Empires and Boundaries: Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings (Routledge Studies in Cultural History)

Empires and Boundaries

Routledge Studies in Cultural History

1. The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe Edited by Brendan Dooley and Sabrina Baron 2. The Insanity of Place / The Place of Insanity Essays on the History of Psychiatry Andrew Scull 3. Film, History, and Cultural Citizenship Sites of Production Edited by Tina Mai Chen and David S. Churchill 4. Genre and Cinema Ireland and Transnationalism Edited by Brian McIlroy 5. Histories of Postmodernism Edited by Mark Bevir, Jill Hargis, and Sara Rushing 6. Africa after Modernism Transitions in Literature, Media, and Philosophy Michael Janis 7. Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics C.L.R. James’ Critique of Modernity Brett St Louis 8. Making British Culture English Readers and the Scottish Enlightenment, 1740–1830 David Allan

9. Empires and Boundaries Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings Edited by Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann

Empires and Boundaries Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings

Edited by Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann

New York

London

First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2009 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Empires and boundaries : rethinking race, class, and gender in colonial settings / edited by Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in cultural history ; 9) Includes index. ISBN 978-0-415-96239-1 1. Imperialism—Case studies. 2. Colonies—Case studies. 3. Hierarchies— Case studies. 4. Social stratification—Case studies. I. Fischer-Tiné, Harald. II. Gehrmann, Susanne. JC359.E457 2009 305.09171'9—dc22 2008015683 ISBN 0-203-89065-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-96239-0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-89065-5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-96239-1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-89065-3 (ebk)

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments 1

Introduction: Empires, Boundaries, and the Production of Difference

vii ix

1

HARALD FISCHER-TINÉ AND SUSANNE GERHMANN

2

“Education for Work” in Colony and Metropole: The Case of Imperial Germany, c. 1880–1914

23

SEBASTIAN CONRAD

3

Hierarchies of Punishment in Colonial India: European Convicts and the Racial Dividend, c. 1860–1890

41

HARALD FISCHER-TINÉ

4

Boundaries of Race: Representations of Indisch in Colonial Indonesia Revisited

66

VINCENT J. H. HOUBEN

5

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness: Public Service Recruitment and the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association, 1876–1901

86

SATOSHI MIZUTANI

6

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa, 1946–1960 FREDERICK COOPER

107

vi Contents 7

Gendering the Colonial Enterprise: La Mère-Patrie and Maternalism in France and French Indochina

129

NICOLA J. COOPER

8

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar: Visual Encounters and the Construction of the Female “Other” in the Colonial Discourse of Maghreb

146

CLAUDIA GRONEMANN

9

In the Empire’s Eyes: Africa in Italian Colonial Cinema Between Imperial Fantasies and Blind Spots

166

IMMACOLATA AMODEO

10 Rationalizing the World: British Detective Stories and the Orient

179

MARGRIT PERNAU

11 African Americans in West and Central Africa in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Agents of European Colonial Rule?

195

KATJA FÜLLBERG-STOLBERG

12 The Boundaries of Blackness: African-American Culture and the Making of a Black Public Sphere in Colonial South Africa

212

ZINE MAGUBANE

Index

233

Figures

7.1.

Poster from the Marseille colonial exhibition of 1922.

131

7.2.

Réunion des musées nationaux.

132

7.3.

Private photograph, Saïgon 1902.

134

8.1.

First version of Eugène Delacroix, Femmes d’Alger dans leur intérieur (1834).

153

Watercolor draft of the Femmes d’Alger by Eugène Delacroix.

154

8.3.

Postcard of Jean Geiser, Mauresques dans leur intérieur.

156

8.4.

Screenshot from Djebar’s documentary film La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli (1982).

158

Screenshot from Djebar’s documentary fi lm La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli (1982).

159

8.2.

8.5.

Acknowledgments

When we took the initiative to organize an international conference on the subject of “Empires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in African and Asian Colonial Settings” at the Institute of Asian and African Studies of Humboldt University, Berlin, in September 2006, our aim was to bring together scholars from various academic backgrounds and with different regional as well as topical foci in their respective discipline. Although the “race, class, gender” paradigm has been prominent in the historical and cultural (post-)colonial studies over the last twenty years, it continues to be a fascinating and fruitful field of research. Our starting point was the realization that there is an obvious lack of debate among scholars working on the different colonial Empires in both Africa and Asia and/or in different disciplines. The project of a cross-disciplinary get-together of scholars in history, literary, cultural studies, and the social sciences working on the British and the French Empire, as well as on “smaller” imperial enterprises like the Dutch, the German, and the Italian, thus came into being. The present volume brings together selected papers from the conference and some complementary contributions. We would like to thank all participants of the conference whose papers could not be included for either reason of coherence of the volume or of their already being published elsewhere: Clare Anderson (University of Leicester), Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting (Vanderbilt University), Didier Gondola (Indiana University Purdue), Durba Gosh (Cornell University), Theresa Hubel (Huron University College), Elizabeth Kolsky (Villanova University), Lize Kriel (University of Pretoria), John Marriott (University of East London), Silke Strickrodt (Humboldt University, Berlin), Klaus Stierstorfer (University of Münster), and Melitta Waligora (Humboldt University, Berlin). We enjoyed the papers, statements in the discussions, and presence of each one of you. Equally, our thanks go to those Berlin colleagues who served as panel moderators and contributed vividly to the discussions: Ulrike Auga (Humboldt University, Berlin), Susan Baller (Humboldt University, Berlin), and Achim von Oppen (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, now University of Bayreuth), as well as to the student assistants and secretaries who made a great contribution in the organization of the event: Maria Framke, Astrid Kiesewetter, Moïse

x

Acknowledgments

Ngolwa, and Muriel Wettstein. Luicy Pedroza (Jacobs University) did the bulk work of editing the contributions, helping immensely to turn the English of the German contributors into readable academic English. We thank her greatly. Many thanks also to Ian Beacock (research assistant at Jacobs University), who provided the index and was ready to cast his native eye over the Introduction and made valuable suggestions for its improvement. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that the conference was generously sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and organized with the help of the Institute for Asian and African Studies, particularly the chair of African Literatures and Cultures at Humboldt University, Berlin. Last, but not least, we wish to express our gratidude to Max Novick and Erica C. Wetter from Routledge, New York, who shared our enthusiasm for the project and patiently accompanied us in the arduous process of realizing it. Susanne Gehrmann and Harald Fischer Tiné Berlin and Bremen, January 2008

1

Introduction Empires, Boundaries, and the Production of Difference Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann

THE RETURN OF EMPIRE By the early 1970s, the global process of decolonization having been more or less completed, the academic preoccupation with European imperialism was clearly on the decline. Many historians, for instance, perceived ‘Imperial History’ as a marginal and slightly outdated field that had not kept abreast with contemporary theoretical and methodological developments in the discipline. Few anthropologists or scholars of cultural and literary studies addressed issues of imperialism and colonialism at all. In today’s political climate, however, histories and cultures of empire are receiving renewed scholarly attention from various directions and for a number of reasons. Most significant, now that the optimism of the decolonization phase has evaporated, it has become clear that the legacies of imperialism and colonialism1 remain ubiquitous into the twenty-fi rst century. As such, an influential body of recent historical studies has sought to emphasize the imperial origins of globalization from the impact of imperial transportation, communication and economic systems to international flows of ideas and worldviews.2 Considering such issues within an imperial framework, these studies have enhanced our understanding of what has been variously termed “the age of global empire”3 or the period of a “great acceleration”4 that coincided with the age of high imperialism. There is a growing awareness of other equally significant global legacies of colonialism—the substantial movement of people from former colonies to European countries and other destinations, creating huge diaspora communities, is another example.5 Further, quite a number of scholars as well as authors with a background in journalism point to similarities between the motives and rhetoric that accompanied the wave of “new imperialism” in the late nineteenth century and the actions, words, and hegemonic aspirations of the United States at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst.6 The similarities are indeed striking. Considering fin de siècle imperial language in the West claiming a ‘mission civilisatrice’ toward the rest of the world in conjunction with current catch phrases surrounding a ‘new world order’ and the exportation of democracy, one hardly requires a leap of faith to justify such comparisons.7

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An understanding of past empires can be tremendously useful for having a solid grasp of contemporary political problems and debates, as this déjà vu effect demonstrates. Yet our notions of ‘empire’ in the early years of the twenty-fi rst century may differ from those held only decades ago. Considering the field of imperial and colonial studies, it is worth investigating the extent to which our current conceptions of modern colonial empires (i.e., those existing during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) differ from conceptions held in the 1970s, a period in which colonialism and imperialism had, at least for a short while, ceased to be political issues.

RECENT APPROACHES TO THE HISTORIES AND CULTURES OF EMPIRE The renewed interest in ‘Empire’ has produced a number of excellent studies that have significantly deepened our understanding of the field by offering insights from new angles, with particular regard to the era of high imperialism in modern world history (c. 1880–1914). Older works of imperial history, some of which bear clear traces of the discipline’s origin in an early twentieth-century imperial academic framework, have by now largely been supplemented or completely replaced by more critical and sophisticated studies. Thus, newer studies have begun an exploration of the intimate relations between science and technology, on the one hand, and imperial aspirations and colonial practices, on the other hand,8 as well as the ecological costs of European expansion for the colonized regions.9 Likewise, the medical dimension of imperial projects has been a favorite topic with researchers since the 1990s, producing a wealth of literature dealing with the complicity between colonialism and medicine.10 The discovery of issues of colonial medicine has gone hand in hand with a more general tendency to concentrate on the human body as an object of research in history and cultural studies. This development, which in turn can be traced back to the growing impact of both social anthropology and Foucauldian philosophy on the humanities, has produced some fi ne results in colonial studies.11 The same holds true for the tremendously popular field of colonial gender studies. The impact of feminist theories has sparked prolific writing on the effects of imperialism and the situation coloniale on the gender identities and sexual relations of both colonizers and the colonized.12 That issues of cultural representation have become a mainstay of colonial studies also is a result of the theoretical shifts of the 1980s. Within the scholarship dealing with the impact of imperialism on cultural production in both metropoles and colonies, one also can trace a development from the literary to the visual. Particularly in the past decade, the long-established tradition of rereading the fiction of imperialism13 has been increasingly accompanied by explorations of the roles of theatre, fi lm, art, and architecture.14

Introduction 3 Through this pithy review of current research concerns, one can detect perhaps the most salient difference between much recent scholarship on empire and more established forms of historiography on European imperialism and its implications: The former has largely abandoned a fixation on empire’s ‘hard’ economic, political, and military aspects in favor of a defi nitive turn toward ‘soft’ issues of culture, identity, discourse, and representation. Particularly in the two decades since the ‘Saidian revolution,’15 the multilayered cultural dimensions of imperialism have been creatively addressed by a younger generation of researchers. An entire array of exciting new theoretical approaches to the history of colonial empires has emerged since the wave of postcolonialism began to be felt in the humanities. The widely received ‘Subaltern Studies’ series16 and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s successful call to ‘provincialize Europe’17 are the most prominent examples of the remarkable impact of new approaches to colonial histories and cultures since the 1980s. Most recently, an awareness of the cultural consequences of imperialism also has led to a revision and reevaluation of ‘metropolitan’ European histories and cultures. Focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the British Empire, advocates of this self-styled ‘new imperial history,’18 for instance, have made waves by calling for a reframing of the study of imperialism. The relation between the ‘motherland’ and the subjugated colonies, they argue, was by no means a one-way affair in which an imperial ‘core’ would radiate social and cultural influence on a colonial ‘periphery.’ It is the contention of these new imperial historians that it is imperative to look at the “counterflows to colonialism” that affected the metropole in myriad ways19 and to acknowledge the existence of an “imperial social formation”20 to understand European national histories. There were other developments bound to imperial developments than the “forging of nations,”21as one scholar has famously phrased it. An extensive range of other processes, ideologies, and social practices in the Western ‘core’ regions was influenced by the imperial status of European powers. The discovery of the relevance of the colonial experience for metropolitan societies has even led some authors to posit the existence of an ‘imperial turn’ in the writing of modern European history. 22

BOUNDARIES REVISITED Our contributors take these new directions in imperial and colonial history as foundations, building on these useful and stimulating approaches to draw new insights about the characteristics of empire. However, it cannot be denied that, in particular, the ‘cultural turn’ in the academic treatment of imperialism and colonialism has left us with a series of problems. This book sets out to tackle two of them. Both concern issues of boundaries. Although one is methodological in nature, the other entails a challenge of the content of existing studies.

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One of the most serious methodological deficits in this field lies in a lack of true interdisciplinarity. Despite much lip service paid to this ideal, there remains a lack of meaningful dialogue between two groups: those seeking to understand empire primarily through the lens of postcolonial theory and the analysis of ‘colonial discourses’—largely coming from a background in cultural, literary, or gender studies—and those working in colonial archives—mainly historians—taking an empirical approach with a view to establish the material ‘facts of empire.’ The existence of these two largely isolated camps has had a clear impact on the limits of their research. Although many empirically oriented historians fail to make use of the sophisticated analytical tools and categories provided by postcolonialism, many cultural and literary scholars would certainly benefit from a more thorough empirical grounding. Given the contemporary preoccupation with the “unsettling of boundaries” in the humanities, it is ironic and regrettable that disciplinary boundaries remain surprisingly intact. 23 Accommodating representatives of both traditions, this book, aimed at both historians and scholars of culture, seeks to extend and deepen dialogue between the disciplines. The second problem we hope to illuminate with regard to boundaries in imperial and colonial history has to do with the content of previous research. Apart from the continued existence of disciplinary frontiers, it also is ironic that revisionist, ‘critical’ histories of imperialism and colonial relations often unwittingly contribute to the perpetuation of received—and perhaps not wholly accurate—imperial borderlines. One of the most persistent of these myths refers to the imperial dividing line par excellence: the boundary between rulers and ruled. In many studies that take postcolonial theory as a frame of reference, the premise that colonial societies were predicated on the existence of two different, easily identifiable, and clearly separate collectives is rarely questioned. The interactions between the colonizers and the colonized, the argument runs, were entirely determined by existing ‘asymmetrical power relations,’ which in turn were grounded in questions of racial identity. Following this line of reasoning, it was seldom problematic to distinguish the powerful from the powerless, the oppressor from the oppressed, the articulate from those who ‘could not speak.’24 A recent study concerned with British legal intervention in colonial India is a case in point. The Indian scholar, influenced by postcolonial as well as feminist theory, arrived at the rather crude conclusion that “the white man condemned the ‘Hindu’ as both weak or effeminate and predatory or brutal, and posed as the ultimate guardian patriarch.”25 Although the quotation marks suggest that the category ‘Hindu’ is seen as problematic and not a sufficiently subtle distinction, colonial administrators and legal experts in British India, at least some of whom were Indians, are lumped together as ‘the white man.’ Such overly simple interpretations may tell us a great deal about the Manichaean imagery of imperialism itself—or about the ideological bent of anti-colonial nationalisms, for that matter—but they are

Introduction 5 not helpful in understanding the complexities and subtleties of the actual colonial encounter. To the contrary, these stark ‘white-over-black’ models hinder our ability to grasp both the specific agency of historical actors as well as the heterogeneous and changing character of colonial cultures. In reality, internal stratifications along the lines of class, gender, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation make our understanding of the elusive ‘color line’ separating rulers from ruled murky indeed. As we have learned largely from the expanding field of ‘critical race studies’ in North America, Australia, and Europe, ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ are mutually constructed and historically contingent identities. 26 Even in colonial contexts, therefore, the racial status of both colonizers and colonized was, to a certain degree, subject to negotiation. Acknowledging the precarious character of race, as well as other taxonomies, Frederick Cooper has persuasively argued that it would make more sense to consider the shifting, negotiable “politics of difference” than to take a racially based ‘rule of difference’27 for granted. In other words, it is necessary to acknowledge the existence of these nonracial systems of stratification before analyzing how they were constructed in the colonial context. At this point, one can consider two aspects: (a) the strategies of the colonized to contest racial boundaries; and (b) those of the colonizers, who were constantly attempting to redraw these margins with an aim to reconcile claims to natural superiority with the pragmatic requirements of including segments of the local population in the common project of colonial administration. As Frederick Cooper convincingly writes; [T]he meanings of difference were always contested and rarely stable. As broad comparative study suggests, all empires, in one way or another, had to articulate difference with incorporation. Difference had to be grounded in institutions and discourses, and that took work. [ . . . ] Just where the lines of exclusion would be drawn—in terms of territory, race, language and gender, or the respectability of personal or collective behaviour was not a given of the “modern state,” but rather the focus of enormous and shifting debate [ . . . ] The openings and closures of such debates deserve careful examination. 28 One of the aims of this volume is to provide a careful examination of these imperial debates and investigate how they were translated into sociocultural practices. Acutely aware of the complex intersection of multiple hierarchies, our contributors explore strategies of assimilation and dissimilation and refi ne our understanding of the resulting practices of inclusion and exclusion in a variety of colonial contexts. The approaches are manifold. Although certain chapters focus on state policies designed to come to grips with difference (Fischer-Tiné, Mizutani, N. Cooper, F. Cooper, and Houben) or concentrate on the influence of missionaries (Conrad and Fülberg-Stolberg) , others are more concerned with the stories told by cultural artifacts (Amodeo, Gronemann, Pernau, and Magubane). Several of our

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authors (see especially Fischer-Tiné, Mizutani, Houben, and Magubane) have decided to approach these questions from the fringes of empires—an interesting choice given that a reading of the instructive work of Stallybrass and White suggests that 29 the socially marginal are often central on a symbolic level. Acts of actual or discursive exclusion and social ostracism regarding ‘subalterns’ or ‘in-between groups’ allow us to reconstruct the inner logic of hierarchies. In the context of colonial studies, it was Ann Laura Stoler who fi rst30 drew the attention of the wider academic community to the ‘tensions of empire’ resulting from the colonial existence of White underclasses and mixed-race communities. In her seminal work on Dutch Indonesia, she focused on the confl icting taxonomies of race, class, and gender inherent in colonial systems and called for a critical reevaluation of hitherto-accepted lines of demarcation.31 Further debates about hierarchies in colonial societies have been triggered by David Cannadine’s provocative study Ornamentalism, in which he draws attention to the alliances between British and ‘native’ elites and argues that class, rather than race, was the organizing principle of the British Empire.32 Valid scholarship grounded in an application of these theoretical impulses to empirical research has already been produced, although it predominantly originated by area scholars. As a result, we now possess largely isolated efforts that are rather limited in their utility for drawing connections across time and space.33 There certainly remains much to do in terms of the ‘broad comparative study’ advocated by Frederick Cooper. The philological and regional expertise needed to conduct transcolonial or even global research in this area can obviously be assembled only through the cooperation of area specialists, imperial and cultural historians, and those scholars from all fields interested in the ‘metropolis.’34 The collection of chapters presented here is an effort to move a step closer toward achieving such an ambitious project of collaboration. It unites a dozen international scholars whose research spans three different world regions that have been strongly shaped by their respective colonial pasts (South Asia, South-East Asia, and Africa), as well as historians and scholars of cultural studies focusing on imperialism and its repercussions on Europe’s major imperial powers (Britain, France, Germany, and Italy). As has been stressed already, the widening of the regional perspective goes hand in hand with the loosening of disciplinary boundaries. The theme of this book clearly privileges a historical approach, but scholars of other disciplines (social anthropology, literary and fi lm studies, gender studies, etc.) also are represented. Although all of them share the focus on the interplay of multiple hierarchies in an Empire setting, the perspectives and theoretical tools employed in the respective disciplines are highly variegated. Assembling them in a single volume, we felt, would not only help improve the interdisciplinary dialogue, but also do better justice to the multilayered phenomenon under survey. Last but not least, we want to reiterate that the

Introduction 7 familiar race–class–gender triad that largely drives this book—it is, after all, found in the title as well as most chapters—should be understood as only one part of a more comprehensive catalogue of differentiating categories (i.e., age, region, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, etc.). The research presented here not only confi rms the earlier observation that intersectionality is, indeed, a complex matter, 35 but it also suggests that there is much room for expanding the approach applied by our contributors to other taxonomies in the future.

THE CHAPTERS As is clear by now, this volume assembles studies on the construction, negotiation, and shifting of boundaries (i.e., on the concrete and symbolic division, exclusion, and inclusion processes within colonial settings). Several contributions explicitly aim to overcome a simplistic view of colonial discourse—that of a mechanical process producing clear-cut stereotypes and straight dichotomies. Taken together, the chapters marvelously illustrate the extent to which simultaneity and juxtaposition were characteristic features in the use of categories of differentiation. Therefore, we are left with gendered races and racialized classes as well as processes of ‘othering’ that were directed not only at the colonized populace, but applied within the colonizing societies. It is clear, then, that even colonizing powers could become trapped in their own imperial ideologies. Such entanglements become most obvious in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when spontaneous imperial conquest was replaced by a project of more systematic colonization. This was an uneven process that had to be constantly legitimized and defended against both critics at home and resistance abroad on the colonial frontier. Most of the contributions, therefore, focus on this period of transformation from the ‘scramble’ to the mise en valeur; from the phase of less-coordinated domination and exploitation to the thorough integration of Europe’s overseas possessions into an imperial world system and the ‘civilizing mission’ rhetoric that accompanied it.

Discipline, Punishment, and Racialism With the help of missionary sources, Sebastian Conrad (Chapter 2, this volume) is able to draw astonishing parallels between two German educational projects in the late nineteenth century. In his chapter “ ‘Education for Work’ in Colony and Metropole: The Case of Imperial Germany, c. 1880– 1914,” he discusses the role of missionaries in the training and ‘moral reclamation’ of workers in Germany as well as in German East Africa. The labor question was at the heart of the German colonizing project in East Africa right from its inception: The recruitment and retention of labor was critical

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for the smooth operation of the plantation economy established in the colony. Grounded in Protestant ethics and later adopted by Catholic German missionaries, who saw work as a fulfi llment of the Christian gospel, the effort to cultivate the so-called ‘lower races’ of Africa was carried out with the quasireligious zeal of a civilizing mission. Both on a discursive and a practical level, this overseas mission effort shows striking similarities with the Lutheran conception of an ‘inner mission.’ In the 1880s, the Christian social reformer Reverend von Bodelschwingh founded a number of ‘workers’ colonies’ in the northern German region of Westphalia. These camps were designed to educate the lower classes of the ‘homeless and work-shy’ with an aim to turn them into a productive labor force for a German Reich on the cusp of industrialization. The colonial connection arose when Pastor von Bodelschwingh became involved in imperial activities and transferred his maxim of ‘work, not alms’ to Africa. As Conrad indicates, “the treatment of the ‘outer other’ corresponded with the education of marginalized groups ‘within’.” However, these obvious overlaps provoked criticism from other missionaries, who felt that the erasure of the boundaries between Germany and her colonies threatened the self-construction of European superiority. Notwithstanding the parallels of the two mission movements (European ‘inner’ and African ‘outer’ mission work), Conrad carefully warns against equating the two in an oversimplified manner. One has to keep in mind that Prussian laws against vagrancy made the ‘reclamation’ of the chronically unemployed in the workers’ colonies and even the punishment of the workhouses ultimately projects of social reform designed for the benefit and ‘upliftment’ of the lower classes. Colonized Africans, in contrast, were seen primarily as a mere labor force—of economic importance, but never to be integrated into ‘respectable’ society. Conrad’s approach in examining the connections between Imperial Germany and her African colonies breaks down the traditional scholarly isolation of the two territories. When one stresses the congruencies of the rhetoric about both groups targeted by disciplinary measures, the treatment of both African plantation workers and German vagrants is a perfect example of interactions within the discursive construction of race and class. Education for work also was central to the regimes of punishment prevalent in the British Empire, as analyzed in Harald Fischer-Tiné’s (Chapter 3, this volume) “Hierarchies of Punishment in Colonial India: European Convicts and the Racial Dividend, c. 1860–1890.” Transferring R. W. Cornell’s concept of marginal masculinities and the patriarchal dividend to the idea of subaltern Whites in the colonial hierarchy, Fischer-Tiné proposes the model of the ‘racial dividend’ to precisely assess how poor Whites benefited from the situation coloniale despite their marginalization in terms of both class and respectability. His chapter draws on the body of literature regarding crime and punishment produced in the aftermath of Foucault’s landmark study Surveiller et Punir, as well as hitherto unexplored material on jail regimes and penal theories in colonial archives. These sources

Introduction 9 reveal the existence of blatantly unequal conditions for ‘native’ and White colonial convicts. Although the desire to provide an advanced and ‘enlightened’ system of punishment was an integral part of the British ‘civilizing mission’ ideology, Fischer-Tiné notes that this myth stood in stark contrast with the realities of the penal practice that was actually implemented in India. He reconstructs in great detail the debates leading to the evolution of a ‘penal pluralism’ that emerged in Britain’s most valuable colonial possession. Buttressed by arguments drawing on environmentalist as well as racist logic, the belief in the fundamental physical difference between Europeans and Indians led to the establishment of ‘White penitentiaries’ in British India from the 1860s onward. The chapter reveals the astonishing extent to which the White inmates of these institutions were privileged in terms of food, clothing, space, and general treatment, compared with their Indian brothers in distress. The fact that European prisoners could apparently cash in on a ‘racial dividend’ underscores once more that the discursive overlaps between the ‘othering’ of the lower White classes and that of ‘native’ colonial subjects should not mislead one to underestimate the importance of the ‘color line.’ Elusive and contradictory as it might have been, the fiction of racial difference continued to have a palpable impact on people’s lives in colonial regimes.

Racial Boundaries and State Politics Vincent J. H. Houben’s “Boundaries of Race: Representations of Indisch in Colonial Indonesia Revisited” (Chapter 4, this volume) builds a bridge to the postcolonial period in that it investigates both the racial politics of Dutch colonialism and their significance for today’s Netherlands. Given that colonial ideology, as part of the justification for European hegemony, was at pains to erect fi rm racial boundaries and that these boundaries were often put into question by the cross-racial sexual relations that were commonplace in the colonies, Houben argues that “the phenomenon of ‘mixed race’ is especially suited to scrutinize the contingent relationships between past and present as well as those between representations and social practice.” Beyond the clear-cut distinctions between Europeans, ‘natives,’ and foreign Orientals in Dutch colonial discourse, the term Indisch primarily refers to a group of people of mixed descent—the Eurasian offspring of White settlers and Indonesian women, as well as Creole settler families. As a community, the Indisch identify with a set of cultural practices, rather than with racial affi liation. In fact, a clear defi nition of what it means to be Indisch has always been elusive. The particular history of the Indisch has long been erased from the national collective memory in postcolonial Indonesia as well as in the Netherlands, where they migrated in large numbers after Indonesian independence. An official research project that sought to recover the Indisch past sponsored by the Dutch government produced four

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major publications between 2001 and 2006. Houben critiques these works, noting that the volumes dismantle received myths and gendered stereotypes while effectively inscribing the Indisch into Indonesian and Dutch history for the fi rst time. However, he regrets a certain neglect to reconstruct imperial and postcolonial Dutch contexts, as well as Indonesian nationalist ones—a strategy that would be useful for a better understanding of the community’s quest for identity between the two spaces. Houben urges a comparative approach to the question of mixed race as it relates to colonial boundaries; in this respect, his chapter dovetails nicely with Satoshi Mizutani’s (Chapter 5, this volume), which focuses on the ‘domiciled community’ of British India. In his chapter, “Contested Boundaries of Whiteness: Public Service Recruitment and the Eurasian and AngloIndian Association, 1876–1901”, Mizutani combines a careful reading of official sources concerning the colonial civil service’s recruitment policies in late nineteenth-century India with an examination of the combined steps toward self-organization that were undertaken by the domiciled community (people of White parentage born in India) and the so-called ‘Eurasians’ (those of mixed British and Indian descent). The analysis of the politics of these in-between groups leads Mizutani to a “critical re-examination of whiteness itself, and particularly its inner contradictions.” In the light of the community’s growing pauperization, the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association (EAIA), founded in 1876, argued that the racial, cultural, and religious affiliation between its members and the British justified the improvement of their social condition through reemployment in the public service. In fact, Eurasians held the majority of appointments in the public service until the mid-nineteenth century, when twin imperial policies (the Indianization of the lower ranks and the Europeanization of the higher positions) started to exclude them from government jobs in large numbers. British resistance to the claims of the EAIA were grounded in both economic reasons—the employment of natives was much cheaper—and on a conviction that an education in British elite institutions was a prerequisite for acquiring positions of imperial leadership. Hence, the community’s claim to Whiteness was refuted as ‘racial vanity.’ During their struggle for a ‘racial upgrading,’ the EAIA decided to drop the epithet ‘Eurasian’ in 1899 and emerged from the ashes as the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association. Thus, the leaders ostentatiously rejected ‘mixed-race’ classification and claimed both cultural Europeanness and racial Whiteness for all their members. Despite these efforts, however, the struggle ended in “an insurmountable historical impasse.” Mizutani’s chapter once again shows the extent to which ‘Whiteness’ as a category was attached to discursive power and class status and was thus by no means fi xed, but rather subject to constant redefinition by the ruling elites. Frederick Cooper’s “Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa, 1946–1960” (Chapter 6, this volume) shifts the spotlight to the post-World War II history of the French Empire. This phase has hitherto

Introduction 11 been rather neglected by scholars—the traditional view, after all, was that France spent the period desperately trying to keep its colonial dominion together despite the impending collapse of the imperial world order. A detailed analysis of French and African debates on the future of the French possessions, however, leads Cooper to somewhat different conclusions. He considers the various possible models for a political, legal, and structural reorganization of France’s relationship to her colonies as alternatives to the nation-state model that was fi nally adopted in virtually all parts of postcolonial Africa. The American historian refutes a simplified teleological view on nation-state-building as directly emanating from a colonial legacy and draws attention to the intense postwar process of renegotiating the politics of difference that took place in both France and her colonial possessions. By the end of a war in which colonial troops had fought alongside the French against the military might of the Axis powers, the granting of French citizenship to all inhabitants of the empire was meant to unite the immense French-dominated territories under a new banner of ‘French imperial community.’ This banner implied a rethinking and recalibration of the formerly well-established racial divisions to which such structures as varying legal systems (i.e. French law for Whites vs. the often arbitrary Indigénat regulations for locals) were bound. Yet the official turn against racism in French colonial policy was inseparable from serious doubts about the economic consequences of such a move. Under the new French constitution of 1946, the colonial empire was renamed l’Union française, and plans for a federal system, which would bind France and the colonies together against a new ideological backdrop, were discussed in the Assemblée Nationale. Although federalist plans were eventually shelved, bills regarding citizenship and the prohibition of forced labor passed as clear landmarks of a renegotiated imperial order. In 1958, the government of Charles de Gaulle renamed the Union: It was then known as la Communauté Française or ‘French Community,’ with overseas territories enjoying a status as affiliated member states. The ambivalence of France’s imperial project caused ongoing tensions between the defi nitions of inclusion and distinction, citizenship and nationality, centrality and autonomy. Backed by the Pan-African movement on the continent, African leaders would eventually begin claiming the right to complete independence, although the community model had initially been endorsed by future presidents such as Léopold Senghor and Félix Houphouët-Boigny. In no time, however, both France and the newly independent African states became more strictly nationalist in outlook, largely consigning this integrative project to the dustbin of history. Today one can only fi nd traces of it in the cultural politics of la Francophonie.

Cultural Representations of the Colony and the Colonized Problems of cultural representation in a colonial context are taken up by four contributors to our book. The role the visual media played in colonizing

12

Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann

processes is discussed in the chapters of Immacolata Amodeo, Nicola J. Cooper and Claudia Gronemann, whereas Margrit Pernau’s chapter is the only one that examines popular literature. In light of the fact that the heyday of European colonialism in Africa and Asia coincided with the age of mechanical reproduction of art, the importance of the circulation of images as a stimulus for the perception of the colonies and the modeling of the role of the colonizing nations can hardly be overestimated. Film, photography, and works of visual art helped to sell colonialism as a national enterprise, using gender and race patterns that ‘naturalized’ the imperial world order. At the same time, visual media, particularly when they depict the colonized, also are a highly ambiguous means of representation. Despite the apparent muteness of the pictured ‘other,’ the gaze of the painter, photographer, or filmmaker does not remain detached from its object. A picture can tell a number of stories, and the surface representation is but one of these. An image also can reveal the desires of the gazing artist and evoke powerful images of that which lies beyond the frame. Nicola J. Cooper’s “Gendering the Colonial Enterprise: La Mère-Patrie and Maternalism in France and French Indochina” (Chapter 7, this volume) analyzes an important shift in the visual representation of the French empire that took place after the year 1900. During the age of conquest and expansion, France’s colonial iconography was dominated by the figure of the masculine, bellicose soldier. Cooper shows how this male allegory of imperial strength was gradually replaced by a maternal figure at the historical phase of mise en valeur, when, at least in official parlance, the ‘civilizing’ and ‘development’ of the colonies, rather than their economic exploitation, became the raison d’être of the French Empire. France’s promise of civilization had to be proved to legitimize its imperial dominion. As Cooper demonstrates, an ideological “trinity of values and principles which came to embody the French nation’s vision of its colonial role—generosity, benevolence and protection” eventually found a gendered embodiment; seen as feminine, maternal qualities, they were expressed through a new colonial iconography. Cooper traces the representation of France as a “mère-patrie” via posters and paintings of the great colonial exhibitions in 1922 and 1931, as well as photographs. Painted works often used the classical allegorical device of the French nation as a woman, the famous Marianne. They simply relocated her to a colonial context, where she became more of a mother figure, caring for the childlike subjects of the French possessions. The modern medium of photography fulfi lled a slightly different role, used to propagate the necessity of French women’s participation in the colonial enterprise as a means to preserve the ‘purity of the race.’ The fear of miscegenation that would purportedly lead to the weakening of White supremacy, and hence jeopardize French civilization, could be assuaged via the caring presence of French wives and mothers in the colony. They would not only provide a check against métissage— benevolent work contributing to the moral upliftment of native women and

Introduction 13 children also was part of their alleged duties. In short, as Cooper writes, as “an idealized vision of colonial femininity, the French woman was to be a personification of la mère-patrie.” However, class divisions inside France and among colonial settlers and workers posed another threat to the colonial project. With regards to the fear of the “other within” (the lower classes), women who failed to live up to the bourgeois standards of French civilizational ideals were especially vilified. The ideological and iconographic use of the female gender thus illustrates how womanhood had become a symbolic site for negotiating between what was perceived as the best and the worst in French colonialism. Within the French colonial empire, the Maghreb occupied a particular position: It was simultaneously shrouded in the mystique of the distant Orient while also serving as the closest Mediterranean neighbor—Algeria, after all, became the largest French settler colony of the twentieth century. In “A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar: Visual Encounters and the Construction of the Female ‘Other’ in the Colonial Discourse of Maghreb,” Claudia Gronemann (Chapter 8, this volume) combines an investigation of colonial painting and photography with an analysis of postcolonial writing and fi lmmaking. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concept of cultural hybridity as a third space between self and other, Gronemann examines French visual representations of Arab women beyond their stereotypical role as the gendered colonial Other. She considers the possible meanings of a reciprocal gaze restoring agency to the painted, photographed, and fi lmed women from the North African colonies. This approach makes it possible to see the unstable and ambivalent moments in visual images that were originally used to construct colonial dichotomies. As Gronemann shows, an obvious link can be made to the postcolonial writing and fi lmmaking of Assia Djebar. As a female Algerian author, Djebar has adopted the colonial and male-driven French language as her artistic tool for a rewriting of history, making use of the colonial archive, both written and visual. In her film La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli (1982), Djebar subverts the colonial male gaze through a collage of French documentary material spoken by a female Arab voice, revealing that the images are informed by more than one perspective—that they exist as ambivalent spaces of representation. Djebar’s approach of reciprocity is further extended by Gronemann: Whereas the former rereads Delacroix’ famous painting Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, the latter reconsiders popular turn-of-the-century postcards portraying North African women. Focusing on the inherent hybridity in visual constructions of the female Oriental Other, this chapter reveals the ambiguous instability of a colonial order grounded in hierarchical gendered and racialized divisions. In “In the Empire’s Eyes: Africa in Italian Colonial Cinema Between Imperial Fantasies and Blind Spots”, Immacolata Amodeo (Chapter 9, this volume) explores the uses of colonial filmmaking in Italy, especially during the Fascist era (1922–1943). Under the leadership of Benito Mussolini,

14 Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann imperial designs in North-East Africa were envisioned as a popular project that would provide new territory for Italian emigrants and thus expand the nation’s fame overseas. Because a substantial body of colonial literature is conspicuous by its absence in Italy, radio and fi lm were the most important vehicles to propagate the colonial ideology during Italy’s short-lived colonial expansion in Ethiopia in the 1930s. In her analysis of three exemplary fi lms, Amodeo points out the particular way in which classical class, race, and gender divisions were subverted or even negated to legitimize further conquest in Africa and to gain the support of the Italian population for the building of the imperio. The documentary Il cammino degli eori (1937) uses a cinematic display of military strength to propagate Italy’s futuristic modernity and constructs the utopia of a nation without classes. The African colonies become an idealized space in which sharp contrasts that were characteristic of the Italian homeland—rich and poor, North and South, city and countryside—would be replaced by an egalitarian settler society. This colonial utopia is further legitimized by linking Mussolini’s imperial efforts in Ethiopia with the colonization of Northern Africa by the Roman Empire. Portrayed with monumental images in the fi lm Scipione l’africano (1937), the Roman conquest during the Punic Wars, which culminated in the imposition of a Pax Romana, supports a peculiar representation of race. According to the Italian colonial ideology of the fascist era, there had been a continuity of Roman-Italian culture in North Africa since antiquity. This legacy of a civilizing Italian presence allegedly even cut across the racial ‘otherness’ and inferiority generally attributed to Black Africa at the time. The rhetoric of the ‘Africa which is not black’ became a running trope in the debate on Italian North-East Africa, ambiguously transforming the region’s colonized inhabitants into ‘quasi-Whites.’ Thus, they were not only placed above other Sub-Saharan Africans on an imaginary ‘civilizational ladder,’ but their territory also was considered to be a natural part of Italy. Finally, in Amodeo’s third example of the popular fi lm Tripoli bel suol d’amore (1954), a case of colonial nostalgia shot a decade after the imperio had collapsed, the category of gender is used to structure colonial power relations. The story of an Italian couple during the war in Libya allows for a “shift in gender dichotomy”—both Italian men and women appear as empowered, masculine characters, whereas the effeminate Libyans are represented as weak, degenerate, and morally corrupt. Margrit Pernau’s “Rationalizing the World: British Detective Stories and the Orient” (Chapter 10, this volume) proves that even a literary genre as conservative as classical English crime fiction can provide new food for thought regarding colonial hierarchies. It is widely accepted among literary scholars working in this field that detective characters function as allegorical embodiments of Western rationality and middle-class values. If this is indeed the case, one would expect, following the logic of Said’s Orientalism, that whenever Orientals figure in these novels and stories, they would be portrayed as irrational and primitive natives. Likewise, one

Introduction 15 would assume that Europe’s Oriental colonies would be constructed as sites of mystery and places of decadence. Pernau’s rereading of some popular British detective novels set in colonial India, the Near East, or European peripheries clearly shows that there is more to the story than initially meets the eye. She rather argues that symbolic narrations in crime fiction can be used as a case in point for the claim of writing ‘new imperial histories’ with the aim of “abolishing the boundary between European and non-European history and to integrate both into a common frame of reference.” Pernau’s careful analysis of texts by Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle focuses on three aspects that are difficult to combine with a postorientalist interpretation: (a) the frequent dependence of the detective on non-European, nonrational, and non-middle-class characters to solve the crime; (b) the intersection of class and gender as structural categories in Britain with race and the Orientalist discourse; and (c) the portrayal of the Orient as an ambiguous space of male adventure, cutting through established colonial hierarchies and blurring the distinction between self and other. As her examples show, the approach of a new historiography beyond the analysis of well-known dichotomies also implies a tearing down of the boundaries between ‘low’ and ‘high’ text genres, scientific and literary writing, and history and cultural studies. The popular detective story, then, although it should certainly not be mistaken as a postcolonial genre avant la lettre, raises clear questions about the established orders of the rational colonizer and irrational local populations, as well as the race, class, and gender implications of Britain’s relation with its empire.

Shades of Blackness: African-American Connections The chapters by Zine Magubane and Katja Füllberg-Stolberg add a fresh perspective to research on European colonialism in Africa, as they analyze the role of the symbolic or physical presence of Afro-America in the process. African Americans were certainly the racialized ‘others’ for White elites in the United States. In Africa, however, they were perceived as representatives of modern Western civilization despite their ‘blackness,’ provoking a constant negotiation of the boundaries between race and culture. What was the role of African Americans during colonialism? How did they participate and with what motivations? How was African-American culture received by Africans? What new types of identity politics could emerge from the encounter between African Americans and colonized Africans? Katja Füllberg-Stolberg explores a fascinating chapter of missionary history in “African Americans in West and Central Africa in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Agents of European Colonial Rule?” (Chapter 11, this volume). She points out that the supposed complicity between Christian missions and colonial states in Africa has been put into question by recent research. Given the pervasive influence of racial thinking in the period under survey, the role in Africa of Black missionaries from the

16

Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann

United States and the Caribbean proves to be especially complex. Although African-American Christians were mostly convinced of the superiority of both their religion and the Western culture they had adopted over ‘African backwardness,’ their sense of racial solidarity with the African population lent an unusual twist to their missionary work. To be sure, a career in one of the many churches and missionary organizations was one of the few options open to African Americans to improve their social status around the year 1900. Therefore, their work in promoting Christianity in Africa might easily have been done out of self-interest. However, as Füllberg-Stolberg’s detailed research in American missionary archives also proves, tensions between White and Black American missionaries arose soon after the intensification of missionary activities in the late nineteenth century. Her case studies leave no doubt that these conflicts resulted in an obvious racial discrimination against the latter. Despite the fact that they generally enjoyed better access to the African population, African-American missionaries were denied positions of leadership within their organizations. Because they were perceived as a threat to the racial order of American society at home, so they were also considered potentially dangerous by the European colonial governments in Africa. Many colonial administrators were suspicious that Black missionaries might incite Africans against colonial rule; by 1920, Blacks were no longer sent to work as American missionaries in Africa. Perhaps the most intriguing section of Füllberg-Stolberg’s chapter is her account of the African career of John Edward Ricketts. Ricketts was a Jamaican who fi rst worked for the American Baptist Missionary Union in the Congo Free State. After his dismissal, he went to Nigeria to found his own missionary outpost. His fate there illustrates the unique situation of an African American as cultural go-between, simultaneously inside and outside of the boundaries of the colonial system. British authorities were suspicious because he had adopted African customs and was partly integrated into the local society, although he was still considered an outside representative of the colonial powers by the local population. In the concluding chapter “The Boundaries of Blackness: African-American Culture and the Making of a Black Public Sphere in Colonial South Africa”, Zine Magubane (Chapter 12, this volume) reconsiders the transfer of African-American cultural practices to South Africa as a means to renegotiate Black African identity and agency in a colonial framework. Minstrelsy theatre and gospel jubilee choirs, which had been popularized in nineteenth-century America, were received by various groups in South Africa in the 1890s and interpreted in different ways. For White settlers and colonizers, the display of ridicule and stereotypes in blackface minstrelsy confi rmed their racialized worldviews. Mission-educated Africans, in contrast, received the ‘modernity’ of African-American cultural practices as an encouraging prospect for their own construction of identity. Yet another stance was taken by uneducated African workers in the diamond mines: Many of them mimicked elements of minstrelsy to challenge the

Introduction 17 racial subordination they were confronted with on a daily basis. Therefore, this South African tableau became as contradictory as minstrelsy in America had already been for decades. Started as a show by White comedians who attempted to make a mockery of Blacks by stereotyping them in an unflattering way, it had quickly been adopted by African Americans. For example, Black minstrelsy ensembles became popular soon after the end of the Civil War. Through this appropriation, minstrelsy became a more ambiguous cultural enterprise, able to offer spaces for the self-affi rmation of Black artists, and, at least to some extent, turn external stereotyping into self-irony. As Magubane explains, mimicry as a means to construct and erase boundaries of race, class, and gender was at the heart of the minstrelsy show. One of its types, the ‘Dandy’ figure, was particularly popular among male Black workers in the South African mines who took performance elements from the stage to the streets. The elegant outlook of these ‘Dandies,’ their playful blurring of gender roles, their habits of conspicuous consumption, and, most of all, their ostentatiously self-confident behavior became perceived as a serious challenge by White males. Whites on the lower rungs of the social ladder in particular felt that their racial and economic supremacy was under siege. On still another level, the successful South African tour of AfricanAmerican Jubilee singers offered an example of a renegotiation of blackness as a part of modernity to the Black South African elite. Like the American artists, the fi rst South African gospel formations strongly relied on White managers. This did not, however, hinder the personal success stories of Black upward mobility among their members. Besides, Magubane carefully analyzes how “transnational flows of persons, practices, and ideologies” from African America to South Africa affected debates on education—the stereotyping in minstrelsy was used as a normative argument for Whites instructing Blacks according to the United States–Tuskegee model of industrial training, preventing them from attaining levels of higher intellectual education. Magubane’s chapter is a persuasive example of the dominant theme of the present volume. She aptly sums up our central message when she concludes: “Although the rhetoric of imperialism continually referenced the sanctity of imperial boundaries and was predicated on the rigid segregation of races, classes, and genders, in actual fact colonialism was, at its core, an exercise in boundary transgression.”

