the educational institutions of this country to aid, by all possible means, educational developments in the colonial dependencies. It seems to us preferable in the interests of the students and of these dependencies that, up to the time of qualification as medical practitioners, colonial students should be educated in their own lands.’40 Underlying this conditional commitment was the assumption that provision for medical education was available in the dependent empire. This was indeed a big assumption given the rudimentary state of medical institutions under British rule in Africa and the West Indies. Nor would the commitment to, and investment in, higher education translate into new doctors for at least a decade or more after the Second World War. While in 1947 the Kitchener Medical School in Sudan received full recognition, the East and West African Schools faced a steeper slope for recognition.41 Sir Francis Needham, who in 1940 inspected the East African Makerere Medical School on behalf of the GMC, estimated at least a decade before recognition. ‘It will I believe, not be easy, to obtain from the Council the recognition of the Uganda Diploma for Registration on the British Register. But, I know of no reasons why the attempt should not be made.’ He recommended raising admissions standards, adding a pre-clinical year of anatomy and physiology taught by a

Douglas M. Haynes 227

full-time anatomy and physiology instructor, and building a new medical school and hospital. Even after adopting the changes, Needham advised the institution to wait seven years before requesting formal recognition. ‘Some time before 1947 it would be necessary to inform the Registrar of the General Medical Council of the intention to apply for recognition and to ask for information as to procedure. But long before this I suggest that it would be in the interests of the Medical School to seek advice by means of unofficial visitations.’42 In West Africa, training at the Yaba Medical School remained largely unchanged since its establishment in 1934. The lack of a modern teaching hospital and other deficiencies doomed the admission of graduates to the external medical degree of the University of London. As a concession in 1952, British universities guaranteed admission to all Nigerian students who finished their pre-clinical instruction.43 The prospects were worse in Ghana and Jamaica, where universities, much less medical schools, were still only in the planning phases.44 Although a scholarship program was established in 1931 for training African medical practitioners from the Gold Coast in the United Kingdom, only one scholar per year was selected until the late 1930s and early 1940s when the number varied between four and seven.45

Doomed to travel: Back-door medical education and licensing in North America There was no alternative for colonial subjects but to travel in order to obtain or complete a medical education. Many colonies did not question the privileged standing of British qualifications. Twenty colonies made no provision for registering foreign degrees at all.46 Some on a case-by-case basis, accepted foreign degrees.47 An even smaller number, mostly in the Caribbean recognized medical degrees approved by the AMA (American Medical Association).48 A stream of students from the colonies studied in North America because the medical schools there were more accessible than those in the United Kingdom. There were 91 approved AMA schools in North America – 79 in the United States and 12 in Canada.49 These schools were open to overseas students. Canadian schools historically not only opened their doors to African-Americans who faced racist barriers in the United States, but also to students from the Commonwealth. Provincial licensing bodies such as Nova Scotia accommodated West Indian applicants with US medical degrees. The provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick facilitated the

228 The Persistence of Privilege

processing of Nigerian students.50 For the United States, international education became a hallmark of its cold war foreign policy. Congress subsidized advanced and technical education of students from the British empire as a way to burnish America’s reputation as the leader of the free world and to recruit allies in the struggle against the Soviet Union. John Hayes of the International Educational Exchange Program of the State Department admitted that sponsored programs ‘conducted by the Government and by private sponsors are recognized as vital aspects of our foreign policy.’ The Deputy Secretary of State for Public Affairs said as much. ‘The more we can bring people together from various countries to foster mutual understanding and friendly contact on an individual basis, the more likely it is that Government will reflect those relationships.’51 Most British colonial subjects enrolled in US rather than in Canadian medical schools. Although state and provincial medical schools were expected to train residents of their respective state and province, the US simply had more capacity than did the 12 schools in Canada. US diplomas also facilitated registration in Britain. Holders of AMA approved degrees or licenses were admitted to the English and Scottish Conjoint Examinations. There was an even more direct route to secure registration. US graduates of AMA-approved schools were admitted to the qualifying examination of several provincial societies in Canada which enjoyed reciprocity with the GMC. Most colonial students training in the US came from colonies that lacked medical schools or where the schools were not recognized by the GMC. In 1955–6, almost 230 students from British colonial territories were enrolled in the United States, nearly a quarter of all foreign medical students. This was equivalent to the intake of a smaller medical school in the United Kingdom.52 While schools and licensing bodies in the United States and Canada were comparatively open in their admissions policies, students from the empire still faced uncertainties. The colonies of origin of many students training in North America did not specifically recognize US or other foreign diplomas. Holders of the diploma of the National Medical Examiners were admitted to the English and Scottish Conjoint Board final examinations and graduates of approved four-year medical schools were admitted to the examination of the Society of Apothecaries. In each case, however, the applicant had to complete a year-long hospital internship after passing the examination. This was problematic for US-trained colonials who sought a British qualification because the shortage of internships in the United Kingdom meant lengthy waiting periods. Those colonial subjects who trained in Canada faced uncertainty about

Douglas M. Haynes 229

the internship year. In some provinces, the preference for white interns to treat white patients made access to qualifying internships especially daunting for African and West Indians. Furthermore, the GMC did not necessarily approve any particular internship in advance, thereby making another year-long internship in the United Kingdom absolutely necessary before being admitted to the register.53 The privileged status of British qualifications imposed on colonial students a steep set of obstacles and risks in obtaining recognized medical credentials. In addition to distorting the supply of qualified practitioners in the empire, the structure of British professional certification contributed to a definition of competence based on one’s relationship to the British nation-state. The colonial doctors secured their qualifications through a tacitly accepted informal ‘back door’ system while British nationals received the state’s mandate to practice medicine after completing a transparent course of study and passing a set of public examinations. One required travel; the other did not. One was foreign and therefore suspect; the other reproduced British medicine as a privilege that was reserved for nationals. The elaborate ruse colonial doctors needed to be entitled to practice medicine in their home colonies contradicted the publicly stated justification of British rule, namely improving the standard of living of the subject population. British officials were not ignorant of the ‘back-door’ system that colonial subjects were forced to submit to. As the next section will show, the growing visibility of, and realities facing, colonial students in the United States spurred internal discussion about reconciling the needs of the colonies and the privileged status of British qualifications.