NOTES 1. There is a sophisticated debate surrounding the precise conceptual meaning of the terms imperialism and colonialism. In this volume, we defi ne them— very broadly—as two sides of the same coin. Imperialism is understood as the drive of a state or corporation to make its military, political, and/or economic influence felt beyond its national boundaries. Colonialism refers to

18 Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann

2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

the effects of such efforts on the territories and populations under influence. It describes the actual relations between the ethnically and/or culturally foreign minority of ruling elites, on the one hand, and the local population of colonized territories, on the other hand. Imperialism, hence, refers to the so-called ‘metropole,’ whereas colonialism considers the phenomena in the ‘periphery.’ However, as the chapters of this book amply illustrate, the two aspects are often so closely intertwined that the choice of a particular term is a matter of emphasis, rather than clear-cut signification. See, for instance, Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2003); Tony Ballantyne, “Empire, Knowledge and Culture: From Proto-Globalization to Modern Globalization,” in Globalization in World History, ed. A. G. Hopkins (London: Pimlico, 2002), 115–40; and, somewhat ahead of its time, Christopher A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (London-New York: Longman, 1989). Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). See also Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier, eds., Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s-1930s (New York: Palgrave, 2007). Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004). See, for example, Adam McKeown, “Global Migration, 1846–1940,” Journal of World History 15, no. 2 (2004): 155–89; Rozina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London-Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2002); David Eltis, ed., Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Crispin Bates, ed., Community, Empire and Migration: South Asians in Diaspora (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Madhavi Kale, Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery, and Indian Indentured Labor Migration in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); and David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See again the tremendously commercially successful, although highly controversial, Niall Ferguson, Empire. For a brilliant response to Ferguson, who has been accused of acting as an apologist for the British variety of imperialism, see Douglas M. Peers, “Reading Empire, Chasing Tikka Masala: The Contested State of Imperial History,” Canadian Journal of History 34, no. 1 (2004): 87–104. An equation of nineteenth-century colonial empires with current global power structures also is common in the works of so-called ‘globalisation critics.’ See, for example, Ray Kiely, Empire in the Age of Globalisation: US Hegemony and Neoliberal Disorder (London-Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2005); David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); and the tremendously influential work by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). The most comprehensive and insightful comparative analysis and theoretical engagement with ‘civilizing mission’ ideologies to date is Boris Barth and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Zivilisierungsmissionen: Imperiale Weltverbesse rung seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Konstanz: UVK, 2005). See also the influential article by Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology,” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (2004): 31–64. On French and British notions of the civilizing mission, see A. L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican

Introduction 19

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997); and Harald Fischer-Tiné and Michael Mann, eds., Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India (London: Anthem Press, 2004), respectively. See, for instance, David Arnold, “Europe, Technology and Colonialism in the 20th Century,” History and Technology 21, no. 1 (2005): 85–106; Idem, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); and Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). Although these works stress the hegemonic role of European science, the creative appropriation of Western disciplines by colonized elites has been underscored in Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). See, for instance, Peder Anker, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); and the pioneering contribution by Richard H. Grove, Ecology, Climate and Empire: Colonialism and Global Environmental History, 1400– 1940 (Cambridge: White Horse Press, 1997). See, for example, Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine, 1859–1914 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris, eds., Race, Science and Medicine, 1700–1960 (London/ New York: Routledge, 1999); Myron Echenberg, Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914–1945 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002); and Richard C. Keller, Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). For example, Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, eds., Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); James Mills and Satadru Sen, eds., Confronting the Body: The Politics of Physicality in Colonial and Post-Colonial India (London: Anthem Press, 2004); E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c. 1800–1947 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001); and Helen Callaway, “Dressing for Dinner in the Bush: Rituals of Self-Defi nition and British Imperial Authority,” in Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning in Cultural Contexts, eds. Ruth Barnes and Joanne B. Eicher, 232–48 (New York: Berg, 1991). The ever-growing body of literature exploring the relationship among gender, sexuality, and empire includes Philippa Levine, ed., Gender and Empire (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Idem, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003); Clare Midgley, ed., Gender and Imperialism (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1998); Inderpal Grewal, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996); Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995); Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth

20

13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann Century (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1995); Ann Laura Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia,” in Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era, ed. Micaela di Leonardo, 51–101 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1992); and Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). For an early example of the sophisticated analysis of imperial literature, see Benita Parry, Delusions and Discoveries: Studies on India in the British Imagination, 1880–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). Compare, for example, Hamid Irbouh, Art in the Service of Colonialism: French Art Education in Morocco, 1912–1956 (London/New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005); Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, Crime and Empire: The Colony in Nineteenth-Century Fictions of Crime (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); David Henry Slavin, Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919–1939: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Prem Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology, and Identity (New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 2001); Anne Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the Native and the Making of European Identities (London: Leicester University Press, 2002); Phillip Darby, The Fiction of Imperialism: Reading Between International Relations and Postcolonialism (London/Washington, DC: Cassell, 1998); Gail Ching–Liang Low, White Skins/Black Masks: Representation and Colonialism (London-New York: Routledge, 1996); Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993); Thomas R. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); John M. Mackenzie, ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). After the publication of Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), debates in colonial and imperial studies have come increasingly under the influence of theories that originated in literary and cultural studies. This has not always been appreciated, especially among historians. For a particularly critical view of the postmodern and postcolonial approaches used in the ‘cult-lit’ field with a focus on imperialism and colonialism, see, for instance, David Washbrook, “Orients and Occidents: Colonial Discourse Theory and the Historiography of the British Empire,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 5: Historiography, ed. Robin W. Winks, 596–611 (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Between 1982 and 2005, twelve volumes of Subaltern Studies were published. Despite their focus on South Asian history and culture, the books have been tremendously resonant in global academia. For an overview of the debates they provoked, see also David Ludden, ed., Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalisation of South Asia (London: Anthem Press, 2002). Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Kathleen Wilson, ed., A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Compare also Durba Ghosh and Dane Kennedy, eds., Decentring Empire: Britain, India, and the Transcolonial World (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006); Catherine Hall and Sonya O.

Introduction 21

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

Rose, eds., At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back?: The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow, UK/New York: Pearson Longman, 2005); Zine Magubane, Bringing the Empire Home: Race, Class, and Gender in Britain and Colonial South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); John Marriott, The Other Empire: Metropolis, India, and Progress in the Colonial Imagination (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 2003); Sudipta Sen, Distant Sovereignty: National Imperialism and the Origins of British India (New York: Routledge, 2002); Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Cambridge: Polity, 2002); and Peter Van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). For a similar approach in the German context, see Sebastian Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (München: C.H. Beck, 2006); and Birthe Kundrus, Moderne Imperialisten: Das Kaiserreich im Spiegel seiner Kolonien (Köln: Böhlau, 2003). See, for example, Jonathan Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). For an example of early migration from the colonies to the imperial heartland, see Michael H. Fisher, Counterfl ows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain, 1600–1857 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004). Mrinalini Sinha, “Britain and the Empire: Toward A New Agenda for Imperial History,” Radical History Review 72 (1998): 163–74. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1992). Antoinette Burton, ed., After the Imperial Turn: Thinking With and Through the Nation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). See, for instance, Antoinette Burton, “Thinking Beyond the Boundaries: Empire, Feminism and the Domains of History,” Social History 26, no. 1 (2001): 61–71. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988). Himani Bannerjee, “Age of Consent and Hegemonic Social Reform,” in Inventing Subjects: Studies in Hegemony, Patriarchy, and Colonialism, idem, 72–98 (New Delhi: Tulika, 2001). Compare, for instance, W. P. Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2002); Birgit B. Rasmussen, ed., The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin, eds., Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1999); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). In the German context, compare Maureen Eggers et al., eds., Mythen, Masken und Subjekte: Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland (Münster: Unrast, 2005). The term was famously introduced in Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

22

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28. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 23. 29. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Methuen, 1986), especially 125–48. 30. She was able to build on a number of earlier pioneering studies that had gone largely unnoticed. See, for instance, David Arnold’s superb work on White dropouts and the complexities of racial categories in British India: “European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Commonwealth History 7, no. 2 (1979): 104–27; and idem, “White Colonization and Labour in Nineteenth Century India,” Journal of Commonwealth History 11, no. 2 (1983): 133–58. 31. Ann Laura Stoler, “Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 1 (1989): 134–61; and idem, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race and Morality in Colonial Asia,” in Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era, ed. Micaela di Leonardo, 51–101 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and idem, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 8. See also the influential essay Frederick Cooper and Anne Laura Stoler, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in eds., idem., 1–56, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in A Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 32. David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (Oxford/New York: Oxford Uniersity Press, 2001). For a critical discussion of Cannadine’s hypothesis, see the articles in the special issue of the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 3, no. 1 (2002). 33. To name but a few outstanding examples: Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995); Elizabeth Buettner, “Problematic Spaces, Problematic Races: Defi ning Europeans in Late Colonial India,” Women’s History Review 9, no. 2 (2000): 277–99; Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda, Domesticating the Empire; Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1998); and Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 34. Compare, for example, the gender- and ‘race’-oriented studies on narratives and performance in the metropolis by Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); Judith R. Walkowitz, “The Indian Woman, the Flower Girl, and the Jew: Photo Journalism in Edwardian London,” Victorian Studies 42, no. 1 (1998–1999): 3–46; and Joseph McLaughlin, Writing the Urban Jungle: Reading Empire in London from Doyle to Eliot (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2000). 35. For a theoretical discussion see also Leslie McCall, “The Complexity of Intersectionality,” Signs 30, no. 3 (2005): 1771–1800.

2

“Education for Work” in Colony and Metropole The Case of Imperial Germany, c. 1880–1914 Sebastian Conrad

At the dedication of the fi rst workers’ colony in Wilhelmsdorf in 1882, Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh from Bielefeld extended the prospect of a “great treasure” to the “vagabonds” and homeless people who were to be housed there, “namely work itself.”1 Regular employment would ensure that “these people, who appear to be lost to civil society, may be preserved from utter degradation and that they may be won back to work and order,” as the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich emphasized on assuming the patronage of Wilhelmsdorf at the end of that year.2 The rejection of compulsion was the guiding principle of this “education for work”: “We do not wish to entertain an involuntary worker for even a single hour.” However, this pedagogy promised sustained success only in conjunction with Christianity: Only “a blend of prayer and work . . . bears blessed fruit for eternity.”3 Let us now leave the workers’ colony and turn to work in the overseas colonies. The ‘education of the Negro for work’ had been a central project of state and particularly church policy since the annexation of the fi rst colonies in 1884. The missions saw their task as that of gradually educating “the idle native to voluntary labor” and to enable him “unobtrusively” to achieve “an existence worthy of a human being.”4 Here, too, success apparently depended on avoiding any appearance of compulsion, instead appealing to a Christian sense of duty: “Ora et labora” was the missions’ motto. In Africa, too, the “link between prayer and work” seemed to be the precondition of becoming human. Were these similarities mere chance? Or was there indeed a link between East Westphalia and East Africa? Was there a connection between the efforts to pull the ‘work-shy elements’ off the highways of the German Reich and guide them to bourgeois society—and the attempts to elevate members of the “lower races, despite their indolence,” to a higher cultural level?5 Did the disciplining of the homeless in the German Reich have an effect on the simultaneous project of ‘civilizing’ the natives in the African colonies, or was it even the other way around?

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Posing questions such as these suggests links between Germany and its overseas counterpart in ‘New Germany’ that may have been closer than generally believed. The relationship between the German Reich and its African colonies has long been regarded as a one-way street. The effects of colonial rule, understood as a civilizing and cultural mission, or rather as exploitation and extermination, have been almost exclusively localized in Africa. By contrast, the German Reich has appeared as a separate, autonomous entity.6 In this chapter, I try to challenge this logic. Following approaches from the context of ‘postcolonial studies,’ I attempt to examine metropolitan Germany and its colonies within a single analytical field.7 This approach includes not only questions of the influence of imperialism on the colonial periphery, but also the effects of the imperial project on the German Reich as social practices were constituted interdependently under the asymmetrical conditions of colonial rule. This approach suggests that both the dominated regions in Africa and Wilhelmine society were impacted, to a degree that needs to be explored further, by the effects of the colonial experience.8

THE COLONIAL “WORKERS’ QUESTION” As early as 1885, just one year after the acquisition of the African colonies, the German East Africa Society in Berlin announced a prize for answering the question: “How does one best educate the Negro for plantation work?”9 In fact, within the framework of colonial policy, no question was so thoroughly discussed as the problem of the recruitment—and education—of a suitable labor force. The abolition of slavery had transformed access to native workers into a difficult undertaking for the European plantation economy. The use of German workers appeared to be prohibited by climatic factors. The shortage of wage laborers confronted the German merchants and entrepreneurs with serious problems. At the German Colonial Congress of 1902 in Berlin, Major Morgen described the “worker question” as “the most important in our colonies, with it the tropical colonies stand and fall [and] with the colonies, I am convinced, stands and falls the Motherland.”10 At the center of the debates on education for work stood the question of the appropriate means. Because slavery was largely eliminated as a means to recruit a labor force, three strategies that were being considered, despite vigorous conflicts among their proponents, certainly had complementary applications: explicitly coercive measures, the establishment of economic incentives, and the development of the inner human being. Yet the success of coercive and fiscal policies remained small. This supported the opinion of the Christian missions that had long stated the opinion “that inner transformation and inner motives are indispensable when people are really to be educated for work.”11 Education for work was soon

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transformed into a vital field of missionary activity. Thus, it was even suggested that one should “exchange the Gospel of Christ with the Gospel of labor” and “abandon conversion to Christianity as the actual purpose of the mission, at least for a time, and to replace it with education for work.”12 The missions, both Catholic and Protestant, were an integral part of German colonialism and only in exceptional cases voiced criticism of the colonial project in fundamental form. The native population, likewise, typically viewed the colonial state and the missions as part of the same regime. This did not preclude that many missionaries stylized themselves as the representatives of the ‘natives,’ and in many cases missionaries indeed were crucial in exposing colonial mismanagement and infringements. But more important than the divide between colonial state and Christian missions was the opposition of both toward the sometimes reckless measures of plantation owners. In particular, the limitation, if not abolition, of child labor was one of the aims of missionary activity, mostly for humanitarian reasons, but also because this kind of exploitation tended to reduce the numbers of children in the mission schools.13 Different from the German planters and settlers, the missions of both confessions stressed the nonextractive and humanitarian character of work as performed on the mission plantations. According to the rhetoric of the Christian press, work in the missions was aimed primarily at character building. The settlers typically reproduced this image by complaining about the emphasis laid on religious education. This reciprocal stereotype should not lead us to ignore, however, that most mission stations employed workers for low-level wages and economically speaking did not fundamentally differ from other economic enterprises.14 However, there were differences. Generally speaking, work in the mission stations was less compulsive and more popular than on the large plantation complexes. We do not know much about the way African workers perceived their work. There are hardly any written documents that bear witness to the various experiences of work and the differences among education for work, forced labor, and the remains of slavery. For the reconstruction of the reactions of workers, historians are largely dependent on the reports of missionaries and the colonial bureaucracy.15 Through close readings against the grain of the colonial archive, individual agency may be recovered. In the past few years, a few studies have appeared in which the agency and subjective strategies of African workers have been recuperated.16 The fact, for example, that mission stations frequently were the goal of refugee workers fleeing the hardships of plantation labor both attests to the differences in work conditions and to the space this opened up to individual agency. A subaltern history of African workers remains a difficult project. But even in cases where the scarcity of sources makes it difficult to pin down individual ‘experience,’ the way colonial authorities reacted to forms of compliance and resistance, and the transformations of colonial discourse betray the traces of otherwise undocumented social action.

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The education for work emerged as one of the central goals of colonial policy, and many self-styled experts debated the most suitable strategies. The broad panorama of recommended measures typically included the abolition of polygamy. “Without the express demand of monogamy,” a lecturer stated at the German Colonial Congress of 1902, “a people cannot be educated for work.”17 But the educational reach went even further. In regard to an “education for work,” the entrepreneur Hermann Bibo emphasized that it was essential “to touch on questions which appear to be only loosely connected with direct education.”18 As Bourdieu would later say, “the whole cunning of pedagogical reason lies in uprooting the essential in the guise of promoting the insignificant.”19 Bibo dedicated an entire book to this issue, in which he painted a broad panorama of hygienic measures. These measures included washing in cold water in the morning (“to harden the body”), regulations on hair (“cut short”) and clothing (“the upper body bare”), and also a plan for a “standardized house” that would guarantee comprehensive “cleanliness of dwelling and body.”20 Beginning early in their youth, children should be submitted to a minute time schedule, which would regulate getting up, work, meals, and bedtime. In the process, “they must never be left to themselves! A teacher leads their activities without interruption”—that was the idea in this colonial version of Bentham’s Panopticon. The production of working subjects, independently of their inner dispositions and attitudes, would be achieved by disciplining their bodies. The demands of the modern era—training for plantation production and “simultaneously for their own good, to moral and happy human beings”—were engraved onto their material surface. 21 Not least, their nutrition and metabolism would have to be adapted: “We can only make history with grain-eating peoples.”22 Work, subjects, history—in the colonies, too, this was the Holy Trinity of progress.

THE “WORKERS’ COLONIES” Yet the problem of ‘work-shyness’ not only concerned the colonies. In the late nineteenth century, it was also increasingly viewed as a serious evil within the German Reich. The disinclination or inability to pursue regular work, generally understood as dependent wage labor, was increasingly perceived as a social problem. Beginning with the foundation of the Empire, social reformers, lawyers, and politicians sought ways to deal with it. In 1912, the ‘Law Against Work-Shyness’ was passed in Prussia. Since the mid-1870s in particular, the ‘work-shy’—the collective term for all unemployed and homeless persons, beggars, tramps, and vagabonds— were increasingly perceived as a social calamity. In 1880, approximately one percent of the Empire’s population (i.e., some 400,000 persons) lived on the streets. They were only part of the drastically increasing transient movement that, according to the Reich statistics of 1907, had drawn one

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out of two Germans away from the place of his birth. Particularly between 1890 and 1914, mobility became “a mass phenomenon without precedent in Europe.” 23 Begging was also a growing problem as a result of lengthening periods of unemployment. Bourgeois circles founded numerous antibegging associations and soup kitchens to reduce begging from door to door. In 1880, for instance, 320,548 persons were convicted of begging and vagrancy. 24 To relieve this assembly of evils, Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh from Bethel founded the fi rst of his ‘workers’ colonies’ in Wilhelmsdorf near Bielefeld in 1882. These settlements were oriented on the model of the so-called “Herbergen zur Heimat” (“Hometown Hostels”), which the Lutheran Inner Mission had established throughout Germany to gain control over mobility and fluctuation of the unemployed. However, Bodelschwingh’s concept was not only aimed at setting up hostels in which vagrants and the homeless would be offered a primitive bed and a simple meal to ease the bitterest distress and to prevent utter depravity. For him, labor stood at the center of his social reform project: “Work, not alms” was the guiding principle in his colonies: “Education for work . . . is an incomparably greater benefit than a piece of bread handed out for free.” 25 Just three years after the founding of Wilhelmsdorf, thirteen workers’ colonies were in operation, and by 1890, this number had increased to twenty-two. They were largely initiated and fi nanced by the Protestant middle classes, but also by individual aristocrats, the government, and the Church. The colonies admitted the homeless and unemployed, who were compelled to perform daily work lasting up to four months in exchange for room, board, and clothing. They were also paid a small wage with which, at the end of their stay in the colony, they were returned to civil life, ideally in connection with a new job. 26 The workers’ colonies were not prisons, but rather were based on the principle of voluntarism; the unemployed could leave the colony at any time, aside from the moral pressure exerted on them. The daily schedule was organized down to the last detail. The workers’ colonies were a laboratory of bourgeois sensibilities. Days in the colonies were filled with work, largely simple manual activities such as wood chopping, stone breaking, road construction, and, above all, agricultural work. The emphasis on field work betrayed the conservative ideals of a premodern society untouched by urbanization, which the aristocratic Bodelschwingh entertained.

COLONIAL WORKERS’ COLONIES The parallels between these two great projects of the bourgeois cultural mission (overseas and workers’ colonies) can scarcely be ignored, even if their fields of activity were separated by national borders, oceans and long journeys, by the assumption of different “spheres of culture” and racial

28

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differences. In both, labor was seen as the core of the individual, as the starting point for the constitution of the subject. Labor also functioned as an instrument of cultural ‘elevation’ and distinguished the savages from the civilized—or made it possible, as it were, to bridge the gap between the two. Can we then say that the ‘work-shy’ were, so to speak, strangers in their own country? In conceptual and rhetorical terms, the two groups were certainly not all that different. ‘Foreigners’ and ‘savages’ are terms that were used to characterize both domestic tramps and African ‘natives.’ It was also common to see them as ‘children’ in need of benevolent protection. The notion that Christian social work cast “light into darkness” was also common to both discourses. This idea referred both to the “darkness of the big city” and the “dark continent”—black Africa. 27 The parallels between the treatment of the ‘work-shy’ in the Empire and the ‘natives’ in the colonies were not restricted to central metaphors and rhetoric. The motives behind the establishment of workers’ and overseas colonies point to a series of similarities. The missionary impetus that gave both projects part of their momentum was only one aspect. Added to this was the fear of social revolution, which drove Christian social work and also was a significant motive of colonial acquisition after 1884, as the colonial activist Friedrich Fabri and chancellor Bismarck repeatedly emphasized.28 After all, the founding of colonies was also a reaction to the rise of uncontrolled mobility and migration. While the workers’ colonies were designed to check uncontrolled movement on the German highways, the African colonies received the task of shifting the migration of Germans abroad (particularly to America) to New Germany. But the mere identification of common motives does not adequately account for the intertwining of the colony and the homeland. Regardless of the rhetorical barriers between Germany and Africa, between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ we can see examples of a direct exchange reaching beyond metaphor and ideology. Indeed, an opportunity for direct intervention arose when Bodelschwingh was asked by the Evangelical Mission Society for German East Africa to become involved in the colonies. He accepted: “It is a fi ne thing to care for poor ailing whites, but it is even fi ner to care for black heathens.” Bodelschwingh’s colonial fantasies were nourished by the dream of a premodern utopia that he hoped to encounter in the “indescribably different conditions” in Africa. The activity among the “Negro tribes” who were “as yet untouched” by the phenomenon of industrial society appeared as the idealized model for his idyllic rural workers’ colonies outside of the vast Babylon of Berlin. Without ever having been “there,” he looked beyond mechanized mass society in search of a field of activity that “is still remarkably unsullied by decadent European culture.”29 The Evangelical Mission Society—called “Berlin III” to distinguish it from the Berlin and Gossner Mission Societies—was founded in 1885 at the peak of the colonial euphoria in Germany. Because of internal differences,

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the new mission society remained precarious in its fi rst years. This only changed when Bodelschwingh was coopted onto the board of directors in 1890 and increasingly took charge of the mission. He set up a seminary, to which emperor Wilhelm II contributed 3,000 Marks from his private budget, and organized the dispatch of missionaries. In 1906, the main office of Berlin III was moved to Bethel.30 The gradual transfer from Berlin III to the Bethel Mission was viewed with suspicion by the other mission societies. The criticism was not only aimed at its close link to colonial agitation and to the local German colonial administration. The critics were mainly concerned that the boundaries between the motherland and the colonies were being erased and the differences between the two spheres were being contaminated. “While for Father all work areas of the earth flowed together into one and the boundaries of the homeland and the heathen world overlapped,” as Bodelschwingh’s son Gustav recalled, the critics were disturbed that Bodelschwingh “has placed the German protectorates on precisely the same level as the German provinces.”31 The pastor from Bethel repeatedly had to defend himself against accusations that he had disregarded the dissimilar nature of outer mission and social work within. But, as he always maintained: “Internal and outer mission cannot be separated.”32 The mission fi rst established itself in Dar-es-Salaam. However, Bodelschwingh soon insisted that the mission’s activities be moved to the Usambara mountain region. The names of the mission stations that his missionaries founded and that maintained constant contact with Bethel sounded familiar: Hohenfriedberg, Lobetal, Wilhelmstal, and Bethel. But the similarity went much further than a mere coincidence of names. The missions were the embodiment of the Bethel maxim of “work, not alms.” In Lutindi, one of the Bethel Mission’s model projects, it indeed “placed more emphasis on work than on school instruction,” as an observer reported with admiration.33 To the missionary Charles Buchner, “every mission station always appeared as a work station.” Life in the missions was “work and more work.”34 No wonder that one visitor said about Lutindi: “I felt as if everything was exactly as in Bethel; the similarity is remarkable.”35 Beyond motivational and organizational parallels, the mission stations in the colonies and the Bethel institutions and workers’ colonies were linked in the circulation of social practices. Education for work in East Africa was already being practiced in East Westphalia. The missionaries, teachers, and deaconesses who had volunteered to work “with our black Reichsgenossen” (Imperial subjects) (Bodelschwingh) were prepared for their tasks in their interaction with the work-shy and, above all, with epilepsy sufferers in Bethel. The missionary Paul Döring described how he and his colleagues “received our special training for the work among the heathens in the Bielefeld Institutions.” The instruction was not least aimed at “becoming simple and natural and practical,” which is the way one apparently had to be in Africa. “We were expected to learn how to deal with children. . . .

30

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Everything was aimed . . . at work among the heathen, which, after all, are like children in many respects.”36

MARGINALIZATION AND IDENTITY The treatment of the work-shy in the German Reich and the cultural ‘elevation’ of the colonial subjects overlapped and influenced each other. 37 Terminology and rhetorical tropes, guiding motives, money, as well as actors and elements of pedagogical practice circulated back and forth. The transfer from Bethel and Berlin to the mission stations of East Africa was gradually professionalized and institutionalized. As a consequence, the treatment of vagabonds, beggars, vagrants, and work-shy itinerants within the German Reich was also loaded with connotations that evoked the colonial experience. “Is not,” Bodelschwingh asked rhetorically, “the work of the inner mission in our modern great cities, where so many thousands of un-baptized children are growing up, also an outer mission?”38 The treatment of the ‘outer other’ corresponded with the education of marginalized groups within. Just as nation building presupposed the creation of a stable boundary between the homeland and the colonies, regardless of all processes of exchange and transfer, the founding of the ‘inner Reich’ depended on internal exclusion. This included discriminatory policies toward the Poles, particularly the settlement laws beginning in 1886. In the popular press, the Jews also functioned as an ‘inner Orient.’39 It is important to recognize that exclusion and marginalization did not occur solely according to ethnic criteria. Benedict Anderson, Léon Poliakov, Michel Foucault, and others have put forward different theories on whether the notion of social classes has developed from insight into racial differences or whether the genealogy does not, in fact, run in the opposite direction.40 The language of class may have created a vocabulary that could be used to think through the question of race or the other way around. Without resolving this issue here, it is clear that, at the end of the nineteenth century, both ethnic and social forms of marginalization could no longer be completely separated from one another. In fact, they interacted and overlapped.41 One could even say that the defi nition of bourgeois society and Western civilization is based on the distancing of the work-shy and natives as two sides of the same exclusionary coin. Foucault once compared the boundary between reason and madness with a “dividing line” that “represents the Orient: the point where homesickness and the hope for return emerge, the Orient which is offered to the colonizing reason of the West, which, however, remains eternally inaccessible because it always remains the boundary.”42 For the society of the German Empire as well, the colonial Orient—and the inner Orient, namely the workers’ colonies and workhouses—was the boundary that made the constitution of the bourgeois self possible in the

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fi rst place. “The impression of feelings of strangeness towards the poor,” which characterized the social reform debate in Germany, was thus not only an expression of the “apocalyptic fears of the bourgeoisie,”43 but was also the precondition of its self-awareness.

WORKHOUSES Linking external and internal Orientalism is now common practice. For many areas, this perspective has opened up new realms of analysis and presented familiar topics in a different light. Of course, the common trope should not erase the differences between the two phenomena and degenerate into a simplistic and vague label for the asymmetry of power relations. After all, the education of the work-shy and Negroes refers to two different projects. Despite their similarities, which were further enhanced by the circulation of discourses and practices, the differences between the social reform projects cannot be ignored. Thus, the imposition of industrial production methods and work attitudes began much earlier in Europe than in the colonies.44 More fundamentally, the integration into bourgeois society through ‘education for work’ was a concrete possibility in Germany, whereas in Africa the difference between colonial masters and colonial subjects could not be transcended. Finally, the concepts for work education in the colonies were developed within the context of foreign domination and against the background of cultural and ethnic discrimination, which differed from the inner-European constellation. Thus, whereas in colonial Africa confl ict situations could transform the cultural mission into war and extermination, as in the Herero War of 1904, the elimination of “Vagabundennot” (vagabond distress) in Germany stood for a program of enlightened and emancipatory social reform. Thus, there were indisputable differences between the two projects. The question remains, however, whether these differences were as absolute as Wilhelmine’s self-understanding suggested. Were not just the African colonies, but also the workers’ colonies, perhaps nothing more than “a refi ned training facility for human slaves,” as contemporary Social Democratic critics put it?45 In fact, conditions in the hostels could be rough at times, even if not all of their pedagogical demands were enforced (“three days of bread and water and three electrical shocks at every meal would work wonders”). More significant in this connection is the principal decision to defi ne the boundaries of the community by the amount of work performed. The hobo program, the ‘hometown hostels,’ and the workers’ colonies were reserved for those willing to work. Others were not welcome. “Anyone who rejects the work he is offered,” Bodelschwingh proclaimed with his typical vigor, “is to be arrested.”46 Those who did not work and who did not want to be educated to work were forced into the workhouses. According to the Prussian “Law for the

32

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Punishment of Vagabonds, Beggars and the Work-shy” of 1843, which was included virtually unchanged in the Reich Criminal Code of 1871, those offenses that were viewed as being rooted in a lack of the will to work were punished with confi nement to a workhouse. The workhouses were created in Europe during the sixteenth century and had their heyday in the early modern era. They experienced a renaissance in the late nineteenth century: In the early 1880s, more than 20,000 people were committed to correction facilities each year. As late as 1895, there were forty-seven workhouses in the German Reich, almost all of which had been founded in the nineteenth century.47 The cultural mission rhetoric of ‘elevation’ was also typical of the workhouses. There, in contrast to normal prison sentences, imprisonment was merely a means to an end, designed to “make persons, who are inclined toward behavior deleterious to society, fit to reenter human society as useful members.”48 In daily practice, the social reform impulse made itself felt in numerous disciplinary regulations. The long working hours, the rigid organization of time, and the shorn and uniformed new inmates demonstrated that here the bourgeois individual should be constituted through a regime of “discipline and punishment.”

EXCLUSION AND DEPORTATION Beyond the housing of the work-shy in the rural workers’ colonies, the workhouses and correction facilities marked a further and more rigid boundary dividing bourgeois society and its Other. But this exclusion was not exclusively an inner affair; here too there were attempts to externalize the internal marginalization. For example, starting in the early 1890s, there were efforts to ship the work-shy to the “external colonies . . . where they can do no more harm to the fatherland.” In this way, social reform and colonial problems could be solved in a single step, and the “occupation with useless work” in the correction facilities could be redirected to the African colonies: “In the fatherland we are wasting our energy, while there is a shortage of hands in our colonies.”49 The most significant proponent of this shift of internal exclusion overseas was the legal scholar Felix Friedrich Bruck, a professor at the University of Breslau, who had propagated the deportation of the work-shy to German South-West Africa in numerous writings since the mid-1890s. As a result, the Reichstag discussed the deportation plans twice in 1898. But there most reactions were critical. The colonial bureaucracy, above all the administration of the Colonial Office, resisted the idea.50 Even so, the latter did establish a special desk for deportation, and in 1909, the young detective Robert Heindl was sent on a fact-fi nding mission to New Caledonia, the Andaman Islands, Australia, and China. But unlike in Russia and France, Germany’s deportation plans never became colonial reality. 51

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Nevertheless, the discussions on forced deportation illustrate the extent to which internal discrimination and territorial exclusion were mutually dependent and frequently overlapped. “There is a relation of reciprocal determination,” Etienne Balibar has said in describing this mechanism, “between ‘class racism’ and ‘ethnic racism,’ and these two determinations are not independent. Each produces its effects, to some extent, in the field of the other and under constraints imposed by the other.”52 The work-shy were not the only social group whose internal marginalization was associated in public discussion with the possibility of physically excluding them from the living space of the community. Early colonial propaganda was particularly concerned with exporting the revolutionary potential of Social Democracy by establishing penal colonies. The Saxon estate owner Ernst von Weber even demanded “wide drainage canals” for the “annually more numerous and increasingly dangerous proletarian masses” so that Germany would not “march with giant steps towards revolution.”53 The fi rst considerations of a forced emigration of Jews, which would play a major role down to the Nazi era in the form of the ‘Madagascar Plan,’ occurred at this time. In 1885, Paul de Lagarde became the fi rst person to suggest this African island as a target for Jewish deportation. In later years, voices demanding a “removal of the Jewish people from the family of Aryan peoples” and their forced resettlement in the colonies, with the help of a rhetoric in which the brittle boundary between deportation and extermination was already visible, increased.54 The strategies of internal and external exclusion, of class and race, overlapped and produced an overdetermined space of both discursive and actual exclusion. In the process, the German Reich and its African colonies did not appear as distant from one another as one might at fi rst believe. As Felix Friedrich Bruck stated in his plans to deport the work-shy, “German South-West Africa is comparable to a distant German province.”55

GERMAN HISTORY IN A COLONIAL CONTEXT Could one tell this story in an internalist fashion, without exotic locations, without reference to Africa? After all, a benevolent paternalism and the notion of the Protestant educational mission had a long tradition in Germany. Likewise, the workhouses were not an invention of the German Empire, but had developed in the early modern era. To be sure, in the late nineteenth century, ‘work’ had emerged as one of the central concepts of social theory and social institutions. Not only was the internal classification of society increasingly linked to work and one’s profession (and no longer one’s ancestry), but in the modern intervention and welfare state, the institutions of social insurance were also directly linked to work. In the humanities as well, work increasingly advanced as a guiding concept (e.g., in anthropology), but above all in the ‘work science’ of the turn of the century.56

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But is the reference to colonial interconnections necessary to explain these discursive displacements? Could not the metamorphosis of the concept of ‘work’ be interpreted within German (and European) history (i.e., as the triumph of the bourgeois understanding of work, whose roots are to be found in the eighteenth century)? Indeed, most historians interpret the career of the notion of work as a development entirely internal to Europe.57 But this form of Euro-centrism may bear the danger of eclipsing an important part of the picture. The question remains whether the discursive interference of the European debates on work with the colonial experience left the Kaiserreich entirely unaffected or the articulation of internal and external modes of difference can help explain, at least partly, the qualitative transformation that became manifest around 1900 in the understanding of work as a criterion of exclusion. What was the significance, in other words, of the intermingling of the traditional understanding of social inequality and class differences with the fundamental dichotomy characterizing the colonial discourse? There have always been mechanisms of exclusion; among the more conventional forms of discrimination was the marginalization of the poor, the unemployed, and the vagabonds. What needs to be explained is why the traditional practices of difference, possibly under the spell of the Manichaean ontology of colonialism, were now turned absolute. Colonialism had introduced the fundamental dichotomy of ‘racial difference.’ Indeed, Ann Laura Stoler and Partha Chatterjee, among others, have argued that colonial policy was constantly concerned with maintaining racial difference.58 This notion particularly applied to labor markets and work regulations in the colonies. If the discussions on work and education for work in Germany and the colonies interacted in complex ways and informed one another (even if only implicitly), then the discourse on the social question in the German Empire may have been superimposed with colonial discourse—with a discourse, in other words, in which the mechanism of exclusion was not only discriminatory in character, but absolute. This articulation of social and ethnic exclusion happened at a historical juncture in which the boundaries of social belonging were increasingly defi ned through work. In this context, colonial entanglements may well have contributed to the radicalization of mechanisms of social dominance and exclusion that already possessed a long (and internal) history. Of course, much further study is needed to explore this question. This vignette can only sketch some of the possible connections and their implications, and it remains limited to a fi rst probing into the example of ‘education for work’; other fields of inquiry might include the history of psychology and psychiatry, the history of eugenics, the discourse of race, the disciplines of medicine and anthropology, and many more. It seems evident, however, that the kind of radicalization we have observed within the discourse of work was by no means a unique phenomenon. The history of anti-Semitism in Germany, for example, shows clear parallels. Anti-Semitism likewise

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was not an invention of the German Empire, but had a prehistory lasting through centuries. Nevertheless, in the Wilhelmine epoch, one can observe a clear discursive shift that also extended to the practices of exclusion: a shift from traditional Anti-Judaism to biological anti-Semitism. Not individuals, but rather ‘the Jew’ was now the target of polemics and discrimination.59 Anti-Semitism also became radicalized and ethnicized, becoming part of a biological-racist discourse—at precisely the same moment as the ‘scramble for Africa,’ Germany’s colonial expansion and the fi rst ‘racial laws’ in the colonies took the stage. It is important, in this context, to resist the temptation to read the history of the nineteenth century through the lens of its aftermath has so much of the Sonderweg literature depicting Germany’s deviant path into modernity has tended to do. There was no direct path that can be constructed leading from the shift in notions of work in the Wilhelmine Empire to the ideology of Arbeit macht frei, to the eliminatory logic of national socialism and the practices of extermination. After all, the education for work was a project that Germany shared with other European powers. Likewise, the blending of practices of social exclusion with the notion of colonial difference was not a German peculiarity. In general, modern racism was a European concept in which the transfer of ideas within Europe was crucial.60 Moreover, while not neglecting the criminal acts and atrocities committed overseas, the colonies were for the most part not the site of a politics of genocide. Likewise, the forms of anti-Semitism in pre-World War Germany were not, on the whole, eliminatory. The gap between the mechanisms of exclusion in the German Empire, including its colonial practices, and the ‘elimination through work’ in the Third Reich remained substantial. It remains a puzzle how a few decades would suffice to turn a discriminatory discourse into a politics of extermination. It is important to recognize, however, that within the social and political projects in Imperial Germany, some forms of radical exclusion had already become conceivable, even if only by a minority. The debate about deportation of unwanted social groups is an example of this phenomenon, as are the genocidal fantasies that found their way into colonial warfare.61 Even if the transformation of practices of exclusion—which, moreover, did not manifest itself in all European countries in the same way—cannot directly be derived from the colonial experience, it nevertheless remains difficult to fathom and understand this radicalization without taking the colonial context into account. Why this happened in Germany remains an open question. Frantz Fanon suggested long ago that fascism should be seen as a variant of European imperialism turned inward. According to Fanon, it was no coincidence that this reverse imperialism was played out, most of all, in Germany—a country that had lost her overseas territories in 1918.62 Fanon’s is a hypothesis equally plausible and difficult to ascertain. It suggests that the articulation of discursive practices in metropole and colony may have lastingly transformed central dimensions of European thought, at least in Germany. To

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turn the stereotypes and imaginations of the Wilhelmine epoch into genocidal politics, however, a complex set of developments and factors played a role that was not present before 1914.

NOTES 1. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 2 (Bielefeld: Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten, 1964), 431. 2. Cited in Martin Gerhardt, Friedrich von Bodelschwingh. Ein Lebensbild aus der deutschen Kirchengeschichte (Bielefeld: Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten, 1952), 134. 3. Bodelschwingh, Ausgewählte Schriften, 432, 433. 4. Ludwig Berg, Die katholische Heidenmission als Kulturträger, vol. 1 (Aachen: Xaverius-Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1923), 293. 5. Berg, Heidenmission, 281. 6. Compare Sebastian Conrad, “Doppelte Marginalisierung. Plädoyer für eine transnationale Perspektive auf die deutsche Geschichte,” Geschichte & Gesellschaft 28 (2002): 145–69. 7. Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony. Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, eds. Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, 1–56 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). See also Kathleen Wilson, “Introduction: Histories, Empires, Modernities,” in A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire 1660–1840 ed. Kathleen Wilson, 1–26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, “Homemade Hegemony,” in Ethnography and the Historical Imagination, eds. J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, 265–95 (Boulder: Westview, 1993). 8. For the larger argument, see Sebastian Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (München: C. H. Beck, 2006). 9. Regarding the prize, compare Anton Markmiller, “Die Erziehung des Negers zur Arbeit”. Wie die koloniale Pädagogik afrikanische Gesellschaften in die Abhängigkeit führte (Berlin: Reimer, 1995), 76ff. 10. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Kolonialkongresses 1902, 538. 11. Kratzenstein, “Bemerkungen,” Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift 14 (1887): 169–81, quote: 180, 181. 12. Cited in Gustav Warneck, Evangelische Missionslehre. Ein missionstheoretischer Versuch, vol. 3.1 (Gotha: Perthes, 1897), 67. 13. Compare Horst Gründer, Christliche Mission und deutscher Imperialismus 1884–1914 (Paderborn: Schönigh, 1982), 247–74; Rainer Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung. Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte DeutschOstafrikas 1885–1914 (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1967), 199–201; Wolfgang Reinhardt, “Christliche Mission und Dialektik des Kolonialismus”, in Historisches Jahrbuch 109 (1989): 353–70; Edward Graham Norris, Die Umerziehung des Afrikaners. Togo 1895–1938 (München: Trickster, 1993), 86–106; Winfried Brose and Ulrich von der Heyden, eds., Mit Kreuz und deutscher Flagge. 100 Jahre Evangelium im Süden Tanzanias. Zum Wirken der Berliner Mission in Ostafrika (Münster: Lit Verlag, 1993); Thorsten Altena, “Ein Häufl ein Christen mitten in der Heidenwelt des dunklen Erdteils.” Zum Selbst- und Fremdverständnis protestantischer Missionare im kolonialen Afrika 1884–1918 (Münster: Internationale Hochschulschriften, 2003), 33–72.

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14. Compare Gründer, Christliche Mission, 239–46. 15. Compare Edward Berman, ed., African Reactions to Missionary Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1975); Marcia Wright, German Missions in Tanganyika (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1971). 16. Cf. Marcia Wright, Strategies of Slaves and Women (London: L. Barber Press, 1993); Jonathan Glassman, Feasts and Riot. Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (London: James Currey, 1995). 17. P. W. Schmidt, “Die Behandlung der Polygamie in unseren Kolonien,” in Verhandlungen des Deutschen Kolonialkongresses 1902, 467–77. 18. Hermann Bibo, Wie erzieht man am besten den Neger zur Plantagen-Arbeit? (Berlin: Walther & Apolant, 1887), 3. 19. Pierre Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis auf der ethnologischen Grundlage der kabylischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 200. 20. Bibo, Wie erzieht man den Neger, 11, 19, 40, 47. 21. Bibo, Wie erzieht man den Neger, 19, 23. 22. Hans Ziemann, Über das Bevölkerungs- und Rassenproblem in den Kolonien (Berlin: Süsserott, 1913), 25. Ziemann (1865–1939) was a colonial physician specializing in tropical medicine. 23. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. III (München: C.H. Beck, 1995), 503. Compare also Dieter Langewiesche, “Wanderungsbewegungen in der Hochindustrialisierungsepoche. Regionale, interstädtische und innerstädtische Mobilität in Deutschland 1880–1914,” in Vierteljahresschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 64 (1977): 1–40. 24. Compare Wolfgang John, “Die Vorgeschichte der Arbeiterkolonien,” in Ein Jahrhundert Arbeiterkolonien, ed. Zentralverband Deutscher Arbeiterkolonien, 12–22 (Bielefeld: VSH-Verlag, 1984). Compare also Richard Evans, “The ‘Dangerous Classes’ in Germany from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century,” in The German Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History, ed. Richard Evans, 1–28 (London: Routledge, 1988). 25. Cited in Jürgen Scheffler, “Die Gründungsjahre 1883–1913,” in Ein Jahrhundert Arbeiterkolonien, ed. Zentralverband, 23–35, quotation 28. 26. Compare Scheffler, Gründungsjahre; Jürgen Scheffler, ed., Bürger und Bettler. Materialien und Dokumente Zur Geschichte der Nichtseßhaftenhilfe in der Diakonie, vol. 1 (Bielefeld: VSH-Verlag, 1987). 27. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Wer hilft mit? Ein Wort zur Reorganisation der Berliner Asyle (Berlin: A. Scherl, 1904), 15; Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Licht im Dunkeln (Bielefeld: Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten, 1927). ‚Licht im Dunkel’ (light into darkness) was also the name of a journal published quarterly by the Evangelical Mission Society for German East Africa. 28. Compare Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bismarck und der Imperialismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), esp. 486–502. 29. Bodelschwingh, Ausgewählte Schriften, 522, 647; Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Letter of 7 June 1890, in Briefwechsel in 9 Bänden (Bielefeld: Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten, 1966–73), 454, 407. 30. On the history of the Evangelical Mission for German East Africa and the relationship of the various mission societies to one another, cf. Gerhard Jasper, Das Werden der Bethel-Mission (Bielefeld: Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten, 1936); Horst Gründer, “Deutsche Missionsgesellschaften auf dem Wege zur Kolonialmission,” in Imperialismus und Kolonialmission. Kaiserliches Deutschland und koloniales Imperium, ed. Klaus Bade, 68–102 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982). 31. Gustav von Bodelschwingh, Friedrich von Bodelschwingh. Ein Lebensbild (Bielefeld: Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten, 1922), 273.