Preserving the national boundaries of the national medical profession In 1957, British consular officials in San Francisco grew concerned about reports regarding the dearth of health care personnel in colonial Kenya.54 With the approval of the Foreign Office, they directed Bernard Mellor, the adviser for colonial scholars at the British Embassy in Washington, DC, to investigate colonials studying medicine in the United States and Canada. In his report, Mellor outlined the political and practical difficulties created by the restrictive conditions of medical practice in the dependent empire. With few or no options for medical education in Britain or the empire, study in universities in the United States exposed subjects to what Mellor saw as undesirable points of views or created situations that potentially challenged the legitimacy of colonialism. ‘I know

230 The Persistence of Privilege

of one mature West Indian student,’ Mellor reported, ‘who abandoned the Institution in which he was studying, and lost a whole year in transfer, largely to obtain relief from local efforts to enlist his sympathy with charges of academic discrimination leveled at British territories and obscurely tied to the struggles of the American negro.’55 Conversely, when describing the attention given to the future plans of one Kenyan student, Mellor warned of the potential for embarrassment if the restrictive conditions of practice became public. It is the dream of this physician, now in a New York hospital serving an internship, to build and run a clinic in his country, and to acquire American foundation funds with which to do it; according to one press report he has won ‘the moral support of several prominent Americans, including Dr. Ralph Bunche, UN undersecretary, and Chester Bowles, former United States economic stabilizer. The big snag in this, which was fortunately unknown to press, is that the territory from which he comes and in which he hopes to establish his clinic will not permit him to practice with the qualification he has. He added ‘from afar, a disgruntled and disaffected student may seem of none but humanitarian concern; but the many hundreds of colonial students in America in all fields of study are of great concern in their potential for good or for harm to the Commonwealth cause on their return home.’56 Mellor framed his recommendations in terms of reconciling the needs of the colonies while preserving the privilege of British qualifications. His plan, which assumed foreign medical training in the United States, protected and perpetuated the uneven power differential of professional authority between the metropole and the periphery. He proposed that for ten years satellites of metropolitan bodies would oversee licensing of foreign graduates as well as the approval of hospital internships in the colonies. The license to practice would be limited to the territory and would not entitle the holder to practice in the United Kingdom. After this probationary decade, local licensing boards would assume the responsibility for licensing. In the absence of a local medical body assuming responsibility, the metropolitan body would continue to license practitioners or a Commonwealth Board of Medical Examiners would serve a similar purpose for all territories.57 Other features of Mellor’s recommendations were designed not only to channel colonial students to American and Canadian medical schools but also to diminish their political voice. Only schools that were

Douglas M. Haynes 231

approved by the AMA and accredited by regional bodies for general education would guarantee graduates admission to the local licensing examination. Foreign graduates would also be required to pass a citizenship test in their home territory. Mellor also proposed that territories that had already made provision for the admission of US graduates be asked to conform to these conditions. To underscore the urgency of his plan, Mellor cautioned that the ‘alternative appears to be, to find some acceptable means of preventing colonial students from proceeding to the USA or to certain Canadian provinces to study medicine, on professional grounds solely, if the body of educated potential malcontents in America is to be prevented from growing any larger.’58 In submitting Mellor’s report to the Foreign Office, the UK ambassador Sir Harold Caccia underlined the need for prompt consideration of the problem. The availability of American medical schools together with the likely growth of colonial students attending them continued to make the privileged status of British qualifications difficult to justify. ‘To decline to make the maximum use of the facilities which America can offer lays us open to the charge that we are acquiescing in the sacrifice of the interests of our Colonial peoples to those of the Britishtrained medical profession.’ For colonial students, Caccia warned that their resentment may become a source of embarrassment to the government. ‘Left without redress it can in my view only lead to frustration among the students concerned with unhappy results not only in the colonial territories when they return home but in this country while they are here.’ There was also a financial dimension to foreign medical study that made Mellor’s alternative valuable to the Treasury. ‘In the men emerging from American medical institutions we have a source of technical assistance ready-made and furthermore one which has been provided by citizens of our Colonies themselves largely through their own efforts though with some American help. To allow this source of technical skill to go to waste to the extent that appears to be the case at present, seems to me hard to justify.’59 The Foreign Office was unimpressed with Mellor’s proposal. Sir James Bennett Hance, medical adviser to the Colonial Office and former Director-General of the Indian Medical Service, regarded the status quo as the only politically practical outcome. If colonial governments needed trained practitioners, they could make provision for registering or licensing foreign medical graduates. Hance conceded that the adverse effects of this course would include closing of advanced or postgraduate study and appointments in various specialties and, by extension, the quality of health care available to colonial populations. He doubted that the GMC

232 The Persistence of Privilege

would be interested in extending reciprocity to US medical schools, even if possessed of the resources for inspection and the cooperation of the AMA. ‘How far this is desirable I am very doubtful, since it might expose this over-doctored country to an influx of American practitioners.’60 An ad hoc meeting of government medical representatives, consisting of Wilson Rae, J.C.R. Buchanan, B.G. Stone and G.J. Lunnon, was equally doubtful about modifying the imperial barriers to practice in the empire. Like Hance, they had little confidence that United Kingdom licensing bodies would be interested in participating in recognizing foreign medical degrees. They did report that the University of London had approved internship positions at several hospitals in the empire. Beyond the ‘backdoor’ route for foreign medical graduates, there was no other mechanism for accommodating the needs for medical personnel for the colonies. This was true for slots for overseas medical students at UK medical schools. ‘There were substantial numbers of applicants refused every year, though many of them through mediocre scholastic attainments of the applicants. Successful applicants usually had to wait for a considerable time before being able to commence their studies, but it did not seem that there would be any increase in the number of places for Colonial applicants in the foreseeable future.’ In the short term, they counseled waiting at least until the completion of a Health Ministry report on the projected staffing needs of the National Health Service led by Sir Henry Willink, former Minister of Health: ‘nothing of value in this connection appeared likely to come out of the deliberations of the Willink Committee, which might well recommend a decrease in the intake of UK schools rather than otherwise.’61 Rather than viewing the stream of colonial students in medical schools symptomatic of the structural barriers to the practice of medicine in the empire, the ad hoc committee linked their presence to scholastic deficiencies and the low standard of medical education in North America. At most, they recommended that colonial governments make information about the standard of US medical schools available to prospective students. There were about 300 British Colonial medical students in the U.S.A., but many went there because their scholastic attainment had fallen short of those required for entry into a British medical school. Moreover, the standard of qualification often achieved in U.S. medical schools was low by British standards. Americans coming to the U.K. to sit for the Conjoint Board’s examinations often had the greatest difficulty in passing them. There was a great need in the Colonies for information about academic conditions in the U.S.A., in light of which Colonial governments could bring some

Douglas M. Haynes 233

influence to bear on students wishing to go there for study but with only a low standard of education.62 Mellor’s proposal was still-born. He received permission more than a year after submitting his report to publish an article in the Lancet, describing the pitfalls of pursuing a foreign degree without attending to the laws governing professional practice in the empire. Although the tone of the article was more advisory than critical, it provoked a brief flap in the medical and lay press. A leader in the Lancet noted that ‘it has all become exasperatingly complex, and must be harmful to the populations concerned: countries with only one doctor to 50,000 inhabitants cannot avail themselves of the services of their own people without delay, expense, and what is little better than forced chicanery.’63 It added that ‘the level of sheer lunacy is reached by the fact that graduates of McGill and Toronto, because these schools are in Canadian Provinces that are not in communion with the General Medical Council, are not acceptable, apparently, in any of the Colonies.’ The Express described colonial subjects trained in North America as ‘outcasts so far as the British General Medical Council’ were concerned.64 The Daily Telegraph echoed the sentiment. Stating its openness to reciprocity, the GMC shifted the responsibility away from Britain to foreign institutions. ‘As regards Canada the remedy rests with the States concerned. We would like reciprocity. With the U.S. the situation is difficult because it means separate agreements with each State and some have standards which we do not consider high enough.’65 Surveying the response for the Colonial Office, A.J. Somerton thought that the status quo was politically tolerable. ‘We have seen no reaction to Mellor’s subsequent article in The Lancet or to the leader which accompanied it. The Leader is headed “reciprocity” but the only suggestion it makes is that the General Medical Council might lay down standards of acceptance of foreign medical degrees for local practice. Apart from the fact that the General Medical Council are not prepared to do this for practice in the United Kingdom, local doctors and representatives of the British Medical Association in the Colonies might well protest against extended recognition of foreign degrees in any particular territory.’66

Conclusion The circuitous pathway for colonial subjects from Africa and the West Indies seeking to practice medicine legally in the territories of their birth was constitutive of the larger intersection of nation and empire

234 The Persistence of Privilege

in the institutional formation of the British national medical profession. As provided by Parliament, the very conditions of entry into the profession, namely the possession of discrete British qualifications, regulated access into the imperial medical market while establishing steep hurdles for colonial subjects who sought entry. The imperial periphery and metropole formed a single, integrated space where all graduates of British medical schools were entitled to practice medicine anywhere where the flag waved without submitting to a local authority. A diploma or license holder from English and Scottish as well as Irish licensing bodies not only could practice in this space, but also was eligible to serve in the established and growing medical services that supported the formal and informal political and economic structures of the empire such as the various state services and the mercantile and passenger fleets. Just as British practitioners benefited from the empire, they policed its boundaries as a right. The initial resistance and qualified admission of foreign medical degrees or licenses to the Medical Register reflected the inherently politically constructed nature of the imperial boundaries of British national medicine. The restrictive conditions of entry into the profession had real consequences for colonial subjects who aspired to practice medicine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Travel was virtually required, given the astonishingly low number of medical schools in the dependent empire and the fact that few of them enjoyed recognition by the GMC. Opportunities for study in the metropole were fraught with uncertainty even for colonial subjects who had sufficient preliminary education and access to financial resources. British medical schools as a rule catered to nationals and admitted non-nationals only as space allowed. Depending on the colony, those who were sponsored by their governments, such as from Sierra Leone, were prohibited or in the case of India, discouraged from practicing medicine in Britain after qualification. Graduates of the most advanced medical schools in British Africa had to travel to Britain for hospital internships to complete their qualification or to pursue advanced training in a specialty. The former segment of their professional odyssey was conditioned on the availability of subsidies for travel. In Egypt, official travel support was discontinued in 1887. Moreover, even those who secured a British qualification were denied equal opportunity or treatment as medical professionals in government service. In British Africa as well as in the West Indies and India, formal and informal racial bars facilitated the use of the labor of doctors of color. Such practices perpetuated the racialized nature of professional authority that

Douglas M. Haynes 235

the entry requirements into the profession enabled and from which British-born graduates overwhelmingly benefited. This uneven professional landscape simultaneously spurred colonial subjects before and after the Second World War to seek training in North America and reinforced suspicion about foreign degrees or diplomas. Even as the privileged position of British qualifications in the empire contradicted the post-war public defense of colonialism as assisting undeveloped territories, the British government as well as the GMC reinforced the national boundaries of the medical profession while masking its imperial boundaries in two related ways. Prospective medical students contemplating study abroad were advised to determine in advance that foreign medical schools were recognized by the GMC. At the same time, the authority of colonies to recognize foreign degrees for purposes of local practice was tolerated or covertly encouraged. These and other steps consolidated the boundaries of the British medical profession at a moment when policy-makers began planning to expand the number of British medical schools, primarily to meet the staffing needs of the NHS. While expansion increased the number of medical students as well as graduates, including from the Commonwealth, the NHS increasingly relied on the labor of overseas practitioners, especially from India and Pakistan, to staff hospitals in the inner city and remote rural areas. As Karola Decker and others have documented, these practitioners tended to hold serial junior appointments and were concentrated in low prestige consultancies such as gerontology, while doctors who qualified in Britain experienced a more stable career path that could include consultancies in surgery and other high prestige specialties.67 These divergent career paths illustrate the continuing legacy of imperialism in the making of the British medical profession.

Notes 1. D.J. Smith, Overseas Doctors in the National Health Service (London, 1980); M. Anwar and A. Ali, Overseas Doctors: Experience and Expectations: A Research Study (London, 1987); and N. Decker, Overseas Doctors: Past and Present in Racism in Medicine (London, 2001), pp. 23–53. C. Kyriakides and S. Virdee, ‘Migrant Labour, Racism and the British National Health Service,’ Ethnicity and Health, 8(4) (November 2003), pp. 283–303. 2. Wales had no training institution at this time, nor indeed a university. 3. Medical Act, 1858, Vict. 21 & 22, and Medical Act Amendments Act, 1886, Vict. 49. 4. The information in this paragraph is based on ‘The Abstract, by the Registrar of the Medical Council, of Answers from Medical Licensing Bodies, with respect to the Exemption granted to Foreign Graduates’ in Special Report from

236 The Persistence of Privilege

5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

the Select Committee on the Medical Amendment Act, XII (1878–1879), Appendix II, pp. 356–8. See Medical Act, 1858, Clauses 4 and 46. R. Hamowy, Canadian Medicine: A Study in Restricted Entry (Vancouver, BC, 1984), p. 68. See also ‘Medico-Parliamentary: Medical Practitioners (Colonial) Bill,’ British Medical Journal (11 April 1868), p. 365; ‘The Medical Act,’ British Medical Journal (11 April 1868), p. 356. ‘Privileges of British Graduates,’ British Medical Journal (25 April 1868), p. 405. See ‘Extract from Minutes of the Meetings of the General Council of Medical Education and Registration of the United Kingdom, 1877,’ in Special Report from the Select Committee on the Medical Amendment Act, XII (1878–1879), Appendix II, pp. 334–5. In seeking a single comprehensive examination for medicine, surgery and midwifery, the GMC sought to formalize an informal practice among some licensing bodies in the United Kingdom that voluntarily joined together or conjoined to provide a more complete qualification. Some conjoint qualifications included those sponsored in Scotland by Edinburgh’s Royal College of Surgeons/Royal College of Physicians (1859). The addition of Glasgow’s Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons to the RCS/RCP produced the ‘Scottish triple’ in 1884. Two year later the Irish conjoint qualification was created through the collaboration in Dublin between the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeon of Ireland. See H. Phillips, ‘Home Taught for Abroad: The Training of the Cape Doctor, 1807–1910,’ in H. Deacon (ed.), The Cape Doctor in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History, (Amsterdam, 2004), p. 120. See Minutes of Evidence in Special Report from the Select Committee on the Medical Amendment Act, XII (1878–1879), pp. 218–9. Dr. William Turner, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Edinburgh, commented that colonial students would also be unfairly disadvantaged in that conjoint degrees were not a condition to practice in their home territories, but they would be required to take two examinations and pay additional fees in order to be placed on the register. Minutes of Evidence from Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Medical Acts, XXIX, pp. 61–2. Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Medical Acts, XXIX, pp. 560–1. Medical Act Amendments Act, 1886, Vict. 49, Section II, Clauses 11–5. Punjab University, Ceylon Medical College, Dalhousie University, Halifax Medical College, Laval University, Nova Scotia Provincial Medical Board, University of Adelaide, University of Calcutta, University of Madras, University of Malta, University of Melbourne, University of New Zealand, and University of Sydney. See A. Patton, Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora (Gainesville, 1996), pp. 200–1. A. Digby, Making a Medical Living: Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine (Cambridge, 1994). D.M. Haynes, ‘Social Status and Imperial Service: Tropical Medicine and the British Medical Profession,’ in D. Arnold (ed.), Warm Climate and Western Medicine, (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 208–20. See also H. Phillips, ‘Home