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32. Cited in W. Trittelvitz, Nicht so langsam! Missionserinnerungen an Vater Bodelschwingh (Bielefeld: Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten, 1930), 123. 33. Carl Paul, Die Mission in unseren Kolonien, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Richter, 1900), 193. Compare the nearly identical comments in Paul Döring, Morgendämmerung in Deutsch-Ostafrika. Ein Rundgang durch die ostafrikanische Mission ‘(Berlin III)’ (Berlin: M. Warneck, 1899), 73. 34. Charles Buchner, Die Mission und ihre Kritiker (Berlin: Berliner ev. Missionsgesellschaft, 1905), 10–12. 35. Cited in Gustav Menzel, Die Bethel-Mission. Aus 100 Jahren Missionsgeschichte (Bielefeld: Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten, 1986), 114. 36. Döring, Morgendämmerung, 172–76. 37. This double thrust of philanthropic strategies was no German peculiarity. For the British case, see Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Global Civil Society and the Forces of Empire: The Salvation Army, British Imperialism and the ‘pre-History’ of NGOs (ca. 1880–1920),” in Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s–1930s, Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier eds., 29–68 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); John Marriott, The Other Empire: Metropolis, India and Progreß in the Colonial Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Mariana Valverde, “The Dialectic of the Familiar and the Unfamiliar: ‘The Jungle’ in Early Slum Travel Writing,” in Sociology 30 (1996): 493–509. 38. Bodelschwingh, Ausgewählte Schriften, 193. 39. Robert Young, White Mythologies. Writing History and the West (London: Routledge, 1990), 140. 40. Compare Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), 136; Léon Poliakov, The History of Antisemitism, 4 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974); Michel Foucault, In Verteidigung der Gesellschaft. Vorlesungen am Collège de France (1975–76) (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999), 73–75, 88–98. Compare Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991). 41. Ann Laura Stoler has described how the fear of degeneration was linked simultaneously with ethnic mixing and social degradation in Race and the Education of Desire. Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 95–136. 42. Michel Foucault, Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft. Eine Geschichte des Wahns im Zeitalter der Vernunft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969), 10. 43. Hartwig Drude, “Christliche Wandererfürsorge oder die Vollstreckung der bürgerlichen Moral an den Armen,” in Bürger und Bettler, ed. Scheffler, 153–57, quotation: 154. 44. Compare Rudolf Schenda, “Die Verfleißigung der Deutschen. Materialien zur Indoktrination eines Tugend-Bündels,” in Volkskultur in der Moderne. Probleme und Perspektiven empirischer Kulturforschung, ed. Utz Jeggle et al. (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1986), 88–108. 45. Der Sozialdemokrat, Nr. 13, 1883, quoted in Scheffler, Gründungsjahre, 31. 46. Cited in Scheffler, Gründungsjahre, 28. 47. Compare Wolfgang Ayaß, Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau. Bettler, Landstreicher, Prostituierte, Zuhälter und Fürsorgeempfänger in der Korrektionsund Landarmenanstalt Breitenau (1874–1949) (Kassel: Gesamthochschule Kassel, 1992); Christoph Sachse and Florian Tennstedt, Geschichte der Armenfürsorge in Deutschland, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980), 244–56.

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48. Programm des Arbeitshauses Breitenau, cited in Ayaß, Arbeitshaus Breitenau, 178. 49. Felix Friedrich Bruck, Die Gegner der Deportation (Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1901), 60; Felix Friedrich Bruck, Die gesetzliche Einführung der Deportation im Deutschen Reich (Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1897), v. 50. Bruck, Gegner, 67–76. 51. Compare Cathrin Meyer zu Hoberge, Strafkolonien—“Eine Sache der Volkswohlfahrt”? Die Diskussion um die Einführung der Deportation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Münster: Lit Verlag, 1999). 52. Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, 214. 53. Ernst v. Weber, Die Erweiterung des deutschen Wirtschaftsgebietes und die Grundlegung zu überseeischen deutschen Staaten (Leipzig: Twiethmeyer, 1879), 50–51. 54. Hans Leuss, “Das richtige Wanzenmittel”: ein jüdischer Staat. Ein Vorschlag zur Güte (Leipzig: Beyer, 1893), 19. The anti-Semite and author Hans Leuss (1861–1920) was a Reichstag member for the German-Social Reform Party in 1893/94. Compare also Magnus Brechtken, “Madagaskar für die Juden‘. Antisemitische Idee und politische Praxis 1885–1945 (München: Oldenbourg, 1997). 55. Bruck, Gegner, 106. 56. Compare Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor. Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley: California University Press, 1992). 57. Compare, for example, Wolfgang Zorn, “Arbeit in Europa vom Mittelalter bis ins Industriezeitalter,” in Der Mensch und seine Arbeit, ed. Venanz Schubert, 181–212 (St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 1986); Werner Conze, „Arbeit,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol. 1, ed. Otto Brunner et al., 154–215 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972); Jürgen Kocka and Claus Offe, eds., Geschichte und Zukunft der Arbeit (Frankfurt: Campus, 2000). 58. Compare Stoler and Cooper, Between Metropole and Colony; Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments. Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), esp. Chapter 2. 59. There is an extensive literature on the topic. See, for example, Helmut Berding, Moderner Antisemitismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988); Jacob Katz, Vom Vorurteil bis zur Vernichtung. Der Antisemitismus 1700–1933 (München: C. H. Beck, 1989); Annegret Kiefer, Das Problem einer ‘jüdischen Rasse’. Eine Diskussion zwischen Wissenschaft und Ideologie (1870–1930) (Frankfurt: Lang, 1991); Shulamit Volkov, Die Juden in Deutschland 1780–1918 (München: Oldenbourg, 1994); Michael A. Meyer, ed., Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte in der Neuzeit, Band 3: 1871–1918 (München: C. H. Beck, 1997); Massimo Ferrari Zumbini, ‘Die Wurzeln des Bösen’. Gründerjahre des Antisemitismus: Von der Bismarckzeit zu Hitler (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2003). 60. Compare Christian Geulen, Wahlverwandte. Rassendiskurs und Nationalismus im späten 19. Jahrhundert (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2004), esp. 42–94; George M. Fredrickson, Rassismus. Ein historischer Abriß (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2004), esp. 53–100. 61. This refers to the Herero war that some authors have described as a war of annihilation and consequently is placed in a line of continuity with the Holocaust. See, for example, Jürgen Zimmerer, “Holocaust und Kolonialismus. Beitrag zu einer Genealogie des genozidalen Gedankens,” in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 51 (2003): 1098–1119. For this debate, see Birthe Kundrus, “Kontinuitäten, Parallelen, Rezeptionen. Überlegungen zur‚ Kolo-

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nialisierung’ des Nationalsozialismus,” in Werkstatt Geschichte 43 (2006): 45–62; Pascal Grosse, “What Does German Colonialism Have to do with National Socialism? A Conceptual Framework,” in Germany’s Colonial Pasts, eds. Eric Ames and Marcia Klotz and Lora Wildenthal, 115–134 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005). 62. Compare Young, White Mythologies, 7–8. For similar arguments in Germany, see Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1955).

3

Hierarchies of Punishment in Colonial India European Convicts and the Racial Dividend, c. 1860–1890 Harald Fischer-Tiné

INTRODUCTION After being treated rather indifferently for decades, issues of crime and punishment have aroused the interest of historians of South Asia during the last twenty years to an astonishing degree. The reason for this growing popularity is not hard to comprehend. Already in the introduction to his pioneering volume on Crime and Criminality in Colonial India, Anand Yang has argued in the vein of E. P. Thompson and the ‘Warwick school’ that “crime pays for the social historian.”1 Not only does it open up what sometimes is the only window allowing a glimpse on underprivileged individuals and groups who are otherwise difficult to trace, but it also allows us to draw conclusions on the norms set by the elites of a given society. Other historiographical trends were at play, too. From the late 1970s onward, the Tsunami-like impact of Foucauldian philosophy on European and North American history-writing soon produced an impressive amount of sophisticated historical scholarship on issues of Western legal systems and penology, which in turn could serve as a point of reference for students of Indian history. Mostly in line with Foucault’s argument, 2 legal systems and penal institutions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe now often came to be portrayed as key features of the ‘enlightenment project,’ which was exposed in this growing corpus of literature as a design to discipline and mould the modern subject.3 Because the Foucauldian critique of modernity has informed the majority of the more interesting recent trends in postcolonial historiography as well, it comes as no surprise that by now a massive amount of literature dealing with an impressive variety of legal, criminological, and penological issues partly or wholly based on material from Indian colonial archives is available.4 What, then, does criminal and penal history tell us about issues of race and imperial boundaries? As many authors have noted, the myth of the ‘rule of law’ constituted a cornerstone of the British civilizing mission. From the late eighteenth century onward, it was hailed time and again by many a spokesman of British

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imperialism as an achievement that ultimately legitimated the conquest and control of a vast empire to save the ‘native’ population from the grip of “despotic regimes.”5 The imposition and enforcement of Western legal codes, as well as the transfer of policing systems, thus became key elements in colonial state-building,6 not only because they were expected to demonstrate the authority of colonial rule and its ability to establish ‘law and order,’7 but, beyond that, to evince its innate superiority in comparison with indigenous political regimes denounced as arbitrary and cruel. Law in a colonial context, therefore, can indeed be seen as a ‘state’s emissary.’8 Although somewhat less conspicuous, penal practices seem to have had a similar function. As the criminologist John Pratt emphasizes, even in the twenty-first century, there remains a strong link between claims to civilizational superiority, on the one hand, and penology, on the other hand: Punishment in the civilized world would not take the form of arbitrary indefi nite detention [ . . . ] nor would it involve public executions, floggings, maimings, and so on associated with the Third World and Islamic Societies. Instead it would be expected to demonstrate such features as the possession of a penal system that was overseen by an enlightened bureaucratic rationalism [ . . . ] and precluding punishments to the human body [ . . . ]. Instead of destroying and brutalizing offenders, punishment in the civilized world was intended to be dispensed with the kind of productive frugality, reforming and rehabilitating criminals.9 The entanglement between legal and penal practices and Western notions of a universal civilizing mission, however, soon created problems for the self-proclaimed vanguards of worldwide ‘civility.’10 The current controversy regarding the legal status of the prisoners detained by U.S. authorities in Guantánamo Bay and the worldwide outrage caused by the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail offer good examples of this ‘colonial predicament’: Once civilizational standards are invoked to justify conquest and control, the carriers of civilization are likely to be measured against this yardstick. In systems of domination that were even more outspokenly unequal (or ‘asymmetrical,’ as the now widely accepted metaphor has it) than the U.S.-led administration in postwar Iraq, this could not but result in a certain vulnerability of the ruling power. It proved difficult for a colonial regime to keep the balance between the legitimizing standards of the ‘rule of law’ and ‘civilized’ modes of punishment, on the one hand, and the pragmatic requirements of containing the subject population, on the other hand. Recent research has highlighted that many imperial powers hence reacted with the ‘politics of legal pluralism,’11 entertaining simultaneously multiple legal systems in their colonies, which applied to different ‘communities.’ Such measures were often justified with the need to administer law for the ‘natives’ in line

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with the putative traditions of the country.12 Similar arguments were made to justify the (less well-known) existence of a plural penal system.13 The tensions resulting from the fact that penal systems of British India had to fulfi ll the contradictory double task of maintaining the fiction of ‘the rule of law’ and yet at the same time serve as sites of colonial control and subjugation can perhaps best be demonstrated by analyzing the differential treatment accorded to European convicts imprisoned in India.

‘WHITENESS,’ CRIMINALITY, AND THE ‘RACIAL DIVIDEND’ To understand the complex interaction between racial empowerment and social marginalization, I found it useful to borrow (and slightly modify) a concept that has been developed in gender studies some time ago.14 In his book on Masculinities,15 the Australian sociologist Bob Connell has made an effort to overcome essentialist and normative defi nitions of male identity. He seeks to analyze it as a socially constructed and dynamic configuration of social practice. This configuration is determined by the specific historical situation in which it takes shape and dependent on more than one variable.16 Acknowledging the impact of other taxonomies like race, class, age, sexual preference, or national affiliation leads Connell to the assumption that there is not one, but multiple masculinities, only one particular strand of which would deserve to be called “hegemonic masculinity.”17 There are many groups of men who do not fit in with the hegemonial masculine ideal, and yet claims of hegemonic manliness make a deep impact on the entire male population: The number of men rigorously practicing the hegemonic pattern in its entirety may be quite small. Yet the majority of men gain from its hegemony since they benefit from the patriarchal dividend, the advantage men in general gain from the overall subordination of women. [ . . . ] Men gain a dividend from patriarchy in terms of honour, prestige and the right to command. They also gain a material dividend.18 If we return to the colonial situation and the problem of marginal Whites, it would, I suggest, make perfect sense to talk also of a ‘racial dividend’ on which even the ‘white subalterns,’ the lowest among the ‘low Europeans,’ could cash in within certain contexts. Although they did not comply with the ideological content of ‘hegemonic whiteness,’19 although they were living proof for the fact that being White did not automatically entail the ‘gentlemanly’ qualities of honesty, self-restraint, frugality, and ‘character.’ Although they were subject to disciplinary measures, ‘white subalterns’ were still privileged under the colonial regime. The diverging wage scales (e.g., for seamen and railway workers) can be cited as the most obvious examples of

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a material dividend gained from their racial affiliation with the ruling élite. To explore this topic more exhaustively, I examine the living and working conditions of European convicts in Indian jails. Concentrating on the period between 1860 and 1890, particular attention is paid to the penitentiaries built exclusively for Europeans convicted in the subcontinent. RACE, CLIMATE, AND THE HISTORY OF THE ‘WHITE PENITENTIARY’ IN BRITISH INDIA

Race and the ‘Just Measure of Pain’ Thomas B. Macaulay, who headed a Committee on Prison Discipline, put together in Calcutta in the 1830s, 20 was the fi rst to address the delicate issue of the appropriate type of punishment for Europeans in a colonial setting. Because he shared the widespread view that “every Englishman participates in the power of the Government, though he holds no office,”21 he opted for transportation to Australia as a suitable means of punishment for Europeans who had committed felonies in India. That way it should be prevented that their “vices reflect[ed] disgrace on the Government.”22 For lesser crimes perpetrated by members of the ‘ruling race,’ however, his scheme suggested that in “one District Gaol, here and there, suitable accommodation should be provided [ . . . ] for one or two prisoners of European habits, who may be sentenced to simple confi nement.”23 The use of the term ‘European habits’ is momentous because it reflects once more that even a utilitarian thinker like Macaulay, 24 who was generally inclined to believe in the universal character of law, retained preassumptions regarding the essential cultural and physical differences of Western and Eastern ‘races.’ Next to the anxieties regarding the racial prestige, this is the second pervasive theme in the administrative discourse on ‘White’ punishment in nineteenth-century India. Serious doubts about whether the same kind of punishment would have evoked the same effect in the colony and in Britain are even more bluntly expressed in the statements of the jail inspectors and magistrates attached to the Report of the Committee on Prison-Discipline. 25 According to their logic, their ‘natural’ endowment with ‘fi ne and manly feelings’26 would make European convicts more worthy targets of reformation than Indian criminals, 27 who, as a leading expert on colonial prison administration later put it, sometimes were “aboriginal savages, nearly as low in the scale of civilisation as any wild uncultivated people known to ethnologists.”28 Accordingly, in a minute written in 1844, Law Member Herbert Maddock declared it to be “absurd to sentence an Englishman and an Indian to the same term of confi nement in Jail.”29 This type of reasoning on the lines of a crucial racial distinctiveness, which expressed itself not least in the myth of the Indian prisoners’ inborn inclination toward ‘unnatural vices,’ remained popular throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. 30 Anxious about the health of White

Hierarchies of Punishment in Colonial India

45

convicts, MP Samuel Smith, for instance, asked the Secretary of State for India in the House of Commons in July 1899 if the British-Indian government would “take into consideration the special hardships which long term European prisoners now suffer in India owing to their inability to bear the climatal effects under gaol conditions, as compared with the Native prisoners around them.”31 The government of India reassured the Secretary of State that the accommodation provided for European prisoners has been very favourably reported upon by expert authorities. It should also be remembered that the courts in sentencing Europeans, take into consideration the effects of climate, and that such prisoners, if their health requires it, can be transferred to the United Kingdom under an Act of 1884.32

Imperial Imperatives and Moral Reservations The suggestion to erect a separate prison exclusively for European criminals was a logical outcome of the conflicting interests of the colonial administration we have just outlined. A completely separate punishment for Europeans would allow for a harsh handling of the ‘white criminal classes’ while removing them from the ‘native gaze’ and thus help maintain ‘racial prestige.’ It was at this juncture that the idea of the European Penitentiary was thrown into the discussion. The fi rst suggestion to open such an institution came from the government of Bengal. In 1854, Governor-General Dalhousie wrote a letter to the Court of Directors announcing the plan to build “a general prison as in Scotland and England” for Europeans sentenced to penal servitude and reiterated the familiar environmentalist argument that the “jail should be erected at some hill station and not in the plains of India seeing that the inmates will be Europeans and that the sentences for some of them will be for life or long terms of years.”33 In 1860, the Madras Government somewhat half-heartedly suggested a site near the hill station of Ootacamund for the proposed prison. At the same time, the government of Madras stated that the European community living in ‘Ooty’34 felt a “great uneasiness [ . . . ] at the idea that a body of desperate European prisoners being placed among them.”35 The prevailing ‘uneasiness’ was partly explained by the doubts about whether it was really “necessary to make a point of selecting the very best climate in India”36 for the ‘White criminal classes’ and partly by the absence of a European garrison in the station that could have protected the local British community from their captive compatriots. Because the government of India did not react immediately, another letter was sent by the responsible administrators in Madras on September 20, 1861. The tone could hardly have been plainer: I am also to submit [ . . . ] the question which this Government think should be settled before the prisoners from the other Presidencies are

46 Harald Fischer-Tiné sent to Madras, viz., what is to become of the men when their sentences expire, or they receive pardons? Are they to be turned loose upon the society in this Presidency, or sent back to the Presidency whence they came? This is a serious question as respects Madras. Its own European criminal population is small; but if that of the whole of India is to be poured into it, merely because it happens to have, in some localities a good climate, the Madras police system will be much enhanced. 37 The trenchant refusal to accommodate the ‘White trash,’ mainly from the large seaport towns situated in other presidencies, can serve as a powerful illustration not only of the extreme stratification of Anglo-Indian society, but also of the resulting problems of coming to terms with the lower orders of the own community. It exhibits once more the central contradictions in the whole discussion on the right measures of punishment for Europeans. On the one hand, their confi nement had to be dreadful and deterrent, on the other, tribute had to be paid to the overarching ideology of European difference. The minuscule body of white criminals under long-term sentences of penal servitude thus threw a spanner into the works of the British imperial machinery.

Grand Designs and Decreasing Numbers In view of the strong objection by the Madras authorities, the government of India gave in, resolving that the proposed prison in Ooty should be reserved exclusively for European convicts from Madras and declaring it a special jail for this purpose in 1862. 38 Furthermore, each of the other presidencies should provide for its own European long-term prisoners.39 The matter seemed to be particularly pressing in Bengal. Because the majority of convicts were still tried and sentenced in Calcutta,40 the LieutenantGovernor of Bengal was requested to “have a plan and estimate prepared without delay for the construction of a prison at or near Hazaribagh.” The assessment of Hazaribagh as a site whose climate was supposedly suited to Europeans seems somewhat cynical because the ‘Native Jail’ situated in the town had the second highest mortality rate of all prisons in the Bengal presidency in the late 1850s.41 It was further disproved only a few years afterward, when an outbreak of enteric fever in 1874 decimated the British Regiment stationed in the town, whereupon the troops were withdrawn, with the exception of a small detachment of about 100 soldiers, which was “chiefly designed to guard against a possible outbreak of the prisoners in the European penitentiary.”42 The construction work in Hazaribagh was completed by the end of 1865.43 The European Penitentiary was one of the first truly ‘cellular jails’ built in India, allowing for an efficient separation of the prisoners.44 Not without reason did Frederic Mouat, the Inspector-General of Prisons in Bengal, refer to it as “the only prison of my jurisdiction that was properly constructed.”45 The prison had space for more than 100 inmates, most of whom turned out

Hierarchies of Punishment in Colonial India

47

to be ex-soldiers. From 1864 to 1880, most military convicts served their term in India, before a new law was promulgated that provided for their immediate deportation to the British Isles. Tellingly, in 1881, just one year after the new regulation had come into force, the prison was closed down because the number of nonmilitary convicts was on the decline and did not justify the costs involved.46 In view of these developments, as early as 1876, the superintendent of the Hazaribagh institution had to ask the authorities of other presidencies to send more prisoners from outside to “bring the population up to a workable number.”47 When it became obvious that the numbers did not grow despite this appeal, it seemed more reasonable and cost-efficient to declare the Presidency Jail in Calcutta as the only place for the confi nement of European long-term prisoners in Bengal even if there remained some reservations regarding the suitability of Calcutta’s climate.48 During the 27 years of its existence, the penitentiary’s capacity (108 cells) was hardly ever exhausted, not even during the time when military prisoners still used to be sent there. A similar fate caught up with the European prison in Ootacamund, the only other exclusively ‘White’ penitentiary in India. With 44 cells, it was considerably smaller than the Hazaribagh jail; nevertheless, even the combined number of prisoners from the Madras and Bombay presidencies and (after 1881) the rest of British India was too insignificant to make its running profitable. Outliving its sister institution in Bihar for merely ten years, it remained open until 1891. By this time, here as well the realm of viability had been left behind because of the withdrawal of military prisoners and the ever decreasing numbers of Europeans sentenced to long-term penal servitude in India.49 Even if we include the population of Europeans serving a short-term sentence in one of the regular Indian Central Prisons, it might be safely assumed that the overall figures for Europeans behind bars in colonial India at any given day during the 1890s rarely exceeded three to four hundred. Compared with an average daily number of more then 100,000 prisoners in Indian jails in this decade,50 ‘White’ incarceration is hence a truly marginal phenomenon. What, then, was the day-to-day-experience of these marginal men51 who caused such a disproportional concern among colonial administrators and to what extent did it differ from that of their Indian fellow sufferers? We try to take a closer look at what life was like behind the thick walls and palisades that surrounded the European penitentiaries in the next section.

‘CRIMINAL CLASSES’ OR ‘BRETHREN IN DISTRESS’? THE EUROPEAN PRISON EXPERIENCE

Strategies of Moral Improvement At least according to the theories of colonial prison administrators, the jail regime for Europeans in British India was as harsh as that of any comparable institution in Europe. Moreover, education to work was a central

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element of the punitive strategy in both European and Indian jails. Most penal experts in India agreed that the reformation of the criminal’s character was only one goal of his penal servitude; almost equally important was to render him a useful and productive member of the community as a whole.52 The intended spiritually uplifting effect of menial labor, combined with strict surveillance, is underscored by a prison chaplain in charge of the catholic convicts in the Presidency Jail, Calcutta. Referring to the European prisoners under his pastoral tutelage, he notes in a report written in 1867: With regard to their moral conduct in jail, the overseers who watch over them are, of course, better judges than any chaplain. Nevertheless, I may say, that having this year less time to spend in idleness and laziness, being better watched over, there must have been certainly an improvement in that department; since labour, order, and a just severity lead even naturally to God. 53 Anticipating this ‘work-centered’ approach, the Jail Conference of 1864 had already provided a classification of labor into light, medium, and hard, 54 and the whole variety was supposed to be offered to the inmates in European Penitentiaries as well. This subdivision of prison labor was closely connected with another innovation that had been gradually introduced to Indian jails after the passing of Act II of 1864: the mark system. 55 According to the logic of this penal strategy, which had been introduced in Britain shortly before its application in the colonial jails of India, 56 the criminal’s reformation had to be achieved by making him pass through three different stages of punishment (therefore it was also known as the ‘progressive stage system’). 57 The mark system was designed to bolster the capacity for selfregulation and catalyse the civilising process which was supposed to ultimately “enable the ex-criminals to enlist under the banner of industry.”58 Most of the penal experts in the colonial administration were confident that a consistent application of this carrot-and-stick policy would substantially contribute to a smooth ‘managing’ of European convicts in India.59 It may be worthwhile to submit such optimistic expectations to a reality check by once again shifting the focus from the institutional design to the actual practice in the European penitentiaries.

Remissness and ‘Racial Soldidarity’ In the early 1870s, the civil and military authorities in Calcutta became increasingly concerned that European penitentiaries had lost their deterrent character as the jail discipline was not strictly enforced and the convicts were instead rather “lightly dealt with.”60 None lesser than the LieutenantGovernor of Bengal had felt obliged “to interfere and to insist on some more suitable labor than learning Latin and Entomology which appears to have been part of the routine proposed.”61 A fi rst result of these concerns was a letter sent to the prison direction complaining about the holdings of

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49

the jail library. According to the Inspector-General of Jails, the list of books available in Hazaribagh contained “far too many trashy novels and works of mere amusement.” Hence, the superintendent was asked to “weed these out and send them to some soldiers’ library, retaining only the instructive books.”62 The second concrete matter of concern was that the subdivision of labor, which played such a crucial role for the functioning of the mark system, was apparently utterly disregarded.63 The authorities of the Judicial Department in Calcutta were of the opinion that the proportion of prisoners employed as jail servants and on light work was far too large and asked for a detailed explanation as to “whether the servants whose work is of the second class have all passed through the prescribed period of first class labor as required by rule.”64 The superintendent of the Hazaribagh penitentiary was reminded in unmistakable terms that it was “indispensable that some energitic [sic!] steps be taken at once to provide more systematic and hard labour than is at present in use in the penitentiary.” Besides, the officiating Inspector-General of Jails requested an explanation for the fact that separation was obviously not strictly enforced and some of the prisoners were even allowed “to be outside the jail without supervision and [we]re not always searched when they return.”65 Around the same time, private letters by ex-military inmates of the Hazaribagh Penitentiary addressed to their companions back in the garrison had been intercepted by the military authorities. They seemed to confi rm already existing suspicions in official circles that punishment in Hazaribagh was “very mild compared to that in military prisons.”66 Such anxieties were further corroborated by the report of a sergeant who had commanded the escort,67 delivering European convicts from a military prison to ‘Hazareebaugh.’ He gave the following account: When I arrived at the jail, I handed the convict (who was then handcuffed) over to an official who made the following remarks: “Hullo [sic!], who have you got there, a convict, I suppose.” I then handed him the warrant and replied “Yes.” He then said, “Take those handcuffs off, they are not required here.” While the convict was stripping, the man who took him over from me said to him “You will have very little to do, but you must be civil.” [ . . . ] His manner in making these remarks [ . . . ] gave me and the escort the impression that he would be much better off there than where he came from.68 Fragmentary as this evidence certainly is, it suggests that there was a huge hiatus between the ambitious reform schemes of colonial penologists and the every-day experiences on the ground. The latter was obviously much more shaped by practical concerns of prison superintendents and jailors as well as the convict’s creativity in using their limited room for maneuver to effectively improve their situation. This, of course, happened likewise in the ‘native’ jails and penal settlements,69 but the sources seem to indicate that the goodwill of a European prison direction, and the exclusively European

50

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keepers,70 toward a ‘White’ jail population was for more pronounced than was usually the case toward natives. Indeed, it appears that, in many cases, the prison authorities were satisfied as long as the European inmates were ‘civil.’ Such tendencies of ‘racial solidarity’ apparently were still stronger in the large Central Jails accommodating both European and Indian convicts. In the Madras penitentiary in the 1870s, for instance, a European inmate who had incited two Indian fellow prisoners to smuggle forbidden goods into the jail went unpunished, whereas his Indian accomplices were flogged.71

Vested Privileges There were some areas in the punitive process where one can detect less subtle instances for a differential treatment. Vested rights accorded to Europeans solely on account of their ethnic origin are perfect examples of the working of the racial dividend alluded to previously. One such area has already been touched on briefly: the issue of climates and constitutions. The fact that the two only European prisons actually in use were built in hilly areas may be taken as proof of the fact that the belief in his bodily difference was fundamental to the construction of the European convict. The tenet of racially distinct somatic constitutions was also evident in some related areas where we can pinpoint the direct effects of theories of ‘cultural-cum-climatic otherness’ on the privileging of European convicts. One of those issues was clothing. By the time the European penitentiaries in Ooty and Hazaribagh were inaugurated in the 1860s, prison uniforms had been introduced all over India, and there were detailed regulations regarding the clothing of Europeans.72 There is hardly any other example where the differences between European and ‘native’ convicts were more pronounced than in the prison uniforms they received on their admittance to jail. The fi rst Europeans sent from the Bengal presidency to the newly opened penitentiary in Oootacamund, for example, were well equipped. Before boarding their ship in Calcutta, they were furnished with a suit of dark grey cloth without pockets and two pairs of American Drill Drawers, and two Shirts, two Banians, two towels and a comb, it would be convenient as [ . . . ] the Prisoners should be warmly clad before they ascend these hills [ . . . ] and, in addition to what has been named [ . . . ], I would beg to suggest, the following be added, namely: 1 Flanell Drawers 2 pairs of worsted Stockings 1 Red Cap 1 Mattrass

1 Pair of imported Shoes 1 Patna Blanket 2 Tin Plates

1 Pillow 1 Tin Mug73

That the attention paid to warm and sufficient clothing for the Ootacamund prisoners was not only a matter of the hill climate, but also one of racial preference, becomes obvious if we compare the yearly expenditure

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51

for clothes for an inmate of the European prison with the sum spent for the dressing of Indian prisoners confi ned in the Ootacamund District Jail. Whereas Rs 32 per annum were spent on the clothing of a European prisoner, the dress of a ‘native’ convict cost only Rs 9.74 The gap was even wider in Hazaribagh, where Rs 40 a year were spent on clothing of a European and Rs 4 on the clothing of a ‘native prisoner’ 75 in the Central Jail.76 In the Andaman settlements, but also in ‘mixed’ jails with a significant minority of European prisoners, like the presidency jail in Calcutta or the Madras penitentiary, the demonstratively different clothing of Europeans and Indians moreover acquired the function of a marker of penal hierarchies.77 Similarly, manifest was the institutionalization of racial difference in terms of the prisoners’ diet. From the late eighteenth-century onward, the provision of food to prison inmates had confronted the colonial administration with serious challenges. There was a heightened awareness among most jail administrators of the crucial importance of providing different types of food according to ethnic and religious distinctions.78 In the last decades of the nineteenth century (and probably related to the fact that mortality rates were still disturbingly high in many Indian jails), this tradition of segregated messing was reinforced and slightly altered by medical discourses on the impact of the ‘right’ nutrition on bodies and minds of the captive population.79 As a result, highly elaborated schemes were compiled, prescribing the right type and quantity of food for prisoners of various religious, ethnic, and, of course, racial backgrounds.80 Thus, from the 1860s onward, there was a clear differentiation in the Bengal prisons between the diet of a ‘Beharee’ and that of a ‘Bengalee’ inmate. The former were fed on chapatis,81 vegetables and occasionally meat, whereas the latter received a strictly vegetarian diet mainly based on rice. Europeans, in turn, were entitled to a completely different dieting with a strong nonvegetarian bias.82 Hence, the element of racial privileging was not only visible in the simple regulation that there should be “two meals daily for natives and three for Europeans,” but also in the quality of the food.83 The daily menu of laboring ‘Bengalees’ and laboring Europeans, respectively, looked like the following table.84

L ABORING B ENGALIS L ABORING E UROPEANS A ND E URASIANS Daily Ration

Breakfast 85

Chittacks Rice Dall Vegetables Oil Salt Condiments from Jail garden

Dinner

Supper

Chittacks Chittacks Chittacks 8 8 Soup 4 Gruel 11 Gruel Bread 4 4 Beef (cooked, 2 Bread 1/3 ½ without bone) 2 Sugar 3 Butter 4 ⅛ Sugar ⅓ Vegetables + Pepper, ¼ potherbs, salt

⅛

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Considering the popular contemporary theory that nutrition had an allimportant impact “on the physical development of the race”86 and a meatbased diet was seen as a prerogative of the “fi ner races,”87 these inequalities lead to the conclusion that the perceived racial superiority of Europeans was to be saved even in the jails and penitentiaries of colonial India. That European prisoners were dearer to the jail authorities than Indian ones translates, once again, into the fi nancial expenditure invested. Next to the better clothing, the costly meat diet was mainly responsible for the huge gap between the sum annually spent on a European and on a ‘native’ convict respectively88 as the example of the European penitentiary and the ‘native’ jail in Hazaribagh amply demonstrates:

Y EAR

C ENTRAL J AIL

E UROPEAN P ENITENTIARY

1873

Rs 48

Rs 305

1874

Rs 61

Rs 326

1875

Rs 64

Rs 371

1876

Rs 57

Rs 349

1877

Rs 71

Rs 466

1878

Rs 75

Rs 449

1879

Rs 77

Rs 379

1880

Rs 65

Rs 490

This investment did pay off for the European inmates. There can hardly be a more neutral yardstick than the mortality rates that were meticulously recorded in every jail in British India. All available data point to an extremely low mortality of European prisoners. In the most acute case of 1876, for example, the rate of deaths in the Hazaribagh Central Prison was 11.74%, whereas only 1.44% of the inmates in the European penitentiary had died. We fi nd comparable figures in prisons situated in the ‘unhealthy’ plains, too. As far as the comparative death rate of Hazaribagh and Calcutta’s presidency jail, where European short-term prisoners were sent in great numbers, was concerned, an official remarked that “the difference is so small, [ . . . ] that there is nothing to choose between the two.”89 In the period between 1855 and 1863, for instance, the mortality in the European wards of the presidency jail was lower than in the barracks of the European regiment stationed in Calcutta.90 A sentence of penal servitude, which meant for most Indians who had to serve upward of five or six years that they would probably never return to their families, thus had a completely different meaning for Europeans. The colonial authorities in this case portrayed the period of detention even as a sort of cure, providing European criminals with a unique chance to get rid of their unhealthy habits.91 To be sure, such statements are gross

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53

exaggerations and probably would not have been made from European jail inmates. Nonetheless, it can hardly be denied that a—literally—vital difference between the effects of imprisonment for Europeans and Indians remains. The same holds true for transportation to which we now turn.

THE ‘BLACK WATERS’ AND THE ‘WAGES OF WHITENESS’:92 EUROPEAN CONVICTS IN THE ANDAMANS For a brief moment in the early 1870s, the British public became aware of the privileged life that European prisoners led in India. 93 On March 3, 1871, licensed convict James Devine murdered a fellow prisoner named Alkana.94 The investigations into the crime and the ensuing correspondence between the authorities in Port Blair, Calcutta, and London brought to light the living and working conditions of those European convicts in the third stage of their penal servitude, who had managed to get a license to the Andamans. Before looking at the Devine case in greater detail, it might be helpful to briefly recapitulate the history of Europeans in the Andamans fi rst.

European Convict-overseers and ‘Native Respect’ The system of sending Europeans to the Kala Pani 95 had been introduced in the early 1860s, shortly after the (re-) opening of the Andamans as penal settlement.96 It was mainly due to pragmatic considerations that European ticket-of-leave men were imported into the islands. Because (European) manpower was scarce in the penal colony, they were mainly employed in “superintending native convicts at work, and in seeing that the orders of the settlement officers are duly carried into effect, or as clerks attached to the different Government offices in the Settlement.”97 At least in theory, only convicts who had reached the third stage of the mark system could apply to be sent to the settlements. Once arrived, their superior status had to be clearly visible. Like most European convicts, they were housed accordingly in a segregated barrack on Ross Island, paid a monthly salary,98 and, in analogy to the jail rules on the mainland, entitled to a special scale of diet.99 To fi nd reliable men for these responsible tasks, the local authorities were trying to ensure that “only intelligent prisoners of European parentage, who have a good character, and who are likely to be useful either from special knowledge or general qualifications”100 were selected from the many applicants.101 The qualifications required could sometimes, indeed, be quite special, as in the case of prisoner John Barron sent from Hazaribagh to Port Blair in April 1880 “to fi ll the post of organist and choir master,”102 but less exotic qualities were also in demand. For example, clerks103 or prisoners who were experienced in working in a printing press were much

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sought-after.104 As Satadru Sen has persuasively argued, another reason for the import of Europeans was to “bolster the European presence on the island and assist in creating a racial hierarchy”105 in the settlement. Especially the Europeans who worked as convict overseers, therefore, had to be selected to live up to this expectation. But not all the Europeans sent to Port Blair possessed the necessary language skills, and fewer even had the ‘patience with the natives’ that was required according to the colonial authorities106 for an overseer according to the colonial officials. Some of them acted in a way that would hardly have backed the moral claims underpinning the social order of colonialism. Notwithstanding that the convicts knew perfectly well that an offense committed in the Andamans would mean a withdrawal of their licence and transferral back to a mainland jail,107 many of them exploited the comparative lack of restriction and surveillance to lead a life that was hardly compatible with the ideals of discipline and self-regulation they were supposed to embody vis-à-vis the Indian convict population. Of particular interest in this respect, although certainly not unique,108 is the case of convict John Freeman, who, after forfeiting his licence, was sent back to the European prison, Ootacamund, in early 1868.109 The superintendent of the penal settlement explains why: His constant infringement of Settlement rules, his defiant manners, and notorious character, exercise an immoral influence amongst the other prisoners of his class, from which there can be no safety for them until he is incarcerated. Opportunities were offered to the prisoner to retrieve in some measure his character, but he is found to be irreclaimable and incorrigible, and has even tempted others by his apparent impunity to commit themselves. From a state of religious hypocrisy, he has come to open dissoluteness—no officer in the Settlement would trust, no one will employ him.110 Exactly what kind of offenses the ticket-of-leave man had committed and what sort of ‘immoral influence’ he exerted is disclosed in the subsequent report: Freeman, whose “intemperate habits were the talk of almost everybody,” had stolen wood and tools while he was employed in the executive engineer’s department. Moreover, the authorities found it highly disturbing that he moved about freely all over the islands, constantly “visiting the other stations in a canoe of his own making,” One of the purposes of his frequent movements was the selling of liquor he had illegally procured111 for soldiers of the European garrison, thereby “enticing them to drink.”112 The almost unrestricted mobility of European convicts in the Andamans and the free access to alcoholic beverages were some of the elements of European convict life in the Andamans that soon afterward shocked a wider public when a “want of proper control over the convicts undergoing transportation and sentence in the island”113 was revealed during the trial of James Devine, to which we now return.

Hierarchies of Punishment in Colonial India

55

A “Disgraceful Laxity of Discipline”:114 European Convict Life on the Beach Devine, a former ship carpenter115 who had been sentenced to penal servitude for the term of ten years in 1864 for the crime of “causing grievous hurt,” was living together with other European and Eurasian convicts in the socalled ‘Christian Barracks’ on Ross Island. Originally, Europeans and Eurasians were accommodated in a segregated section of the ‘native barracks,’ but because this “was found unsuitable from caste prejudice and difference of habit of the two classes of prisoners,” separate buildings, completely detached from the ‘native barracks,’ had been constructed in 1866.116 They stood close to the beach “with no other houses of any sort near them” so that James Devine and the other European inmates practically lived “under no personal restraint and control.” For other reasons, too, the convict life on the shores of the Andamans was distinctively more attractive than the daily routine and lodging in mainland prisons. The barrack on Ross Island, a “stone building with a shingled roof,”117 was partitioned by mat walls into compartments,118 and nonlicensed prisoners usually lived in double rooms, whereas licensed convicts had compartments for themselves. Even the nonlicensed Europeans were “allowed the same proportion of room as is allotted to a European soldier.”119 Indian convicts, by contrast, were housed in “iron framed wooden barracks containing 100–150 each, which are divided into 4 or six partitions each comprising 25 men.”120 In the wake of the Devine murder, it was further uncovered that “some of the men had native convict servants of their own: and one native lived at the barrack to cook for such Christian convicts who had no servants of their own.” The only supervision over the entire population of the ‘Christian Barrack’ came from a ‘free’ European overseer, who lived in a far away bungalow and was supposed to make “rounds occasionally at night to see that all was quiet.”121 That ‘native’ convicts were employed as servants and cooks to guarantee that European felons could live in relative comfort is particularly striking proof of the validity of the ‘racial dividend’ thesis. Some examples for a racially based division of labor can be found in some of the mainland jails as well,122 but this official assignment of ‘master and servant’ roles in the day-to-day life of the convicts clearly went a step further. The existence of racially based hierarchies of crime and punishment could hardly become more conspicuous than in the penal practice on the Andamans. The fact that the crime was committed during the course of a carousal, when Devine was ‘maddened with drink,’ pointed to another indulgence unimaginable in a ‘native barrack.’ As the testimony of European head overseer E. D. Davies shows, this was far from unusual; in contradistinction to most Indian prisoners,123 European convicts were entitled to draw a

56

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daily allowance of rum. The superintendent had the power to sign indents for rum to the extent of one gallon or half of a gallon per month, and the possible outcome was well known to the authorities: “If three or four men happen to get their indents signed at the same time, there may be three or four gallons of rum ‘going’ in these barracks on the same night.”124 It was precisely on such a night, during a party attended by Devine and five other convicts as well as, interestingly enough, “a soldier named Morris, of her Majesty’s 1–10th Regiment stationed in the island,”125 that licensed convict Alkana lost his life as the “mad drunk” Devine had “battered in the head of the man that had lain nearest to him.”126 The revelations of the trial caused quite a scandal in administrative circles.127 James Devine was sent back to the mainland, tried for murder, and sentenced to life-long penal servitude. Within a few months, the regulations regarding European licensed convicts ‘at large in the Settlement’ were severely stiffened.128 However, the harsh reaction of the government and jurisdiction could not undo the damage already done to the credibility of the penal system introduced by the British. The ‘farce’ of a privileged punishment for Europeans was denounced by the superintendent of Port Blair in particularly unmistakable terms: At present a European arrives fresh from the dock expecting to undergo a severe course of penal discipline proportionate to his crime. Instead of this being the case, he fi nds on fi rst coming on shore that he has private quarters allotted to him with a monthly salary of Rs 30 to supply himself, a nice library to amuse his leisure hours.[ . . . ] If he misbehaves himself, we have actually no means of carrying out any punitory system, beyond reducing his pay, as there are no solitary cells or other means of restriction available in the department. Is such a system likely to impress a culprit with a due sense of his guilt, or to deter him from a repetition of his offence, or others from following his example?129 It seems that the transfer of European prisoners was restricted in the aftermath of the Devine incident, and the number of European prisoners sent to Port Blair on a ticket of leave, which had been comparatively small even before a stricter policy of selection was adopted, further decreased.130

CONCLUSION The investigations into areas of the penal history of colonial India that have been somewhat neglected to date corroborate our initial thesis that the racial dividend paid handsomely for Europeans who came into confl ict with the law. Like marginal men profit from the overarching patriarchy, White

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criminals and convicts gained from the colonial setting both materially and ‘in terms of prestige,’ sometimes even acquiring ‘the right to command’.131 The spectrum of preference was wide. We have seen informal expressions like the softer attitude often taken by individual European guards or jailors toward European convicts out of a feeling of ‘racial solidarity.’ We have also seen vested privileges (like the provision of better lodging and rationing) that emanated from a deep-rooted belief in essential physical and cultural difference between Europeans and Indians and were prescribed by law. Most telling, perhaps, was the example of the official laissez-faire policy in the Andamans, which has put the translation of those beliefs into day-to-day penal practice into stark relief. The Indian public was well aware of the discriminatory treatment they received under the colonial system. Indian journalists noticed this double penal standard. After exposing the dubious practices of the administration of justice, one author writing in an Indian newspaper in 1882 cynically comments on the debates about the right type of imprisonment for European offenders by asking: “Then again, is not the Indian climate against the poor white man? Why should an Englishman be sent to prison at all? And when he is in prison why should he be asked to work?”132 Was the experience of imprisonment and transportation for European offenders, then, basically a matter of feasting, drinking bouts, and canoe excursions in exotic settings? There are plenty of indications that such an interpretation would completely miss the point. The position of European criminals and convicts was a highly ambivalent one, and scenes like those we have described for the Andamans were certainly the exception, not the rule. The privileging of European defendants and convicts always has to be seen in relation to the treatment of Indians in similar situations. Then, of course, there can hardly be any doubt that, in most situations, they were far better off than their ‘native’ companions in distress. Yet at the same time, we should not forget that there were divergent voices among the colonial establishment, such as people who asked for a harsher treatment of the European ‘criminal classes.’ These voices were also manifest in the administrative discourse of rendering the imprisonment for Europeans more deterrent or those suggesting that treating ‘mean Whites’ and Indians alike would have a beneficent effect for the former because it would teach them not to “bear themselves as a superior and arrogant caste.”133 Nor should we draw premature conclusions from the status of European prisoners as a group to the individual suffering of ‘White’ convicts. On the individual level, the ‘racial dividend’ is not always discernable, especially in cases where the situation did not require a conspicuous maintenance of European prestige. It is important to bear in mind that, under such circumstances, Europeans, too, could be the targets of repression, brutality, and ruthless violence by the colonial authorities. Once the frame of reference of ‘imperial boundaries’ based on race was taken away, the color of the skin

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became a worthless asset and hierarchies grounded on notions of class and deviance came to the fore.