Douglas M. Haynes 237

17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

Taught Abroad;’ and D. Dyson, ‘The Medical Profession in Colonial Victoria,’ in R. MacLeod and M. Lewis (eds), Disease, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Western Medicine and the Experience of European Expansion (London, 1998), pp. 194–209. See Phillips, ‘Home Taught Abroad,’ pp. 106; 125–6 and Dyson, ‘The Medical Profession in Colonial Victoria,’ pp. 195–6; 203. A. Digby, ‘A Medical El Dorado’? Colonial Medical Incomes and Practice at the Cape,’ Social History of Medicine, 8 (1995), pp. 463–79; E.B. van Heyningen, ‘Agents of Empire: The Medical Profession in the Cape Colony, 1880–1910,’ Medical History, 33 (1989), pp. 450–71; D. Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India (Cambridge, 2000), p. 64; and ‘The Public Services,’ British Medical Journal, (28 August 1897), p. 559. See Phillips, ‘Home Taught Abroad,’ pp. 119, 126, 185. As Phillips points out, this anxiety about African doctors reinforced the resistance of many British trained doctors to the establishment of a medical school in Cape Colony at least until the early twentieth century. J. Iliffe, East African Doctors, a History of the Modern Profession (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 60–7, 92–103; and Patton, Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora, pp. 32–3. Graduates of the Hong Kong Medical College, founded in 1887, were prohibited from registering locally until 1914 when the GMC recognized the degree. See G.H. Choa, The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai: A Prominent Figure in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2000), pp. 152–4. H. Bell, Frontiers of Medicine in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1899–1940 (London, 1999), pp. 52–4. H.C. Squires, The Sudan Medical Service, An Experiment in Social Medicine (London, 1958), p. 66. M.O. Beshir, Educational Development in the Sudan, 1898–1956 (London, 1969), p. 82. Bell, Frontiers, p. 49. Squires, The Sudan Medical Service, pp. 115–6. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the government sponsored several doctors to receive advance training in Britain. Squires, The Sudan Medical Service, p. 115. Founded in 1827 by Muhammad Ali Pasha, the medical school predated the era of Dual Control. A. el Azhary Sonbol, The Creation of a Medical Profession in Egypt, 1800–1922 (Syracuse, 1991), pp. 109–19. Sonbol, p. 115. Wong Foon and Kai Ho Kai received their elementary education, respectively, in the United States and Scotland and their medical degrees from Edinburgh in 1853 and Aberdeen University in 1879. In the latter year Ho Kai passed the Licentiate examination of the Royal College of Physicians and Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. See Choa, The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai, pp. 20–3. See P.C. Sen Gupta, ‘Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty: The First Indian Contributor to Modern Medical Science,’ Medical History, 14 (1970), pp. 183–91 and Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine, pp. 64–5; and M. Fosher, Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travelers and Settlers in Britain (Delhi, 2004), pp. 369–74.

238 The Persistence of Privilege 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

Patton, Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora, pp. 77–8. Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine, pp. 64–5. ‘The Public Services,’ British Medical Journal (28 August 1897), p. 559. Bell, Frontiers, p. 41. Patton, Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora, pp. 79–84, 88–9, 128–31. J. De Barros, ‘Spreading Sanitary Enlightenment’: Race, Identity, and the Emergence of a Creole Medical Profession in British Guiana,’ Journal of British Studies 42 (October 2003), pp. 488–94. Patton, Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora, p. 150. Moody to Stanton, 31 December 1933, National Archives, London, CO 323/1218/5 Colonial Doctors and Nurses [hereafter CO]. Report of Inter-Departmental Committee on Medical Schools (London, 1944), p. 104. Report of Inter-Departmental Committee, p. 105. Bell, Frontiers, p. 49. Iliffe, East African Doctors, p. 64. I.C.M. Maxwell, Universities in Partnership: The Inter-University Council and the Growth of Higher Education in Developing Countries 1946–1970 (Edinburgh, 1980), pp. 96–8. Maxwell, pp. 149–51, 240–1. S. Addae, The Evolution of Modern Medicine in a Developing Country: Ghana 1880–1960 (Durham, 1997), pp. 276–7. Grants-in-aid for private students became available in the 1940s. These territories are Brunei, Dominica, Fiji, Gibraltar, Grenada, Hong Kong, Kenya, Malaya, Mauritius, Nigeria, North Borneo, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Sarawak, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda and Zanzibar. A Note on British Colonial Medical Students in North America by B. Mellor, Adviser for Colonial Scholars in North America, pp. 1–3 and Appendix II. CO 859/1271. Note on British Colonial Medical Students. Note on British Colonial Medical Students. Note on British Colonial Medical Students. Note on British Colonial Medical Students, pp. 3–5. Note on British Colonial Medical Students, pp. 8–9. Note on British Colonial Medical Students, pp. 3–6 and Appendix I. Note on British Colonial Medical Students, pp. 3–7 and Patton, Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora, pp. 207–8. In practice, African medical students in the United Kingdom were prohibited from participating in obstetrical cases involving white women. See Addae, The Evolution of Modern Medicine in a Developing Country, p. 295, n. 25. United Kingdom Ambassador Sir Harold Caccia to Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd in A Note on British Colonial Medical Students. Note on British Colonial Medical Students. Note on British Colonial Medical Students. Note on British Colonial Medical Students, pp. 12–13. Note on British Colonial Medical Students. United Kingdom Ambassador to Selwyn Lloyd in Note on British Colonial Medical Students. Lloyd in Note on British Colonial Medical Students.

Douglas M. Haynes 239 61. 62. 63. 64.