NOTES 1. Anand Yang, “Introduction” in Idem (ed.), Crime and Criminality in British India (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 1–25, 1f. 2. Brought forward most famously in Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Repr. Paris: Gallimard, 2005 [1975]). 3. Compare, for instance, Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (London: Macmillan, 1978); Stanley Cohen, Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment, and Classification (Cambridge: Polity, 1985); David Garland, Punishment and Welfare. A History of Penal Strategies (Aldershot: Gower, 1985). For a brief discussion, see John Pratt, “Explaining the History of Punishment,” in Crime and Empire 1840–1940. Criminal Justice in Local and Global Context, eds. Barry S Godfrey and Graeme Dunstall, 25–41 (Cullompton: Willan Publishers, 2005) esp. 31–4. 4. Because the literature is so extraordinarily rich, I confi ne myself to some recent outstanding publications of a more general interest. On crime and criminal justice, see: Elizabeth Kolsky, “Codification and the Rule of Colonial Difference: Criminal Procedure in British India,” Law and History Review 23, no. 3 (2005): 631–83; Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures. Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Michael R Anderson and Sumit Guha, eds., Changing Concepts of Right and Justice in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); Jörg Fisch, Cheap Lives and Dear Limbs. The British Transformation of the Bengal Criminal Law (Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1983). On penology and punishment, see Satadru Sen, Colonial Childhoods, The Juvenile Periphery in British India, 1850–1945 (London: Anthem Press, 2005); Clare Anderson, Legible Bodies. Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (Oxford: Berg, 2004); Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000); Martha Kaplan, “Panopticon in Poona. An Essay on Foucault and Colonialism,” Cultural Anthropology 10, no. 1 (1995): 85–98; , Anand Yang, “The Voice of Colonial Discipline and punishment: Knowledge, Power and the Penological Discourse in Early Nineteenth Century India,” Indo British Review 21, no. 2 (1995): 62–71; David Arnold, “The Colonial Prison: Power, Knowledge and Penology in Nineteenth Century India,” in Subaltern Studies VIII. Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha, eds. David Arnold and David Hardiman, 148–87 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). 5. Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 18–20. Compare also Sally E. Merry, “Law and Colonialism,” Law and Society Review 25, no. 4 (1991): 889–922, 890. 6. Graeme Dunstall and Barry S Godfrey, “Crime and Empire: Introduction,” in Idem, eds., Crime and Empire 1840–1940: 1–7, 2. 7. Compare Sandria B Freitag, “Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India,” Modern Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (1991): 227–61. 8. Upendranath Baxi, “The State’s Emissary: The Place of Law in Subaltern Studies,” in Subaltern Studies VII eds. Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey, 247–64 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992).

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9. John Pratt, Punishment and Civilization. Penal Tolerance and Intolerance in Modern Society (London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage, 2002), 1 f. Compare also Arnold, “The Colonial Prison,” 159 f. 10. For a useful discussion of the concept of ‘civility’ and its intricacies in colonial settings, cf. Anindyo Roy, Civility and Empire. Literature and Culture in British India, 1822–1922 (London-New York: Routledge, 2005), 1–20. 11. Benton, Laura, “Colonial Law and Cultural Difference: Jurisdictional Politics and the Formation of the Colonial State,” Comparative Studies in Societies and Histories 41, no. 3 (1999): 563–88, particularly 563–6. 12. K. K Raman, “Utilitarianism and the Criminal Law in Colonial India: A Study in the Practical Limits of Utilitarian Jurisprudence,” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 4 (1994): 739–91. 13. A recent work on prisons in colonial Vietnam briefly mentions the differential treatment accorded to European prisoners. Compare Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille. The History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940 (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 53. 14. I am indebted to my student Timo Kiesel from Berlin for fi rst guiding my attention to the striking parallels between marginal masculinities and marginal ‘whitenesses.’ 15. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 22005) [1995]. 16. Ibid., 67–76. 17. On the issue of multiple masculinities in a colonial society, a similar point has been made earlier in Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy. Loss and Recoverance of Self under Colonialism (Repr., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996 [1983]), 4–10. 18. Connell, Masculinities, 79, 82. 19. Compare, for instance, Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families. Britons and late Imperial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 72–109; Mrinalini Sinha, “Britishness, Clubbability, and the Colonial Public Sphere: The Genealogy of an Imperial Institution in Colonial India,” Journal of British Studies 40, no. 3 (2001): 489–521; E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies. The Physical Experience of the Raj (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), Chapter 4. 20. For details compare Yang, “The Voice of Colonial Discipline and Punishment,” passim. 21. Macaulay, Notes on the Indian Penal Code, cited in Kolsky, “Codification and the Rule of Colonial Difference,” 659. 22. Ibid. 23. Report of the Committee on Prison-Discipline to which is prefi xed a resolution recorded by the Government of India on the 8th of October 1838, after taking the report into consideration (Calcutta: Government of India, 1838), § 291. 24. It might seem problematic to call Macaulay a utilitarian because he openly criticized James Mill and the utilitarian philosophy of politics. Nonetheless, he remained highly influenced by the utilitarian doctrine of law. Compare Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 190–2. 25. Report of the Committee on Prison-Discipline, Appendix no. 4. 26. Ibid., 124. 27. Compare Sen, Colonial Childhoods, 85–7. 28. Mouat, “On Prison Discipline and Statistics in Lower Bengal,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 35, no. 1 (1872): 57–106, esp. 57. 29. Minute by H. Maddock, 04–09–1844, in National Archives of India, New Delhi [hereafter: NAI,] GoI, Legisl. Progs., Oct.–Dec. 1844, October 12, no.

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30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

Harald Fischer-Tiné 5. I am grateful to Elizabeth Kolsky for making me aware of this particular reference. One witness gave evidence to the Jail Committee of 1919 that 80% of the inmates of a particular native jail were “either sodomites or catamites or both.” Report of the Indian Jails Committee, 1919–20 (London: Government of India Press, 1921), 99 f. Oriental and India, Collection at the British Library, London, India Office Records [hereafter OIOC, IOR: ] L/PJ/6/516, GoI, Home Dept., Public & Judicial Progs., 1899. Question by Samuel Smith, MP, in the House of Commons, 31–899. Reply of the Secretary of State for India, ibid. The Act referred to is the ‘Colonial Prisoners Removal Act,’ 1884. Ibid. For an interesting account of the small White community in Ooty and its internal stratifications, cf. Alexander Morrison, “ ‘White Todas’: The Politics of Race and Class Amongst European Settlers on the Nilgiri Hills, c. 1860–1900,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 32, no. 2 (2004): 54–85. NAI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl. Progs., No. A-30–35, 31–10–1861, Letter No. 1106, J. D. Sims, Secy. to Government of Fort St. George, to GoI, 3rd September 1861. From 1870 onwards, Ootacamund served as the summer capital of the Madras Presidency and thus was the seat of the government for five months a year. “Closing of the European Jail at Hazareebagh,” loc. cit. Compare also OIOC, IOR: P/206/64, GoI, Judl. Dept. Progs. 1861, Prog. No. 30, 03–09– 1861, Letter No. 1106, J.D. Sim, Secy. to GoMad to W. Grey, Secy. to GoI, 3rd September 1861. Compare OIOC, IOR: P/925 GoMad, Judl. Progs., 1876 Prog. No. 69, 11 August 1876, Govt. Order No. 1639. West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata, [hereafter: WBSA], GoBeng, Judl./Jails Dept., Prog. No. 1, March 1862, Letter No. 5, Charles Wood, Secy. of State for India, to the Gov.-Genl. in Council, 16 January 1862. The average number of Europeans under the sentence of penal servitude during the years 1859–1861 had been 35 in Bengal, two in Madras while there was none in the Bombay Presidency. Compare “Protest of Madras Government Against Having one Central Jail for All Europeans,” loc. cit. In September 1858, the ratio of deaths per average strength was 29.14%. Compare Frederic John Mouat, Report on the Jails of the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1858–59 (Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1859), 28. The Imperial Gazetteer, Vol. XIII, 99. Compare also Frances Maria Millman, ed., Memoirs of the Right Rev. Robert Millman, Lord Bishop of Calcutta & Metropolitan of India, with a selection from his correspondence and journals etc. (London: John Murray, 1879), 329. WBSA, GoBeng, Judl./Jails Dept. Progs., Feb. 1865, No. 15; Letter No. 842, 13 February 1865, J. Geoghegan, Under-Secy. to GoBeng to GoI, Home Dept., 13 February 1865. Cf. also NAI, GoI, Home Dept., Progs., Judl. (Jails), No. A–38–40, 14 February 1865 “Construction of a Central Jail for European Prisoners at Hazaribagh.” OIOC, IOR: P/1007, GoI, Home Dept., Judl. Progs., (Jan.-May) 1865, No. 39, Letter No. 2696, F. J. Mouat, Ins-Genl. of Jails, Lower Provinces, to Lieut.-Col. J. Beadle, Secy. to GoBeng in the PWD, 15 January 1864. Mouat, “On Prison Discipline and Statistics in Lower Bengal,” 1872, 76.

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61

46. Ibid. and NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–179–187, August 1881, “Closing of the European Jail at Hazareebagh.” Interestingly, the buildings of the European Penitentiary were later used as a reformatory school for Indian juvenile delinquents. 47. Ibid., No. 11, Letter No. 1018, A.S. Lethbridge, Ins-Genl. of Jails, Bengal to the Secy. to GoBeng, Judl. Dept., 12 February 1880. 48. OIOC, IOR: P/1491, GoI, Home Dept., Judl. (Jail) Progs. 1880, No. 11, Letter No. 1018, A.S. Lethbridge, Ins-Genl. of Jails, Bengal to the Secy. to GoBeng, Judl. Dept., 12 February 1880. 49. Compare OIOC, IOR: P/3088, GoMad, Judl. Dept. Progs., 1887 (Jan-May), Prog. No. 208–9, 2nd February 1887, Letter No. 368, H.R. Grimes, InsGenl. of Jails, to the Chief Secy. to GoMad, 16–12–1886, OIOC, IOR: P/3892, GoI, Home Dept., Jail Progs. 1891, April 1891, B—1–6, and OIOC, IOR: L/PJ/6/516, GoI, Home Dept., Public & Judicial Progs., 1899. 50. The total daily average of the jail population in British India varied from 95,177 in 1894 to 113,266 in 1897. Compare Statistical Abstract Relating to British India From 1894–95 to 1903–4, Thirty-Ninth Number (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1905), 41. 51. They, indeed, mostly were men. The numbers of European women sent to jail was truly insignificant, as the table shows. 52. Mouat, “On Prison Discipline and Statistics in Lower Bengal,” 1872, 200. 53. Mouat, Report on the Jails of the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency 1866–1867, 32. 54. The classification scheme is reproduced in Report of the Prison Conference, appointed in January 1892, Appendix VI (Notes by Sir John Tylor, Inspector-General of Prisons, North-Western Provinces and Oudh on the questions raised etc.), 50. 55. The following account is largely based on Rules for the Superintendence and Management of Jails in the Lower Provinces of Bengal, 88–94. 56. McGowen, “The Well-ordered Prison. England 1780–1865,” in The Oxford History of the Prison. The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, eds. N. Morris and D.J. Rothman (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 79–110., 102 f. 57. Ibid., 102. 58. Mouat, “On Prison Discipline and Statistics in Lower Bengal,” 1872, 200. 59. Compare, for instance, Report of the Indian Jail Conference 1877, 182. 60. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–37–42, February 1870, “Proposed arrangements for the discipline of the Penitentiary at Hazareebaugh,” Letter No. 1863, Col. F. Thesiger, Adjuntant-General to the Secy. to the GoI, Military Dept., 7 July 1872. 61. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–11, 21–07–1869, Letter by E.C. Bayly, Secy. to GoI, 26 June 1869. 62. OIOC, IOR: P/700, GoI, Judl. Dept. Progs., 1871 (Aug–Dec), Prog. No. 1, 23 August 1871, “Discipline in the European Penitentiary at Hazareebaugh”; Letter No. 6039, the Offg. Ins-Genl. of Jails, Lower Provinces, to the Suptd. of the European Penty., Hazareebaugh, 27 July 1871. 63. For the following, see WBSA, GoBeng, Judl./Jails Dept. Progs., June 1871, No. 17; Letter No. 4195 from A. J. Payne, Offg. Ins-Genl. of Jails, Lower Provinces to the Suptd. of Jail, Hazareebaugh Penitentiary, 24 May 1871. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. NAI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–37–42, February 1870, “Proposed arrangements for the discipline of the Penitentiary at Hazareebaugh,” Letter

62

67.

68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79.

80.

Harald Fischer-Tiné No. 1863, Col. F. Thesiger, Adjuntant-General to the Secy. to the GoI, Military Dept., 6 July 1872. As a rule, ex-military prisoners were escorted by European soldiers exclusively to their respective jails after their conviction, as it was regarded as “open to many objections” to have them escorted by “native policemen.” Compare NAI, Home Dept. Progs., Jails, A–34–36, December 1881, “British Soldiers When Convicted Are to Be Escorted to Jail by European Guards,” No. 36, Letter No. 8–403, A. Mackenzie, Offg. Secy. to GoI to Offg. Secy. to GoBeng, Judl. Dept., 17 December 1881. Ibid., Statement of Sergeant R. Garrod, 85th K.L.I. Regiment, Dugshaie, 22 June 1872. See, for instance, Clare Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–53 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 9–84. As a rule, only Europeans jailors were hired in places chosen for the confi nement of European long-term convicts. Native warders were only employed on the nightwatch. Compare NAI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–148–166, October 1887, “European Prisoners Removed from the Central Provinces to Ootacamund,” Letter No. 293, H. R. Grimes, Ins-Genl. of Jails to the Chief Secy. to the GoMad. I. Tyrell, From England to the Antipodes and India—1846 to 1902, with Startling Revelations. Or 56 Years of My Life in the Indian Mutiny, Police and Jails (Madras: Thompson & Co., 1902), 193 f. For a detailed and perceptive treatment of clothing matters in the colonial prisons of India, cf. also Anderson, Legible Bodies, 101–40. WBSA, GoBeng, Judl./Jails Dept. Progs., March 1862, No. 126, Letter No. 55A., H. Bell, Offg. Junior Secy. to GoBeng, to the Sheriff of Calcutta, 10–21862; quoting the Insp.-Genl. of Prisons, Madras. Report on the Administration of the Jails in the Madras Presidency 1873, Madras 1874. [OIOC, IOR: V/24/1998], 83–5. In the Bengal presidency, the usual set of clothes received by Indians on admission consisted of “one koorta, two jungeahs, one gumcha, one cap, two blankets, and a piece of tatputtee for bedding.” Compare Rules for the Superintendence and Management of Jails in the Lower Provinces of Bengal, 1876, 108. For the regulations regarding convict dress in Hazaribagh (which was quite similar to that in Ooty), see OIOC, IOR: P/700, GoI, Judl. Dept. Progs., 1871 (Aug–Dec) Progs. No. 10, 23–12–1871, “European Penitentiary Hazareebaugh,” Letter No. 7730, W.L Heeley, Offg. Ins-Genl. of Jails, Lower Provinces to the Offg. Secy. to the GoBeng, Judl. Dept., 3 October 1871. Mouat, Report on the Jails of the Lower Provinces 1866–1867, 35. Anderson, Legible Bodies, 119–21; Sen, Disciplining Punishment, 224. Compare also David Arnold, “India: The Prisoners’ Revolt,” IIAS Newsletter 39 (2005): 6 Compare Frederic J. Mouat, “On Prison Statistics and Discipline in Lower Bengal,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 25 no. 2 (1862): 175– 218, 186–94; D. McCay, Investigation on Bengal Jail Dietaries. With Some Observations on the Physical Development and Well-Being of the People of Bengal (Calcutta: Government Press, 1910 Scientific Memoirs by the Officers of the Medical and Sanitary Departments, No. 37), 2–10. Compare also Mrinal K Basu, “Food, Fatality and Deprivation in Bengal Prisons: A Study of the Santal Convicts,” Indian Historical Review 32, no. 2 (2005) 122–41, 130 f; Anand Yang, “Disciplining ‘Natives’: Prisons and

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81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

95. 96.

97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

102.

63

Prisoners in Early Nineteenth Century India,” South Asia 10, no. 2 (1989): 29–45, 31. Chapati: Flat bread made out of wheat and chickpea flour. WBSA, GoBeng, Judl./Jails Dept. Progs., March 1862, Progs. 65–71, “Mutton Instead of Beef for European Prisoners.” Rules for the Superintendence and Management of Jails in the Lower Provinces of Bengal, 1876, 97. Ibid., 107 f. Chittack: weight unit in use in Bengal; corresponds roughly to 55 grams. McCay, Investigation on Bengal Jail Dietaries, 199. Ibid. Henry Beverley, Administration Report of the Jails of Bengal 1876 (Calcutta: Government Press, 1877), Appendix B, xlv. Compare also Report on the Administration of the Jails in the Madras Presidency 1873, loc. cit., 82–5. OIOC, IOR: P/1491, GoI, Home Dept., Judl. (Jail) Progs. 1880, No. 11, Letter No, 1018, A. S. Lethbridge, Ins-Genl. of Jails, Bengal to the Secy. to GoBeng, Judl. Dept., 12 February 1880. Mouat, “On Prison Discipline and Statistics in Lower Bengal,” 1872, 87. Ibid. The heading alludes to David R Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991). The Times, 13 February 1872, 5. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–60–61, 5th August 1871, “Laxity of Discipline at Port Blair as Disclosed at the Trial of J. Devine for Murder,” Letter No. 385, Major F.L. Playfair Offg. Supdt. of Port Blair and the Nicobars, 7 June 1871, OIOC, IOR: P/700, GoI, Judl. Dept. Progs., 1871 (Aug.–Dec.), Prog. No. 10., 5 Aug., 1871 and Prog. No. 61, 19 Aug. 1871, Appendices A-G and OIOC, IOR: V10/42, “Annual Report on the Penal Settlements of Port Blair and the Nicobars for the Year 1871–72, etc.,” Calcutta 1872, 9. The story of the Devine murder is also briefly touched upon by Satadru Sen and Clare Anderson. Cf. Anderson, Legible Bodies, 121 and Sen, Disciplining Punishment, 224. Kala Pani: Hindi/Urdu, meaning literally ‘black waters,’ was the derogative term used by Indians to refer to the penal settlements in the Andamans. WBSA, GoBeng, Judl./Jails Dept. Progs., March 1862, No. 126, Letter No. 55A., H. Bell, Offg. Junior Secy. to GoBeng, to the Sheriff of Calcutta, 10–21862, quoting the Insp.-Genl. of Prisons, Madras. Compare also Sen, Disciplining Punishment, 225 f. Rules for the Superintendence and Management of Jails in the Lower Provinces of Bengal, 1876, 94. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–60–61, 5th August 1871, Letter No. 385, Major F.L. Playfair, Offg. Supdt. of Port Blair and the Nicobars, 7 June 1871. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Publ., A–131–133, 12 March 1870 “Revised Scale of Dietary for European and Eurasian Convicts at Port Blair.” Ibid. For a typical example, see OIOC, IOR: P/204/71, GoI, Home Dept., Judl. Progs., Jan.–May 1865, No. 90, March 1865, Petition by Martin Murphy to Lieut.-Col., W.J. Wilson, Chief Comm. of Police for the town of Madras, 26 September 1864. OIOC, IOR: P/1340, GoI, Home Dept., Port Blair Progs., 1879–1880, March 1880, Prog. No. B–22 and April 1880, Progs. Nos. B–38–41.

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103. OIOC, IOR: P/528, GoI, Home Dept., Port Blair Progs. 1871–73, Prog. No. B–18. 104. OIOC, IOR: P/1670, GoI, Home Dept., Port Blair Progs. 1881–83, July 1883, Progs. Nos. B–46–48 and OIOC, IOR: P/1340, GoI, Home Dept., Port Blair Progs. 1879–1880, December 1880, Progs. Nos. B–22. 105. Sen, Disciplining Punishment, 226. 106. OIOC, IOR: P/1670, GoI, Home Dept., Port Blair Progs. 1881–83, January 1883, Nos. A–45–48, “European Prisoner as Assistant Overseer in Special Charge of the Dover Gardens Is Required,” Prog. No. A-46; Letter No. 1063, A. D. Larrymore, Superindent, Presidency Jail to the Ins-Genl. of Jails, Bengal, 8 November 1882. 107. OIOC, IOR: P/1006, GoI, Home Dept., Port Blair Progs. 1876–1878, December 1876, Prog. No. A-21; Letter No. 357, A. Holwell, Offg. Secy. to GoI to the Supdt. of Port Blair and the Nicobars, 18 December 1876. 108. See, for instance, NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Port Blair, A–81–87, December 1875. 109. For a similar case, cf. OIOC, IOR: P/1340, GoI, Home Dept., Port Blair Progs. 1879–1880, April 1879, Progs. Nos. B–62 & 63. 110. OIOC, IOR: P/441/16, GoMad, Judl. Dept. Progs., 1868, Prog. No. 18., 1st February 1868, Letter No. 62, Lieut.-Col. H.B. Ford, Supdt. of Port Blair, to Major H.N. Davies, Secy. to the Chief Comm. of British Burmah, 11 December 1867. 111. All over the Andamans there was a lively black marketeering with alcohol that the colonial administration did not manage to control. Compare OIOC, IOR: P/700, GoI, Judl. Dept. Progs., 1871 (Aug–Dec), Prog. No. 61, Aug. 19, 1871, Appendix D, Letter No. 1421, Captain H.T. O’Reilly, acting Deputy Asst. Commissary Genl. to the Supdt. of Port Blair and the Nicobars, 9 March 1871. 112. Ibid., Letter No. 335, J. H. Fraser, Asst. Supdt. of Port Blair to Lieut.-Col. H. B. Ford, Supdt. of Port Blair, 4 December 1867. 113. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–21–22, 20 May 1871, Letter No. 10, C.C. Macrae, Clerk of the Crown, High Court to E.C. Bayley, Secy. to the GoI, 9 May 1871. If not otherwise indicated, the following quotations are taken from this extraordinarily instructive source. 114. Ibid. 115. OIOC, IOR: P/1491, GoI, Home Dept., Judl. (Jail) Progs. 1880, No. 8. 116. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–60–61, 5 August 1871, Letter No. 385, Major F. L. Playfair, Offg. Supdt. of Port Blair and the Nicobars, 7 June 1871. 117. H. N. Davies, Inspection Report on the Penal Settlement of Port Blair 1867 in Three Volumes, Vol. I, Containing Report etc. (Calcutta: Government Press, 1867), 18. 118. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–60–61, 5th August 1871, Letter No. 385, Major F.L. Playfair, Offg. Supdt. of Port Blair and the Nicobars, 7 June 1871. 119. Davies, Inspection Report on the Penal Settlement of Port Blair 1867, 18. 120. Ibid. Compare also Robert Heindl, Meine Reise nach den Strafkolonien Mit vielen Originalaufnahmen (Berlin-Wien: Ullstein, 1913), 385 f. 121. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–21–22, 20 May 1871, Letter No. 10, C.C. Macrae, Clerk of the Crown, High Court to E.C. Bayley, Secy. to the GoI, 9 May 1871. 122. In the European prison in Ootacamund, for instance, it was the custom that convicts from the neighboring ‘Native Jail’ would do the scavenger’s work for the European and Eurasian inmates. If there were difficulties in fi nding

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123.

124. 125. 126. 127. 128.

129. 130.

131. 132. 133.

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Indian convicts ‘of suitable caste’ in the Ootacamund jail, they were recruited from the Coimbatore Central Jail. Compare NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–148–166, October 1887, “European Prisoners Removed From the Central Provinces to Ootacamund,” Letter No. 293, H. R. Grimes, Insp.Genl. of Jails, to the Chief Secy. to the GoMad. Only a few selected “professional groups” among the Indian convicts (fishermen, forest clearers, etc.) were granted spirit rations. OIOC, IOR: P/700, GoI, Judl. Dept. Progs., 1871 (Aug.-Dec.), Prog. No. 61, 19 August 1871, Appendix D, Letter No. 1421, Captain H.T. O’Reilly, acting Deputy Asst. Commissary Genl. to the Supdt. of Port Blair and the Nicobars, 9 March 1871. Cf. also Heindl, Meine Reise nach den Strafkolonien, 393 f. Testimony of Esdale Richardson Davis, NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–21–22, 20 May 1871, Appendix. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–21–22, 20 May 1871, Letter No. 10, C.C. Macrae, Clerk of the Cown, High Court to E.C. Bayley, Secy. to the GoI, 9 May 1871. The Times, 13–2–1872, 5. NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Judl., A–60–61, 5th August 1871, Letter No. 796, E.C. Bayley, Secy. to the GoI, to Supdt. of Port Blair, 9 May 1871. OIOC, IOR: P/700, GoI, Judl. Dept. Progs., 1871 (Aug–Dec.), Prog. No. 10, 5 Aug., 1871, Letter No. 1366, A. Howell, Under Secy. to the GoI, to the Offg. Supdt. of Port Blair and Prog. No. 61., 19 Aug. 1871, Appendix B, “Rules to Be Observed by Christian Prisoners in Their Barrack.” Ibid., Letter No 707, Col. H. Man, Supdt. of Port Blair and the Nicobars to the Secy. to the Chief Comm., British Burma. There were 43 European and Eurasian convict overseers on the islands in 1866. In 1873 (i.e., two years after the Devine outrage), only twelve remained. Compare Davies, Inspection Report on the Penal Settlement of Port Blair 1867, 18 und OIOC, IOR: P/528, GoI, Home Dept., Port Blair Progs., 1874, January 1874, Progs. Nos. A-37 & 38; Report on the affairs of the Penal Settlement for Nov. 1873. See also NAI, GoI, Home Dept. Progs., Port Blair, Nov. 1881, B–5–7, “Undesirability of sending European Convicts to Port Blair.” It seems that the deportation of Europeans was completely stopped by the early twentieth century. As the German penal expert Robert Heindl, who visited the islands shortly before WW I, notes: “Die Strafverschickung für Europäer ist zwar im‚ Manual’ vorgesehen, wird aber praktisch nie durchgeführt.” Compare Heindl, Meine Reise nach den Strafkolonien, 376. Connell, Masculinities, 82. The stress of the ‘White privileges’ is, as a matter of course, not intended to deny the possibility that Indian convicts were capable to appropriate the racial assumptions underlying their treatment. The Indian Spectator, 5 March 1882, Report of the Native Newspapers, Bombay, 1882. Statement of a British official, cited in Kolsky, “Codification and the Rule of Colonial Difference,” 657.

4

Boundaries of Race Representations of Indisch in Colonial Indonesia Revisited Vincent J. H. Houben

INTRODUCTION The emergence and maintenance of boundaries of race in Indonesia was an integral part of colonialism, but still has great societal relevance for present-day Dutch national culture. In this chapter, an attempt is made to show how colonial society was built on ideational boundaries of race and how these as well as their transgressions have been instrumental in the construction of a postcolonial order in Holland, which now is rewriting the history of colonialism. The tension between theories and practices of racial segregation and the realities of racial mixture were highly contentious in a colonial setting as they still are in the contemporary era of global migration and transnationalism. The category of ‘mixed race’ is especially suited to scrutinize the contingent relationships between past and present, as well as those between representations and social practice. Over the past decades, the racial nature of Dutch colonialism has been well researched. Cees Fasseur reconstructed the establishment of a formalized, public system of racial classification in the Netherlands East Indies during the nineteenth century, a feature that was viewed by contemporaries as a ‘cornerstone’ of Dutch colonialism. Since 1848, three population groups were put under their own separate system of law: Europeans, ‘natives,’ and so-called ‘Foreign Orientals,’ mostly Chinese. In 1854, the racial criterion became part of the constitutional law of the colony.1 Boundaries of race were not only legal or social, but also belonged to the realm of ideas, exemplified by racist and social-Darwinist thinking that was quite common among policymakers and colonial power holders of the time. Ideas and practices of racial distinction were, at least in the colonies, confronted with realities of boundary transgression and a long history of creolization. Ann Stoler has deepened our knowledge of the kind of categorizations that colonial culture produced, taking the plantation belt of North Sumatra as a case. She theorized on the interconnection between inclusion and exclusion, using the concept of ‘interior frontier’ and showing that particularly métissage (pointing at racial hybridity as well as cultural syncretism) can expose the fault lines of empire. 2

Boundaries of Race 67 Not only through visible embodiment and colonial practice, but also within intellectual thinking, the ‘hybrid’ was as important a category as that of ‘race’ or racial distinction. Robert Young has pointed out that hybridity has been a key issue for cultural debate since the eighteenth century, although its original connotation was biological. Hybridity as a cross between two species can only be understood on the basis of a presumptive single origin and of distinctiveness of species. A more apt term to describe colonial realities would be ‘doubleness’ because by focusing on movements of homogenization and diasporization, it refutes nineteenthcentury thinking regarding racial purity. Homi K. Bhabha has argued that colonial authority produces hybridity, whereas the single voice of colonial authority inscribes the Other, which transforms itself in a ‘hybrid displacing space.’ In a similar vein, Bakhtin’s idea of linguistic hybridity hinges on the concepts of mixture and encounter as language can be double-voiced, simultaneously the same but different. 3 The history of Eurasianism or ‘Indisch-ness’ lies at several crossroads. In its most literal form, it embodies the contact history between Europeans and indigenous inhabitants of what is now called Indonesia. On a more abstract level, it involves the representation of a contested colonial past primarily within the context of the present-day, postcolonial nation-state of Holland. Although we can fi nd Indisch communities of some size in the United States and Australia, they do not enter national history as a separate group, nor is there any apparent wish on their behalf to do so. Like other minority groups of immigrants, Indisch Dutch have started to look for their own identity by claiming to have a right to be represented properly in national history. Their supposed silent assimilation into Dutch society after the Second World War and their linkage to a burdened colonial past have initially produced a gap in collective remembrance. This silence was, as we see in this chapter, broken in the 1980s and 1990s.4

THE POLITICS OF POSTCOLONIAL COLLECTIVE MEMORY Even in contemporary Europe, official history is an important constituent of collective identity, in which scholarly representations of the past are fashioned to the needs of a national audience. Therefore, the recent creation of a (semi-) official history of the Indisch Dutch is an interesting example of how postcolonial nation-states deal with multiculturalism or minority politics on the level of historical representations. But it also is revealing to see how these kinds of postcolonial histories try to replace colonial stereotypes with new scholarly and, at the same time, politically motivated representations of the past. The central trope of Dutch national history after the Second World War has been modernity in the form of progress, democracy, and tolerance. Although modernization as representation can be read as a metaphor of the

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future, it is necessarily embedded in a past that needs to be re-created in the public sphere through the construction of collective memories. It involves agency, mediation, as well as mediatization. Agency entails the capability to act by using cultural codes and in this way generate a particular ‘habitus,’ which Pierre Bourdieu circumscribed as a set of predispositions that generates social practice. Mediation involves negotiation and transfer of ideas, thus enabling interaction that results in the coming together of diverse meanings that ultimately are constitutive in the construction of social reality. Mediatization covers the ways in which ideas or messages are socially transported. Narratives that produce modern identity can be found in books and images, but also in material objects, oral testimonies, and even public performances. The decolonization of Indonesia did not fit the narrative of national progress toward modernity. In fact, it was felt as the third national ‘defeat’ after Germany occupied Holland between 1940 and 1945 and Japan forced the Dutch to surrender in March 1942. The post-Second World War immigration of several hundred thousand people from Indonesia was therefore an unwelcome reminder of a history that was to be forgotten and even felt as a threat to Dutch national unity.5 Postcolonial emancipation of the Indisch community in the Netherlands started late, moving slowly from the cultural to the social and fi nally to the political. It was not until the mid1990s that the Indisch people successfully lobbied for long-denied official recognition. Dutch politics decided to support the publication of a commissioned history of the Indisch Dutch, focusing on their origins and role in colonial society, their departure for Holland, and their integration into Dutch society without losing their own identity. Earlier already, some forty years after migrating to Holland, the Indisch people started to raise critical questions about their own identity, their past, and their exclusion from any official minority politics because they were supposed to be completely assimilated, in contrast to the population groups from the Moluccas and from Surinam. Having long been silent, there existed among Indisch people feelings of neglect, lack of recognition, and a desire for rehabilitation because they had been Japanese war victims, victims of the violent end to colonialism, and victims of a rather cold reception in the Netherlands in the 1950s.6 In the 1980s, the fi rst publications on the special identity of the Indisch Dutch appeared in the form of press articles and popular books.7 Paul van der Veur, an academic of Indisch descent based in the United States, had already done seminal work in the 1950s.8 The publication of volume 11A of the official history of the Netherlands during the Second World War by Lou de Jong in 1984 triggered the politization of the theme. In this volume on the Dutch East Indies between 1942 and 1945, the Indisch Dutch were portrayed in a rather disdainful manner. This portrayal led to legal action from their side and the publication of a “black” book refuting all the ‘mistakes’ of De Jong. A series of study conventions in Leiden in the early 1990s tried

Boundaries of Race 69 to put the theme on the public agenda. On August 15, 1991, the Japanese premier visited the Indisch monument in The Hague, honoring those who had fallen in Southeast Asia during the Second World War. On this occasion, he was hit by an egg, thrown by an angry member of the Indisch Dutch community. After this diplomatic incident, a series of negotiations between the Dutch government and a union of Indisch organizations (Indisch platform) followed. Finally, these resulted in an official, government-sponsored project to write the history of this minority within Dutch and Dutch East Indies society. The project was started in 1996 in the format of a research program of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), supervised by two senior historians of Dutch colonialism and one expert on migration and executed by four postdoctoral fellows. Between 2001 and 2006, a total of four books were published, totaling well over a thousand pages9, on the one hand, in an attempt to create a new Indisch historiography to respond to the feelings of neglect on the part of the Indisch community and, on the other hand, to try to ‘decolonize’ public consciousness by discarding some of the historical myths and stereotypes regarding this group. These stereotypes go back to colonial days, but have since been perpetuated in history-writing and public representations of ‘Indisch-ness.’ The books written by Ulbe Bosma, Hans Meijer, Remco Raben, and Wim Willems could therefore be labeled the ‘new Indisch history.’

DEFINITIONS, NUMBERS, AND STEREOTYPES What is Eurasian or Indisch Dutch and who belongs to this category of people? In fact, there is a confusing array of terms and defi nitions, which shows how ambiguous and problematic the constructions of boundaries of race have been in both colonial and postcolonial settings. Robert Cribb proposed a rather loose defi nition: The meaning of Indisch lurks somewhere between ethnicity—mainly mixed race Indo-European/Eurasian—and culture, standing for the whole complex of cultural adjustments between East and West which took place in the Indonesian archipelago and which involved not only Europeans and indigenes but also Chinese and other Asians. Indisch culture was marked by distinctive uses of language, dress, cuisine, entertainment, recreation, housing, family structure, and so on, all of them loosely speaking hybrid between Western and Asian cultures. The term identity however implies both a collective identity and a sense of the political implications of that identity10 In the ‘new Indisch’ historiography, a slightly different approach is taken— Indisch involves all permanent settlers (in Dutch blijvers) as opposed to

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‘imported’ Dutch (in Malay totok) who came out to Indonesia for a couple of years to go back later (so-called trekkers). It includes pure Dutch that stayed in the Indies and all those springing from Eurasian relationships (in Malay peranakan, or locally born). However, for the 1920–1962 time period, the defi nition of Indisch is restricted to Eurasians only.11 In this defi nition, until 1920 at least, place of residence or degree of locale is taken as the decisive criterion, not ethnicity or culture. Both Cribb’s defi nition and the ‘new Indisch Dutch’ approach try to systematize a highly complex social phenomenon. In existing sources, a bewildering array of terms appears, partly overlapping and partly contradicting each other. They include: Eurasian, Indo-European, mestizo/métis, liplap, inlandsche kinderen, creole, Indo, sinjo, Indis, and so forth. The problem is that many of these terms perpetuate colonial categories, reflecting policies of exclusion to distinguish the European from a broad spectrum of the nonEuropean. The terms used comprise not only issues of color and race, but also of social status, language, religion, culture, and lifestyle. Colonial categories of Indisch were also changing over time, being rather open ended until the late nineteenth century, when colonial boundaries started to become much more rigid. In this connection the term ‘Indo’ is significant as a socially applied, racial concept to distinguish the half-blood from the full-blood European.12 In the early years of the twentieth century, the ‘Indo-problem’ stood for the growth of a European subaltern class in many particularly urban parts of the Dutch East Indies. Several authors explicitly distinguish Indo-European from Eurasian because, contrary to the Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans, Indisch people had a European legal status in the Dutch colony, if recognized by a European father.13 What kinds of quantitative data are available on the Indisch people? In 1930, during the late colonial era, 240,000 Europeans lived in the Dutch East Indies out of a total population of more than 60 million; 208,000 of these were Dutch citizens, one third having been born in the Netherlands and two thirds in the Indies.14 According to official statistics between 1945 and 1968, some 296,000 Indisch migrated from Indonesia to Holland; 35,000 more went directly to Australia and America. Those going to Holland were coined ‘repatriates,’ although more than one third had never before set foot on European soil. They were part of a much larger group of 6 to 8 million people (British, French, Belgian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italians) who after 1945 migrated from the former European colonies to their respective mother countries. In the Dutch case, being seen as returning national citizens, there was no place for an own group identity because they were supposed to integrate forthwith into a supposedly familiar Dutch society. Around 50,000 later opted for a second migration from Holland to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Brazil.15 A number of historical myths and cultural stereotypes have been constructed on the Indisch people that were constitutive for historical representations of their subordinate status in colonial society. Hybridization

Boundaries of Race 71 and mixture were common in the Indonesian archipelago because it was a region of trading and cultural contact among many Asian people. The advent of a tiny minority of Europeans, who partly mingled with the indigenous population, was therefore hardly anything unusual or new. However, in Dutch colonial thinking, racial distinction became more and more important over time, culminating in the social-Darwinist thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Racial distinction was essentialized and dominated the production of historicized representations of Indisch-ness, which, in turn, by means of agency, mediation, and mediatization, was responsible for the creation and maintenance of a segmented social order in which Indisch people were put at the margins, first in Indonesia and later in postcolonial Holland. Indisch stereotypes were, in fact, very old and certainly predated social Darwinism. In the early nineteenth century, John Crawfurd described them as follows: ‘with very few exceptions, a timid, servile, sensual, indolent and uneducated people.’16 Forty years later, the Dutch minister of colonies Jean Chétien Baud wrote: History teaches us that the encounter of the white human race with the coloured one always led to the subjugation of the latter by the fi rst. This experience has led to the conviction of the black races that the white man belongs to a higher order of creatures and that it is the destiny of both that one is the ruler and the other the subject. This right to rule is considered to be a prerogative of the pure white race. While the black man bows himself humbly under the white man, he only unwillingly obeys someone of mixed origin. 17 Thus, ideas of White superiority and Indisch inferiority were already present before Darwin’s 1859 study on the origin of species and were based on early colonial experience. On the basis of colonial children’s stories and literary works dating from the late colonial era, Cottaar and Willems made an inventory of external and internal representations of Indisch-ness, which can be summarized as follows18: Group stereotypes include their ‘oriental’ mentality—indirectness, respect for the elderly, distrust of whites, openness for occultism/superstition, but primary features are indolence, vanity and passiveness. As far as physical characteristics are concerned the following ideas persisted: Indisch girls are of exceptional beauty because of their fair brown skin (kulit langsep), slimness, dark eyes, white teeth, long legs; Indisch boys are slim too, elegant and with a fi ne face but their skin colour varies from white to very dark. The character of Indisch people is supposed to be born out of a sense of inferiority: women are provocative, males are either shy or too daring but Indisch people basically lack will-power.

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Vincent J. H. Houben Indisch women have ‘tingka’ (make trouble) and are over-sensitive, possess little culture whereas in contrast the white woman is an example of purity, activeness and reliability. Their language is connected to an inappropriate use of Dutch (speaking deviant, krompraterij). Stereotypical behaviour includes a great gift for music (especially krontjong) and dancing but a dislike for manual work. Indisch life-style means living in houses with indigenous furniture, eating indigenous food.

These kinds of gendered stereotypes of Indies people in the colonial literature reflected common beliefs in the late colonial period. Joost Coté, working on the literary construction of tempo doeloe (‘the good old days’) by Dutch novelists between 1880 and 1930, has recently observed that: Questions of identity and cultural defi nition were urgent issues for the conscientious colonial writer positioned between a Dutch parent society in Europe and the culturally and racially segmented colonial society which he or she inhabited.19 These were grounded in an ideology of supremacy of the White race, arguing that through mixing the bad qualities of both White and brown would become prevalent. Racial thinking had a deep impact because social difference was primarily reproduced through racial distinction. Indisch was often portrayed as a void between two cultures, yet the Indisch people were seen to aspire to Dutch status, something they would never fully attain, however. Another prejudice tells us that Indisch meant being internally split, bodily and mentally. 20 This external construction of Indisch should, however, be compared with self-defi nitions that prevail among those living in Holland. Indisch is nowadays often defi ned as a ‘hidden feeling’ of being different. It is expressed primarily in daily life by food, krontjong music, a strong family orientation, respect for older generations, morality and religion, hospitality, and respect for authority. 21 It is interesting to observe that external descriptions of lifestyle seem to match in-group usages and that pejorative constructs have been either left out altogether (the indolence or slowness, which could be considered as a variant of the myth of the lazy native) or turned to the positive. Respect for authority has often been labeled by the Dutch as a feeling of inferiority, which in the colonial setting was clearly linked to racial hierarchy.

THE NEW INDISCH HISTORY The authors of the new Indisch historiography advocate a periodization, in which history is divided into three eras, each covered by a separate monograph: that of the ‘old Indisch world’ (1500–1920); a transitional period

Boundaries of Race 73 between 1920 and the early 1960s; and the period of 1945–1995, covering the departure from Indonesia and the settlement elsewhere. The old Indisch world was a social network of people who were connected to the colonial enterprise of the Dutch Indies Company (VOC) and the colonial state of the Dutch East Indies. Yet, although being linked to migration from Europe and its close association with the colonial state, Indisch society developed a particular dynamics marked by forms of hybridization, localized family networks, and representing localized points of view. During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, this world came under pressure as a consequence of a multiple transition—a marked increase in European presence (notably an increase in the number of women from Europe), integration into the Western capitalist system, and social segmentation through more rigid racial classification. Whereas the old Indisch world could be seen as a structure of European-indigenous contact, the 1920 to early 1960s period was marked by movement and change. A confrontation occurred between Dutch colonialism and the Indonesian nationalist movement, which put an end to Indisch emancipation. Indisch people were increasingly being marginalized during the late colonial era, the Japanese occupation, and the Indonesian struggle for independence. In the end, almost all but a few chose to leave Indonesia. The period of 1945–1995 was that of the rise of a ‘community of destiny,’ marked by overseas arrival, social integration, and the maintenance of a separate identity, as exemplified by a recoining of the term Indo (In Nederland door omstandigheden or ‘in Holland because of circumstance’). To what extent does the new Indisch historiography modify previous standardized history-writing that has relegated métissage to the margins? It has apparently been the goal to write Indisch history from within, stressing social fluidity and mobility in daily life. I limit myself here to six central ideas that emerge from the 2001–2006 books, although these are mainly inferred from description without having been put forward in a systematic manner, with the exception of the popular scientific summary volume of 2006. First, in the Indonesian Archipelago from 1500 to about 1920 besides an Asian and a colonial sphere, a third ‘world’ existed that was Indisch and that possessed unique features. It emerged from the continuous migration of Europeans to Southeast Asia and was connected to the colonial administration. However, it was more than a subsidiary structure of colonialism and developed dynamics of its own. The Indisch world was a network of places and families based on contact between, and the mixture of, groups of people from various cultures. In this manner, Indisch was a continuation of patterns that had existed in the Archipelago for a long time. Race or color of the skin was not the prime characteristic of Indisch; family connections, class differences, educational backgrounds, and local settings were more important. Therefore, Indisch did not add up to a homogenous community positioned between European newcomers (totok) and indigenous population. 22

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Second, Indisch was the predominant element within Europeanness because the large majority of Europeans in the Indisch were locally born and raised. Batavia was dominated by totok culture, but elsewhere, in the cities of North Java, in Macassar, and the Minahasa, as well as the agricultural hinterlands of West and Central Java, Indisch were prevalent. Besides being a stable social element in the form of local families that lived in a particular place for many generations, there was also an element of circular movement because many Indisch were connected to the colonial administration or even more so to the colonial army, so they were regularly reposted or (if of higher rank) went on leave to Europe. Also, children of better-off Indisch people went to Europe to receive higher education there. The mobility between the Indies and Europe and also within the Archipelago led to an increase in homogeneity of Indisch culture. 23 Third, since the late nineteenth century, the European community within the Dutch East Indies grew in size. This growth was not so much a consequence of more immigration of newcomers, but of endogenous growth. Also, Indisch and not European customs continued to prevail among the European community. What changed was the strictness of official classification along racial lines, but if recognised by the European father, people of mixed descent were classified as European. 24 Fourth, social hierarchy within the Indisch world was more relevant than official discourses of race-based inferiority. There existed an Indisch underclass of former colonial soldiers, but the early twentieth-century social ‘problem’ of Indisch poverty was not matched by reality. Besides an Indisch underclass, there existed a middle class of administrative clerks, shopkeepers, artisans, and gardeners and an upper class of wealthy plantation owners in Java (not wholly eradicated by the agricultural crisis of 1884). 25 Fifth, from the beginning of the twentieth century onward, Indisch political consciousness was awakened in reaction to debasing articles in the European press on ‘sinjo’ as degenerated hybrids. It led to the demarcation of Indisch as a separate social domain, the idea of the Indies as fatherland, and fi nally the rise of an emancipatory movement among Indisch people. A split occurred, however, between an Indisch movement, which initially developed in conjunction with Indonesian nationalism but did not carry the day, and the Indo-Europeesch Verbond (IEV), an organization of IndoEuropeans that opted for association with the Dutch, thus clashing with Indonesian aspirations for independence. 26 Sixth, late colonial developments led to the dissolution of the Indisch world and had a far-reaching impact later. Because of their association with Dutch colonialism, the Indisch people became victims of the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian revolution. Racial prejudice, which was strengthened during the late colonial era, did play a role after the Indisch people migrated to the Netherlands. They kept to a nostalgic Indisch identity in the private domain, whereas they tried to keep a low-public profile. Common experiences of repression and migration and the struggle for recognition

Boundaries of Race 75 created the feeling of being a community, which finally led them to come out and demand a history for themselves.27 The new Indisch history can clearly be viewed as the result of serious scientific research, but also as the outcome of a program to write Indo-centric history. It matches scientific criteria, but it is also an attempt to put the historical record straight for current political reasons in the Netherlands. This novel kind of historiographical representation fits within the attempt to identify Indisch as a social, rather than a racial and therefore discriminatory, category. Also, a stress is laid on sociopolitical history, whereas the cultural history as a unique fusion between Western and Asian culture is addressed foremost as a postcolonial phenomenon. 28 Some additional points merit further discussion. The old Indisch world has been given the central stage for an extended period. This raises the question of how central Indisch really were to the Archipelago that later became Indonesia. The Indisch family network was undoubtedly important as a social, cultural, and even economic phenomenon, but the question of its subsidiary nature has not been settled satisfactorily, neither its size nor character compared to indigenous formations or that of other minorities, especially the peranakan Chinese. Also, by stressing the exclusiveness of the Indisch world, the role of Indisch people as intermediaries between the colonial state and the indigenous population has been lost. In the new history books, the old Indisch world is prolonged until 1920, whereas most studies of European colonialism tend to see the end of the colonial ancien regime somewhere around 1880, which was signaled by the rise of modern imperialism, Western economic dominance, and the influx of more Europeans into the colony, giving rise to a European and no longer an indigenous lifestyle. 29 The authors of the new Indisch historiography argue that even when more White Europeans migrated to the Indies, the locally born were still in the majority, and the number of mixed marriages was on the rise. Racial distinction as the decisive motor for colonial representations of Indisch and the assignment of their role in the colonial order has been downplayed, especially for the late colonial era. Race was only one factor among others, it is argued, and racial discrimination of Indisch people of mixed descent was more a matter of official thinking than a dominant aspect of social reality. How strong boundaries of race really were is discussed in greater detail later. Indisch in the format of subaltern history-writing is avoided. It is contended that Indisch people were not marginal, with the exception of those belonging to the lower ranks of the colonial army. The history of the IndoEuropean landlords of central Java, exemplified by the Dezentjé family, 30 is brought up as a clear example of Indisch leverage. The public discussion of Indisch poverty in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century was not matched by the facts, as can be inferred from government surveys and the general economic expansion taking place between 1900 and 1929, which

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provided job opportunities for many. Only during the economic depression of the 1930s did the Indisch community come under pressure. Their record of access to Western education, it is admitted, was less positive and certainly a factor in the rising political awareness among the Indisch community at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the contrary, established historiography tends to portray the Indisch elite as tiny and on the decline after the 1880s. It portrays the majority of those of mixed descent as lower middle class (lower administrative personnel mainly) or as belonging to the underclass (soldiers, unemployed, etc.). By taking the foundation of the IEV in 1919 as a turning point in Indisch history, implicitly the Indisch have been severed from the Indies territory and its indigenous population, prefiguring and even constructing the later exodus backward in time. The awkward position of the Indisch community marginalized and caught in the middle between a radicalizing Indonesian nationalist movement and an increasingly racist and conservative White European population is replaced by an internal focus on the IEV and its increasing association with Dutchness. The subsequent anxieties, the loss of sense of belonging as a consequence of the double subjugation by fi rst the Japanese and then the Indonesians, and finally their expulsion from the East after Indonesia became independent are narrated as a by-product of a larger history of which Indisch were the victims. In short, by focusing on inner dynamics more than on the broader historical context for the period until 1942 and then reversing it for the 1940s and 1950s, the new Indisch historiography has offered a new perspective, but at the same time a rather tunneled view with a number of programmatic items that set the record straight for the current Indisch readership, but which gives it a clear bias as far as both Indonesian and Dutch colonial history are concerned.

BOUNDARIES OF RACE: COMPARISONS, TRANSFERS, AND TESTIMONIES The new Indisch historical account raises a number of critical questions on representations of social stratification and cultural differentiation along racial lines, which continue to be of critical significance in the reassessment of colonialism in a postcolonial world. The history of people of mixed descent and the issue of boundaries within empire cannot be confi ned to the Dutch East Indies, but needs to be put into a comparative perspective. A short digression to the French and British experience may offer some additional clues for our analysis because these countries, like Holland, are also faced with dilemmas regarding a colonial past and post-Second World War immigration. Until recently, the historiography of French colonialism has rather neglected the subject of people who have been labeled colons (inhabitants

Boundaries of Race 77 of a French colony) and creoles (locally born colonial inhabitants). Just as in the Netherlands, many of the stories written by journalists and novelists seem to circle around matters of remembrance and a nostalgic wish to recover the lost paradise. Since 2004, 50 years after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, a media debate has erupted on the meaning of colonial history for the French nation, amounting to a ‘crisis’ of remembrance that still has not been settled. 31 In the huge French empire, the phenomenon of racial mixing was on the whole the exception, except for the so-called old colonies—the Antilles, La Réunion, coastal Senegal, Tahiti, and Tonkin. The mestizos in the French colony, as in the Dutch East Indies, were treated with disdain from both sides because they broke the rule of racial separation and, thus, for the European side undermined the colonial order, whereas in the eyes of the indigenous they were its embodiment. Only a minority of the children of a liaison between a European father and an indigenous mother were legally recognized, so most were raised in the indigenous sphere. Much fewer were the offspring of a French mother and indigenous father, who gained French citizenship through the female line. There was a long legal debate on whether to legalize the offspring of mixed relationships because a strict division was upheld between citoyens (French citizens and those associated with them) and sujets indigènes (indigenous subjects). Whereas earlier in the border zone between colonizers and the colonized the social and legal status of individuals were negotiated on the spot, the expanding societal penetration of the colonial administration rendered this flexibility obsolete. It was only during the late colonial period that French citizenship became accessible for the ‘métis’ because, between 1928 and 1944, a series of decrees was issued that ‘mixed race’ people born of unknown parents would be recognized as French citizens. 32 Whereas ‘métis’ were limited in number in almost all French colonies, in urban French Indochina, this situation was different. During the mid1930s, about 100,000 Eurasians lived there; in 1955, these numbered 300,000. During the late colonial era in Tonkin (northern Vietnam), about one fifth of the French population was believed to be of mixed descent, whereas in Annam (Central Vietnam), the figure was only less than 1%. Official numbers of French citizens were much lower, however, totalling 34,000 out of a total population of more than 22 million in 1940, 12,500 of whom lived in Tonkin. 33 This fi nding shows that many Eurasians had not been granted French citizenship. In French colonial history, the myth of universal rights has been merged with the practice of particularistic exclusion of ‘others.’ However, a reversal of the social order, such as occurred in the French Caribbean islands shortly after the French revolution when the slave population was emancipated, did not occur in Vietnam.34 Like in the Dutch East Indies during the fi rst decades of the twentieth century, the French authorities conducted government surveys on the ‘métis.’ Emanuelle Saada does not take the results at face value, as is done in the

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new Indisch historiography, but sees it as proof of a shift in the appraisal of Eurasianism. Whereas during a fi rst survey in 1908 the inherent qualities of individuals were highlighted, the second survey of 1937 was focused on the social problems created by unrecognized children abandoned by their European fathers and the division of colonial society between citizens and subjects. In this way, people of mixed descent were constructed as a social category, however without abandoning assumptions on racial qualities.35 The changing interface between racial ascription and the emergence of a social-political group in colonial society is of great relevance for the situation in the Dutch East Indies, too. Further analogies can be found in the involvement of Eurasians in the violence of early decolonization. Whereas Indisch people in the closing months of 1945 were harassed by angry Indonesian nationalist youths, in Saigon on September 24, 1945, a massacre of French and Eurasian civilians by Vietnamese took place 2 days after French soldiers released from Japanese prison camps had hunted down and killed supposed Viet Minh and their helpers. The history of the Anglo-Indians has been the study object of Satoshi Mizutani (see Chapter 5, this volume) and is only briefly touched on here. Similar to Tonkin and Java, in the colonial cities of coastal India, a Eurasian community emerged. They intermarried with each other to form a group that developed its own culture, spoke English, and turned into Christians. Although having been excluded from the British legal system since the late eighteenth century, later on they were given government jobs, secured a Western-oriented school system for themselves, and developed their own identity. They acted both as bulwark for the British, working in the colonial army, the transportation services, and lower bureaucratic functions, and also as a bridge between them and the colonial subject. At independence in 1947, there were at least 300,000 Anglo-Indians living in India, most of whom, after having sided with the British against the Indian nationalists, subsequently migrated elsewhere during the 1950s and 1960s, with the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States being primary destinations.36 Contrary to the experiences in Indonesia and Vietnam, during decolonization, the Eurasian population has apparently not been the target of physical abuse because the communal violence accompanying the partition of India and Pakistan was a matter of ethnic-religious differences in which Europeans and their descendents were not directly involved. 37 As was the case elsewhere, people of mixed descent in colonial India have been framed through stereotypes and dealt with in terms of a societal problem. Until the nineteenth century, apparently no strong stigma was attached to being of mixed descent, but since then the existence of an Anglo-Indian underclass was framed in terms of ‘contamination’ and ‘miscegenation,’ in which representations of degeneracy, weakness, and lack of education abounded. Anglo-Indian women were seen as unstable and promiscuous. The appearance of a class of poor Whites was seen as a social problem, threatening a social order built on the superiority of the British race.38

Boundaries of Race 79 The history of the Indisch could benefit from a broader comparative view, taking in perspectives from other colonial systems. As could be expected from standard historical comparison, both analogies and differences emerge when comparing colonial Indonesia with India or Vietnam. The analogies appear on the level of colonial representations and policy programs, whereas the workings and experiences of racial boundaries differed according to time and place. The historical cases cannot be studied in complete isolation because connections existed among the three areas in South and Southeast Asia discussed earlier. The application of European ideas concerning race and racial distinction was transferred among representatives of various colonizing nations. From the start of the twentieth century, colonial congresses were held in Europe, facilitating direct exchange of information among colonial policymakers. Not only private persons traveled from one colony to another and recorded their experiences (among them were also Eurasians), but also colonial officials went on missions to study neighboring colonies. Their reports are resting in archives or have been published, attracting some interest as is evidenced by the books of Angoulvant and Money on Indonesia, Furnivall on Burma and Indonesia, and De Valbezen on India.39 An intranational kind of transfer would be that of societal ideas and projects from the motherland in Europe to the colony and vice versa. Frances Gouda has addressed the problem of how a rather enlightened country with a history of tolerance like Holland could adopt a policy of racial distinction in the Dutch East Indies. She wrote: In a European context, the cultural representation and meaning of being Dutch were rooted in an unwavering faith in civic freedom and neutrality, or in the liberal acceptance of political and religious difference. ‘Dutchness,’, in other words, resided in a political universe ordered by time-honoured habits of accomodation, compromise, and the honest bargaining over contested space. Once uprooted and divorced from the cultural lineage of the Dutch nation in the European metropole, however, such cultural representations became empty gestures, as if ‘true’ Dutch values were lost in translation. In a colonial arena, it appeared, the moral visions and behavioral norms of Dutch men and women were transformed and came to be grounded, instead, in a belief in their white-skinned, cultural superiority.40 Therefore, the colonial past of Indisch should be embedded into the broader history of empire, including that of ethnic politics toward minorities in general. To take just one example, Anthony Reid has pointed out that Dutch rule gave the Chinese a separate legal status as part of a policy to create an occupational and residential separation of ethnic groups. Chinese were needed to fill the social void between superior and subordinate portions of society, the so-called ‘status gap.’ At the top of colonial society, things

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were different because there people of Chinese, indigenous, and European backgrounds could mix freely.41 This brings us back to the question of what function Indisch played within the politics of difference that characterized colonialism.42

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS The construction and application of colonial racial categories raises the issue of representation as an instrument in the formation of a ‘habitus’ that generates social practice. Timothy Mitchell’s study of Egypt has shown how policy universals that are represented as rational abstractions separate from the social order they govern are historically grounded and produced through contingent actions.43 The situation in colonial Indonesia was not much different. The creation of a colonial order based on political-military control, legal pluralism, and an ideology of racial difference pushed a horizontally and vertically segmented society toward segregation. The social space for forms of mixture and creolization was becoming increasingly restricted since the beginning of the twentieth century. Paul van der Veur explained that, despite the increasing polarization within colonial society, the social position of Indisch people was determined by a variety of factors. He stated: “Although within the ‘European’ group no real ‘colour bar’ existed, the situation may have been similar to the situation in some South American countries, where a ‘shade bar’ replaced a ‘colour bar.’ A combination of education, social position, language use and colour all played a role.”44 Ann Stoler has used a different, multidimensional concept, that of ‘interior frontier,’ a space that covers both enclosure and contact, but also internal distinction.45 To understand the daily life of Indisch people, official sources are of less value than private histories that are transmitted either orally or on paper. Biographical accounts, such as that of S. M. Jalhaij, are helpful for the historian. Jalhaij writes that he had the feeling of living in three worlds— being a young Indo boy, when visiting his Dutch friends, he had to adapt his feeling, thinking and behaviour, shaking hands and sitting still properly in order to avoid being labelled a village-Indo (kampongindo). When visiting his Javanese friends everything was much more colourful and uncomplicated. A clear example of racial segregation was the fact that the military swimming pool of Gombong (a garrison town on Java) was open on Sunday for Dutch officers and their families, on Monday for lower ranking officers, on Tuesday for the ‘non-indigenous Indisch population,’ and on Wednesday for the indigenous population (inlanders).46 Oral testimonies confi rm the existence of segregation in other parts of society, but add local variation to the picture. Employed by a bank as a local worker, it was impossible for an Indisch man to rise to a staff function because these positions were exclusively reserved for people from the

Boundaries of Race 81 Netherlands (Mr. De Waal Malefijt). On the Handelsvereeniging Amsterdam (HVA) sugar plantation, it was the specific task of the Indo-European garden employees to act as intermediary between totok staff and the field workers because they knew the land and the people. It functioned as a well-oiled machine (Mr. Rudolph). Being a Indisch boy from the kampong, one was discriminated against by other people. Girlfriends did visit you at home, but not the reverse because they felt themselves to be higher (Mr. Dröge). In the hinterland, everything was not as strict as in the town. When one was not so close to the government, everyone could mix on an equal footing (Mrs. Tan).47 The correlation between class and race seems to have been particularly important, but locality also played a role. Eurasians occupying important positions constituted only a tiny minority, whereas those belonging to the much larger middle and lower classes were always in an inferior position vis-à-vis the ‘White imports.’ Existing class and status distinctions in this manner became racial in character, implying that racial segregation in the Dutch East Indies was likely to become more rigid the lower the class of people involved. Added to this, social segregation was more marked in the city, where the colonial administration resided, or in the workplace, foremost on plantations, but was much less in hinterland society. I argue that in the context of the late Dutch East-Indies (a hybrid term in itself), color and class were correlated, but in an asymmetrical way. There was a difference whether one moved from the bottom to the top in the informal social sphere or from the top to the bottom in the formal sphere. From top to bottom, Indisch people were meant to act as an extension of Dutch authority, as formal representatives of Dutch authority toward the indigenous population. The bar was between the Indisch and indigenous. Moving from bottom to top in the informal social sphere, the ‘bar’ was at the upper end of the scale, between White Europeans or totok and the rest. The bar, which determined inclusion or exclusion, was therefore simultaneously located at two points on the social scale. Indisch positioned itself in the asymmetrical space between these two bars in an area full of ambiguity and tension. When during the late colonial period educated Indonesians started to take over positions from Indisch people in the formal sphere, the formal bar was shifted upward, which meant that the social space for Indisch was becoming more and more restricted. After decolonization, the totok segment in society was removed altogether, reversing the direction of the movement without a protective bar being left; this could have no other consequence than a further marginalization of the Indisch, which provoked their departure. In the Netherlands, they had to start over again, being at the lower end of the scale within society and, as immigrants, the object of informal discrimination. This illustrates a reversal of the thesis of Frances Gouda, implying that notions of racial hierarchy were transferred from the colonial Dutch East-Indies to postcolonial Holland. Present-day

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social problems in the Netherlands, the emergence of populist politics with a negative stereotyping of immigrants from North Africa, and of Muslims in general may hark back to post-World War II patterns. The historical representations brought up in the ‘new Indisch history’ raise new questions on centrisms and the periodizations of the colonial and postcolonial in both Indonesia and the Netherlands. The history of Indisch in the context of Dutch national history has now been rewritten, but has, as I tried to explain, not been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Indisch in the context of Indonesian history is still a complete blank because, after the fall of Suharto in 1998, a process of reworking the national past has only just been initiated.48 Indonesian colonial history is a hybrid of Dutch, Indisch, and indigenous experiences. Finally, Indisch history offers us several keys to deal with important questions concerning boundaries of race in a colonial and postcolonial context. To me it seems clear that ambivalence or ‘doubleness,’ as proposed by Young and others, best captures the essence of Indisch culture and history, which implicates that it cannot be a separate history.

NOTES 1. Cees Fasseur, “Cornerstone and Stumbling Block. Racial Classification and the Late Colonial State in Indonesia,” in The Late Colonial State in Indonesia. Political and Economic Foundations of the Netherlands East Indies 1880–1942, ed. Robert Cribb, 31–56 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1994). 2. Ann Laura Stoler, “Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule,” in Colonialism and Culture, ed. Nicholas B. Dirks, 319–52 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); “Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia,” in Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, eds. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, 198–237 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). On métissage, Rogers Brubaker, “Beyond Identity,” in Theory and History 29 (2000): 1–47; Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question. Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 3. Theoretical debates as summarized by Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 6–10, 20–25. 4. V. J. H. Houben, “A Torn Soul: The Dutch Public Discussion on the Colonial Past in 1995,” in Indonesia 63 (April 1997): 47–66. 5. Andrew Goss, “From Tong-tong to Tempo Doeloe: Eurasian Memory Work and the Bracketing of Dutch Colonial History, 1957–1961,” in Indonesia 70 (October 2000): 9–36. 6. Wim Willems, De uittocht uit Indië 1945–1995 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2001), 14. 7. In 1982, an annex to the weekly Vrij Nederland was published; in 1984, the author Hella Haasse wrote an essay in the magazine Ons Erfdeel; in 1984 also, Cottaar and Willems published a book on representations of Indisch Dutch; then followed the publication of a survey among Indisch Dutch by Ellemers and Vaillant (Indische Nederlanders en de gerepatrieerden. Muiderberg: Dick Coutinho, 1985) to test the theory of silent assimilation.

Boundaries of Race 83 8. P. W. van der Veur, Introduction to a Socio-Political Study of the Eurasians of Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell, 1955); the same author recently published a monumental biography of the founding father of the Indisch movement in the Dutch East Indies, Ernest Douwes Dekker (1879–1950). See Van der Veur The Lion and the Gadfly: Dutch Colonialism and the Spirit of E. F. E. Douwes Dekker (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2006). 9. Ulbe Bosma, Remco Raben, and Wim Willems, De geschiedenis van de Indische Nederlanders (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2006); Hans Meijer, In Indië geworteld. De twintigste eeuw (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2004); Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische wereld 1500–1920 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2003); Wim Willems, De uittocht. 10. IIAS Newletter 2003, as referred to by Joost Coté and Loes Westerbeek, eds., Recalling the Indies. Colonial Culture & Postcolonial Identities (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2005), 10. 11. Meijer, In Indië geworteld, 12. 12. Ibid., 10. 13. Willems, ed., Bronnen van kennis over Indische Nederlanders (Leiden: COMT, 1991), 113–4. 14. Esther Captain, Marieke Hellevoort, and Marian van der Klein, Vertrouwd en vreemd. Ontmoetingen tussen Nederland, Indië en Indonesië (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), 17; Willems 2001: 12–13. 15. Willems, De uittocht, 13–17. 16. Quote in Van der Veur, “De Indo-Europeaan: probleem en uitdaging,” in Balans van beleid. Terugblik op de laatste halve eeuw van NederlandschIndië, eds. H. Baudet and I. J. Brugmans (Assen: Van Gorcum 1961), 82. 17. Dutch National Archive, File 9 June 1855 Nr. 303 secret as referred to in Vincent H. Houben, Van kolonie tot eenheidsstaat. Indonesië in the negentiende en de twintigste eeuw, Semaian 16, (Leiden: Vakgroep Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost Azië en Oceanië, 1996), 32. 18. Annemarie Cottaar and Wim Willems, Indische Nederlanders. Een onderzoek naar beeldvorming (The Hague: Moesson, 1984), 47–80. 19. Cotté, Recalling the Indies, 135. 20. Tessel Pollmann and Ingrid Harms, In Nederland door omstandigheden (Baarn: Ambo/The Hague: Novib, 1987), 14. 21. Ibid., 92. 22. Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische wereld, 9–10, 13, 26; Bosma, Raben, and Willems, De geschiedenis, 150. 23. Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische wereld, Chapter 1; Bosma, Raben, and Willems, De geschiedenis, 27–34. 24. Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische wereld, 218, 220–221; Meijer, In Indië geworteld, 31; Bosma, Raben, and Willems, De geschiedenis, 35. 25. Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische, 35, 213–214, 226, 285; Bosma, Raben, and Willems, De geschiedenis, 147, 156–159, 164. 26. Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische, Chapter 9; Meijer, In Indië geworteld, Chapters 2–4. 27. Willems, De uittocht; Bosma, Raben, and Willems, De geschiedenis, 44–53, 139–141. 28. A recent study of Indisch culture, especially architecture, has been published by the Indonesian scholar Djoko Soekiman, Kebudayaan Indis dan gaya hidup masyarakat pendukungnya di Jawa (abad XVIII–medio abad XX) (Yogyakarta: Yayasan Bentang Budaya, 2000). Postcolonial Indisch culture is described as heritage in Willems, De uittocht, Chapter 9. 29. See, for instance, John Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880–1941. The Social History of a European Community in Colonial Southeast Asia (Kuala

84 Vincent J. H. Houben

30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

Lumpur/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). The situation in the Dutch East Indies was rather similar. On the Dezentjé family, see Houben, “De Indo-aristocratie van Midden Java: de familie Dezentjé,” in Sporen van een Indisch verleden 1600–1942, ed. Wim Willems (Leiden: COMT, 1992), 39–50. The lack of White officials and entrepreneurs in the part of Java that remained under formal rule of the indigenous princes of Solo and Yogyakarta opened up the social space for an Indisch elite to appear, just as in some parts of the hinterland of West Java. These were exceptions, however. Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, and Sandrine Lemaire, eds., La fracture coloniale. La société française au prisme de l’héritage colonial (Paris: La Découverte, 2005); Romain Bertrand, Mémoires d’empire: La controverse autour du «fait colonial» (Bellecombe-en-Bauge: Éditions du croquant, 2006). The debate was heated up by the French law of February 23, 2005, in which article 4 stipulated that the positive role of the overseas French presence should be acknowledged in education. Claude Liauzu, ed., Colonisation: droit d’inventaire (Paris: Armand Colin, 2004), 177–184 ; Emanuelle Saada, “Citoyens et sujets de l’Empire français. Les usages du droit en situation coloniale,” Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire 53 (Décembre 2003): 4–24. Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochine. La colonisation ambiguë 1858–1954 (Paris: La Découverte, 2001), 178. Laurent Dubois, “La République métissée: Citizenship, Colonialism, and the Borders of French History,” Cultural Studies 14, no. 1 (2000): 15–34. Emanuelle Saada, “Race and Sociological Reason in the Republic: Inquiries on the Métis in the French empire (1908–1937),” International Sociology 1, no. 7–3 (September 2002): 361–91. A survey sociolegal study of the “métis” in the French empire is published by Saada, Les enfants de la colonie: les métis de l’Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté (Paris: La Découverte, 2007). Gloria Moore, “A Brief History of the Anglo-Indians,” http://home.alphalink. com.au/~agilbert/jed1.html (accessed August 22, 2006; article of 1988). Dorothy McMenamin, “Anglo-Indian Experiences During Partition,” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (June 2006): 69–95. Megan Stuart Mills, “Some Comments on Stereotypes of the Anglo-Indians,” http://home.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/jed1.html (accessed August 22, 2006). E. de Valbezen, Les Anglais et l”Inde. Avec notes, pièces justificatives et tableaux statistiques. Troisième ed. (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1857); J. W. B. Money, Java or How to Manage a Colony, Showing a Practical Solution of the Questions Now Affecting British India. 2 vols. (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1861); G. Angoulvant, Les Indes Néerlandaises: leur role dans l”économie internationale. 2 vols. (Paris: Le monde nouveau, 1926); J. S. Furnivall, Netherlands India. A Study of a Plural Economy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1939). This book was based on an earlier report, published in Rangoon in 1933–1934. Frances Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas. Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies 1900–1942 (Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 18. Anthony Reid, “Outsider Status and Economic Success,” in Perspectives on the Chinese Indonesian, eds. Michael R. Godley and Grayson Lloyd, (Adelaide: Crawford House, 2001), 69–71. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 23. David Mosse, “Rule and Representation: Transformations in the Governance of Waters Commons in British South India”, Journal of Asian Studies 65, 1(February 2006), 61.

Boundaries of Race 85 44. Van der Veur, 1961, 93. 45. Stoler, “Mixed bloods and the Cultural Politics of European Identity in Colonial Southeast Asia,i The Decolonization of Imagination. Culture, Knowledge and Power, eds. Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikku Parekh (London: Zed 1995), 130. 46. S. M. Jalhaij, Tussen blank en bruin. Indo in Nederlands-Indië (Breda: Warung Bambu, 1984), 52–53; 123–124. 47. A collection of 724 interviews has been recorded by the Foundation Oral History Indonesia. See the website: www.kitlv.nl/smgi. A sample of these interviews has been published in the form of a book and two accompanying CDs, fragments of which were used here. See Marieke Brand, Henk Schulte Nordholt and Fridus Steijlen, Indië verteld. Herinneringen, 1930–1950 (Zutphen/Leiden: Walburg/KITLV, 2005); Steijlen, comp., Memories of “The East.” Abstracts of the Dutch interviews about the Netherlands East Indies, Indonesia and New Guinea (1930–1962) in the Oral history Project Collection (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002). 48. Mary S. Zurbuchen, ed., Beginning to Remember: The Past in the Indonesian Present (Singapore University Press, 2005).

5

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness Public Service Recruitment and the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association, 1876–1901 Satoshi Mizutani

INTRODUCTION: ‘WHITENESS’ AND ITS SHIFTING BORDERS IN COLONIAL SOUTH ASIA British rule in India might be viewed as an illuminating example of nonsettler colonialism, where the proclaimed imperial mission to ‘civilize’ and ‘modernize’ was carried out by utilizing the very people who were being colonized. The ideological belief in a superiority of the White race was perhaps nowhere stronger than in late-nineteenth-century India, but at the same time, the use of natives in administrative and other tasks of colonization had an effect of making ‘Whiteness’ and the limits of its privileges subject to modification and readjustment. Especially from the late nineteenth century onward, when the history of anticolonial nationalism gradually unfolded, the power balance between ruler and ruled also shifted, making certain spheres of imperial privilege open to the claims of the colonized. What had facilitated this historical current was the Westernization of colonized elites through education, the idea of which was already in existence in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century before being put into practice in the latter half. This served to create certain groups of natives like ‘Bengali babus,’ who approached or even surpassed British colonial elites in terms of educational credentials and cultural refi nement. Colonialism had to face up to an inevitable dilemma: Its White masters would wish to bring their subjects onto the road to ‘progress,’ but the very creation of modern, civilized, and (in this specifi c sense) ‘White’ persons would make the very idea of colonial rulership ambivalent. For the British in India to maintain their status as a ‘ruling caste,’ it would be necessary to adjust the membership criteria for the ruling community so that the colonized might become infi nitely close to their colonizing counterparts, but at the fi nal moment be always dismissed for their being ‘almost the same, but not quite,’ to borrow Homi Bhabha’s celebrated expression.1

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 87 One of the domains where such a colonial dialectic was typically played out was the politics over the recruitment policy of the colonial civil service. The policy to educate native subjects into local agents of imperial administration originated in the 1830s. By mid-century, it was recognized that this policy of so-called ‘Indianization’ would have to be supplemented by a stronger degree of imperial control exerted from the distant metropole, and the colonial authorities wished to do this by drawing Oxford and Cambridge graduates into the upper echelons of the colonial service. For this, a system of competitive examination was introduced in the mid-1850s, replacing the older system of patronage.2 Initially, the new system did not in the least function in such a way that the initiators of this reform intended; it ended up attracting those who did not attend Oxbridge, but had studied specifically for the examination under the tutelage of infamous ‘crammers’ in London. However, after some technical changes were made to the examination regulations, the top ranks of the bureaucracy were, from the early 1890s onward, to be occupied predominantly by those ‘gentlemen’ from the two ancient universities.3 As Mrinalini Sinha shrewdly observes in her book Colonial Masculinity, by introducing the ethos of a White, middle-class masculinity supposedly embodied by these hyperelites, this policy of ‘Europeanization’ excluded not only less-privileged British men, but also Westernized native elites, who would score high in the selection examination, but whose supposed ‘effeminacy’ was said to make them unfit as rulers.4 My chapter explores the aforementioned question of how boundaries of White privilege were defi ned, challenged, and guarded, but from a hithertoneglected perspective. It was certainly around the dialectical confrontation between colonizer and colonized that British India’s civil-service reform revolved. However, its manifold outcomes also affected other groups whose interests were not shared by either the colonizers or the colonized. Those people of White descent brought up and educated in the colonial land, composed of India-based White people called ‘Domiciled Europeans’ and mixed-decent ‘Eurasians,’ related themselves to the reform, but only in problematically ambiguous and severely constrained ways. These two groups, jointly forming ‘the domiciled community,’5 historically depended to a great degree on public-service recruitment for a living while fearing that both Indianization and Europeanization, unless swiftly modified in their favor, would lethally damage their economic lifeline. The domiciled community claimed to be recognized as ‘White’ on account of their genealogical and social connections with the British, however remote they might have looked by the late nineteenth century. Accordingly, especially since the mid-1870s, they demanded to be incorporated into the Europeanized portions of public service employment, but this demand was to be fi rmly denied. Europeanization determined its boundaries of inclusion according to a criterion of whether candidates attended a suitable educational institution in Europe, and, naturally, this turned out to be fatal to this community permanently rooted in India. By the early

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twentieth century, as a retired executive engineer pointed out, to ‘have been born in India and domiciled there’ was ‘a bar to employment there’ at a time when ‘even Shop Assistants’ had been ‘being imported from England.’ 6 As far as the civil service was concerned, even some lower grades were to be rigorously Europeanized, structurally excluding domiciled Europeans and Eurasians. They were of White decent but were educated at schools in the colony, which were regarded as more disadvantaging than empowering.7 The basic counterstrategy of the domiciled community, at least until the end of the 1910s, was to try and transform the ongoing policy of Europeanization into one that would benefit domiciled Europeans and Eurasians: According to community representatives, the domiciled were not only Christian, English-speaking, and loyal to the British cause, but were indispensable local agents of imperial administration, even more efficient and useful than ‘home-born’ Britons who were new to the land. However, given the aforesaid origins and goals of the public-service reform, it is not at all surprising that such a claim was to be subjected to attacks from all corners: by the colonizer as vain and mere privilege seeking and by the colonized as treacherous to their anticolonial cause. But what is required of us here is to put into perspective the economic and social conditions that necessitated such a claim-making in the fi rst place and to ask why such a bound-to-be-unpopular protest had to be made continuously for as long as nearly half a century.8 While discussing the domiciled community’s claim for their own version of ‘Whiteness,’ it is not really the aim of this chapter to pass any historical judgment as to its ethical and political legitimacy. Rather, it takes such an advocated possibility of an alternative kind as the entryway to a critical reexamination of Whiteness, particularly its inner contradictions. Perhaps it should be pointed out at this early stage of our discussion that the protest by domiciled Europeans and Eurasians was ultimately insignificant in terms of the historical impact it had on the actual development of the public-service reform. Nevertheless, it would be no less important to register the fact that their struggle did bring to the fore certain contradictions that, albeit at different levels, deeply penetrated the historical constitution of Whiteness. The ideology of White racial supremacy, on the one hand, and the actual social organization of the settled community, on the other, were not always in tune with one another. India’s White community was not at all homogenous in its social constitution: rather, it was often fraught with ‘social problems’ caused by the ‘other’ of the ‘civilized’ bourgeoisie. In fact, domiciled Europeans and Eurasians had emerged from the heterogeneity of the colonizing community, unwittingly exposing contradictions and vulnerabilities inherent in the class and racial hierarchies of empire.9 It was in the context of such historical incongruities that the domiciled community was compelled to challenge the accepted criteria for Whiteness, stirring up what Frederic Cooper and Ann Stoler have aptly termed ‘tensions of empire.’10 It is precisely for interrogating such tensions

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 89 that this chapter explores the question of public-service recruitment in British India from 1876 to 1901.

INCOHERENCIES OF THE BRITISH ATTITUDE One important channel through which domiciled Europeans and Eurasians struggled to make their communal grievances heard was the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association (EAIA). In 1876, its fi rst branch was established in Calcutta, soon followed by a second one founded in Madras, by a third in Bombay, and also by many others scattered across India, including Allahabad and Burma. There did exist nondomiciled Britons who were sympathetic to the EAIA, but even they do not seem to have been so enthusiastic about the latter being used as a platform for making claims, especially those strategically drawing on the community’s ancestral linkage to the White–British establishment. In contrast to nondomiciled Britons, who constituted a select minority of ‘European-British subjects,’ it was only as one among the numerous ‘Natives of India’ that domiciled Europeans and Eurasians had since 1870 been recognised (despite their uniqueness in respect of their white descent). It followed from this statutory arrangement that they should not demand any special protection from the colonial state, which was supposed (at least in theory) to treat all ‘Natives’ equally. The domiciled might as well try and pursue material gains through communal politics, but only on the condition that they would see their community as a ‘Native’ one, formulating its claims accordingly. It was far more likely that the non-domiciled British community wanted the EAIA to act as collaborative agents of their own welfare and philanthropic endeavours. By the time the EAIA was established, the increasing pauperism of domiciled Europeans and Eurasians had long emerged as a perceived threat to imperial racial prestige because it was feared to erode the native respect for the White community as a whole. Thus, instead of simply inferiorizing and keeping away the domiciled, the nondomiciled constantly reminded themselves of an urgent need to control and discipline the former under a race-specific scheme of welfare that in principle excluded the native poor.11 They thought that such social measures would be most far-reaching and effective when carried out by members of the community in question. It would be a notion of ‘self-help’ that the Association should implant in its poverty-struck members, not a militant desire for material equality, still less a White racial pride as its underlying basis. As The Friend of India, and Statesman put it, the EAIA should orient itself toward “a spirit of selfhelp and independence the want of which has been the source of so many of the evils.” Its primary function should be to foster “a spirit of enterprise and admiration for honest labour.”12 By concentrating on the amelioration of the community’s pauperized conditions, it should inculcate self-reliance

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and effect the “process which Hubert [sic, Herbert] Spencer calls ‘superorganic evolution.’ ”13 All this emphasis on the Association as a locus of communal self-help efforts did not mean that nondomiciled British found the political allegiance of their domiciled kin utterly insignificant. On the contrary, there were at least two arenas where the former saw it as useful to let the latter identify with them politically in the name of a shared Whiteness and common imperial loyalty. One of these was the sort of White racial politics practiced during the infamous ‘Ilbert Bill’ controversy (1882–1883), in which a number of Britons in India protested against a governmental proposal to allow senior Indian magistrates to preside over legal cases involving ‘EuropeanBritish’ subjects. For those European-British agitators, the mere thought of their being judged by natives was offensive enough as an unbearable violation to the racialized hierarchy of empire. At this specific moment of White racial backlash, British agitators were ready to enlist the support of the domiciled community, even though the latter had not in fact been recognized as European-British. The actual socioeconomic gap between the two notwithstanding, a “perfect solidarity between the European and the mixed races,” as The Englishman celebrated to have emerged,14 was to be much appreciated in the event of such racialized struggles.15 The British authorities were also willing to utilize the supposed racial loyalty of the domiciled in matters relating to the internal securities of British India. Despite their dismissal of the special claims of the domiciled, they wished to retain a certain presence of domiciled-European and Eurasian personnel as far as the so-called ‘security services’ (namely, the customs, telegraph, and railways) were concerned. In the age of a growing anticolonial nationalism, it was deemed necessary to safeguard communication and transportation means from possible occurrences of internal security threats, such as weapon smuggling or labor strikes. In the case of the railways, domiciled employees were forced to join the volunteer corps, one of the crucial functions of which being to crack down on strikes. The secure management of the railways had been considered vital for preserving the strategic and commercial interests of British imperialism, and the colonial authorities sought to procure it by pitting domiciled-European and Eurasian employees against their native colleagues. As David Arnold points out, what was perceived by native employees as a preferential treatment of the domiciled community in railway recruitment, as well as their assigned role as strike breakers, much served to racialize their relations with Indians.16 The domiciled on their part complained that none of the British appropriations of their blood connection had served to narrow the preexistent social gap between the domiciled and nondomiciled sections of India’s White population. Indeed, the nondomiciled British did not only leave such a gap intact, but tended to attack any expression of material claims made by the domiciled as an inimical manifestation of their confused sense of racial vanity and unfounded desire for White privilege.

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 91 THE CLAIMS OF THE DOMICILED The attitude of domiciled leaders, however, was far more complex than simply proimperial or privilege-craving. They were duly mindful of the seriousness of pauperism that had beset the poorer sections of their community and of the immediate need to provide ameliorative measures. Through the EAIA, they organized various ‘self-help’ schemes, such as agricultural settlement and emigration. They often cooperated with the British promoters of these schemes, at times jointly appealing to the government circles for funds and institutional provisions. In fact, the appointment of the Pauperism Committee (1891) was to be done partly thanks to a petition by the EAIA, and the Committee heard the opinions of domiciled leaders by including in its board several EAIA leaders, as well as British representatives. Even ideologically, the leadership was never so uniformly proimperial as its British critics had imagined to be. The domiciled community was a geographically scattered community with a heterogeneity of political opinions. The EAIA, with its often pro-British policies, was certainly influential, but the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled-European Association of Southern Indian, for example, openly dissented from the former’s leadership, asserting to adhere to their own approach, which was more philanthropic and less political. During the Ilbert Bill controversy, for example, the leadership in Madras did not follow Calcutta’s call to ally with British agitators. D. S. White, the president of the aforementioned Association of Southern India, was even in favor of the Bill, causing much friction within the domiciled community, as well as with those Britons who welcomed the community’s participation in the agitation.17 If there was one point on which different domiciled leaders formed a united front, it was over the question of the community’s living standard. Despite the frequent disagreement over ideological and other matters, they generally agreed that their community vitally needed those avenues of employment that would allow its members to afford a ‘European’ mode of living. However impoverished it might have become, the community they represented was an English-speaking Christian community with European roots (however remote they might have become) and, as such, were argued to require more material resources than natives. Thus, the EAIA claimed that the domiciled community had to be recognized as a ‘White’ community in the sense that its members should be offered Europeanized positions in the civil and military services. This did not mean that the domiciled would want to rank among the colonial superelites. Rather, what they demanded was a certain guaranteed portion in the middle range, with salaries between Rs. 250 and Rs. 600 per month. In the case of the military, this would mean the right to form a communal unit paid at the nondomiciled British level. Domiciled leaders thought that these levels of remuneration alone would enable a genuine economic recovery. Given the characteristic abundance of low-cost native labor in India, government employment emerged in the eyes of the domiciled as almost the only

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way out of their collective indigence. Moreover, the EAIA argued that the domiciled community had legitimate historical ground for insisting on such inclusion, especially on account of its cross-generational contribution to the building of the colonial services in pre-Indianization years, as well as to the development of railways since mid-century.

THE PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION It was particularly in the cases of the Pilot, Forest, and Public Works Departments that the policy of Europeanization emerged as a menace to the position of domiciled Europeans and Eurasians within the Civil Service. No sooner was the fi rst EAIA branch established than its leaders started to voice concerns over the Europeanization of these departments, and it did not take long before they transformed, in their own specific way, the question of public service recruitment into a politics over the definition of ‘Whiteness.’ Such a claim of the domiciled to be recognized as ‘White’ was to be most sharply articulated during the Public Service Commission (PSC; 1886–1887). The PSC may be seen as a crucial historical occasion where the colonized, by now increasingly aware of possibilities for self-rule, confronted their colonial masters over the nature of imperial rule. It was the question of how and how far to Indianize the Civil Service that was the prime focus of debate and negotiation. From the perspective of the EAIA, however, it was Europeanization, not Indianization, that appeared as by far the most critical issue to be addressed. To be sure, Indianization had historically constituted a fatal threat to the position of the domiciled community within the Civil Service, causing its inexorable decline in economic and social terms. Many Eurasians, in fact, used to be well integrated with the civil and military headquarters of the Raj, sometimes being educated in Britain before coming back to India as ruling Whites. This short period of relative prosperity ended around the end of the eighteenth century, but even then they could still cling, with their language and culture, to the White colonial establishment as almost the only candidates for low-grade administrative clerkships. This had to fi nish, however, with the advent of Indianization, a policy originating from Lord Macaulay’s Minute on Education (1835), which advocated to educate certain classes of natives into Western-minded, English-speaking servants of the colonial state. As a result of this policy, by 1890, the proportion of Eurasian clerks declined to 18% (a dramatic fall from 99% as of 1840).18 Yet, according to the EAIA, it would not be by being incorporated into Indianization that the domiciled community would regain its economic stability of the bygone era: instead, it would be in Europeanization that the key to the community’s survival would be found. Certainly, the EAIA never failed during the PSC to criticize the racialized ways in which the

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 93 imperial authorities had promoted Indianization; it was notoriously the case that the policy implicitly intended to promote the use of ‘non-White’ natives, in apparent contradiction to the state’s supposed commitment to the ‘nonracial’ principle regarding public appointment.19 But as far as Indianization was concerned, the EAIA’s protest remained merely formal. Unlike the representatives of native communities, their domiciled counterparts argued that the problem lay not so much in the predominantly ‘British character’ of colonial administrative management as in linking up ‘Britishness’ to European upbringing and education: The British should continue Europeanization as a supplement to Indianization, but only in ways that would also benefit those of White descent brought up and educated in India. The Pilot Service turned out to be one of the most fiercely contested sites. The authorities’ view regarding the preferential admission of men coming directly from Britain was graphically articulated by A. J. Milner, a Branch Pilot of the Pilot Service. According to Milner, “the Natives of India,” including domiciled Europeans and Eurasians, would be “collectively [ . . . ] deficient in nerve, judgement, decision of character, etc., to carry on such duties [involved in the pilotage of the River Hughli].”20 The pilot service on the River Hughli had been given a high degree of strategic and commercial importance. To secure the safety of ships, cargo, and the lives of passengers, the best men had to be assigned as pilots. Milner’s point was that members of the domiciled community would not be good enough for the service because they were not brought up and trained in Britain. In fact, by the time of the PSC, it had already become a consensus that all potential pilots must undergo a course of professional training in the metropole so that they became thoroughly versed in Western skills, ideas, and manners. Candidates should be educated on training ships moored on British waters and, with the recommendation by the committee of these training ships, should fi nally be nominated for the pilot service by the Secretary of State for India. 21 L.W. D’Cruz and C. A. Tweeddale, who represented the domiciled community on this issue regarding the pilot service in the PSC, objected to such pro-Europeanization views, arguing that training in India was more than sufficient. One thing the government could do was to recruit domiciled men fi rst and then train them in India, together with those men brought from the metropole. D’Cruz and Tweeddale claimed that domiciled European and European men were not only equal with, but even more useful than, those British youths trained outside of India. The acclaimed training in British waters was impractical, and the trainees would run into stumbling blocks once in duty, owing to their lack of real experiences and local knowledge. In addition, it was more costly to employ home-educated men because the state had to bear the cost of their passages to India, as well as the furlough allowances, none of which would be infl icted if the state chose to employ locals. 22

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Similar resistance was observed in the PSC’s inquires into the state of recruitment in the Public Works Department (PWD). The Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill had been opened in Britain (1870), the function of which was to provide professionally trained men for the higher grades of the colonial public-works service. The problem for the domiciled community was the imperial policy to Europeanize the PWD’s managerial sector with those men educated at this college while Indianizing the lower grades with those from engineering schools in India, such as the Thomason College at Rurki (since 1847). It soon became a consensus among nondomiciled Britons that ‘Cooper’s Hill men’ (or ‘Royal Engineers’) were superior to ‘Rurki men.’ This view was made explicit during the PSC by some British officers of the department. R. B. Buckley, under-secretary of the PWD’s Irrigation Branch, compared the best men of the Cooper’s Hill and of the Rurki Colleges and remarked that the former undoubtedly had “the great advantage of an English training which certainly gives a higher tone to their character.”23 Henry Irwin, the superintending engineer in the Simla Imperial Circle, found the recruits from Cooper’s Hill to be “more reliable.”24 Colonel Robert Home, deputy secretary to the PWD and inspector-general of Irrigation, described the Royal Engineers as generally more fit: “no doubt [ . . . ] the Royal Engineers are very picked men, the cream of a service.”25 In view of these opinions, it was with great confidence that the subcommittee of the PSC concluded: “The professional education received there [at Cooper’s Hill] is, it is said, superior to any obtainable in India.”26 F. T. Atkins, one of the interviewees of the Commission, was an active member of the EAIA at Allahabad. Although he did not formally represent the EAIA on this occasion (he came as president of the United Railway and Government Servants Association), in many ways, he spoke for the domiciled community of which he was a member. Atkins argued that India’s civil engineering service had already been self-sufficient of capable ‘White’ elements to fulfill its managerial positions. His point was that the authorities may bring men from the metropole, but should do so without substituting them for those of White descent already living in India. According to Atkins, domiciled Europeans and Eurasians would discharge their duties as high-ranked officers, a fact obvious from the past cases in which domiciled men rose to prominent positions, just as had happened in the locomotive and traffic departments of the railways. 27 The sort of argument expressed by D’Cruz, Tweeddale, and Atkins was most sharply articulated by W. C. Madge, one of the most influential leaders of the EAIA in the late nineteenth century. He criticized the ways in which the policy of Europeanization based itself on a rigid distinction between metropole and colony, ignoring the genealogical and cultural continuum existing across the seas between two societies of White descent. According to Madge, there was no significant difference between nondomiciled Britons and the domiciled community despite their differences in terms of place of education:

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 95 I do not underestimate the value of an English education [i.e. education at schools in the United Kingdom] for Anglo-Indian and Eurasian youths, but no such gulf separates Anglo-Indians and Eurasians educated in India from Englishmen coming out to the country as that which separates English-educated from Indian-educated Natives [ . . . ] in most essentials, English society in India is the same as English society in England—men brought up and living in either, being subject to much the same moral and social standards, and preserving the same national traditions.28 Leaders of the EAIA were forced to challenge the idea of domiciliary difference. What was so devastating about the ongoing policy of Europeanizing the Civil Service’s higher positions was that it elevated the admission criteria to standards that were simply unattainable for the domiciled community. By the late nineteenth century, most domiciled Europeans and Eurasians were far too poor to send their children to the metropole for education, thus being structurally excluded from Europeanized positions of the Civil Service. If it was practically impossible for members of the community to go beyond the domiciliary distinction, the only strategy left was to abolish the distinction itself. The EAIA’s argument was that such a distinction was invalid and meaningless because domiciled Europeans and Eurasians were not only culturally the same with nondomiciled Britons, but even more suited as civil servants than the latter precisely because of their being domiciled in India not in spite of it. They maintained that the assigned status of the domiciled as ‘Native of India’ should be understood as a mere formality: It should not be used to justify their socioeconomic alienation from the nondomiciled, nor should it be taken to indicate their cultural ‘Indianess.’ If anything, their ‘Nativeness’ should be understood as meaning a localness of positive sort. By being born and educated in India, so the argument went, domiciled Europeans and Eurasians had an advantage over nondomiciled Britons because the former were more accustomed to, and naturally knew better, the place that was being colonized.