Lloyd in Note on British Colonial Medical Students. Lloyd in Note on British Colonial Medical Students. ‘Reciprocity,’ Lancet (23 May 1959), p. 1079, CO 859/1272. ‘Rule Bars Empire Doctors from Jobs,’ Telegraph (22 May 1959), CO 859/1272. 65. ‘Colonial Doctors Who Become “Outcasts”,’ Daily Telegraph (22 May 1959), CO 859/1272. 66. Somerton to Williams on recognition of United States’ medical qualifications, 3 November 1959, CO 859/1272. 67. Decker, Overseas Doctors: Past and Present, Anwar and Ali, Overseas Doctors; Kyriakides and Virdee, ‘Migrant Labour, Racism and the British National Health Service.’

Index Abbott, Grace, 66 Abhi Nava Bharat Secret Society (ANB), 175, 176 Abolition Act, 1807, 82 Abysinnia, Italian invasion of, 114 Acton, Lord ‘Nationality,’ 45 Addams, Jane, 45 Ador, Gustave, 59 Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, 95 Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children, 59–66, 69–71 Africa medical profession in, 221–3, 224–5, 226–7, 234 Sikh police in, 152–7, 160, 164–5 see also names of individual African countries age of consent, 11, 16–30 in Australia, 18, 20, 21–3, 26 in Basutoland, 24 in Britain, 16–20, 23–5, 27–30 in Ceylon, 18, 20, 25–6 Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, 11, 18 in Hong Kong, 18, 21 in India, 18, 20–3, 24–30 in Jamaica, 19 in New Zealand, 18 and race, 11, 19–20, 24 and rape, 29 in South Africa, 18, 20, 26 and sovereignty, 11, 17–18, 27, 30 in Straits Settlements, 18, 21 and transnationalism, 11, 18–19, 27, 30 Ahmad, Nazir Banat un-Na’ash, 138–9 Aiangar, C. Duraiswamy, 199, 201 Aligarh movement, 126–44 Aligarh Muslim University, 126

Allied Maritime Transport Council (AMTC), 37, 39–40 Allied Maritime Transport Executive (AMTE), 37, 39–40 All-India Muslim League, 140–1 American Association for Social Hygiene, 66, 71 American Bureau for Social Hygiene, 66 American Legion, 182 American Medical Association (AMA), 227 Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, 1919. see Rowlatt Act, 1919 ANC Youth League, 94–5 Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities, 192 Andrews, C.F., 112 Angell, Norman, 35 Fruits of Victory, 6–7 Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, 62, 82, 91, 95, 96 Anti-Slavery International, 82 anti-slavery movement. see slavery, abolition of Anti-Slavery Society. see Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, 62 Australia age of consent in, 18, 20, 21–3, 26 and free trade, 39 Azariah, V.S., 111 Baker, Annie, 58 Banat un-Na’ash (Ahmad), 138–9 Barker, Ernest, 38, 117, 119, 120 Basutoland, age of consent in, 24 Battacharji, N., 180–1 Beck, Ulrich, 4 Berkman, Alexander, 187 240

Index 241 Berlin Act, 1885, 12, 83, 84–5, 86, 89, 92, 98 Berlin West Africa Conference, 108 Bhatavdekar, H.S., 191 Big Parade, The, 199 Bird, Isabella, 149 Bismarck, Otto von, 83 Bombay Board of Film Censors, 198 Bombay Vigilance Association, 68, 71 Boyle, Mayfield E., 225 Brisbane Courier, 22 Britain and abolition of slavery, 82–93, 97–8 age of consent in, 16–20, 23–5, 27–30 medical profession in, 9, 214–35 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society. see Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society British Council of Churches (BCC), 117, 119 British empire. see imperialism British Medical Association, 218 British Quota Act, 1927, 210 Bromley, Constance, 194, 195–6 Brussels Act, 1890, 83–4, 87, 89, 90, 98 Brussels Sugar Convention, 38–9 Butler, Josephine, 55–6 Buxton, Travers, 62 Caccia, Harold, 231 Calcutta Missionary Conference for the Protection of Young Girls, 20 Campbell, Samuel, 224 Camperdon, Earl of, 219–20 Canada and free trade, 39 medical schools in, 227–31 cartels, 40–1, 42 cartography and Islam, 137–40 Casement, Roger, 85, 181 Cassin, René, 96 Castell, Manuel, 7 Catholic Association for the Protection of Women and Children, 61

Cecil, Lord Robert, 91 censorship of films, 195–210 Ceylon, age of consent in, 18, 20, 25–6 Chamberlain, Joseph, 39, 46 Charles, Persis, 19, 24 Chatham House, 36, 39 children, traffic in, 54–74 China missions in, 108 Sikh police in, 162–3 traffic of women and children in, 72 Christianity and abolition of slavery, 82–3, 88 see also missions Christianity and the Race Problem (Oldham), 114 Church Missionary Society (CMS), 106–7, 117 cinema censorship of, 195–210 and imperialism, 9, 192–211 in India, 9, 191–211 and morality, 193–6, 204–7, 211 and sovereignty, 9, 191–211 citizen-consumers, 41 citizenship, 3, 10, 34, 37, 38, 44–50 civilization vs. savagery, 80, 84, 88–9 civil society, global, 1, 2, 4, 43 Clan-na-gael, 173 Clarke, George, 176 Clements, Keith, 112–13, 121 Clifford, Hugh, 149–50 Coatman, J., 201, 203 Cobden, Richard, 41, 44 Cohn, Bernard, 210 Cold War, 1 colonialism. see imperialism Colonial Medical Committee, 221–2 Commission of Enquiry on Traffic in Women and Children in the East, 71 Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), 119, 120 Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace (CJDP), 118, 119

242 Index Commonwealth doctors, 8–9, 214–35 communism collapse of, 1 fear of in United States, 184–8 community, 10, 44, 48 Conference of British Missionary Societies (CBMS), 113, 119 Conference on Traffic in Women and Children, 1921, 58–9 Congo Free State human rights in, 108 missions in, 109 reform of, 84–6 slavery in, 83 Congress of Vienna, 1815, 82 consent, age of. see age of consent consumers, 41 Contagious Diseases Acts, 21, 55 Convention of St. Germain-en-Laye, 1919, 87, 89, 98 Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children, 54 Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age, 1933, 69 Convention on Traffic in Women and Children, 1921, 59 cooperation, international. see international cooperation coordination, international. see international coordination Coote, William Alexander, 56 cosmopolitanism, 2, 4, 5–6, 10, 45 Cotton, Henry, 177 Cowper-Temple, William, 218 Crawford, J.D., 199–200, 201, 203, 207–8 Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, 11, 18 Crowdy, Rachel, 58, 62–3 Curzon, Lord, 161 Daily Telegraph, 233 Das, B., 208–9 Davies, William Broughton, 224 Dead Man’s Child, 191 Decker, Karola, 235 Dehousee, Fernand, 95–6

democracy, 35, 37 Deportation Statute, 184, 186 Devji, Faisal, 10 Dhingra, Madanlal, 175 Digby, Anne, 221 Dilke, Charles, 85 doctors. see medical profession Doyle, Arthur Conan A Study in Scarlet, 169 The Valley of Fear, 169–70 Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Lugard), 89, 90, 92 Dulles, John Foster, 117, 118 Dwarkadar, Kanji, 68 East African Makerere Medical School, 226 Egypt, medical profession in, 222–4 Emancipation Act, 1833, 82 empire. see imperialism empire films, 9, 196–201, 208 see also cinema Empire Marketing Board, 37 End of History, The (Fukuyama), 1, 192 Express, 233 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 11, 171, 183, 185–8 Federal Council of Churches (FCC), 117, 118, 119 film. see cinema Fitzgerald, J.P., 221 Flow and Ebb of Islam (Hali), 129 Foreign Missions Conference of North America (FMCNA), 113, 117, 119 Foucault, Michel, 138 Francesco, Frank, 186–7 Free India Society, 175, 176 free trade, 5, 10, 35–6, 37, 38–9, 40–2, 86 see also cartels; trusts, international Fruits of Victory (Angell), 6–7 Fukuyama, F. The End of History, 1, 192 Gandhi, Mohandas, 112 gender and age of consent, 16–30