LORD CURZON’S CRITICISM After the PSC, the EAIA continued to agitate over the question of Europeanization with a renewed frequency. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, the economic condition of the domiciled community had grown singularly appalling. The British efforts in the fields of education and welfare had long been underway, culminating in the European Education Code (1883) and the appointment of the Pauperism Committee (1891). 29 The EAIA’s attitude toward these antipoverty measures was ambivalent. These were certainly necessary, but never sufficient: Pauperism would not be solved without an economic revival of the community as a whole.

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The EAIA’s annual general meeting held at the Dalhousie Institute (March 1897) condemned Europeanization for its disastrous effect on the future prospects for domiciled European and Eurasian youths. Against this threatening policy, “a united protest should be submitted to the Government of India, and through it to the Secretary of State.”30 The same year, an executive member of the EAIA, James R. Wallace, toured to England, presenting the grievances of the domiciled community, with W. C. Madge’s written instruction in his hands. Over the course of half a year, Wallace interviewed Members of Parliament and officials in both the India Office and War Offices.31 Those whom he interviewed included Lord George Hamilton (Secretary of State for India), Lord Roberts, Sir Richard Temple, Mr. Henry J. Wilson, and Captain Pirie. Wallace sought to rouse interest in the EAIA’s cause by appearing in Parliament and sending circular letters to retired Indian Civil Service officers now living back in the United Kingdom. Wallace’s effort was met by Whitehall, which fi nally authorized a deputation to the Secretary of State for India.32 The deputation took place on July 23, 1897, at the India Office. It was met by Arthur Godley, permanent under-secretary of state (who took the place of Lord George Hamilton, the secretary of state, who was too busy to make himself present). Wallace led a group of delegates, including some other EAIA executives such as W. H. Ryland. Regarding the question of public service recruitment, the deputation insisted on the inclusion of domiciled Europeans and Eurasians in what was seen as the European-British preserve of the upper grades of the Provincial Civil Service (if not those of the much more exclusive Indian Civil Service). According to the report of The Friend of India, and Statesman, the delegates demanded: the inclusion of domiciled Europeans and Eurasians under the term “European” or “British,” in any scheme for the reserving of special appointments in India for the purely British element; this implying definitely that domiciled Europeans and Eurasians shall have the privilege of sharing in all such offices in India which the Government may be pleased to classify as purely British or European, provided always that they shall prove themselves by competition with their co-competitors fit for such posts, without reference to the fact of the education of competitors having been carried out in India or in England. 33 Wallace argued that the cultural need of the community to “live like Europeans” created “the demand for a class of employment which alone can supply the ordinary needs of life.”34 According to the delegates, it was only in a technical sense that their community was ‘native,’ while never being able in actuality to bring themselves to accept any lower standards of living: conditions of climate and race [in the colony] make it absolutely impossible for this class to compete with native manual labour in spheres

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 97 which, though they afford a suitable and congenial living wage to the native, are naturally closed by irremovable barriers to the Anglo-Indian classes.35 The delegates complained about the ‘Native’ status of their community. The statutory protection of the domiciled community as ‘Native’ brought about certain appointments, but they were usually of lesser importance; more often than not, it only restricted the community from pursuing its claim to be incorporated in Europeanized positions. Ryland, for instance, argued that inclusion in the category ‘Statutory Native’ had actually been “of very doubtful benefit.”36 Returning to India, James Wallace attended an association meeting held in Calcutta to report on the events in London. There he explicitly reiterated the deputation’s position by declaring that the domiciled community “should have the acknowledged right to be officially regarded as the domiciled British community of India.”37 Only this would enable domiciled Europeans and Eurasians to “compete for the purely British services in India on equal terms with competitors from the Home land.”38 The prolonged struggle for higher public appointments eventually led EAIA leaders to change the title of their association. They thought that the exclusionary attitude of nondomiciled Britons derived partly from the derogatory image of the domiciled community much associated with the term ‘Eurasian’ (as used in ‘Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association’). It usually implied illegitimate sexual liaison and racial degeneration: The use of the term “Eurasian” under the circumstances is not only impolite but it is unmanly and ungentlemanly. The word was conceived in infamy; it bears the brand of the “bar sinister”; it was fi rst applied to the illegitimate offsprings of Europeans–nondescript Europeans–by native Indian mothers, and no amount of quibbling can wash out the stain that has forever branded this detestable name with disgrace and infamy. 39 To express the community’s genuine and legitimate Whiteness, a new nomenclature should be given to its representative organ. This subject of new association title was addressed at a conference held at Allhabad (December 1899), with delegates from the EAIA branches of Bengal, Bombay, the N. W. P. and Oudh, the Punjab, Mysore, and Coorg. At this conference, “it was unanimously resolved that the term ‘Eurasian’ should be dropped and the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ should in future be used as a designation for persons and associations representing those of mixed European or British descent and Indian descent.”40 This decision to change the association’s name to the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association (AIDEA) was forwarded to the Viceroy, together with a copy of the deliberations of the Allahabad conference, so that: “His Excellency is not in ignorance of

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the just and sound reasons for which this opprobrious and offensive title is protested against and this use very staunchly objected to.”41 The domiciled community was as ‘White’ as the nondomiciled British and should be officially recognized as such; it was with this strong desire to be regarded as a constitutional part of the White body politic that the delegates (consisting of Wallace and his colleagues) brought the case to the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon. To the disappointment of the delegates, Curzon’s response only mirrored the ambivalence and reluctance that had characterized the British attitude toward the material claims made by their domiciled brethren. His speech did start with a typical expression of sympathy toward the kin, saying that “no man with a heart can fail to be touched by the misfortunes of a community, partly, if not mainly, of his own race, who appear to have fallen upon hard times.”42 But this did not alter the fact that, for Curzon, those ‘British’ people who were then called ‘Anglo-Indians’ were, by defi nition, those who were not domiciled in India, but invariably went back to the United Kingdom after finishing their colonial career. The AIDEA’s claim to be both domiciled and British simultaneously would hence be contradictory in terms. The use of the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ was nothing more than an illegitimate will to deliberately conflate existing categories: Anglo-Indian is a phrase which is applied in popular acceptance to a particular individual and society, British as a rule in origin, which spends its life, official, professional, or otherwise, in India, and as a rule fi nally goes home. Then when we speak of Anglo-Indian officials, judges, clubs, newspapers, opinion, and so on, everybody understands exactly what is meant.43 It was precisely because the whole matter implied more than a simple change of name that Curzon was compelled to criticize the new nomenclature. Curzon thought it wrong of the domiciled community to aim at higher public appointments because these were meant for ‘Anglo-Indians,’ whom, according to the Viceroy, domiciled Europeans and Eurasians were emphatically not. All the domiciled could do was to increase their gain within the bounds of their ‘Native’ status. They might as well see themselves as WhiteEuropean in language, religion, and culture, but must accept an Indian standard of living. To claim anything more would immediately amount to a case of self-misrecognition.44 Despite their shared racial descent, British and their domiciled brethren were not meant to share the same living standard. As far as public-service recruitment was concerned, the government had already discharged its responsibility by providing the domiciled community with constitutional protection as ‘Statutory Native of India.’ The function of the colonial state was to ensure equal opportunities, and not results, to all of its ‘Native’ subjects. It was within this framework of constitutional equality, Curzon asserted, that several departments had been

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 99 open to or even preferentially reserved for domiciled Europeans and Eurasians.45 More generally, Curzon maintained that it would be in the spirit of self-help, instead of art of political rhetoric, that the future regeneration of the domiciled community would ultimately depend on. 46 Domiciled leaders were outraged by the Viceroy’s response. At the annual meeting of the AIDEA that took place after the deputation, Wallace could not but express his anger, especially in regard to Curzon’s criticism of the new nomenclature, Anglo-Indian and Domiciled-European Association: Lord Curzon gracefully ridiculed our labour over the question of a name for our people and for our Association. [ . . . ] It concerns very materially by what name we are called. We understand our position far better than outsiders. To them it is merely a matter of sentiment whether we associate our origin with the ruling British race or not. To us it is a question of national right and privileges, our heritage, our Magna Charta.47 Far from being contented with the results of the deputation, in February of the following year, the AIDEA sent a memorial to the government of India, once again arguing that the domiciled community was a special kind of White community that required a European standard of living and a commensurate range of civil-service positions. Curzon’s reply was communicated to the AIDEA thorough a letter written by the Secretary to the Government of India, J. P. Hewett. According to the letter, India’s educational intuitions were not expected to produce men of respectability suitable for superior positions in the Civil Service. Sometime before, the plan of holding the examination for higher offices simultaneously in the metropole and colony had been cancelled. This plan had purported to enable more ‘Native’ candidates to try the exam, but the imperial authorities decided against it on the grounds that such a system might lower the quality of personnel: It might wrongly privilege memorization while downplaying the importance of ‘character.’ To create imperial civil servants with an appropriate forbearance of character and power of judgment, a course in higher education in the metropole was deemed indispensable. With most of its youths educated in India, the government could not regard the domiciled community as a recruitment pool: the assertion of an obvious, though regrettable fact, namely, that the education available in India for the classes represented by the memorialists is defective in the training in life and conduct which moulds the character of those who are educated in the higher Educational Institutions of Great Britain.48 Wallace was so unsatisfied with Curzon’s repeated rejection of the community’s demands that he published a short article in The Indian Medical

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Record, which he (a doctor) was involved in editing. Although published anonymously, it soon became known that it had been authored by no one but Wallace, causing a controversy especially after it was reprinted in The Friend of India, and Statesman (October 1901). In this article, Wallace described the Viceroy’s attitude as representing a “studied and hateful prejudice towards this class of British subjects.”49 Wallace was resentful of Curzon for his policy, which appeared to him as “markedly one of repression—aggressive, tantalising repression—aggravated by prejudice and despotism.”50 Under Curzon’s regime, the domiciled had been sacrificed to make room for their nondomiciled brethren despite their shared British descent: the man of British descent in India, the man whose father fought the battles that gave India to England, simply because he is born and bread in the land of his adoption, is, by Lord Curzon’s edict, condemned as “moral [sic. original ‘normal’] and intellectual inferior” of the imported material from England—good, bad, or indifferent, as it may be.51 According to Wallace, the colonial state’s concomitant recourse to the principle of fair competition under the statutory rule was mere rhetoric, concealing a particular kind of discrimination that was practiced in the margins of the colonial White society, the class distinction that unjustifiably divided the wealthier from the poorer classes. He remarked: His Lordship endeavoured [ . . . ] to emphasise the principle of making no difference in religion or races. But Hindus and Mahomedans are Indians, “Eurasians”—Curzonian Eurasians—are Britishers, and Britishers in India are of two classes—the imported and the domiciled. If Lord Curzon conscientiously desires to hold the balances evenly between the races, he must prove that he and the India Office are dealing justly, holding the balances evenly, between the imperial and the domiciled Britisher. This they most emphatically are not doing.52 In discussing Wallace’s article, the newspaper, The Friend of India, and Statesman, defended Curzon’s position. Just like the Viceroy, it did acknowledge the domiciled community’s special difficulties: “the condition on behalf of whom the Memorial has been submitted bespeaks our warmest sympathy.”53 But the keynote of this article was also typically exclusionist, dismissing the community’s desire to be recognized as ‘British’ by adopting a new nomenclature as ‘ill-chosen’ and ‘absurd,’ claiming that “the attitude adopted in it [Wallace’s article] is unfortunately one which it is difficult for any unbiased person to regard with patience.”54 What then would be a possibly ‘unbiased’ point of view? What would be the right way to remedy the utterly complex problems of the domiciled community? The diagnosis of the newspaper reproduced the typical British view that

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 101 the only way to solve the economic problem of their domiciled fellows was to change the latter’s ‘culture’ of indigence through ‘self-help’. The role of their nondomiciled brethren would be to assist the domiciled community through education and philanthropy: The best advice we can offer to the community whom we do not expect to thank us for it, is that they should endeavour to arrive at a true if not absolutely impartial idea of the degree in which the difficulties, economic and social, under which they labour are traceable to race, to domicile, or to defects of character or training, which are more or less their own control. They will then be in a better position to formulate a scheme for the amelioration of the condition in the promotion of which the Government, consistently with the established principles of its policy, can co-operate. 55 The proposals made in the memorial to Curzon, the newspaper argued, had good reason to be dismissed. They had derailed from the spirit of selfhelp to which non-British wished the AIDEA to aspire, while problematically betraying “a startling example of the extravagance of the pretensions and the depth of the confusion of ideas.”56

CONCLUDING REMARKS In summary, the economic problem for domiciled Europeans and Eurasians during the last quarter of the nineteenth century was triple-fold. First of all, the policy of Indianizing the colonial civil service had, by mid-century, already made them redundant as local agents of imperial rule. Second, the policy of Europeanization made them doubly redundant, as the bounds of White privilege implied by that policy were such as to structurally exclude them because of their colonial domicile. Third, despite these double disadvantages, apart from the railway service, the Civil Service was the only substantial source of income that would be able to ensure the economic survival of the community. It was against the backdrop of such constraints that the EAIA (or later the AIDEA) made its claim for domiciled Europeans and Eurasians to be recognized as ‘White’ in matters of public employment. But the dialectical evolution of the civil-service reform, with its combination of Indianization and Europeanization, presented itself to them as nothing but an insurmountable historical impasse, making their protests appear disastrously out of touch with the course of history. The political protest of the domiciled community was hardly successful not only during the period covered by this chapter, but also thereafter until decolonization. Yet the fact that such a protest did inscribe itself in public political discourse is important not least for its effect of exposing certain tensions over the defi nition of colonial Whiteness. As if to unsettle our

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commonsense image of White racial rule in colonial South Asia, boundaries of White privilege were not permanently fi xed, but shifted historically with changing parameters for inclusion/exclusion. Up to the late eighteenth century, to be known as of mixed descent did not necessarily alienate one from the colonial White establishment. However, by the late nineteenth century, even being of unmixed White descent was not always sufficient for being admitted into the bounds of Whiteness insofar as ‘being White’ meant being in a position to command and rule. Scientific racism, much prevalent since mid-century, was indeed an important historical factor for the intensification of antimiscegenation sentiments, but it alone would not explain why racially unmixed domiciled Europeans, and not just mixeddecent Eurasians, had to be excluded from the sphere of White privilege. The racist belief in British racial supremacy was fundamental to the construction of Whiteness, but it was not all. The supposed preeminence of the White race would be maintained only by constantly redefi ning and readjusting Whiteness and its boundaries; paradoxical as it may look, this even entailed an exclusion of certain people of White descent. For colonial studies, this seems to suggest the need not only to question the idea of Whiteness, but also to reexamine the historical transformations of imperial society and ask how they altered the criteria for White membership, incorporating some while excluding others at different moments.

NOTES 1. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 86. 2. On the old system, see Bernard S. Cohn , “Recruitment and Training of British Civil Servants in India, 1600–1800,” in An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, 2nd ed., ed. Bernard S. Cohn, 500–53 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988). 3. See C. J. Dewey, “The Education of a Ruling Caste: The Indian Civil Service in the Era of Competitive Examination,” The English Historical Review 88 (1973); Bradford Spangenberg, “The Problem of Recruitment for the Indian Civil Service During the Late Nineteenth Century,” The Journal of Asian Studies 30 (1971). For an interesting discussion on the role of Oxford in supplying elite bureaucrats to overseas colonies, see Richard Symonds, Oxford and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 4. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), esp. 100–137. 5. By defi nition, ‘Domiciled Europeans’ were people of unmixed White descent born, brought up, and permanently settled in South Asia across generations. They were mostly of British descent, but could include people of other nationalities. ‘Eurasians’ were people of mixed descent with European blood on the paternal side. In the main, it was British men whom they had as their ancestors, but Portuguese or French ancestry was not so uncommon, partly explaining why many of them were attached to the Roman Catholic Church. For the historical formation of the Eurasian community until the mid-nineteenth century, see C. J. Hawes, Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India, 1773–1833 (Richmond, UK: Curzon

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 103

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

Press, 1996). Despite the ‘racial’ differences between Domiciled Europeans (unmixed) and Eurasians (mixed), the two were often juxtaposed into the category of ‘the domiciled’ on account of their shared difference from India’s ‘nondomiciled’ British community as well as of their common economic deprivation. For the emergence of the domiciled community, see Satoshi Mizutani, “Constitutions of the Colonising Self in Late British India: Race, Class and Environment,” Zinbun: Annals of the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University 38 (2005): 61–73. My use of the two terms ‘Domiciled European’ and ‘Eurasian’ derives strictly from stylistic considerations. I am well aware of the extent to which these expressions had derogatory connotations when used by contemporaries. In fact, the question of nomenclature is one of the major foci of my discussion: ‘Eurasians’ themselves, as will be shown in later pages, disliked this nomenclature so much that it was one of the greatest goals of their Association to get it replaced by another expression, ‘Anglo-Indian’ (which has been in use from 1911 to the present day). C. E. Liversay, “Disabilities of the Domiciled Anglo-Indian,” reprinted in St. Andrew’s Colonial Homes Magazine 11, no. 4 (1911): 63. (This was originally a letter addressed by C. E. Liversay, retired late executive engineer, D. P. W., Irrigation Branch Bengal, to the Rt. Hon. Sir T. Vezey Strong, Lord Mayor of London.) For an illuminating discussion about the British attitude to these schools, see Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Simply due to a lack of space, this chapter can only cover the fi rst twentyfive years of this long-standing struggle, which lasted until the end of British colonial rule. For a discussion of these contradictions and vulnerabilities, see, for example, the following works: David Arnold, “European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the Nineteenth Century,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 7 (1979); Lionel Caplan, Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World (Oxford: Berg, 2001); Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Britain’s Other Civilising Mission: Class-prejudice, European ‘Loaferism’ and the Workhouse System in Colonial India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 3 (2005); Harald Fischer-Tiné, “White Women Degrading Themselves to the Lowest Depth. European Networks of Prostitution and Colonial Anxieties in British and Ceylon ca. 1880–1914,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 40 (2003); Mizutani (2005); Satoshi Mizutani, “Historicising Whiteness: From the Case of Late Colonial India,” Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal 2, no.1 (2006). Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, eds. Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, 1–56 (Berkeley/ Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1997). In this influential introduction to their edited volume, Cooper and Stoler urge scholars of colonialism to analyze European and colonial social formations within a single framework. In the current study, my intension is to follow their lead and show the ways in which the reproduction of colonial Whiteness in India was so fundamentally related to the social and educational networks of British bourgeois society in the metropolis. See Mizutani (2006): 8–10. “The Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], June 5, 1877. “The Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], April 27, 1878.

104 Satoshi Mizutani 14. “The Feeling Against Mr. Ilbert’s Bill,” The Englishmen [Weekly], March 13, 1883. Whether there actually was such a racial solidarity is, of course, open to question because not all Britons and domiciled men were involved in the agitation. 15. Calcutta-based domiciled leaders, such as W. C. Madge, demonstrated a determined commitment during this controversy. See, for instance, “Memorial of the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association,” The Englishmen [Weekly], March 13, 1883, and W. C. Madge, “Moral Aspects of Trial by Peer,” The Calcutta Review 81 (1885). 16. David Arnold, “Industrial Violence in Colonial India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980): 249–53. For a relevant discussion on the presence of domiciled employees and their families in railway settlements, see Laura Gbah Bear, “Miscegenations of Modernity: Constructing European Respectability and Race in the Indian Railway Colony, 1857–1931,” Women’s History Review 3 (1994). From a poststructuralist perspective, she argues that domiciled Europeans and Eurasians who worked for the railway companies created an extraordinary space of ambivalence that was neither ‘modern’ nor ‘traditional,’, but was ‘hybrid’: Such an ambiguity, according to Bear, deconstructed, from within, the idea of linear historical progress symbolized by the ‘modernity’ of railways. 17. See, “Public Meeting of the European and Anglo-Indian Communities,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], August 25, 1883. 18. Mizutani (2005): 65–8. 19. Ibid., 67. 20. Public Service Commission: Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, Pilot Service (Simla: Government of India, 1887): 37. 21. See Ibid., 1–6 for the developments up to the PSC. 22. Ibid., 34–5. 23. Public Service Commission: Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, Public Works Department, India (Calcutta: Government of India , 1886), 110. 24. Ibid., 106. 25. Ibid., 108. 26. Ibid., 7. 27. Ibid., 86. 28. Proceedings of the Public Service Commission, vol. VI–Proceedings Relating to the Lower Provinces of Bengal (Including Assam) (Calcutta: Government of India, 1887): 102. 29. Mizutani (2006): 9. 30. “Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association: Annual Meeting,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], March 31, 1897. 31. The War Office because another major claim of the EAIA had been that the authorities should sanction the formation of a special military regiment composed solely of members of the domiciled community. 32. “Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association: Annual Meeting,” 18. 33. “Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association: Deputation to the Secretary of State,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], August 25, 1897. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. “Anglo-Indian Association: Conversazione at the Town Hall,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], December 1897. 38. Ibid. 39. James R. Wallace, “Letters to the Editor: The Domiciled Community Question,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], October 10, 1901.

Contested Boundaries of Whiteness 105 40. Ibid., 12 41. Ibid. The fi rst official use of the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ was to appear in the 1911 Census of India. 42. Lord Curzon, Lord Curzon in India: Being a Selection From His Speeches As Viceroy & Governor-General of India, 1898–1905 (London, Macmillan: 1906): 80. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 93 45. Ibid., 89–90. 46. Ibid., 92. 47. “Imperial and Anglo-Indian Association,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], April 5, 1900. 48. “The Anglo-Indian Association’s Memorial: The Government of India’s Reply,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], October 10, 1901. 49. James Wallace, “Lord Curzon and the Domiciled Community: Fierce Attack on the Viceroy,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], October 10, 1901. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. “The Eurasian Memorial,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], October 17, 1901. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY “Anglo-Indian Association: Conversazione at the Town Hall,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], December, 1897. Arnold, David. “European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the Nineteenth Century,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 7 (1979): 104–27. . “Industrial Violence in Colonial India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980): 234–55. Bear, Laura Gbah. “Miscegenations of Modernity: Constructing European Respectability and Race in the Indian Railway Colony, 1857–1931,” Women’s History Review 3 (1994): 531–48. Bhabha, Homi, K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Buettner, Elizabeth. Empire Families. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Caplan, Lionel. Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Cohn Bernard S. “Recruitment and Training of British Civil Servants in India, 1600–1800,” in An Anthropologist among the Historians and other Essays, 2nd ed., ed. Bernard S. Cohn, 500–53. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Cooper, Frederick, and Ann Stoler. “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, eds. Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, 1–56. Berkley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1997. Curzon, Lord. Curzon in India: Being a Selection From His Speeches As Viceroy & Governor-General of India, 1898–1905. London: Macmillan, 1906. Dewey, C. J. “The Education of a Ruling Caste: The Indian Civil Service in the Era of Competitive Examination,” The English Historical Review 88 (1973): 262–85.

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“Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association: Annual Meeting” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], March 31, 1897. “Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association: Deputation to the Secretary of State,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], August 25, 1897. Fischer-Tiné, Harald. “‘White Women Degrading Themselves to the Lowest depth.’ European Networks of Prostitution and Colonial Anxieties in British and Ceylon ca. 1880–1914,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 40 (2003): 165–92. . “Britain’s Other Civilising Mission: Class-prejudice, European ‘Loaferism’ and the Workhouse System in Colonial India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 3 (2005): 295–338. Hawes, C. J. Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India, 1773–1833. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1996. “Imperial and Anglo-Indian Association,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], April 5, 1900. Liversay, C. E. “Disabilities of the Domiciled Anglo-Indian,” reprinted in St. Andrew’s Colonial Homes Magazine 11, no.4 (1911): 63. Madge, W. C. “Moral Aspects of Trial by Peer,” The Calcutta Review 81 (1885): 165–70. “Memorial of the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association,” The Englishmen [Weekly], March 13, 1883. Mizutani, Satoshi. “Constitutions of the Colonising Self in Late British India: Race, Class and Environment,” Zinbun: Annals of the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University 38 (2005): 21–75. , “Historicising Whiteness: From the Case of Late Colonial India,” Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal 2, no. 1 (2006): 1–15. Proceedings of the Public Service Commission, vol. VI—Proceedings Relating to the Lower Provinces of Bengal (Including Assam). Calcutta: Government of India, 1887. “Public Meeting of the European and Anglo-Indian Communities,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], August 25, 1883. Public Service Commission: Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, Pilot Service. Simla: Government of India, 1887. Public Service Commission: Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, Public Works Department, India. Calcutta: Government of India, 1886. Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. Spangenberg, Bradford. “The Problem of Recruitment for the Indian Civil Service During the Late Nineteenth Century,” The Journal of Asian Studies 30 (1971): 341–90. Symonds, Richard. Oxford and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. “The Anglo-Indian Association’s Memorial: The Government of India’s Reply,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], October 10, 1901. “The Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], June 5, 1877. , The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], April 27, 1878. “The Eurasian Memorial,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], October 17, 1901. “The Feeling Against Mr. Ilbert’s Bill”, The Englishmen [Weekly], March 13, 1883. Wallace, James. “Lord Curzon and the Domiciled Community: Fierce Attack on the Viceroy,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], October 10, 1901. Wallace, James R. “Letters to the Editor: The Domiciled Community Question,” The Friend of India, and Statesman [Weekly], October 10, 1901.

6

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa, 1946–1960 Frederick Cooper

What kinds of futures were imaginable to political actors, in colonial Africa and imperial Europe, at the end of World War II?1 It is not an easy question to ask not least because so much present-day thinking about colonialism, nationalism, and the state prepares us to approach the problem backward. We see the world of nation-states—the nearly 200 members of the United Nations—and project a necessary movement from empires, which denied people the chance to govern themselves and express their own collective personality, to nation-states. We may recognize the problems that the nation-state entailed, but we often see those as consequences of the nation-state’s imperial genealogy: its master narrative of progress, in which a putatively European story of nation-building becomes the only model to which colonized peoples can realistically aspire, extinguishing other ways in which cultural particularity can be organized. But is such a view a backward projection onto a more varied landscape? At the heart of colonialism, Partha Chatterjee has argued, is the rule of difference.2 I would emphasize instead the politics of difference because the meanings of difference were always contested and rarely stable. As broad comparative study suggests, all empires, in one way or another, had to articulate difference with incorporation.3 To do so took work, and the work was not always done in the same way or to the same effect. To change empire’s politics of difference into something else also took work, and in Africa in 1945, no one knew where it would lead. That it would take the form of a linkage of a putative ‘people’ to a specific territory—and to a specific state— was one possibility, but not necessarily the only or the most attractive one. This chapter explores a particular set of ideas of turning empire into something else, and it does not pretend to explore the range of alternatives of which this was one. It is about an overlapping framework, parts of which were shared by African leaders and leaders of the French government, but not to the same ends. This chapter addresses directly the ambiguity between belonging and distinction that was part of the politics of difference in empires at a moment when the nature of imperial power was very much in question, and it uses the concept of ‘citizenship of empire’ to explore that ambiguity.

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In the decade and a half after 1946, between World War II and the achievement of independence by most sub-Saharan African states of the former French empire, all inhabitants of French territories were citizens. For nearly a century before that, French political theory held that most people in the colonies were French nationals and French subjects, but not French citizens. Citizenship was something for people from European France and their descendants and for those admitted, by the generosity of the state, into the category of citizen—who met educational, cultural, and political criteria for acceptance as ‘French.’ Such a polarity is sometimes seen in more general terms as the fundamental characteristic of empire, in contrast to the imagined community that defi nes the nation.4 I argue that both the leaders of European France and the important leaders of African France in the 1940s and 1950s had a suppler political imaginary than that, a repertoire with more than two possibilities. Both used the idea of a citizenship to put forth different visions of how empire could evolve. That such possibilities were available in 1946 tells us something not only about the postwar period, but about the boundaries of difference and the limits of incorporation within the trajectory of imperial polities. Why was the possibility that Africans could be French citizens and that the French Empire could become a federation of ‘peoples and nations’ in the plural a viable proposition so late in the ‘modern’ era? What were the limits of reconfiguring incorporation and differentiation in the period after the war? At war’s end, the parts of the French empire were classified into: 1. The metropole—that is, European France. 2. Algeria, colonized in 1830, whose territory was considered integral to France, but whose people were divided into citizens and subjects (Muslim Algerians). 3. ‘Old colonies’ (later Overseas Departments), mostly in the Caribbean, whose populations (the majority of African descent) had been citizens since 1848, plus enclave territories inside Senegal and French India. In the Caribbean, all came under the French civil code, but in the Senegalese enclaves, the Quatres Communes, original habitants could be citizens while matters of personal status (marriage and inheritance) came under Islamic law. 4. ‘New colonies,’ rebaptized ‘territoires d’outre-mer’ after the war, whose inhabitants were subjects until 1946. 5. Mandates, namely Togo and French Cameroun, over which France exercised nonsovereign trusteeship on behalf of the United Nations, successor to the League of Nations. 6. Protectorates (renamed Associated States), notably Morocco, Tunisia, and parts of Indochina, which were considered to be ‘states,’ with sovereign rulers and their own nationalities who had ceded by treaty some sovereign prerogatives to France.

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 109 This classification framed debates after 1945 about the degrees of autonomy, sovereignty, and participation in central institutions that each category was to have, all within what some commentators called a “French imperial community.”5 Struggle over what principles applied to the space of empire were old: After the Revolution of 1789, slaves and free Blacks in the Caribbean fought for and won freedom and citizenship within the empire, after which some lost both when Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802 and others fought their way out of the empire. Empire space defi ned a realm that was French and open to struggle over what that meant. Restrictive views of subjecthood were imposed on new colonies in the nineteenth century, whereas the defi nitive abolition of slavery in 1848 expanded the domain of citizenship in colonies to include people of African descent but stripped of their connection to ancestral societies. The possibility that France might widen the application of citizenship to different categories of subjects was debated on and off from 1789 to 1946. At the end of World War II, the concept of citizenship was central to a debate over the limits of inclusion and differentiation within an imperial space.

THE MAKING OF IMPERIAL CITIZENSHIP Racial distinction had an almost taken-for-granted dimension in colonial practices before the war, even if the concept was rarely invoked in judicial texts. The experience of abuse was part of the daily life of relationships between White administrators or settlers and most of their African subjects. Two cornerstones of routinized racial practice in the colonies was the indigénat, a system of separate justice that allowed local administrators to exercise arbitrary authority over people of ‘subject’ status in a wide variety of instances. Considered a measure of exception, the indigénat regulations kept getting renewed until the end of 1945.6 The other key practice was forced labor, a vivid marker of what it meant to be on the wrong side of a categorical divide. Although using coercion to recruit laborers provoked anxiety among many administrators steeped in the antislavery heritage of the French Republic, it was so ingrained in routine practices that when the Popular Front tried to ease its way out of it in 1936–1937, top officials in Dakar could not even tell whether their orders were being followed at the local level. After the Popular Front fell in 1938, forced labor came back with an overtness it had lost during the 1930s—fi rst in the name of strengthening France against the Nazi threat and then, after the defeat of 1940, in the name of the ‘“Etat Français’ and the ‘Empire Français’ that replaced the ‘République Française.’7 The Vichy regime had no scruples about democratic values and no qualms about racial subordination. The Administration of French Equatorial Africa, however, refused to accept Vichy power and cooperated with the Free French.

110 Frederick Cooper Then when the Allied reconquest of continental Europe began via North Africa—with troops from Africa and the Maghreb playing key roles among French forces fighting with the Allies—and a Free French government was installed in Algeria, the myth of France being saved from its colonies began to develop.8 Horror at the implications of racism in its Nazi version, the loss of self-confidence following France’s defeat, the inability of the French government to reestablish its authority over Vietnam after the Japanese defeat, and widespread concern that France lacked the economic and military means to impose its will over subordinated territories were at the back of French leaders’ minds. As the war wound down, Free French leaders in a literal sense were viewing France from its empire and in a political sense were realizing that an imperial vision was essential to French survival. Such a vision would have to represent a break with the forms of the empire of the past. The official repudiation of racial distinction in the French empire thus followed directly from the political and ideological tumult of the war. Yet at the time that colonies were declared to be ended and racism rejected, all the anxieties about Africans’ low state of ‘evolution’ resurfaced. French leaders considered African work habits so far from market rationality that they feared that abolishing forced labor abruptly would condemn their hopes of ‘development’ to failure. French officials gave themselves another five years to wean themselves from forced labor, never mind the sixty years of colonial tutelage that had already elapsed.9 Nonetheless, officials knew they had to make a strong gesture toward inclusion, anxious as they were about how inclusion and difference—so characteristic of imperial polities—could be reconfigured in the postwar context.10 Henri Laurentie, a colonial specialist in the Free French leadership, claimed in 1944 that policy toward overseas France was “the exact application of the principle of equality, that is for the suppression of the colonial concept, properly speaking.” The Empire, renamed the French Union, was to be “a more or less federal ensemble in which each French country, morally equal to each other, including the metropole, will be capable of following its distinct vocation, while sharing in the rights and obligations of the same human society.” In 1946, Charles de Gaulle looked to a national and imperial French population of “110 million men and women who live under our flag and in an organization of federal form.”11 Federalism seemed like a way to redefi ne imperial inclusiveness in the postwar situation, but colonial distinctions could not simply be effaced by declarations of equality. Officials still had trouble imagining any but the most ‘assimilated’ acting like citizens in the political. In 1944 and 1945, they were thinking of allowing more Africans with high levels of education and service to the state to become citizens or of creating an intermediate category with limited political rights.12 The tension over the applicability of French notions of citizenship to Africa came out in Senegal in 1944 and early 1945. When the right to vote was fi nally extended to French women, officials in West Africa decided that

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 111 the law should not be applied to the women of the Quatre Communes (the old colonies of Senegal)—who were citizens—because they were alleged to be backward. Lamine Guèye, the leading citizen politician, protested against the deviation from republican principles. Women and men protested at public meetings. “We categorically refuse this injustice,” said one woman speaker. “We will vote or we will prevent European women from voting.” The Governor General decided that it would be better to give way before violence occurred than afterward, and in April 1945, he conceded to the protests.13 That is how the female citizens of Senegal got the vote. Social conflict brought out another dimension to the politics of equality— one not anticipated by colonial officials. From December 1945 through February 1946, a strike movement swept through Dakar, the administrative and port center of French West Africa, extending to other Senegalese cities and culminating in an effective general strike. The slogan ‘equal pay for equal work’ was heard again and again. Officials in Paris realized that the distinction between subject and citizen did not correspond to reality in Senegal and offered no help to figuring out how to restore urban order. Instead, French officials turned to their metropolitan models of settling industrial disputes. The fiction that African workers were like any other worker, and could be handled as workers were in France, proved far more useful than the fiction of unbridgeable otherness.14 Then too were the beginnings of revolution in Indochina and bloody confl ict in Algeria. The French government was getting caught between its recognition of the necessity for making a reality out of promises that the French Union brought tangible benefits and the dangers of a cycle of escalating revolt and escalating repression. If the French Union were to mean anything to Africans, they had to be represented within it, and they had to see that some degree of political participation and civil rights went along with the duties of a French subject. In 1946, some ten Africans among other colonials took their seats in the Assemblée Nationale Constituante, a small minority of the total, but with far more interest than anyone else in colonial questions.15 Officials probably didn’t realize how difficult it would be to contain the meanings of citizenship. Discriminatory as the electoral process was, Africans entered it with vigor in the fall of 1945 and immediately tried to widen the crack in the door of citizenship. The slogans ‘Citizenship for all’ and ‘equality of rights and duties’ were prominent in the campaign manifestos, as were calls to build a French community “without distinction of race or religion.”16 In the Assemblée Nationale Constituante early in 1946, deputies such as Lamine Guèye and Léopold Senghor from Senegal and Félix HouphouëtBoigny from Côte d’Ivoire helped to write provisions of the constitution dealing with the French Union.17 From the earliest discussions, legislative committees accepted that inhabitants of overseas territories had “the same rights as inhabitants of the metropole. . . . It is necessary to dispense with

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a conscious or unconscious racism.” The draft contained the provision that “all members of the Union have the quality of citizen and enjoy the totality of rights attached to that status.”18 The debate over what this would mean brought out major differences among the deputies over the different degrees of ‘evolution’ of the people of overseas France. Were they capable of voting in the same manner as metropolitan citizens? If they were represented in French legislative bodies, should they be able to vote on matters that concerned European France? The idea of a polygamous legislator from Africa voting on a bill that concerned family policy in France appalled some politicians in European France. But legislators knew that a constitution that did not get at least some support from African delegates would have no legitimacy. Conferring citizenship on colonial subjects gave recognition to the incorporative dimension of the French empire while affi rming its unity and, hopefully, its durability. What institutions would actually run the empire was another question, and here disagreements were sharper. The constitutional draft that emerged from the Assemblée Nationale Constituante in April put forth the historically incorrect view of the Union as a voluntary assemblage of different peoples, all of whom were now French citizens enjoying the same rights. It provided for colonial participation in the major institutions of state, and it included the draft provision on citizenship regardless of personal status.19 Fearing that the draft constitution might be defeated in the referendum on its approval scheduled for May, Lamine Guèye asked the assembly to put in the form of law what the constitution contained as one of its articles: that all inhabitants of French territories would have the quality of French citizen. They would be able to keep their personal status—whether their affairs of marriage and inheritance were regulated under Islamic, customary, or other law—unless they chose to renounce it in favor of French civil status, but such a status could not be invoked to deny them exercise of citizenship rights. The bill passed unanimously; its contents had already passed through the constitution writing process. The Colonial Ministry read the unanimity as a message, signifying “above all a principle of equality: there are no more subjects, there is no more colonial regime.” From then on, there could be only one system of justice, one labor code, and one standard for civil service employment. 20 The proposed constitution was defeated in a referendum in which only people who were citizens under the previous constitution had the right to vote, leaving out most Africans. The defeat reflected domestic conflicts, but its consequences were serious in the colonies because it led to new elections and a more conservative Constituante. Over the summer, defenders of oldstyle colonialism mobilized. The center-right was now proposing a twotiered citizenship, with former subjects becoming ‘citizens of the French Union’ rather than of France.21 During the debate over the revised constitution, an advocate of a strong republican France, Edouard Herriot, cut to the heart of the contradiction

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 113 between a colonizing state and universal citizenship, warning that if all citizens participated equally in electoral institutions and if one looked at population figures, then France could become “the colony of its former colonies.” At this statement, Senghor jumped up to reply, “This is racism!”22 But Herriot had a point that Senghor would one day repeat himself: The Union was not being constructed from equivalent individuals in a unitary state, but out of different units, each of which was seeking both a degree of autonomy and a degree of inclusion in the whole. 23 It is this kind of conception of the state, emerging out of empire but looking beyond it, that is difficult to grasp from our present-day assumption of a pathway to nationstates with a homogenous citizenry, without intermediary bodies between them and the state. Yet such conceptions were at the center of debate in 1946, pushed and pulled in different directions by political leaders from European and African France. African deputies had to threaten to walk out to get the government ministers to keep the citizenship provisions intact, and it was all they could do to prevent separate voter roles for former subjects and former citizens from being enshrined in the constitution, although they were preserved for a few more years by legislation.24 The fiction of federation as voluntary and equal disappeared. The Constitution maintained the Assemblée Nationale as the ultimate legislative authority and allowed for weak territorial assemblies while the assembly devoted to issues in the overseas territories was consultative only. It was in some ways a bizarre combination: The President of the French Union—also the president of the Republic—represented federal executive authority, but he had no federal cabinet or ministries and no federal legislature that could pass a law. Such powers resided in the prime minister and the Assemblée Nationale. But the Assemblée Nationale wasn’t quite national, not in the sense of representing only the ‘people’ of European France; it had deputies from the overseas territories and Algeria, including Muslim Algerians. Yet it didn’t fully represent those territories because there were too few deputies proportional to the population. 25 The African deputies, disappointed as they were, backed the constitution that emerged from the debates over the summer of 1946 because their bottom line demand was fulfi lled: the generalization of citizenship—with all the rights that notion entailed—to all former subjects, independent of civil status under Islamic or ‘customary’ law. 26 Although the vote would only be extended to all citizens over ten years, the recognition given to the equivalence of all citizens and the presence of African voices in the legislature provided a basis for making further claims. Even before the constitution was drafted, claims were being made. 27 The most hated features of French colonial rule could not stand the light of day once colonial deputies entered the French legislature. The Assembly dismantled the indigénat, the separate judicial systems for colonial subjects; 28 it gave Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyana, and Réunion the same status as departments of European France; and, in a bill introduced

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by Félix Houphouët-Boigny and passed unanimously, made forced labor illegal, well ahead of the schedule that administrators had laid out for themselves in 1944. Lamine Guèye’s citizenship bill was the climax of this legislative process. 29 The underlying continuity of 1946—the insistence that all of the empire remain under French sovereignty—and the willingness to erase long-lasting distinctions were both part of the imperial perspective of the French state, an adjustment of the balance of incorporation and difference. Most important, the debate over the structure of the French Union was not stuck in a dichotomy of self-determining nation-state versus colonial empire. How principles of equality—of civil rights, political voice, and economic wellbeing—would conjugate with notions of difference in religion, culture, or degree of ‘evolution,’ was contested, but most deputies believed they would have to be reconciled in some way. The Overseas Ministry’s political bureau read the ideological position emerging from the constitutional debates this way: “the legislature wanted to mark the perfect equality of all in public life, but not the perfect identity of the French of the metropole and the overseas French.”30

EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE IN AN EMPIRE OF CITIZENS Thus, postwar France was supposed to be multicultural as well as egalitarian, but it was not quite either. The French Republic was not the equivalent of the other component parts of empire, and it retained—and indeed its new citizens wanted it to retain—a special role in providing resources for the ‘development’ of the poorer parts of the Union, and the provision of resources went along with a tutelary, modernizing, assimilationist ideology, constantly holding up European France as the model to emulate. 31 The Lamine Guèye law and the 1946 constitutions had made the onceexceptional situation of the Quatre Communes into the norm for the entire French Union: Former subjects could become citizens while keeping their personal status under Islamic or customary law. Officials knew they had to create multiple versions of the état-civil—the system of registering births, marriages, and deaths under the French civil code. For years, only citizens had been required to use the état-civil, whereas subjects most often could not because the state was so seldom present in the places where they were born, married, and buried and because the state didn’t understand anything other than the French civil code. Laws were repeatedly proposed in the French legislature for an état-civil capable of recording marriages and inheritance under different regimes. 32 Not one was carried through at the French Union level, although versions of multiple registers were improvised in different territories. In Senegal, for example, “secondary centers of the état-civil for persons under local customs” were organized in 1951. They recorded thousands of births, deaths,

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 115 and marriages—with uneven results. One local official described their launch as “very painful,” owing to difficulties of getting personnel to keep the registers where they could be used in a timely fashion.33 The stakes in the état-civil were rising with the changes in the colonial state. No longer content to let people organize social life in ‘traditional’ spaces, the more intrusive postwar state needed to identify individuals— and know their ages and marital status—much more than did the prewar state. Schools needed proof of children’s ages, electoral officials needed precise identification, and border officials in European France needed proof of French citizenship for Africans exercising their right to enter and seek employment anywhere in the French Union. Civil servants, who were eligible for family allowances on a per-child basis after the war, needed evidence of children’s status; and after 1956, wage workers in the private sector became eligible for family allowances too and needed similar documentation. This was a fundamental change in the state’s relationship to its population, and it implied a different notion of surveillance—one that the state was ill equipped to handle.34 Because so few births, marriages, and deaths were inscribed in the état-civil, the need to document people’s ages and status translated into a growing demand for “jugements supplétifs,” court decrees certifying a birth or marriage on the retrospective testimony of witnesses.35 The second measure that followed logically from the citizenship provisions of the constitution was to provide a legal framework for the ‘renunciation’ of personal civil status, which gives people the option of coming under French civil law if they so chose. Here one sees the evolutionist thinking, so long part of French colonial doctrine, creeping back into legal discourse, which the formal recognition in the constitution of diverse civil statuses among citizens seemed to be eclipsing. French leaders saw the adoption of French civil status as a positive move toward a higher form of social life, which it was a duty for the French to promote.36 As early as mid-1947, the Minister of Overseas France noted that one could be ‘very liberal’ and give every applicant French civil status on demand, but to do so lacked ‘realism.’ People were so attached to local customs “such as polygamy” that were inconsistent with French civil law that there would be a “very dangerous divergence” between law and practice. So admission to French civil status would have to be regulated, demanding evidence of conformity to the French way of life. 37 The Conseil d’Etat agreed: To be granted French civil status, one had to have “habits and style of life approaching that of people with civil status,” that is, of French people who already had that status. 38 As various bills to regulate renunciation were debated—and failed—the other side of the argument came out too: The constitution appeared to make adoption of French civil status a right and not a favor, but law and practices still made “distinctions among French citizens of different statuses.” What was at stake here was not so clear: As one official put it, “outside of their private life, these citizens have all the rights of the metropolitan French citizens:

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they vote, they can circulate freely including in the Metropole, they can go on strike, they can express their opinions, all in conformity with the rights guaranteed under French law and the preamble of the constitution.”39 Houphouët-Boigny thought the idea of renunciation was insulting: “We are Blacks and proud of the color of our skin. We do not want to renounce our personal status. We have our religion, our customs, which we value greatly.”40 But some Africans did want to get French civil status—to mark their conversion to Christianity or to get away from indigenous inheritance rules. The dossiers contain formulaic expressions to the effect that the applicant “has approached French civilization by his manner of life and social habits.”41 The formula was much like that once used by subjects trying to become citizens. In 1955, the constitutional court reminded everyone that, under the constitution, accession to French civil status was a right, not a favor. The fact that a law had not been passed to specify how renunciation of personal status should take place could not abrogate a constitutional right. Using the methods and criteria intended for citizenship applications before the war made no sense.42 Ten years after the Constitution gave overseas citizens the possibility of choosing whether to retain their old civil status or opt for the French one, the government had not figured out how to codify the process of making the choice.43 The state’s inability to obtain systematic knowledge of its citizens and regulate their personal status reflects, in part, the architecture inherited from the prewar colonial state: their need for low-cost administration and hence on operating through intermediaries and through collectivities rather than via a grid of knowledge and an apparatus of surveillance linking the state to the individual subject. The postwar state, oriented toward development and social engineering, needed such knowledge, but lacked the means to get it.44 But a more elusive element lies in ambivalence over the basic object. The constitution of 1946 may have looked egalitarian and multicultural, but Frenchness was neither culturally nor historically neutral. Officials kept stumbling over the significance of fully recognizing that polygamous marriages should be treated equivalently to marriages that conformed to the civil code, and they feared both that a French social order would be compromised by admitting unworthy people into it and that the indigenous societies of Africa would be undermined by weakening the apparently unique structure of social relations that each contained.45

NATIONALITY, CITIZENSHIP, AND CLAIM-MAKING The tension between inclusion and distinction was striking not only in regard to an individual’s status, but to the institutions of the French Union. Political leaders in both European and African France were uncertain just where the ‘nation’ was and what the place of nationality in a multinational community might be.

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 117 Most Africans before 1946 were French nationals, but not French citizens. The 1946 constitution left deliberately ambiguous what exactly—Republic or Union—Africans were citizens of, but suggested it didn’t matter: All had all the ‘qualities’ of citizens of the French Republic.46 Moroccans, Vietnamese, or others from Associated States had the qualities of citizens of the French Union, but they had Moroccan or Vietnamese nationality.47 Governing different places differently was a classic strategy of empires, but now the situation was volatile: the threat that parts of the French Union, starting with Vietnam, might exit gave extra leverage to those operating within its structures to escalate their demands. I have discussed citizenship as claim-making elsewhere, mainly the labor movement’s efforts, between 1946 and 1952, to obtain a labor code that covered all the overseas territories without distinction of race, religion, or origins. The six-year struggle of African parliamentarians and trade unionists culminated in a French West Africa-wide general strike on the eve of the fi nal debate in Paris over the code. In the end, the principle of equal pay and equal benefits for equal work was accepted; the forty-hour week and paid vacations were guaranteed to all wage workers; all workers had the right to unionize and strike. The labor code debate kept pushing issues of equality to the fore—in the demands of labor unions in Africa, in the way provisions of the bill were discussed in the Paris legislature. Whenever a legislator argued, for example, that legislation had to treat African workers differently from European ones because Africans did not work as hard, the argument was dismissed as unworthy of an egalitarian society. Deputies trying to protect colonial business interests from upward pressure on wages and benefits were reduced to making their own appeal to egalitarian logic, asserting that the benefits African wage workers received made the cost of marketing peasants’ crops so high that the peasants would suffer. Coming from where it did, the defense of peasants against privileged workers was transparently self-serving.48 By 1956, the escalating demands of labor—and other sectors of society—were so great that French officials sought a way out of the logic of universality and equivalence that they had promoted after the war. In that year, the legislature voted in the loi cadre, giving a high degree of political autonomy to the overseas territories, putting effective power in the hands of African territorial leaders elected under universal suffrage. The French government hoped that devolving budgetary authority to these leaders, elected by taxpayers of the territory, would make the resources of the territory, rather than those of France a whole, into the object of claims. The loi cadre’s provision of universal suffrage and substantial autonomy to elected governments autonomy in domestic affairs met two demands of African leaders since 1946. France’s African citizens would continue to be rights-bearing individuals within all of the French Union, but their claims to social equivalence would have to be made at the territorial level and be paid for by territorial taxpayers. Many African leaders realized that social

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and economic equality within the French Union as a whole would be harder to claim and that the focus on territory could lead to fragmentation, but the power that was being devolved was real and tempting.49

NATIONALITIES IN QUESTION The French government’s retreat from the social and economic implications of imperial citizenship meant the effective reversal of a policy that since the war had centralized power in Paris and insisted that France as a whole was the relevant unit of political contestation. For African leaders, 1956 was also a turning point, but one whose direction was not one many of them were fully willing to accept. They had not given up on claims on French resources or on alternative modes of reconfiguring in ways they desired the relationship of particularity and universality in a complex polity. Senghor’s starting premise, put to the Constitutional Committee in 1946, was that “Senegalese accept the French Union. But if they are politically French, they are not culturally French.”50 Until the end of empire, Senghor and his Senegalese colleague Mamadou Dia advocated a Franco-African community that would allow for both expression of an African nationality and continued political affi liation with European France and the rest of the former French empire. They advocated federalism at the West African level—a “primary federation”—and confederalism at the Union level. Federalism implied administrative and political autonomy for individual territories, but national unity among francophone West Africans as a whole, possibly expanding to become a “United States of Africa.” Confederalism meant an association of states, each of which had a national personality. As Gabriel d’Arboussier, a leading West African politician working with Senghor on juridical issues, put it, “The Primary Federation is the institutional form embodying the expression and the satisfaction of the aspirations to unity of the peoples of black Africa.”51 Senghor and Dia regarded the application of the 1956 law as a defeat. Although the law devolved real power to African governments, it seemed to predetermine the debate over federalism by focusing that power at the territorial level, virtually dismantling the government of French West Africa. Dia expressed his “profound and sad conviction of committing one of those major historical errors that can inflect the destiny of a people. . . . In spite of us, West Africa was balkanized, cut into fragments.”52 French officials hoped that ‘territorialization’ would avoid aggregating demands and pushing them upward toward European France. 53 Indeed, for most African advocates of federation, opportunities for leveling upward was precisely why a Franco-African Community, both federal and confederal, was more attractive than complete independence. But the 1956 reforms—and the coming into power after the 1957 elections of Africanmajority governments in each of the colonial territories—gave each ruling

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 119 party a power base, a patronage mechanism, and a structure of elections fi rmly based on the territorial unit. Even after the coming into power of territorial governments, leaders in both European and African France were not ready to give up on some form of supranational polity, the former in the hope of maintaining France’s great power status, the latter in quest of resources and rights–and for fear of the weakness of small and poor territorial states. When Charles de Gaulle came to power–with many French people believing that only he could rescue France from confl ict over the Algerian war—two of the major features of the 1946 constitution were folded, without great controversy, into the 1958 constitution: The former empire, renamed the French Union in 1946, now renamed the French Community, would remain a multiplex political entity, and all inhabitants of the community would have the rights of citizens regardless of personal status. The overseas territories now became ‘Member States,’ and the new constitution provided what the fi nal version of the 1946 Constitution had removed from the earlier draft—that any Member State could choose to leave the Community. The possibility that Member States might choose to federate was not excluded in the constitution, but it was not given any specific basis either. The Constitution stated (Article 77), “There exists only one citizenship of the Community.” French citizens from anywhere in the Community could exercise their rights anywhere else, including entry into European France as well as elite schools and professions. These provisions were part of the Constitution of 1958 accepted by all overseas French territories except Guinea in the referendum of 1958.54 At the level of member states, the new constitution was thus emphasizing differentiation—especially in territorial control over budgets and domestic social and economic policy—while the citizenship provision retained a notion of imperial inclusion. There was little disagreement between European and African French leaders over citizenship. But there was over nationality, and here emerged the tension over what a postimperial polity could be. European French leaders, including de Gaulle, thought that there was only one nationality too—that of the French Community. But after getting initial agreement on this proposition from the Conseil Exécutif–the new institution at which heads of states met to decide policy at the Community level—some African leaders demurred. For them exercising the rights of a French citizen was not the same as being French. Over the course of 1959, the Conseil Exécutif pulled back, recognizing that the question of singular or plural nationality needed further reflection.55 They were recognizing “the need to respect, on the one hand, the existence of growing national sentiment in each state, and on the other hand, the unity of all members of the Community in relation to the exterior.”56 African leaders’ defense of nationality as an expression of the personality of their states forced French officials to shift position. The government argued initially that France—meaning the Republic—was the only body

120 Frederick Cooper whose sovereignty was recognized internationally. But Africans viewed nationality less in terms of the world’s recognition and more on their own assertion of personality. 57 A committee dominated by jurists came up with the idea in November of 1959 of ‘superposed nationality.’ Each member state would have its own nationality and citizenship; it would write its own legislation and decide whom to consider a national. The nationality conferred by an individual state would automatically confer nationality and citizenship at the level of the Community. The discussions made clear that French officials were struggling to make concrete some version of layered sovereignty. The Conseil Exécutif accepted the plan for superposed nationality in December 1959.58 African leaders did not agree among themselves where the nation lay. Senghor claimed that his aspirations for national expression were not “tainted by Senegality.” For Dia, “It is necessary in the fi nal analysis that the imperialist conception of the nation-state give way to the modern conception of the multinational state.” This desire for a layered sovereignty— territorial, pan-African, and Franco-African—was in part practical: The territories were too small and too poor to be the instruments of human progress—Senghor and Dia feared “nominal independence.” It was part cultural, focused on people whom they termed the “négro-africains de l’Union Française.”59 Félix Houphouët-Boigny favored instead autonomy for each member state and a direct relationship to the French Community. He argued that an African federation added another layer of complexity and siphoned resources to its center, which he presumed would be in Dakar, the capital of French West Africa.60 Others, particularly youth and student groups, didn’t think the layered sovereignty constituted a sufficient break with colonialism. For them, the humiliation of colonialism would only be continued if Africans remained French citizens, no matter how complete their civil rights. They were calling for total independence, something Guinea had achieved by voting “no” in the referendum on the constitution of 1958. The issue was the subject of great debates, but the 1958 vote suggested that the majority of French Africans were still willing to follow leaders working within a framework that left open how territory, pan-African unity, and Franco-African affiliation would be conjugated.61 In the end, the French Community and African federation suffered a common fate, but not without considerable effort by French leaders anxious to keep some kind of Greater France and African leaders who feared the trap of territorial sovereignty. The governments of Sudan, Dahomey, and Upper Volta contemplated joining Senegal in a federation. But in the end, because of pressure from the Côte d’Ivoire, Dahomey and Upper Volta dropped out, leaving Senegal and Sudan to put together the Mali Federation in 1959. As leaders of Mali negotiated with French leaders over Mali’s passage to federation and then to independence, the imperial context within which the

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 121 relationship of African and French nationalities were being discussed ceased to be relevant. France agreed to change its laws to allow independent Mali to remain in the Community. But the discussion of ‘superposed’ nationality of November 1959 was gone by March 1960; independent Mali would have its own nationality.62 As negotiations went on, they focused less on the Community as a political entity and more on the bilateral relationship between France and Mali. Other African territories would follow suit. The agreements signed along with the transfer of sovereignty to Mali defi ned by treaty much of what membership in the Community had been supposed to do for all its citizens. Malian and French citizens in the territory of the other state would enjoy the same rights and social services as any resident of the territory in which they were residing, including the right to enter and leave each other’s territory.63 French officials at this time were more anxious about the ability of European French people to reside in and do business in Mali than they were about the possibility that Malians would come to France, continuing the right they had had as French citizens before independence.64 The Mali Federation failed; disagreements over how to run the federal government and, more important, fear on the part of Soudanese and Senegalese leaders that their own bases would be undercut by their partners led to its breakup in August 1960.65 Failure is always hard to interpret historically, and the temptation is to assume that what happened had to happen. Was the dream of supranational African unity unrealistic from the start? Was sentiment among most Africans really focused on the territories that colonial regimes had carved out and that in some respects at least had become a fact of life? Did the idea of dividing the powers of a sovereign state among territories, the Mali Federation, and the French Community go against the fundamental characteristics of politics? Or were narrower and more contingent interests on the part of political elites—above all in guarding the political bases they had established in the initial elections— the operative concern? We cannot tell for sure. But we do know that some people thought the federal possibility serious enough to make a considerable effort to make it work.

FROM COMMUNITY TO NATION-STATES After rejecting the notion of ‘Senegality,’ Senghor, Dia, and other leaders from Senegal ended up with just that.66 Soon after the collapse of Mali, Senegal passed a nationality act and created an état-civil.67 The officials who prepared the legislation insisted that they were exercising the prerogatives of a “fully autonomous state, master of its legislation.” They wanted to express the unity of Senegal via an “état-civil unique.” But while insisting that “this old distinction among different categories of citizens” had to go, they were confronted with the same problem as French officials had

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faced: Different Senegalese married differently. Such practices would have to be recognized, but the bottom line for the law’s authors was that it was the state that would do the recognition: Marriages, as well as births and deaths, would be compulsorily registered.68 European France also became more national. Over time, it became increasingly hard for one-time citizens of France, now living in independent states, to reassert their French citizenship, and immigration too became increasingly difficult in the 1970s. From an empire-state trying to keep diverse people within a political unit, it eventually became a nation-state worried about keeping people out, including the descendants of the same people it had tried to keep in. Some defenders of the ‘republican model’ in France now insist that any cultural or political recognition of distinction among citizens would destroy that model, as if that model were a timeless essence, rather than a part of a less closed and more contested set of political possibilities. In this chapter, I have pointed to the importance as late as the 1950s of a conception of France as a multiplex political entity, a state that was neither a homogenous nation nor a dualistic structure divided into a nation-state and external dependencies. Both European and African French people after World War II had, for different reasons, much at stake politically in arguments that defi ned both as rights-bearing Frenchmen and as members of a multinational community. Rather than see the actions of political leaders in European and African France determined by the inherent logic of the ‘nation-state,’ ‘the rule of difference,’ the ‘republican model,’ or the ‘colonial fact,’ I see them pulling and tugging on the political formations with which they were familiar, changing the framework of political action as they engaged each other. But how far could the leaders of a colonial empire allow the boundaries of difference move in the direction of inclusion and equality and still obtain something of the objectives they expected to have from empire? The French government tried—with the French Union of 1946 and the French Community of 1958—to turn empire into something else, something that was still in a sense French. These projects are sometimes written off as if they were last-ditch efforts to preserve a colonial system that France could not bring itself to give up. But they were more than that. The imperialism that French leaders were trying to defend in the 1950s—and defend it they did, as the Algerian war made clear—was not the same imperialism of the past. However much European French leaders wanted to contain pressures to change, they faced interlocutors from the empire who were using the same ambiguous relationship of federation, confederation, and empire to their own ends—to make claims for the political, economic, and social equivalence of European and African French people.69 French leaders had conceded from the start—with the abandonment of the indigénat, forced labor, and the status of subject—that the politics of difference could no longer be the same. They were pushed further in an egalitarian direction

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 123 by social and political processes, on the streets of African cities, and in the legislature in Paris. In the end, they had entered into a political contest over how multiple nationalities and the equivalence of citizenship could be conjugated, a new variant on the old balancing act of incorporation and differentiation characteristic of empires. A wide spectrum of French political opinion accepted, in the late 1940s, the need for such a political process. But by 1956, the government had learned that it could not control the process, that it could not contain the escalation of demands placed on it. Algeria made clear the dangers of alienating colonial populations; Africa became a testing ground where French leaders figured out in practice how far they were willing to be pushed to give social and economic substance to the politics of imperial citizenship. In the end, the bills were too high for French politicians to ask their constituents to pay. In Africa, acceptance of territorial self-government in 1956 had sent the territories—as Senghor and Dia warned—down a path where the selfinterest of leaders would set them against each other. Some of their critics had promoted African unity as an alternative to a continued relationship to France that could only be discriminatory and humiliating. But withdrawal from the French Community did not lead to African unity. On the contrary, African states have shown signs of xenophobic exclusion of each other’s citizens. They have not presented a united front to France or other ex-colonial powers, but individual leaders have developed ‘clientelistic’ relations to such powers.70 Senghor and his colleagues thought that the humiliations of colonial history could be overcome, that there were more alternatives to empire than the territorial nation-state. Their efforts eventually foundered on the differing views of federation between African and European France and on the different interests and conceptions among African leaders. Neither European nor African French leaders saw the generalization of the territorial nation-state as inevitable—or necessarily desirable—until the end of that period, and their efforts to forge more supple notions of political belonging should be remembered along with the fact that they did not succeed.

NOTES 1. The following abbreviations are used for archival sources: 17G, 20G, 23G, VP, 11D1 from the Archives Nationales du Sénégal (Dakar); F60, C, FPU, FPR, and 5AG from the Archives Nationales Françaises (Paris); AP from Archives d’Outre-Mer (Aix-en-Provence); CAC from Centre d’Archives Contemporaines (Fontainebleau). 2. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 16. 3. For a broad discussion of empires that attempts to get away from the teleological view of the nation-state, see Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires and the Politics of Difference in World History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

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4. The problem with Benedict Anderson’s intervention into the study of nationalism is not with the marvelous phrase of his title, but in his notion that the communities people imagined were necessarily national. Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983). I discuss the conceptual difficulties in concepts like empire, nation-state, coloniality, postcoloniality, identity, and modernity in Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 5. Robert Lemaignen, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Prince Sisonath Youtévong, La communauté impériale française (Paris: Alsatia, 1945). 6. Isabelle Merle, “Retour sur le régime de l’indigénat: genèse et contradictions des principes répressifs dans l’empire français,” French Politics, Culture, and Society 20 (2002): 77–97. 7. Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Chapter 4. 8. On the importance of African soldiers in the French imperial imaginary, see Gregory Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). 9. Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, Chapter 5. 10. Commission chargée de l’étude des mesures propres à assurer aux Colonies leur juste place dans la nouvelle constitution française, Report, July–August 1944, papers of Gaston Monnerville, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, GM 26. 11. Henri Laurentie, “Pour ou contre le colonialism? Les colonies françaises devant le monde nouveau,” Renaissances (October 1945), 10; Charles de Gaulle, speech at Bayeux, June 16, 1946, reprinted in Comité National chargé de la publication des travaux préparatoires des institutions de la Ve République, Documents pour servir à l’élaboration de la constitution du 4 octobre 1958 (Paris: Documentation Française, 1987), 1: 3–7. 12. “Programme Général de la Conférence de Brazzaville (Janvier 1944), ” 17G 186 and Governor General to Minister, Jan. 11 1946 (telegram), 17G 146, and March 3, 1946, 17G 139. 13. Lamine Guèye to M. le Délégué (of Parti Socialiste Sénégalais), Jan. 17, 1945; Lamine Guèye to Governor General, March 20, 1945; police report of a public meeting in Saint Louis, March 8, 1945; Governor General to Commissaire des Colonies, telegrams, March 7, 10, April 12, 1945; and Colonies to Governor General, telegrams, March 11, April 17, 1945, 20G 25. 14. Frederick Cooper, “The Senegalese General Strike of 1946 and the Labor Question in Post-War French Africa,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 24 (1990): 165–215; idem, “ ‘Our Strike’: Equality, Anticolonial Politics, and the French West African Railway Strike of 1947–48,” Journal of African History 37 (1996): 81–118. 15. Ministère des Colonies, Paris, Note au sujet de la représentation des TOM à l’Assemblée Constituante, July 18, 1945, F60/1030; Commissariat des Colonies, Note pour la constitution d’une Assemblée Consultative après la libération des territoires, December 10, 1943, F60/117. 16. The manifestos were summarized by security officials, and may be found in 20G 24. 17. On the constitutional debates, see François Borella, L’évolution politique et juridique de l’Union Française depuis 1946 (Paris: Librarie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1958); Bruce Marshall, The French Colonial Myth and Constitution-Making in the Fourth Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).

Citizenship and the Politics of Difference in French Africa 125 18. Statement of Marius Moutet, head of committee on overseas territories, and presentation of article 1 by Gabriel d’Arboussier, January 25, 1946 Commission de la Constitution, Assemblée Nationale Constituante, Comptes Rendus Analytiques, pp. 259, 261. One deputy even invoked the precedent of the Roman empire’s extension of citizenship to its free subjects in 212 AD to point out that citizenship did not make “local civilizations” disappear. M. Boidon, ibid., 328. 19. Marshall. 20. Minister, Circular letter to High Commissioners, June 14, 1946, AP 3655. 21. Report of Constitutional Commission, Annexe No. II-350, session of 2 August 1946, Documents de l’Assemblée Nationale Constituante, 296; interventions of Lamine Guèye and Senghor, 4, September 25, 1946, before Commission de la France d’Outre-Mer, Assemblée Nationale, C//15313. 22. Assemblée Nationale Constituante, Débats, August 27, 1946, 3334. 23. Paris-Dakar, October 3, 1959. 24. Lamine Guèye, Itinéraire africaine (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1966), 161–62. See also Marshall, 286–89. 25. These peculiarities did not go unnoticed during the constitutional debates. See Rémy Roure, “La Constitution,” Le Monde, September 15–16, 1946. See also Marshall and Borella. 26. Guèye, 164. 27. Some deputies saw the ambiguity of the constitution as a virtue, allowing for evolution. See Paul Viard and M. Valentino, Commission de la Constitution, February 5, 1946, 330, 347. Guèye, Itinéraire, made a similar point, 144–45. 28. See decrees of December 23, 1945; February 20, 1946; and April 30, 1946, on the suppressing of the indigénat, copies in 17G 52. 29. See Borella, L’évolution politique et juridique, for a summary of the debates and the legislation. 30. AOF, Directeur Général des Affaires Politiques, Administratives et Sociales (Berlan), note, July 46, 17G 152, AS. The preamble to the Constitution stated, “France forms, with the overseas peoples, a Union founded on equality of rights and duties, without distinction of race or religion. The French Union is composed of nations and people who make common and coordinate their resources and their efforts to develop their respective civilizations, to improve their well being and assure their security.” Yet as juridical commentators soon pointed out, the institutions of the Union were differentiated, not homogeneous. The preamble could be read as a “view of the future,” not a description. Louis Rolland and Pierre Lampué, Précis de droit des pays d’outre-mer (territoires, departements, états associés) (Paris: Dalloz, 1952), 76–7. 31. On the politics of colonial development in French and British Africa, see Frederick Cooper, “Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the Development Concept,” in Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, eds., International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays in the History and Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 64–92. 32. Barely a month after the passage of the Lamine Guèye law, the Minister wrote that for citizens who had kept their personal status, “it seems indispensable to organize their état-civil.” Minister to Governor General, French West Africa, June 14, 1946, 17G 152. 33. High Commissioner to Governor, Senegal, July 15, 1952, and Administrator, Ziguinchor Circle, to Governor of Senegal, September 12, 1952, 11D1/173.

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34. On the changing relationship of the state to welfare and labor, see Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, esp. Chapter 7. On the inadequacy of the état-civil before the new tasks, see, for example, Governor, Senegal, to Commandants du Cercle, February 24, 1953, 11D1/173. 35. On the burdens imposed by school requirements for birth registrations— and hence on jugments supplétifs—see Governor, Senegal, circular to Commandants de Cercle, June 3, 1955, 11D1/173. On the paperwork required for paying family allowances, see Technical Councilor, Affaires Politiques, Ministère de la France d’Outre-Mer, circular to High Commissioners, August 22, 1952, 11D1/897; Governor, Soudan, to High Commissioner, October 22, 1955, 23G 105. 36. Note de la Direction des Affaires Politiques, February 1947, 23G 33. 37. Minister, circular to High Commissioners,” June 13, 1947, F60/1401. 38. Statement of Conseil d’Etat in regard to bill on renunciation of personal status, July 13, 1949, F/60/1401. 39. Assemblée de l’Union Française, Commission de la legislation, de la justice de la fonction publique, des affaires administratives et domaniales, Rapport No. 154, séance of June 15, 1950; Avis de l’Assemblée de l’Union Française, July 13, 1955; Rapport of commission on legislation of the Assemblée, No. 20, January 27, 1955, Ministre de la France d’Outre-Mer to Secretaire Général du Gouvernement, June 13, 1949, F60/1401; Note of C. Deschamps Chef du Bureau des affaires Admin, “sur la citoyenneté des ressortissants d’AOF,” May 14, 1952; Minister, circular to High Commissioners, June 13, 1947; Note “sur la citoyenneté des autochtones” by Avocat General, Dakar, April 1947, 23G 96. 40. Report by Houphouët-Boigny and Almamy Ibrahima Sory on proposed law brought before the Grand Conseil of French West Africa, no date, but apparently 1946, 23G 96; N’Diawar Sarr argued that renunciation of personal status for a Muslim meant renouncing the religion. L’AOF, January 6, 1948. 41. See the applications in 23G 98. 42. Garde des Sceaux, circular to Procureurs Généraux, March 7, 1957, F60/1401. See also Yerri Urban, “La fonction consultative du Conseil D’Etat et la nationalité dans les territoires coloniaux (hors Afrique du Nord),” unpublished paper for a conference on “Le Conseil d’État et l’évolution de la France d’Outre-Mer de 1945 à 1962,” Paris, September 10, 2005. 43. See correspondence over proposed legislation from 1956 in 23G 96. 44. Foucaudian ideas of a power-knowledge grid or governmentality or notions of ‘colonial modernity,’ as applied by some scholars of colonialism, are too blunt instruments to allow us to see under what circumstances colonial governments wanted to know their subjects and when they did not. See the chapter on “Modernity” in my Colonialism in Question. 45. See, for example Governor, Senegal, to Haut Commissaire, May 31, 1952, 23G 96. 46. The Ministry in 1946 read the legislative debate leading over the constitutional text as meaning that former subjects would have “all the rights and liberties attached to the quality of French citizen,” and that they were not declared to be French citizens so as to protect their right to keep personal status. They would, however, have “a sort of right of option” to be French citizens if they renounced their personal status. Minister to High Commissioner, French West Africa, August 23, 1946, AP 3655. Yet things weren’t so clear. Over a decade later, the Minister tried to correct the High Commissioner in French West Africa, who had distinguished a ‘French citizen’ from a ‘citizen of the French Union.’ Only the former term had any significance, he insisted. “No ambiguity should remain in this regard,” he insisted, “neither in spirits nor in the terms

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

53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58.

59.

60. 61.

used on official documents given to the people concerned.” But this insistence on ending ambiguity was a sign of how much ambiguity there was. Minister to High Commissioner, April 26, 1957, CAC 950236/1. Note of Directeur des Affaires Politiques, March 52 on “qualité juridique des autochtones des pays placés sous tutelle française et à leur naturalisation, ” and Minister to Garde des Sceaux, April 14, 1951, CAC 950236/1. These arguments are analyzed in detail in Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, Chapter 7. Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, Chapters 7 and 11. Senghor, Constitutional Commission, February 12, 1946, 443. Gabriel d’Arboussier, “Etude sur les fédérations primaires,” November 10, 1958, VP 90. Mamadou Dia, “Abstention résignée” and “Une Afrique Unie,” Afrique Nouvelle, March 27, 1956 ; January 15, 1958; discours d’ouverture du President Mamadou Dia au premier seminaire national d’études pour les responsables politiques, parlementaires, gouvernementaux, October 26, 1959, “sur la construction nationale,” VP 93. Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, Chapter 11. On Guinea, see Elizabeth Schmidt, Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939–1958 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005). The Journal Officiel de la Communauté, Recueil des Actes et Informations, February 15–December 15, 1959, proclaims a decision of February 9, 1959, that “there exists only one nationality which is that of the French Republic and of the Community,” but a decision of October 23, 1959, created a committee to study “problems of nationality and citizenship,” and a communiqué of December 11–12, 1959, refers to a committee report on “basic rules of common citizenship and the modalities of acquiring nationality in the different States.” Communique of Conseil Exécutif, Afrique Nouvelle, September 18, 1959. French officials’ realization of African leaders’ views of nationality and their backing off their initial insistence on a unitary nationality for the Community can be seen in “Rapport du Groupe de Travail sur les questions de la citoyenneté et de la nationalité dans la Communauté,” August 5, 1959, “note pour M. Le Président de la Communauté,» November 6, 1959, and “note relative à la nationalité,”November 14, 1959, FPU 215. Conseil Exécutif de la Communauté, “Comité des experts chargés de l’étude des problèmes de la nationalité et de la citoyenneté,” transcript of meetings of November 16 and 18, 1959,; Conseil Exécutif de la Communauté, December 11–12, 1959, “Relève des décisions qui resultent de la’approbation du rapport sur la nationalité et la citoyenneté par le Conseil Exécutif, FPU 215. La Condition Humaine, November 29, 1951 ; May 31, 1956; Senghor, «Rapport sur le méthode du Parti,» in report on congress of the Bloc Démocratic Sénégalais, ibid., April 26, 1949; Mamadou Dia, «L’Afrique Noire devant la nouveau destin de l’Union Francaise,» ibid.August 29, 1955; Senghor, ibid., July 11, 1948. See the interviews with Houphouët-Boigny, Apithy, Lamine Guèye, Senghor, and others in Afrique Nouvelle, June 25, 1957. See also Afrique Nouvelle, July 10, 1956; October 1, 1957; and April 18, 1958. One of the best places for following these debates is the weekly newspaper Afrique Nouvelle. Partisan newspaper like Condition Humaine (Senghor) and Reveil (RDA) were almost major formats, as were the party congresses. See also William Foltz, From French West Africa to the Mali Federation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).

128 Frederick Cooper 62. Note d’information concernant les institutions de la Communauté, nd [December 1959], FPU 198; Haut Commissaire, Bamako, telegram to Secretariat General of Community, April 14, 1960 ; May 5, 1960, FPU 1677; “note à l’attention de M. Le Président de la Communauté,” March 21, 1960, FPR 106. 63. See the papers in the fi le “citoyenneté: négociations Mali 10–15 Mars 1960,” in FPU 201, including draft of the bilateral agreeement, dated March 15, “Note à l’attention de M. Plantey,” 10 March 1960; and Secretariat General of Community, mimeographed paper on “accord de Communauté relatif à la citoyenneté de la Communauté et aux nationalités dans la Communauté,” nd [March 1960]. 64. Officials in charge of Community affairs noted that Africans, as French citizens, already had the right to enter France and they thought that since France was growing economically and Mali was underpopulated, guaranteeing Malians the right to enter France freely and reside and work there would cause no difficulties. «Note relative à la nationalité,» January 9, 1960, FPU 218. On concern with rights of French nationals in Mali, see «note, projet de convention franco-malienne d’établissement,» March 24, 1960, FPR 106. 65. Foltz, From French West Africa to the Mali Federation. New material on the split is available in the FM series in the Senegalese archives and the FPU series (especially dossiers 1677 and 1678) in the French archives. 66. Senghor and Dia, in conversation with French officials as the crisis of Mali neared the boiling point, used the term ‘Senegalese nation’ and referred to ‘Senegalese unity.’ Haut Representatif de la France, Dakar, note à l’attention de M. Le Premier Ministre, August 16, 1960, FPR 230. 67. Law No. 61–10 of March 7, 1960, “déterminant la nationalité sénégalaise,” reprinted in Roger Decottignies and Marc de Biéville, Les nationalités africaines (Paris: Pedone, 1963) 300–6. 68. Projet de loi 17/ANS/61, presented by Mamadou Dia and Gabriel D’Arboussier, February 1961, VP 191. 69. On French efforts to use everything from torture to affi rmative action to keep Muslim Algerians within greater France, see Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). 70. Senghor, who in 1948 (La Condition Humaine, July 11, 1948) had written of the need to balance vertical relations with France and horizontal relations among Africans, was still calling in 1961 for “horizontal cooperation with other independent countries of Africa and vertical cooperation with France and European states.” Secretariat d’Etat aux relations avec les Etats de la Communauté, Synthèse des évènements politiques concernant les Etats de la Communauté, April 1961, 5AG 1/16.

7

Gendering the Colonial Enterprise La Mère-Patrie and Maternalism in France and French Indochina Nicola J. Cooper

ALLEGORIES OF THE NATION, ALLEGORIES OF EMPIRE The turn of the century marked a shift in the visual representation of the French colonial empire. Gone were the etchings of intrepid expeditions, battles against recalcitrant rebels, and the glorification of the warrior European imposing his will on barbarous natives. This visual shift mirrors an ideological evolution that perhaps found its origins in Jules Ferry’s retrospective assertion that France’s rather haphazard accrual of colonial territories stemmed from a specifically French design: the bestowal of the benefits of France’s particularly illuminating political and cultural legacy on the darkness of the backward peoples of the globe. As Ferry noted in his speech to the Chamber of July 28, 1885: “France cannot simply be a free country, ( . . . ) she must also be a great country, exercising over the destiny of Europe all her natural influence, ( . . . ) she must lavish this influence throughout the world, and carry forth wherever she can her language, her customs, her flag, her arms, her genius.”1 The cultural and moral imperatives of French colonialism were henceforth to take precedence over the underlying need for force. Previously, the soldier had predominated in the iconography of empire: As master of all he surveyed, astride the globe, he provided a visual assertion of masculinized versions of power, authority, conquest, and domination. But the ‘heroic’ age of French imperialism was giving way to a new era that was to be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of protection and nurture, at least in official codifications of the French colonial doctrine. In colonial iconography, the warrior was duly replaced by the Mother. The French nation has long been allegorized through feminized iconography. Maurice Agulhon posits the shift from masculine embodiments of the nation to the feminine as a reaction against the monarchy.2 It is his differentiation between the uses of the female icon at different historical moments however, which might prove most illuminating in the context of France’s colonial encounters. Agulhon’s work traces the evolution of visual portrayals of the character, qualities, preoccupations, and ambitions of the nation through two key emblematic moments: the struggle for the Republic

130 Nicola J. Cooper (Marianne at War) and the victory of the Republic (Marianne in Power). These incarnations of the French nation might be most usefully epitomized by two of the most well-known iconographic representations of the nation: Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) and Daumier’s Republic (1848). In the fi rst, Liberty is a strident and bellicose incarnation of the Republic. The second, also entitled The Republic Feeds and Instructs Her Children, presents a protective, reassuring, pacifying version of the Nation: The Republic as Mother shelters, protects, nourishes, and instructs. These versions of Marianne at war and Marianne in power are replicated in the different allegories of empire that were prevalent in different periods of France’s imperial history and can be used to mark shifts and evolutions in colonial ideology. If the nineteenth century had been dominated by concerns to demonstrate economic and military prowess through the acquisition of a colonial empire, then the early twentieth century was marked by a desire to legitimize that acquisition and express national prestige through the beneficial contribution of French rule to colonized territories. This shift became all the more evident in a chastened post-world war European climate, where France, as many of its imperial counterparts, distanced itself from the violent and acquisitive origins of empire to concentrate instead on the humanitarian value of French colonialism. Albert Sarraut (who was twice governor of French Indochina and later Minister for Colonies) retrospectively conceded that colonialism had originally been a primitive act of force, but asserted that this initially violent confrontation could be transformed into a collective triumph of solidarity. 3 A major cornerstone of this reconceptualized vision of French colonial practice was mise en valeur.4 It is a term that connotes not only economic development of the kind pursued by other capitalist imperial nations, but also the moral and cultural improvement to be wrought in the colonies. This emphasis on the moral and cultural dimension stemmed from the French belief in the universal value of its civilization that in turn found its roots in the nation’s revolutionary legacy. Both an ideology underpinning the French colonial doctrine and a set of policies, mise en valeur, is a polyfunctional concept that was much cited and invoked in the defense of French colonialism. This more ethical version of colonial intervention reposed on what might be conceived of as a trinity of values and principles that came to embody the French nation’s vision of its colonial role—generosity, benevolence, and protection. Mise en valeur could be put forward as an example of the beneficial value of French colonial action and thus served as a form of autolegitimation for imperial France. Mise en valeur came to be one of the pillars of French colonial ideology, a touchstone, and a means through which to measure and display the beneficial impact of the French enterprise abroad. It was the policy through which France quite literally constructed the empire.

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This type of shift in colonial ideology (and imperial identity) away from strident assertions of French territorial ambition and military prowess toward a gentler vision of a nurturing and protective version of colonial rule was embodied visually in the iconography of empire. Here the iconography of the maternal nation is readily deployed in the service of greater France (la plus grande France) (Figure 7.1). The great mother figure that dominates both images is a point of ralliement; however, this rallying is not achieved through war or coercion, but through the promise of shelter, abundance, and the bestowal of justice and protection. This is an image that tallies far more readily with the desire to distance France from the bloody legacy of conquest and to present colonialism as an ethically based project.

Figure 7.1 Poster from the Marseille colonial exhibition of 1922.

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In the same way, the artworks commissioned for the Exposition Coloniale de Vincennes in 1931 privilege different forms of colonial relationship that are dominated by an increasingly feminized version of imperial identity (Figure 7.2). The fresco by Ducos de la Haille, which was commissioned for the salle des fêtes of the musée colonial in Vincennes, privileges altogether different forms of colonial relationship: The fresco emphasizes the exchange of ideas between the metropole and the colonies. Although it displays the economic benefits that the colonies brought to mainland France, it nevertheless places more emphasis on the moral benefits of French civilization: peace, liberty, justice, and so on, alongside art, commerce, industry, and science. These visual representations of imperial France signal a revisioning of empire that began at the turn of the century and gained further legitimacy in the wake of the barbarity of World War I. As in contemporaneous textual sources, references to violence and possession are eschewed and a new version of empire is foregrounded, in which feminized qualities are privileged: Benevolence, protection, and nurturing are all by-words of the policy of mise en valeur. La patrie becomes la mère-patrie, and the mothering aspect of the pairing is emphasized. As Paul Reynaud noted on the occasion the 1931 colonial exhibition, “France’s secret is that she is a generous Mother.”5

Figure 7.2 Réunion des musées nationaux.

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RACE, WOMEN, AND IMPERIAL MOTHERING Positing the nation as Imperial Mother can be viewed, on the one hand, as a reworking of France’s imperial identity, but also as the expression of concerns relating to the future of the French race, sexual morals, and the position of France in the colonized territories. The feminized version of imperial identity functioned to some degree not only as an assertion of plenitude toward the colonized, but also as a symbol of the hope of a national regeneration abroad. As I have discussed elsewhere 6 (Cooper, 2000, 2001, 2005), the French state certainly emphasized the racial value of the ‘maternal’ abroad: For a demographically weakened France, this emphasis on heterosocial generation and regeneration was all the more pertinent, and the empire was envisioned as a breeding ground. From marriages between France’s colonial officials abroad, economic prosperity would ensue in the colonies; fertility would rise, and decency and dignity would reign in the colonies. Indeed, concerns about the dilution of the French race were linked with a new role for women in the French colonies: the policing and surveillance of males. Women were perceived as having an important preventative role in the colonies that was sanctioned by the state and disseminated through official guidebooks to life in the colonies. A 1927 publication of the Colonial Army observed that the presence of European wives would play a considerable part in raising moral standards in the colony: European women saved men from debauchery and the ignominy of creating a ‘temporary marriage’ with an indigenous woman; they furthermore reinstated in male minds the benefits of a stable home life. French women were thus viewed as having a potentially moral and modernizing impact in the French empire. The presence of a single European woman in a military post, in some corner of the bush—if she understands her role correctly—can have a considerable impact from the point of view of general morality. (Le Rôle, 8)7 These notions of prevention and surveillance are replicated in Figure 7.3, where the female occupies the place traditionally ascribed to the patriarch in photographic portraits of this kind. In an unusual reversal of turn-ofthe-century portraiture, the woman stands to the side of the seated pater familias, who is holding the child. It is a White child: The preventive presence of a European wife standing over the male has saved him from engaging in a temporary liaison with an indigenous woman, and the dilution of the French race through the creation of a métis, a mixed-race child. Colonial propaganda acknowledged the temptation embodied by the indigenous woman and sought to prevent, or at least contain, the frequency of mixed-race unions through encouraging the emigration of French

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Figure 7.3

Private photograph, Saïgon 1902.

women to the colonies. Like in British and Dutch colonialism, relations with native women were perceived not simply as morally reprehensible, but also as physically risky. The bearer of disease, the native woman also was a vector of moral turpitude. If she was a threat to the moral rectitude of the colony, by extension these mixed-race relationships constituted a threat to the status of France abroad. The potential sexual incontinence of the metropolitan male, faced with these alluring native women, also risked diluting the French race. The presence of European women would mean that indigenous mistresses “conduct themselves more discreetly,” but, more important, “the dignity of the European is thus reinstated.”8 The dissipation of that colonial ‘virilité’ and energy through sexual adventures clearly distracted from the work ethic of mise en valeur. Second, the collapsing of boundaries separating civilized from uncivilized would shatter the framework of colonial hierarchies. If the representative of the superior power showed himself to be sexually and morally weak, then colonialism’s objective to civilize was undermined. The attempt, through the means of propaganda, to extend colonial jurisdiction and interdiction to the private realm is revelatory of concerns over the commitment of colonialism’s own agents to the nation’s colonial enterprise.