Index 243 General Act and Declaration of Brussels, 1890. see Brussels Act, 1890 General Act of the Conference of Berlin, 1885. see Berlin Act, 1885 General Medical Council (GMC), 216, 217–22, 228, 229, 231–5 geographicity, 138–9 Germany missionaries from, 114, 116 nationalism in, 38, 44, 45 prostitution in, 62 global coordination. see international coordination globalization, 7, 8, 12–13, 38, 48, 49 Gohr, Albrecht, 89 Goldman, Emma, 187 Goodenough, William, 226 Goodeve, Henry Hurray, 224 Gorham, Deborah, 23 Grant, Kevin, 12 Greek Commonwealth, The (Zimmern), 44 Green, A.M., 201, 203 Greenidge, C.W.W., 95–7, 98 Gregg, Robert, 11 Grimshaw, Harold, 113 Grubb, Kenneth, 120 Guiana, medical profession in, 224–5 Gutteridge, Joyce, 91 Haig, H.G., 198–9 Hali, Altaf Husayn, 131, 139–40 Flow and Ebb of Islam, 129 Shikwa-e Hind, 135–6 Hance, James Bennett, 231–2 Harris, H. Wilson, 67 Harris, John, 89, 91 Hastings, Adrian, 104–5, 110 Hayes, John, 228 Haynes, Douglas, 8–9 Held, David, 7 Herriot, Christian, 72–3 heterotopia, 138 Hobson, J.A. Imperialism, 41 Home Rule Society, 174

Hong Kong age of consent in, 18, 21 Sikh police in, 146, 161–2, 165 Hoover, J. Edgar, 184, 187, 188 Hopkins, A.G., 8, 105 Horton, James, 224 Howe, Stephen, 93 human rights and freedom of religion, 106 and free trade, 86 and imperialism, 12, 81–93, 95, 98–9 role of United Nations, 12, 80–1, 93–9 in South Africa, 93–5, 120 and sovereignty, 12, 81–2, 84–5, 94–5, 98–9 traffic in women and children, 12, 54–74 vs. trusteeship, 93–5 Humphry, George Murray, 219 identity, national, 10, 37 see also nationalism Imagined Communities (Anderson), 192 immigration and nationality, 45–6 imperialism and age of consent, 11, 17–30 and cinema, 9, 192–211 and free trade, 41 and global coordination, 35 and human rights, 12, 81–93, 95, 98–9 and Islam, 126–44 and League of Nations, 48–9 and the medical profession, 8–9, 214–35 and missions, 10–11, 103–21 and new internationalism, 46–50 and Sikh police, 146–65 and sovereignty, 9, 147, 165 and traffic in women and children, 62–3 and transnationalism, 2–3, 5–10, 12–13, 146–65, 214–35 and trusteeship, 48, 106, 108, 114, 115, 118–19, 121 and United States, 3–4 Imperialism (Hobson), 41

244 Index Independent Labour Party, 36 Living Wage programme, 41 India age of consent in, 18, 20–3, 24–30 cinema in, 9, 191–211 Indian nationalism, 11, 174–81 Islam in, 126–44 medical profession in, 224 missions in, 108–9, 111–13 Sikh police, 146–65 and terrorism, 11, 174–81 Indian Cinematographic Committee (ICC), 9, 192–3, 196–211 Innes, Emily, 149 Innes, James Rose, 21 Institute of International Affairs, 36, 39 Inter-Departmental Committee on Medical Schools, 226 International Agreement for the Suppression of White Slave Traffic, 1904, 57 International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women, 60, 64 International Congress for the Suppression of White Slavery, 1899, 57 international cooperation, 39 and missions, 106–8 and traffic in women and children, 12, 56–74 international coordination, 35–6, 37–40, 42–3, 48 International Educational Exchange Program, 228 internationalism, new. see new internationalism International Labour Office, 60 International Missionary Council (IMC), 105, 108, 110, 113, 115 International Review of Missions, 109 international trusts. see trusts, international International Vigilance Association, 58 International Women’s Associations, 60, 61, 62, 64 Iqbal, Muhammad, 141–3 Wataniyyat, 142

Iraq, 3, 4 Irish nationalism, 11, 172–4 Islam, 10 Aligarh movement, 126–44 and cartography, 137–40 and imperialism, 126–44 in India, 10, 126–44 and nationality, 126–44 Jackson, A.M.T., 175 Jaffer, Khan Bahadur Sir Ebrahim Haroon, 201, 203 Jamaica, age of consent in, 19 Jazz Singer, The, 211 Jervois, William, 148 Johnson, Andrew, 173 Johnson, Bascom, 66, 68 Johnson, George, 25 Johnston, H.H., 151, 152–4 Joint Committee on Religious Freedom (JCRF), 119 Jolston, Al, 211 Kale, Madhavi, 9 Kant, Immanuel, 5, 43 Kaplan, Martha, 192–3, 202 Kelly, John, 192–3, 202 Khan, Muhammad Yamin, 199 Khan, Sayyid Ahmad, 127–30, 132, 133–4, 136–7, 140, 141 Kincaid, Jim, 25 King’s and Queen’s College of Physicians, 217 Kipling, Rudyard, 3 Kitchener Memorial Medical School, 222–3, 226 Lacoste, Yves, 138 Ladies’ National Association, 55 Lancet, 233 Lansdowne, Lord, 21, 26 Lauren, Paul Gordon, 81, 93, 94 League of Colored People, 225 League of Nations, 6 Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, 95 Economic and Finance Section, 36, 37, 39 establishment of, 86

Index and imperialism, 48–9 Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 36 and new internationalism, 36, 37, 38, 39, 43 and policing, 171 Slavery Convention, 1926, 12, 81, 89, 95, 98 Social Section, 61–2, 73 Temporary Slavery Commission, 89, 95 and traffic in women and children, 3, 12, 54–74: Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children, 59–66, 69–71, 73; Article 23 (c), 54, 58; Commission of Enquiry on Traffic in Women and Children in the East, 71; Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children, 54; Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age, 1933, 69; Convention on Traffic in Women and Children, 59 trusteeship, 12, 48, 80, 81, 88–95 see also United Nations League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion (Smuts), 87 Leopold III, 83 Leverhulme, Lord, 42 Levine, Philippa, 11 liberalism, 10 critique of, 36 and free trade, 35 liberation theology, 104 Limoncelli, Stephanie, 55 Lindsay, A.D., 117 Liverpool Daily Post, 85 Living Wage programme of Independent Labour Party, 41 Lloyd, E.M.H., 36, 37, 38, 41 ‘Towards an International Policy,’ 41 Lloyd George, David, 87 Loveday, Alexander, 42 Lugard, Frederick, 89–90, 93, 156–7 Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 89, 90, 92 Luisi, Paulina, 64–5

245

Macdonald, J.R.L., 155 Macmurray, John, 120 Maguire, C.M., 153 “Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon” (Stead), 16, 22 Malabari, Behramji, 21, 23 Malan, Daniel F., 120 Malaya, Sikh police in, 146, 148–52, 165 Mandela, Nelson, 94 Manning, W.H., 160 Martin, C., 180–1 Mayo, Katherine Mother India, 200 Medical Act, 1858, 215, 217, 218, 220 medical profession in Africa, 221–3, 224–5, 226–7, 234 British Medical Association, 218 General Medical Council (GMC), 216, 217–22, 228, 229, 231–5 and imperialism, 8–9, 214–35 in India, 224 medical schools in Canada, 227–31 medical schools in United States, 216, 227, 228–33, 235 and race, 9, 214–35 Royal Colleges, 217 Medical Register, 216, 217–18, 219, 220, 234 Mellor, Bernard, 229–31, 233 Memoir of an Indian Policeman (Tegart), 177–80 Metcalf, Thomas, 9 Metzger, Barbara, 11–12 Miers, Suzanne, 95, 96, 97 Mill, John Stuart, 44–5 Millen, F.F., 173 missions in China, 108 in Congo Free State, 109 effect of World War II on, 116–19 effect of World War I on, 108–10 and imperialism, 10–11, 103–21 in India, 108–9, 111–13 and international cooperation, 106–8 in South Africa, 108–9 in Sudan, 108

246 Index missions – continued and transnationalism, 10–11, 103–21 and the United Nations, 119–21 Molly Maguires, 171, 173 Montgomery, H.H., 107 Moody, Harold, 225 morality and cinema, 193–6, 204–7, 211 Morel, E.D., 85–8, 92 Morley, John, 175, 176, 177 Mother India, 200 Mughal empire, 130–3 Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, 126, 132 Muslimhood. see Islam Mysore, 26

and League of Nations, 36, 37, 38, 39, 43 and World War I, 35–8 see also individual names of new internationalists New Zealand, age of consent in, 18 Nolde, Frederick, 119 Nurser, John, 119 Nyasaland, Sikh police in, 152–5, 160, 165

National Christian Council of India (NCCI), 112–13 National Health Service (NHS), 9, 214, 235 national identity, 10, 37 nationalism, 10 German, 38, 44, 45 Indian, 11, 174–81 Irish, 11, 172–4 vs patriotism, 47 nationality, 44–8 and democracy, 35 and Islam, 126–44 in United States, 45–6, 47–8 ‘Nationality’ (Acton), 45 National Missionary Society of India, 111 National Vigilance Association, 25, 56 Nation and Athenaeum, 41, 48–9 nation-state, 1–8, 10, 44–6 critique of, 34–40 and imperialism, 5 and international coordination, 42–3 and Islam, 144 see also sovereignty Needham, Francis, 226–7 Neogy, K.C., 201, 203, 210 Neuhaus, Agnes, 61 new internationalism, 3, 10, 34–50 and democracy, 37 and imperialism, 46–50

Paget, James, 219–20 Pakistan, 143 Pall Mall Gazette, 16, 22 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 183–8 Palmer, A.P., 159 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi, 94 pan-Islamism. see Islam Paris Peace Conference, 84 Paton, William, 106, 113, 115, 117, 118–19, 120 patriotism vs. nationalism, 47 Paul, K.T., 111–12, 113 Peace Alms Group, 117 Perak Sikhs. see Sikh police Phalke, D.G., 191 Pinkerton organization, 171, 173 piracy, slave trade as, 90–1, 97 policing Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 171, 183, 185–8 Scotland Yard, 171, 173–4, 182–3 and sovereignty, 9, 11, 170 and transnationalism, 9, 146–65, 170 see also Sikh police; terrorism Porter, Andrew, 103 Post, Louis F., 184, 186, 187 Price, E.L., 210 prostitution and traffic of women and children, 55–74 Protestant missions. see missions Pundalik, 191

Oldham, Joseph, 105–6, 108, 109, 110–11, 112–14, 115, 121 Christianity and the Race Problem, 114 Overseas Doctors Association, 9

Index 247 qawm, 128, 129–30, 132, 133–5, 140, 141 Qsar al-Aini Medical School, 222–4 Queensland, age of consent in, 18, 20, 21–3, 26 R. v. Jimmy, 21–2 race and age of consent, 11, 19–20, 24 and the cinema, 193–6, 204–7, 211 and the medical profession, 9, 214–35 Rai, Lala Lajpat, 200, 205 Rai, Rajpat, 201 Raja Harishchandra, 191 Ralston, Jackson H., 185 Rangachariar, Diwan Bahadur T., 193, 201, 203, 205–6 rape and age of consent, 29 Rappard, William, 62–3 Rathenau, Walther, 42 Reed-Johnson Act, 1924, 188 religion, freedom of, 106 Rhodesia, Sikh police in, 156 Rodd, Rennell, 152 Rodger, J.P., 150 Rogers, A.S., 152 Romania, prostitution in, 61 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 119 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 106 Rowlatt Act, 1919, 171, 185 Roy, Amrita Lal, 172–3 Roy, M.N., 181 Royal College of Physicians, 217 Royal College of Surgeons, 217 Royal Commission on the Medical Acts, 1882, 219 Rudra, S.K., 112 sacred trust. see trusteeship Salter, Arthur, 36, 39–40, 42, 43 Sarkar, Tanika, 29 savagery vs. civilization, 80, 84, 88–9 Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar, 174–7 The War of Independence of 1857, 175–6 Scoble, Sir Andrew, 22, 28 Scotland Yard, 171 Special Branch, 173–4, 182–3

Scully, Charles J., 187 Selangor, Sikh police in, 150 Select Committee on the Medical Acts, 1877, 219 Sen, Amiya, 27 sexuality and age of consent, 11, 16–30 Sharpe, Alfred, 154–5, 156 Shikwa-e Hind (Hali), 135–6 shipping crisis, 1916-17, 37 Shukuh, Dara, 128 shurafa, 129, 130–3 Sikh police, 9 in Africa, 152–7, 160, 164–5 in China, 162–3 in Hong Kong, 146, 161–2, 165 Jat Sikh, 159–60, 164 in Malaya, 146, 148–52, 165 in Nyasaland, 152–5, 160, 165 pay of, 154, 157–8 recruitment of, 147–8, 151–2, 153, 157–65 in Rhodesia, 156 in Straits Settlements, 148, 151–2, 162 in Uganda, 155, 160, 165 Singapore. see Straits Settlements Singha, Radhika, 29 Sinha, Kumar Ganganand, 207 Sinha, Mrinalini, 25 Six Pillars of Peace, 118 slavery, abolition of, 12, 81–99 Abolition Act, 1807, 82 Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, 95 Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, 62, 82, 91, 95, 96 Berlin Act, 1885, 12, 83, 84–5, 86, 89, 92, 98 Brussels Act, 1890, 83–4, 87, 89, 90, 98 Congress of Vienna, 1815, 82 Convention of St. Germain-en-Laye, 1919, 87, 89, 98 Emancipation Act, 1833, 82 role of Christianity, 82–3, 88, 107 Slavery Convention, 1926, 12, 81, 89–93, 95, 96, 98

248 Index slavery, abolition of – continued slave trade as piracy, 90–1, 97 and sovereignty, 80, 98–9 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, 1956, 81, 98–9 Temporary Slavery Commission, 89, 91, 95 Slavery Convention, 1926, 12, 81, 89–93, 95, 96, 98 Smuts, Jan, 87–9, 92, 93–4 League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion, 87 Snow, William F., 66 social purity movement, 56, 58, 60 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), 107 Somerton, A.J., 233 South Africa age of consent in, 18, 20, 26 human rights in, 93–5, 120 missions in, 108–9 South Australia, age of consent in, 18 sovereignty, 1–8 and age of consent, 11, 17–18, 27, 30 and cinema, 9, 191–211 and civilization, 84–5, 88–9 and globalization, 38 and human rights, 12, 55, 80, 81–2, 84–5, 94–5, 98–9 and imperialism, 5, 9, 147, 165, 191–211 and international coordination, 39–40 and Islam, 10, 141, 144 and missions, 105, 107 and policing, 170 and terrorism, 11, 188 see also nation-state Speedy, T.C.S., 146, 147–8 Squires, H.C., 222 Sri Lanka. see Ceylon Stanton, Edwin, 173 Stead, W.T., 16, 22, 26 Stoler, Laura Ann, 203 Stoppani, Pietro, 42 Straits Settlements age of consent in, 18, 21 Sikh police in, 148, 151–2, 162

Stuart, John, 10–11 Studdert-Kennedy, Gerald, 112 Student Volunteer Movement (SVM), 107, 111 Study in Scarlet, A (Doyle), 169 Sudan medical profession in, 222–3, 226 missions in, 108 Sufism, 138 sugar trade, 38–9 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, 1956, 81, 98–9 supranationality, 105, 109, 110, 111, 119, 121 Swettenham, F.A., 150, 162 Swinburne, Paul, 149 Syers, H.C., 150 Tagore, Rabindranath, 112 Tahzib-ul Akhlaq, 127 Tawney, R.H., 113 Tegart, Charles Memoir of an Indian Policeman, 177–80 Temple, William, 117 Temporary Slavery Commission, 89, 91, 95 territory and Islam, 10, 126–44 terrorism and India, 11, 174–81 and Ireland, 11, 172–4 and sovereignty, 11, 188 and transnationalism, 1, 11, 171, 188 and United States, 4, 11, 171, 188 Thomson, Basil, 181, 182, 183, 184 Times, 195, 206 Times Cinema Supplement, 194 ‘Towards an International Policy’ (Lloyd), 41 Toynbee, Arnold, 36 traffic in women and children, 3, 12, 54–74 Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children, 59–66, 69–71, 73 Commission of Enquiry on Traffic in Women and Children in the East, 71

Index Conference on Traffic in Women and Children, 1921, 58–9 Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age, 1933, 69 Convention on Traffic in Women and Children, 59 Far East enquiry, 71–3 first enquiry into, 66–71 International Agreement for the Suppression of White Slave Traffic, 1904, 57 International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women, 60, 64 International Congress for the Suppression of White Slavery, 1899, 57 Victorian campaign against, 55–7 transnationalism and age of consent, 11, 18–19, 27, 30 and citizenship, 3, 10, 34, 37 and civilization, 84–5 and Commonwealth doctors, 8–9, 214–35 definition of, 1–2, 4 and human rights, 54–74 and imperialism, 2–3, 5–10, 12–13, 146–65, 214–35 and Islam, 144 and missions, 10–11, 103–21 and policing, 146–65, 170, 188 and terrorism, 1, 11, 171, 188 see also international cooperation; international coordination Trentmann, Frank, 10 trusteeship and imperialism, 48, 106, 108, 114, 115, 118–19, 121 and League of Nations, 12, 48, 80, 81, 88–95 vs. human rights, 93–5 trusts, international, 35, 40–1, 42 Uganda, Sikh police in, 155, 160, 165 ul-Mulk, Muhsin, 134, 135 ummat, 129–30 UNESCO, 36, 37

249

United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, 71, 74 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, 99 Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 36, 37 human rights, 11–12, 80–1, 93–9 Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, 37 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, 1956, 81, 98–9 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, 95, 98, 106, 119–21 see also League of Nations United States Deportation Statute, 184, 186 fear of communism, 184–8 and free trade, 39 and imperialism, 3–4 medical schools in, 216, 227, 228–33, 235 and missions, 104, 117–18 and nationality, 45–6, 47–8 policing in, 11, 171, 173, 183, 185–8 and terrorism, 4, 11, 171, 188 and traffic in women and children, 66 Valley of Fear, The (Doyle), 169 Vertovec, Steven, 1, 4 Victoria, age of consent in, 18 Vilas, 198 Walkowitz, J., 56 War and Democracy, The (Zimmern), 47 Warneck, Gustav, 108 War of Independence of 1857, The (Savarkar), 175–6 Warren, Max, 117, 119, 120 Wataniyyat (Iqbal), 142 West African Mail, 85

250 Index West African Medical Service (WAMS), 224 Westminster Gazette, 193–4 white slave trade. see traffic in women and children Wilde, Oscar, 172 Willcocks, James, 156–7 Willink, Henry, 232 Wilson, Woodrow, 11, 87–8 Wingfield, Edward, 25 Wise, E.F., 36, 38 women age of consent, 16–30 traffic in, 54–74 World Council of Churches (WCC), 106, 115, 117, 119 World Economic Conference, 1927, 42 World Missionary Conference, 107 World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), 111

World War I effect on missions, 108–10 and free trade, 41 and Indian terrorism, 180–1 and the new internationalists, 35–8 and policing, 180–3 World War II effect on missions, 116–19 Wyllie, William, 175–6 Yaba Medical School, 227 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 106, 111 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), 106 Zakaullah, Muhammad, 135 Zimmern, Alfred, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43–9, 48–9 The Greek Commonwealth, 44 The War and Democracy, 47