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ROLES FOR WOMEN IN THE EMPIRE AND THE IDEALIZED FEMALE COLONIAL Women are largely absent from the colonial atlases, instruction manuals, and history and geography books of the 1920s and 1930s. Even in magazines aimed specifically at young girls, such as La Semaine de Suzette, published during the interwar years, women played a minimal part in Empire, as the French historian Alain Tirefort notes: “Men,—fathers, uncles, guardians— come off best in the colonies.”9 The work of empire is man’s work: He is the engineer, doctor, missionary, industrialist, administrator, and soldier. Women, when they appear, are for the most part relegated to the status of help-meet. However, the feminization of the nation’s imperial vocation also led to a rethinking of the role of women in the empire. What emerged was a notion of the Citizen-Mother: Women contributed to empire-building and the shape of imperial identity by linking maternal and public tasks and thus bridging the gap between the domestic sphere and civil/colonial society. In an extract on ‘Colonial Life’ from a bulletin of the Agence des colonies, Marquis-Sébie details the valuable qualities he believed women could bring to bear profitably in the colonies: Woman, with her gentleness, her tact, her diplomacy, her instinctive charm and her sense of duty—perhaps greater than ours—often seems more suited to certain tasks than man.10 These qualities, which he believed to be inherent to women, suited them for specific tasks abroad. These new forms of employment are linked quite explicitly to one of the principal tenets of French Republican identity: fraternity (an unresolved anomaly of the French Revolution). This ‘feminine solidarity’ allows women to have a role within the national imperial project. It is quite naturally towards works of care and assistance that they have directed their activity. We are aware of the magnificent role they have played in the creation of infant creches, the supervision of young black children, the education of mothers, thus providing a new example of that noble sentiment of feminine solidarity which is peculiar to the Frenchwoman.11 However actively women participated in these new functions, theirs was still a secondary role, and the notion of help-meet is clearly articulated. In all fields, they have accomplished humane works, and must be considered as fi rst rate assistants of colonisation as well as the precious collaborators of those whose existence they share.12

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European women also were believed to play a significant yet intermediary role in the empire as regards the identity and amour-propre of the men for whom they acted as help-meet. Georges Hardy, sometime director of the Ecole Coloniale, observed that, “Man remains a man as long as he is under the gaze of a woman of his race.”13 Men’s manliness is here shown to be fragile when in contact with the arena of the colony and all its debilitating potential. The adoring gaze and uxorial support of the woman of his own race provides an important buffer between Man and the hostilities and temptations of the Colony. This is an idealized vision of the female help-meet that often recurs in exotic fiction. In Georges Groslier’s 1928 novel, Le Retour à l’argile, the protrayal of Simone Bertrand presents the reader with Groslier’s vision of the perfect European wife: Simone (‘Pomme’) is lively, gay, practical, and efficient. The uncomplaining, supportive wife of Pierre, Pomme is a model of physical and moral support to her husband. She managed her household with a solid hand, collaborated in her husband’s work, hunted in the bush, and successfully managed a hundred acres of the plantation alone. She cared for the sick coolies, or, whip in hand, disciplined recalcitrant workers. She left the society balls only when she was dead on her feet ( . . . ). Let us not forget that in five years she had provided Pierre with two sons whom she herself had nursed.14 This fictional portrayal of the idealized European coloniale is ambivalent in its uneasy straddling of traditionally ascribed masculine and feminine pursuits and qualities. Pomme adopts masculine activities and traits to be accepted into the masculinized economy that prevails in the colony: She disciplines her workers, works on the plantation, and moves with ease within the colonial society. Yet she also has fulfilled her prescribed feminine role as society hostess and, more important, as an imperial mother providing her husband, and the empire, with two sons. In idealized visions of colonial femininity, the French woman was to be a personification of la mère-patrie. Advancing the nation’s civilizing mission, the Française was to be distinguishable by her appearance and bearing. The few images that exist of French women abroad are posed to emphasize their regal/imperial quality. Similarly, in a guidebook to life as a French female abroad, Chivas-Baron cites the key qualities of the White French woman abroad as: “grace, propriety, elegance, taste, dignity.”15 The activities Chivas-Baron deems acceptable for this French female include daily walks, botany, lay ethnography, music, watercolours, and keeping a journal. Chivas-Baron’s idealized coloniale clearly bears the imprint of class distinctions and indications of the author’s own class prejudices. To a greater degree than any other woman, the coloniale has to maintain the dignity of her manners, behaviour and appearance. Her lifestyle is scrutinised. Those who observe her may be developing peoples, those

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from an ancient civilisation, or refined classes of another society. In each of these cases, it must be proven that the Frenchwoman, representative of the newly-imposed civilisation, is a worthy, well-educated woman.16 These perceptions of the idealized French colonial woman posit interwoven physical and moral attributes as the cornerstones of her superiority: Her visual impact and her appearance were to be instructive and enlightening. Other propagandist texts from the late 1920s and early 1930s laid more emphasis on the activities that women could accomplish as the embodiment of the mère-patrie abroad. A 1927 text, intended to encourage more women to emigrate to the colonies, based its perception of a French woman’s role abroad on a feminized form of mise en valeur that in turn emphasized the nurturing and protective qualities that they could bring to bear: Just imagine of what great service a Frenchwoman could be to the local populations. Her husband commands a military post: she passes around the camps, giving out here and there advice to the wives of the infantrymen concerning the cleanliness and upkeep of their huts, the wellbeing of infants, the hygienic care of clothing and preparation of food. Medicines brought and handed out by her are taken with greater regularity. The physical and moral health of the entire indigenous quarter is improved.17 This feminized version of mise en valeur reminds us immediately of the benevolent and protective role that had been imagined for the nation at the turn of the century. Indeed, the idealized French woman abroad also figured as the embodiment of further key concepts that came to make up the French ‘colonial doctrine,’ including the notion of la plus grande France and the rayonnement [influence, radiance] of French culture and values throughout the empire. The presence of a French woman among the indigenous populations, this reified/deified ‘Elle’ of the following quotation, should ensure the dissemination and inculcation of French values and the lasting re-creation of French mores in the darkest corners of empire. She who, everywhere, has created France all about Her, the customs and visions of France ( . . . ) She has created France for the natives whom She has cared for and educated, and who, by virtue of this physical and moral improvement, will unconsciously retain the memory of Her time amongst them.18

EUROPEAN DEVIANCE AND DEGENERACY IN THE EMPIRE This idealized vision of empire, complete with the presence of idealized women, was threatened by an insidious ‘Other.’ The idea of the ‘Other’

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in the colonial context is invariably used to invoke the native populations. However, another ‘Other’ emerged in the French empire during the interwar years—an ‘Other’ who threatened the foundations of empire. Unease arose in the colonies concerning the ‘Other’ whom colonists thought they had left at home: It was a metropolitan ‘Other’—the lower social classes, a White ‘proletariat,’ the unruly European who failed to adhere to norms of behavior, dress, or bearing. This ‘Other’ came to function as Colonialism’s ‘enemy within.’ Europeans whose behavior, appearance, and morals deviated from the ideal threatened the boundaries and barriers that shored up the differences on which colonial rule was premised. They were wicked, debauched, immoral, idle, criminal, or just plain feeble. Colonial societies, disunified by their nature and often transient and displaced, were prime sites for class tension and conflict. Indeed, anxieties concerning the stability and durability of the colonial project were most frequently articulated through the prism of class, with gender often appearing as a natural corollary. As early as 1905, Claude Farrère’s Goncourt-winning novel Les Civilisés, had presented to a metropolitan audience the idea of the French abroad as “that human dung heap.”19 Having kept the best of its personnel and manpower for itself, mainland France had condemned its colonies to “contemptible colonial plebs,”20 European inferiors whom the colonial climate degenerated even further: . . . the mainland carefully keeps all its worthy recruits for itself, and only ever exports its cast-offs. Here we’re sheltering wicked and the useless, the spongers and the scroungers.21 Farrère’s novel, set in French Indochina, overturns the principal tenets of the French colonial doctrine. The notion of ‘progress’ within the colonial situation—respect for others and pursuit of the common good embodied in the ideal of associationist colonial policy—disappear. In their place emerges a notion of progress in which an exaggerated individualism overrides the pursuit of a collective advantage. The racial hierarchies that underpin colonial rule have collapsed, but their disintegration does not promote a heightened sense of fraternity; instead, it exacerbates segregationist practices and worsens racial tensions. Here, the freedom offered by the empty space of the colony does not necessarily offer a field for constructive action. The formule civilisée in fact runs counter to the model of altruistic endowment in that it embraces the hedonistic formula of ‘minimum effort for maximum pleasure.’ Thus, the ironic use of the formule civilisée condones lawlessness, licence, debauchery, opiomanie, homosexuality, and prostitution. Farrère’s portrayal of this lawlessness provides an unambiguously immoral image of the European community in Saigon, whose population is described as a prodigious hotchpotch of decent people, and, more numerous, those who weren’t. For the French colonies are really a manure field on which

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the mainland spits out its excrement and rottenness. In Saigon there was a multitude of dubious characters which the penal code, like a sagging spider’s web, had not managed to trap in its threads: bankrupts, adventurers, blackmailers, wily husbands and a few spies. There were plenty of women of more than easy virtue, all too ready to sink into debauchery, and that in a hundred different ways, the most virtuous of which was adultery. In this cesspool, any rare instances of probity or modesty stood out like a sore thumb and although everyone knew about this shameful state of affairs it was displayed and publicized, accepted, even welcomed. Clean hands shook dirty ones without repugnance. Far from Europe, the European, monarch of all the earth, sees fit to proclaim himself as being above law and morality, which he violates with pride. 22 Here the European colonial embodies unbridled hedonism, rather than innate nobility and stature. The primacy and desirability of the moral rectitude and probity that underpinned the idealized version of France’s mission abroad are thoroughly undermined by the protagonists’ morbid obsession with sexual proclivity and perceived moral deviance. Farrère’s protagonists betray France’s mission through the effects of solitude, passivity, degeneracy, and desire. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, a steady stream of nonfiction writers had begun to criticize French colonial action abroad. Amid a generalized dismay regarding the failures of French colonial administration and management, there emerged a recurring lament: the parlous behavior of the metropolitan French abroad. Where the colon, innately superior by birth, nationality, and class, was supposed to command immediate respect from his underlings through his bearing and demeanour, commentators instead found that the effects of an undiscriminating policy of recruitment to the colonial services had created an unworthy and undignified White underclass that threatened France’s position abroad. Echoing Farrère’s earlier narrative, Albert Sarraut had termed the majority ‘detritus.’ He acknowledged that the nation’s choice of emissary and agent abroad had often been ill-advised: We should only ever have sent to these far-flung territories an elite of trustworthy, wise, level-headed men capable of the tact and intuition necessary to the accomplishment of a work of psychology as subtle as delicate as this. But in the beginning the colonies aroused mistrust, and only the mainland’s detritus was exiled there. 23 Furthermore, the ‘slovenly morals,’ the ‘indiscipline,’ ‘licentiousness,’ and ‘rough vulgarities’ of a ‘white proletariat,’24 he remarked, had conspired to diminish the prestige of the ruling race. Similarly, Louis Roubaud, writing in the wake of nationalist uprisings in Indochina, placed a good

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deal of blame for this indigenous rebellion and agitation at the door of the French personnel abroad and its failings: “the European clerk or assistant is often a young dunce whose family sent him over here for want of fi nding him a position at home.”25 Although these general criticisms of the behavior and activities of French colonials tended to focus on men, as principal agents of France’s civilizing mission abroad, a special place was reserved for perceived female failings. The fi rst incarnation of what was perceived as the undesirable European abroad was the licentious female. A frequent feature of exotic and colonial fiction, she was cast as the debauched and enslaving socialite, the femme fatale, the prostitute. Her sexual voraciousness, her unfeminine virilité, threatened the masculinity of the European male and also prevented him from fulfilling his duty as agent of the civilizing mission: She thereby functioned as a threat to colonialism. However, this threat posed by the ‘Dark Woman’ could conversely serve to inspire European males to greater colonial efforts. As Jennifer Yee has noted, the femme fatale appears as the “incarnation of a threat against which man’s only hope is to reaffi rm his masculinity through the heroic work of combat and construction which is the colonial enterprise.”26 A second incarnation is the weak woman: She appears as the antithesis of the idealized embodiment of la mère-patrie. In a guidebook to colonial life, Julien Maigret remarks that “The English say that the equatorial colonies are the countries of the three Ds: Drink, Divorce and Death”27 and goes on to note that the presence of European women abroad often exacerbated these problems. The frail nature of females could often prevent their men from carrying out their duties; worse still, the European wife might become an embarrassment to her husband: Further disadvantages still: woman is of a more delicate health than man. In general she suffers more greatly from the rigours of the climate, she risks becoming a bother, a hindrance for the man who is trying to set himself up. A cruel embarrassment should his wife’s health require a sudden return to the mainland. 28 These weak, enfeebled versions of femininity that prevailed in patriarchal society in general also occurred frequently in colonial fiction as a counterpoint to the depiction of a symbolic great Imperial Mother. So in Groslier’s novel, for example, Pomme Bertrand is positively contrasted with the rather spineless Raymonde Rollin who is unwilling and unable to adapt to her new life in the colony. Prey to inactivity and boredom, she is positioned quite clearly as the ‘bad wife,’ and she attracts the disapproval and antagonism of the male society partly as a result of her manifestly female characteristics: her clothes, make-up, social activities, and thoughts. Colonial life becomes an endless round of frivolities: parties, suppers, visits, lovers, and adultery. The vacuity of life, the claustrophobic nature of this

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small European community, and the incestuousness of European society abroad lead inevitably to ennui, melancholy, and passivity: “In spite of her year’s stay, Raymonde lived unhappily, prey to an ennui bolstered by her nostalgia for France. She attempted nothing to distract or amuse herself, scarcely grasped at anything on offer.”29 This lapse into inactivity is an element of the female experience of the colonies that is highlighted in journalistic texts of the same period. Both Louis Roubaud and Andrée Viollis, investigative journalists writing in the 1930s, were highly critical of the passivity and ineffectualness of the European women they encountered during their travels through French Indochina. Andrée Viollis regrets the unproductiveness, vacuity, and idleness of the women colonials she meets. They are not “aware of their responsibilities”; they fail to tend adequately to the natives; they are not “not worthy of the task which should be so rewarding.”30 In regretting the fact that the French women she meets are unwilling or incapable of performing the duties required of a benevolent French matriarchy, Viollis reveals the extent to which the noble, worthy, idealized vision of imperial femininity had permeated French perceptions. Colonial society, she concludes, was being damaged due to the failure of women settlers to fulfi ll their prescribed role. For Louis Roubaud, these unproductive traits are exacerbated by the perceived ignorance and lack of gentility of the class of women arriving abroad. In his bitterly class-ridden analysis of ‘petites bourgeoisies,’ he laments the artificiality of their newly acquired bourgeois lifestyle and regrets that class superiority is no longer inherent in the French community, but has to be proved through ostentation and overt displays of power: those women, whose numbers have increased far too much over the last ten years, who, having left their little flat in the fi fth arrondissement where they stingily eked out their hours of domestic help, suddenly found themselves in a large mansion, in charge of a whole cohort of servants. . . . So, in the space of the twenty eight days it takes to arrive here, these lower middle-class women acquired the status of colonial nobility, and have imported here scorn for the native irrespective of his class or education.31 Roubaud’s portrayal of these ‘lower class’ women is revealing of the ways in which women came to function as a vector for bourgeois class prejudices and anxieties concerning the displacement of metropolitan class boundaries and tensions to the empire.

CONCLUSIONS The role envisaged by the state for women colonists during the interwar years tallies with the new iconography of empire that emerged during the

142 Nicola J. Cooper post-World War I period. France was to be represented as a great, protective Imperial Mother, her female emissaries as Citizen Mothers, embodying the idealized values of imperial France. On the ground, official France desired the further domestication of empire and hoped to achieve this partly through the tacit moral arbitration of women. Women were to provide the disciplining gaze of the state over the potentially ill-disciplined sexual mores of the male. Aside from a restatement of their role as help-meet, women also were to fulfi ll duties of care and education to the native populations, thereby providing a tangible demonstration of the civilizing value of France’s colonial doctrine. Concomitantly, however, expressed first in fictional and later in nonfictional sources emerges the notion that French colonialism is threatened from within. French cultural and moral superiority, imperative to the maintenance of colonial rule, was, it was argued, being undermined by the arrival to the colonies of sections of the metropolitan population who demonstrated moral standards that were little better (if not worse) than those of the indigenous populations they were intended to dominate, guide, and control. Amid these generalized class laments, women tended to be singled out for particular vilification and were specifically targeted as perpetrators of types of unbecoming behavior attributed to their lack of social graces and lack cultural knowledge or intelligence. As Stoler has noted, what is startling is that women, “otherwise marginal actors on the colonial stage, are charged with dramatically reshaping the face of colonial society ( . . . ) encouraging class distinctions among whites while fostering new racial antagonisms.”32

NOTES 1. [la France] ne peut pas être seulement un pays libre; ( . . . ) elle doit aussi être un grand pays, exerçant sur les destinées de l’Europe toute l’influence qui lui appartient, ( . . . ) elle doit répandre cette influence sur le monde, et porter partout où elle le peut sa langue, ses moeurs, son drapeau, ses armes, son génie. Paul Robiquet, ed., Discours et opinions de Jules Ferry, tome 5, Discours su la politique extérieure et coloniale (Paris: Armand Colin, 1897), 220. This and all following translations are the author’s own. 2. Maurice Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir: l’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1880 à 1914 (Paris: Flammarion, 1989) ; Maurice Agulhon, Marianne au combat: l’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1789 à 1880 (Paris: Flammarion, 1992). 3. Albert Sarraut, Grandeur et servitude coloniales (Paris: Sagittaire, 1931). 4. On this subject see Robert Aldrich, Greater France: A History of Overseas French Expansion (London: Macmillan, 1996), 163–98; Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters (New York-Oxford: Berg, 2001), 29–42 and Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 5. Paul Reynaud, L’Empire français. Discours prononcé à l’inauguration de l’Exposition coloniale (Paris: Guillemot et Lamothe, n.d. [1931]), 29.

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6. Nicola Cooper, “(En)Gendering Indochina: Feminisation and Female Figurings in French Colonial Discourses,” Women’s International Studies Forum 23, no. 6 (2000), 749–59. See also Nicola Cooper, “Living the Dream: Settler Responses to Colonial Indochina,” Journal of Romance Studies 5, no. 1 (2005): 79–90; Cooper, France in Indochina. 7. “La présence d’une seule femme européenne dans un poste, dans un coin de brousse,—si elle comprend bien son rôle,—peut être d’une importance considérable au point de vue de la moralité générale.” 8. N. N., Le Rôle et la situation de la famille française aux colonies (Paris: Editions du journal des coloniaux et de l’Armée coloniale réunis), 8 9. Alain Tirefort, “Les petites Suzette aux colonies: La Semaine de Suzette et la culture coloniale pendant l’entre-deux-guerres,” Afrika Zamani, nos. 9 & 10, 2001–2002, 102–25, 117. 10. “La femme, avec sa douceur, son tact, son doigté, sa séduction instinctive et son sens du devoir—peut-être supérieur au nôtre—semble souvent mieux désignée que l’homme pour certaines tâches.” Quoted in C. Chivas-Baron, La Femme française aux colonies (Paris: Editions Larose, 1929), 102. 11. “C’est tout naturellement vers les oeuvres d’assistance qu’elles ont orienté leur activité. Nous savons quel haut tribut elles ont apporté à l’institution des crèches pouponnières, dans la surveillance des jeunes enfants noirs, à l’éducation des mères, donnant ainsi un nouvel exemple du haut sentiment de solidarité féminine qui est le propre de la femme française.” Ibid., 103. 12. “Dans tous les domaines, elles ont fait oeuvre humaine et doivent être considérées comme des auxilières de premier ordre de la colonisation en même temps que précieuses collaboratrices de ceux dont elles partagent l’existence.” Ibid. 13. Ibid., 109. 14. “Elle conduisit sa maison d’une main solide, collaborait aux travaux de son mari, chassait en brousse et cent hectares nets de la plantation aussi bien tenus que les autres, dépendaient de sa seule autorité. Elle soignait elle-même les coolies malades, ou, de sa cravache, le dos du caporal indocile. Elle ne quittait le bal que morte de fatigue ( . . . ) N’oublions pas qu’en cinq ans, elle avait donné à Pierre deux garçons nourris par elle.” Georges Groslier, Le Retour à l’argile (Paris: Emile Paul, 1928 [repr. Paris: Kailash, 1994]), 21–2. 15. Chivas-Baron, 121. 16. “Plus qu’une autre, la femme coloniale doit garder la dignité de sa tenue. On la regarde vivre. Ceux et celles qui la regardent sont des êtres en voie d’éducation ou de très vieux civilisés, des raffi nés d’une civilisation différente. A ceux-ci, comme à ceux-là, il faut prouver que la Française, représentante de la civilisation nouvellement imposée, est une femme bien élevée, digne.” Ibid. 17. “S’imagine-t-on d’ailleurs les services que peut rendre la femme française auprès des populations locales ? Son mari commande un poste: elle passe dans le camps des femmes de tirailleurs, distribue de ci, de là quelques conseils concernant la propreté et la tenue des cases, les soins à donner aux nourrisons, l’hygiène du vêtement et de la nourriture. Les médicaments apportés et présentés par elle sont absorbés avec plus de régularité. La santé physique et morale de toute l’agglomération indigène y gagne.” N. N., Le Rôle de la famille française, 8–9. 18. “Celle qui, partout, crée de la France autour d’Elle, avec des habitudes de France, des visions de France ( . . . ) Elle a crée de la France pour les Indigènes qu’Elle a soignés et éduqués et qui, en vertu de cette amélioration physique et morale, garderont, inconsciemment, le souvenir de son passage parmi eux.” Chivas-Baron, 187.

144 Nicola J. Cooper 19. Claude Farrère, Les Civilisés. Paris: Kailash, 1993 [1905], 63. 20. Ibid., 64. 21. “. . . la métropole garde pour elle, soigneusement, toutes ses recrues de valeur, et n’exporte jamais que le rebut de son contingent. Nous hébergeons ici les malfaisants et les inutiles, les pique-assiettes et les vide-goussets.” Ibid., 62. 22. “Prodigieux pêle-mêle d’honnêtes gens et de gens qui ne l’étaient pas,— ceux-ci plus nombreux: car les colonies françaises sont proprement un champ d’épandage pour tout ce que la métropole crache et expulse d’excréments et de pourritures.—Il y avait là une infi nité d’hommes équivoques, que le code pénal, toile d’araignée trop lâche, n’avait pas su retenir dans ses mailles: des banqueroutiers, des aventuriers, des maîtres chanteurs, des maris habiles, et quelques espions;—il y avait une foule de femmes mieux que faciles, qui toutes savaient se débaucher copieusement, par cent moyens dont le plus vertueux était l’adultère.—Dans ce cloaque, les rares probités, les rares pudeurs faisaient tache.—Et quoique cette honte fût connue, étalée, affichée, on l’acceptait; on l’accueillait. Les mains propres, sans dégoût, serraient les mains sales.—Loin de l’Europe, l’Européen, roi de toute la terre, aime à s’affi rmer au-dessus des lois et des morales, et à les violer orgueilleusement.” Ibid., 126. 23. “Il eût fallu n’envoyer en ces pays lointains qu’une élite d’hommes sûrs, avisés, pondérés, capables du tact et de l’intuition nécessaires pour l’accomplissement d’une oeuvre de psychologie entre toutes subtile et délicate. Mais les colonies, au début, excitaient la méfiance, et on n’y exilait que les déchets métropolitains.” Sarraut, Grandeur et servitude coloniales, 210. 24. Ibid., 210–11. 25. Louis Roubaud, Vietnam: la tragédie indochinoise (Paris: Valois, 1931), 246. 26. Jennifer Yee J., “Colonial Virility and the Femme Fatale: Scenes from the Battle of the Sexes in French Indochina,” French Studies 54, no. 4 (2000): 469–78, quote 473. 27. Julien Maigret, Le Colon (Paris: Editions Larose, 1931), 137. 28. “D’autres inconvénients encore. La femme est d’une santé plus délicate que l’homme. En général elle souffre davantage des rigueurs du climat, elle risque de devenir une gêne, une entrave pour l’homme qui doit se faire une situation. Cruel embarras si la santé de la femme exige un prompt rapatriement.” Ibid., 137–38. 29. Groslier, Le Retour à l’argile, 15. 30. Andrée Viollis, SOS Indochine (Paris: Gallimard, 1935), 35. 31. “Celles—trop multipliées depuis dix ans—qui ayant quitté le petit logement du 5ème, où les heures de ménage étaient chichement comptées se sont trouvées brusquement dans un hôtel particulier, à la tête d’un personnel domestique ( . . . ) Ainsi, les petites bourgeoises de quartier ayant gagné, en vingt-huit jours de traversée, leurs nouveaux quartiers de noblesse ont importé ici le mépris de l’indigène sans distiction de classe ni de culture.” Roubaud, Vietnam, 243–44. 32. Ann Laura Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Cultures,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 634–60, quote 640.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agulhon, M. Marianne au pouvoir: l’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1880 à 1914. Paris: Flammarion, 1989.

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Agulhon, M. Marianne au combat: l’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1789 à 1880. Paris: Flammarion, 1992. Aldrich, R. Greater France: A History of Overseas French Expansion. London: Macmillan, 1996. Chivas-Baron, C. La Femme française aux colonies. Paris: Editions Larose, 1929. Cooper, N. “(En)Gendering Indochina: Feminisation and Female Figurings in French Colonial Discourses,” Women’s International Studies Forum, 23, no. 6 (December 2000): 749–59. Cooper, N. France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters. New York/Oxford: Berg, 2001. Cooper, N. “Living the Dream: Settler responses to Colonial Indochina,” Journal of Romance Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 79–90. Farrère, C. Les Civilisés. Paris: Kailash, 1993 [1905]. Groslier, G. Le Retour à l’argile. Paris: Emile Paul, 1928 [repr. Paris: Kailash, 1994]. Maigret, J. Le Colon. Paris: Editions Larose, 1931. N. N. Le Rôle et la situation de la famille française aux colonies. Paris: Editions du journal des coloniaux et de l’Armée coloniale réunis, 1927. Reynaud, P. L’Empire français. Speech given at the inauguration of the 1931 exhibition. Paris: Guillemot et Lamothe [n.d]. Robiquet, P. Discours et opinions de Jules Ferry, tome 5, Discours su la politique extérieure et coloniale. Paris: Armand Colin, 1897. Roubaud, L. Vietnam: la tragédie indochinoise. Paris: Valois, 1931. Sarraut, A. Grandeur et servitude coloniales. Paris: Sagittaire, 1931. Stoler, A. “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Cultures,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (November 1989): 634–60. Tirefort, A. “Les petites Suzette aux colonies: La Semaine de Suzette et la culture coloniale pendant l’entre-deux-guerres,” Afrika Zamani, nos. 9 & 10 (2001– 2002) : 102–25. Viollis, A. SOS Indochine. Paris: Gallimard, 1935. Wilder, G. The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism Between the Two World Wars. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Yee, J. “Colonial Virility and the Femme Fatale: Scenes From the Battle of the Sexes in French Indochina,” French Studies LIV, no. 4 (2000): 469–78.

8

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar Visual Encounters and the Construction of the Female “Other” in the Colonial Discourse of Maghreb* Claudia Gronemann

The Algerian author Assia Djebar, following the Horatian principle of ut pictura poeisis, visualizes the historical moment at the start of colonization, where French and Maghrebian culture fi rst meet, as a reciprocal face à face. The city of Algiers lies sprawled before the conquerors as a mysterious Oriental about to draw the gazes of the fi rst foreign artists: Dawn on this thirteenth day of June 1830 [ . . . ]. As the majestic fleet rends the horizon the Impregnable City sheds her veils and emerges, a wraith-like apparition, through the blue-grey haze. A distant triangle aslant, glinting in the last shreds of nocturnal mist and then settling softly, like a figure sprawling on a carpet of muted greens. The mountain shuts out the background, dark against the blue wash of the sky. The fi rst confrontation. The city, a vista of crenelated roofs and pastel hues, makes her fi rst appearance in the rôle [sic] of ‘Oriental Woman,’ motionless, mysterious. [ . . . ]. When the squadron left Toulon, there were four painters, five draughtsmen and about a dozen engravers on board. . . . The battle is not yet joined, they are not yet even in sight of their prey, but they are already anxious to ensure a pictorial record of the campaign.1 This literary re-imagination of the conquest of Algiers, which Djebar develops in her historical and autobiographical novel L’Amour, la Fantasia [the English translation appeared under the title Fantasia: an Algerian cavalcade] drawing on the eyewitness accounts of French officers, contains the basic questions underlying my considerations on the historical constitution of the “other” in French colonialism in North Africa.

*I would like to thank David Burnett for rendering my Teutonic academic language into English.

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 147 1. To what extent is femininity encoded as a symbol for cultural difference in the French colonial discourse as it is in the Spanish and English cultures of conquest?2 2. How does the construction of femininity manifest itself in different visual media, and what is the relation between media specificity and cultural or sexual coding? 3. How can stereotypical representations of this sort be interpreted beyond the simplistic opposition of Orient vs. Occident or Self vs. Other? My chapter pursues a dual aim. On the one hand, it attempts to show the overlap and interpenetration of gender and cultural differences in the process of constructing otherness. Moreover, the visual representations are not to be construed as stereotypes (and validated as such), 3 but are to be reread with an eye to the ambiguity inherent in their genesis. A hybrid-geared reading of these images should help extricate them from the dichotomy attributed to them by virtue of colonial power relations. Thus, I do not intend to point out the reductions, distortions, and conventionalized patterns in these representations in the manner of an archaeology of stereotypes, but rather to show how these came into being through the obliteration of a variety of elements and ambivalences. Hardened, one-sided viewpoints and the static thought patterns that go along with them, known as Orientalisms, are to be rolled back and their poles set into a state of oscillation. For the purpose of counteracting the renewed authoritarian appropriation of colonial images through one-sided, neocolonial, scientific, pedagogical, moral, and other discourses, they should be considered with a view to their innate hybridizations and moments of tension.

COLONIAL STRUCTURES AND VISUAL MEDIA PLAY Visual media play a central role in the formation of cultural patterns of perception and interpretation, as well as serving a key function in the act of colonization. Hence, reappraising European colonial history without taking the production of images into account seems unthinkable. Historian Pascal Blanchard argues as follows with regard to fi lm and photography: [ . . . ] it is impossible to comprehend the whole dimension of the colonial enterprise if you do not include, if you do not show, if you do not analyze this production of images [ . . . ] to measure to what extent the colonial culture is a system.4 The colonial powers were well aware of this visual power and influence, and they put the production of images and the realm of the visible under its control from the start. A central office, l’Agence Générale des Colonies, was set up in France in 1919 to censor pictorial material along ideological

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lines, and it was here that eighty percent of the pictures used in the French colonies originated. 5 So the visual construction of the ‘other’ is a fundamental part of the colonial strategy, no less important than the military conquest because laying siege to a foreign territory presupposes some sort of legitimation.6 The conquerors bestow this upon themselves in a performative act, disambiguating their invasion as a gesture of domination and thereby purposively masking the simple curiosity of the approaching invaders, their desire to possess the ‘other,’ their insecurity and fears.7 The violence employed in the act of colonization—French colonial forces fought tooth and nail for nearly forty years (1832–1871) against the Berber resistance in southern Algeria—is therefore necessary in a performative sense to establish a superiority. This alleged superiority, however, is de facto only one side of the medal. Power relations between different cultures do not exist a priori, but have to be created and visualized in the process. Images imply actualities that they succeed in creating through the power of representation. Artists were sent to North Africa on the first French warships to document the moment of penetration into unknown territory and, ipso facto, make the anticipated foreignness their own, translating it into a familiar system of images. The threat thought to emanate from the sinister ‘other’ and jeopardize the self—Bhabha, following Freud’s concept of the uncanny (Das Unheimliche 1919), uses the term ‘unhomely’—is to be warded off through the power of visual appropriation. As Oriental fictions, these constructions of otherness went down in history with the Egyptian campaign of Napoleon (1798). They gained currency through literature, art, opera, and architecture, and they can be traced back to artwork and travel accounts of the sixteenth century.8 Since the late nineteenth century, the projection of the foreign went beyond traditional texts and images to include the more technical, photographic media, suggesting an empirically tangible and, for the viewer, transparent reality, therefore lending itself with particular effectiveness to the creation of stereotypes. Dichotomous relations are construed in certain optical dispositives, which in turn give rise to a prevailing cultural view and the ascendance of the viewer. The development of visual apparatuses, a prosthesis for the human eye such as the mechanical camera eye, allows the body of the viewer to dissolve and become an abstraction. The image produced by technical means implies a subject that sees without being seen and is therefore quasi-universal, describing its object without any apparent reciprocal effect. This incorporeal omniscient view appears objective the moment it blocks out its partially, culturally, and historically defi ned standpoint, along with its attendant strategy. Dichotomies such as subject–object or victim–perpetrator are fabricated through the constructive power of the given view. Through the image-creating capabilities of photography and film, the power of representation is amplified; cultural ideas are habitualized, codified, and communicated in an attention-grabbing way so that the hierarchies depicted seem increasingly real.9

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 149 Ever since the Enlightenment, a kind of evolutionary criterion served as the pretext for the establishment of power relations in this manner, enabling the ‘other’ to be grasped as part of a prehistory based on categories derived from natural history. One’s own visual tools are construed as an expression of cultural superiority, of scientific and technical mastery, whereas the ‘other’ appears as a backward creature at the mercy of nature—indeed, is cast in this light through fantasies of omnipotence. Thus, the category of gender as a cultural construction of sex refers not only to the object portrayed in the visual media under consideration here, but configures the (construing) gaze on the production-aesthetic side as well, which, through the use of media, creates the concept of otherness in the framework of a gendered order of vision. I am not concerned here with the question of how appropriate these images are in relation to the contingency of reality, but with the production process, which is blocked out for the sake of freezing the gaze, producing coherency and stereotypical modes of perception. The complex and contradictory nature of producing—never unambiguous—images must be laid bare to augment the one-sided and reductive approaches to canonical images.

THE GENDERED ORDER OF VISION: THE FEMALE AS ‘OTHER’ A recurring image, indeed a topos of all colonial histories, is the imagining of the ‘foreign’ as female (i.e., the sexualization of cultural difference): “The foreign continent to be discovered or conquered has always been depicted as a woman,” the latter being equated, particularly since the Enlightenment, with nature, which for the conquerors in their civilizational mission is the ‘foreign’ per se.10 By the same token, in the modern body and gender order, woman is not only functionalized and biologized, but also exoticized in her purported naturalness. Then the ‘Oriental’ woman is a creature of nature in a double sense: She is the epitome of unspoiled wildness and at the same time nature by virtue of her biological function.11 This notion implies an essential, natural inferiority of the ‘other,’ when in fact it is the reinforcement of social power structures at work. The construction of gender differences—whether metaphysical or biologistic—was put into the service of colonial power performance, marking off the ‘civilized’ from the ‘other.’ Thus, since the Early Modern Age, the conquest of the New World, and, in particular, the Enlightenment, there have not only been “structural analogies in the discourse about savages and women,”12 but a downright overlap of discourses. The manifold constructions of the ethnic/female ‘other’ have followed two trends. On the one hand, ‘otherness,’ construed as backwardness, is idealized following the myth of the Golden Age. It is considered an expression of unspoiled naturalness, in line with the mythologem of the bon sauvage from Montaigne to Rousseau, juxtaposing the original purity of the noble savage with the corruption of modern man. On the other hand,

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the ‘other’ is also demonized, being portrayed in Christian discursivization as the embodiment of depravity or human sinfulness: Women are depicted as godless temptresses and the opposite of reason, whereas Indians ‘are’ sodomites and cannibals. The representation of territories, continents, and cities in the form of female figures (e.g., the at once cannibalistic and seductive America) invariably contains references to a dimorphic female nature, harking back to the medieval allegory of the world as a woman. The colonial production of difference likewise takes up these European traditions, with the female body time and again serving as a signifier for unfathomable foreignness and described as a universal icon for otherness.13 These strategies of ‘body politics’—tactical body construction through codification—transform the body into a place of power.14 The female body becomes a surface for symbolic transference to concrete women, anchored in a long, not exclusively European tradition of portraying women.15 As with the categories of race16 and class, the codification of gender aims at the symbolic constitution of hierarchical bodily images in legitimation of colonial interests. Although the idea of a symbolic production of cultural otherness became a mainstay of cultural theory with Edward Said’s Orientalism, there were parallel, even postcolonial approaches in the Orient that to this day have barely been acknowledged. The Moroccan theorist Abdelkébir Khatibi, a pupil of Roland Barthes, formulated his critique on the discourse of French Orientalists as early as 1976. This lack of reception is surely due to language barriers, the anglophone field of cultural studies seldom referring to texts in French, or other languages for that matter.17 Moreover, Khatibi depicted the problems of Orientalism in a less pithy and globally relevant manner, discussing instead specific works by French Orientalists (professors Jacques Berque and Louis Massignon from the Collège de France).18 As described by the concepts of ‘orientmaking,’ ‘othering’ (Spivak), or ‘disoriented Orientalism’ (Khatibi), representations of difference can be interpreted as forms of cultural identity in which the ‘other’ is symbolically created to consolidate a mythically transfigured, hegemonial authority and identity. But the potential of generating overarching cultural patterns, as implied in Said’s concept of Orientalism, and hence of succeeding in creating monolithic paradigms of the ‘other,’ whether Oriental or Occidental in assignation, is called into question by the concept of hybridity. Rather, the symbolic drawing of boundaries would seem to be an indispensable strategy in dealing with foreignness and a requisite part of any construction of identity. How else but through ascribing qualities from their own horizon of meaning could Europeans and non-Europeans grasp the respective ‘other’?19 Bhabha’s concept posits cultures not as units capable of being topographically and holistically differentiated from each other, but as quantities constantly in the process of being generated anew and rewritten symbolically. Any stable point of reference for measuring the truth or forgery, the success or failure of images of otherness necessarily becomes invalid. Rather, the focal point of research becomes the ambivalences and dynamics of those cultural discourses in which authorities are articulated and boundaries shifted. Therefore Bhabha states:

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 151 In my own work I have developed the concept of hybridity to describe the construction of cultural authority within conditions of political antagonism or inequity. Strategies of hybriddization reveal an estranging movement in the “authoritative,” even authoritarian inscription of the cultural sign. At the point at which the precept attempts to objectify itself as a generalized knowledge or a normalizing, hegemonic practice, the hybrid strategy or discourse opens up a space of negotiation where power is unequal but its articulation may be equivocal. 20 Unlike Said, Bhabha assumes that power discourses are never unambiguous and are therefore as unlikely to succeed as Orientalization. Thus, the colonial (image) archive contains not only the same old patterns of attribution, but also hybrid inscriptions—moments of a creative (uncontrollable) process of identity construction. To a certain extent, every colonial model bears witness to the presence of its author, his desires, and his entanglement with what he declares as foreign or ‘other.’ Accordingly, it is less a matter of decoding otherness as an ‘invention’ of the ‘other’ than of investigating colonial representations for aspects of negotiation and for traces of inscriptions of a self continually thwarted by the ‘other.’21

THE FEMALE ‘OTHER’ IN PAINTING Because the ‘other’ is constituted in the colonial gaze, the start of French colonization allowed an Orient construction of North Africa to penetrate the European consciousness and even become the focus of a wide-ranging fashion in Europe. One of the first European artists to travel to Morocco, even before the littérateurs Lamartine, Nerval, Flaubert, Gautier, and Loti, was the French painter Eugène Delacroix. Having made a name for himself in France, the extraordinarily talented historical painter set off voluntarily and, full of curiosity, on his diplomatic voyage. The studio painter documented this utterly new experience in his travel diary. On his return voyage to Algiers, he became the first Frenchman to set foot in a harem22 on North African soil, thereby breaking a cultural taboo. Twice he violates the Islamic prohibition of looking. He enters the harem of an Algerian man where only the host is allowed to enter, and he looks at unveiled Arab women, which in Islamic culture is prohibited to every man outside the family.23 The act, a foreign man intruding on the home of the Algerian, is tantamount to a conquest or “expropriation.”24 Gender difference is displaced by the construction of a cultural one: The Algerian man is for Delacroix just as foreign as the women he ‘looks over,’ and gender difference gives way to a more clearly delineated cultural boundary. Delacroix’s perception of the foreign women is based on familiar ideas such as the feminine ideal projected on Antiquity: I was extremely lucky to have the opportunity to visit a harem in Algiers. It is so beautiful! It is like in Homer’s times! A woman in the

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The women’s quarters he sees give him the impression of an ‘untouched’ world preserved in its naturalness—the harem embodies here the natural domestication of women—subscribing to Rousseau’s ideal of woman. In the tradition of the ‘noble savage’ topos and following the Enlightenment concept of nature, the people of other cultures are conceived as creatures of nature having no part in what is deemed as ‘civilization.’ This is the dominant image of the ‘foreign’ in the nineteenth century. Baudelaire, too, interprets the otherness depicted by Delacroix as a natural difference: [ . . . ] there he [Delacroix, C.G.] could take his time to study the man and the woman and the independence and native originality of their movements, and understand the ancient beauty by the sight of a pure race untainted of miscegenenation, adorned of health and of the free development of the muscles. (my translation)26 Both man and woman in the other culture are construed as creatures of nature. That this does not automatically imply cultural essentialism is revealed by Baudelaire, who labels the painter Delacroix with the purportedly anti-bourgeois sauvage concept, Orientalizing him so to speak: “There was much of a savage in Eugène Delacroix; that was the most precious part of his souls, the part entirely devoted to the painting of his dreams and to the cult of his art.” (my translation)27 The ‘stolen glance’ (Djebar) in the harem would preoccupy the painter for many years to come. His oil painting Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1834, 28 became the object of fascination for an audience taken with the Oriental craze. The painting, called the “plus beau tableau du monde” by Renoir, shows typical elements of the harem fantasies found in European painting. The exotic props can all be found here: water pipe (in the foreground), Oriental rugs and pillows, ornamental wall tiles, and a Koran plaque in the background. The women’s attire reveals additional Oriental motifs: head scarves, babouches, valuable jewelry, and clothing, such as the traditional Ottoman brocade vest worn by a woman (see Figure 8.1, left-hand side). The women appear ‘natural’. Sitting barefoot on the floor, the phantasm of their doubly unspoiled nature is enacted: the harem as a place of primitiveness and sexual mystery, standing in for the culture of the colonized, which is deliberately hidden from view. But can Delacroix’s artistic obsession be reduced to colonial propaganda and ‘cheap eroticism,’ as Boujedra suggests?29 Oriental paintings— not only Delacroix’s—serve to visually create and resurvey the space being incorporated into France as colonial territory. Nineteenth-century art critics blocked this aspect out, concentrating instead on the aesthetic qualities of the painting’s novel light and color effects.

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 153

Figure 8.1 First version of Eugène Delacroix, Femmes d’Alger dans leur intérieur (1834).

What stands in the way of reading the painting as a mere stereotype is that Delacroix stages the voyeur’s gaze, with explicit reference to the viewing context. He simultaneously exhibits the ambivalence of his Orientalizing composition. The women, immersed in themselves—not particularly alluring or provocative—seem to be on stage draped in a colorful décor. A curtain framing the field of vision is raised to one side by a servant girl, thus symbolically lifting the veil: The visual perimeters in both directions are rolled back for a brief moment. The Black slave girl marks the boundary between the harem women and the outer world, and her gaze is a proxy for that of the viewer. The color of her skin accentuates a further difference, making the other women seem like aristocratic beauties and legitimate wives. Delacroix’s Femmes d’Alger does not satisfy the stereotype of dark skin. A further indication that the ‘stolen’ gaze is staged are the shutters slightly ajar in the background. Delacroix has painted a harem fantasy while reflecting on the constraints of visual representation. He shows not only a scene from a harem, but behind the façade exposes various viewpoints and their attendant hierarchies, dispositions, and interpretations. 30 In the early 1980s, the Algerian author and historian Assia Djebar opened up a new debate about the famous painting, turning it into an instrument for the literary reappropriation of a female history of Algeria, an Algerian ‘her-

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story.’ Delacroix’s painting, the leitmotif of her collection of short stories by the same name, becomes the inscription surface for a series of tales that can be read as a female chronicle of both Algerian wars. In a postcolonial ecphrasis, Djebar reflects in the book’s epilogue upon colonial (visual) constellations that continue into the present and that she then proceeds to break up. She evokes the artist’s voyeuristic curiosity, his longing for the forbidden gaze, and thereby disables a one-way exoticist perspective.31 She interprets the scene recorded in the painting as a cultural encounter affecting both sides equally and thus hindering their cultural essentialization. The painter, well aware of the unique and brief opportunity afforded to him, meticulously noted all the details of what he saw in sketches and watercolors, which he then used to paint both versions of the painting (1834 and 1848) in his studio. The watercolors reveal not only the intriguing colors and objects, which Delacroix names with precision, but also the names of the women depicted: Moûni, Zohra Bensoltane, and so on, wrenching them out of their anonymity (see Figure 8.2). Although they remain unnamed in the painting, the French painter at least leaves behind traces of them in an otherwise womanless Algerian and French history. Djebar emphasizes that Delacroix is more than a mere representative of a colonial ideology, not a conqueror but an interested eyewitness.32 . The famous painting and its genesis bespeak a transcultural Algerian-French history in which neither the ‘native’ nor the ‘foreign’ can exist in dichotomous dissociation.

Figure 8.2

Watercolor draft of the Femmes d’Alger by Eugène Delacroix.

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 155 WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHED: THE RECIPROCAL GAZE AS MIMICRY The representation of Arab women in the popular medium of the colonial postcard seems wholly different than in painting, the photograph appearing as a more realistic mode of reproduction and the impersonality of mass-produced pictures (almost) disguising every hint of subjectivity. The new consumer mass medium is soon put in the service of colonial propaganda. With the introduction of special printing techniques around 1900, postcards can be produced serially by the postcard industry, being sold in Algeria mainly as advertisements for the settler colony. Colonial photo studios arose shortly after the invention of photography. The fi rst photographs are innocuous outdoor shots, but the colonies’ inhabitants increasingly become the focus of attention, being ‘studied’ photographically in studio takes. Women, as anonymous femme-objet, are one of the prime subjects for photographers. They are portrayed as sinful and impulsive, wild and backward, naive and childish to appeal to the erotic imagination of European postcard collectors and to signalize their availability.33 The anonymity of viewer and object coincides with the scopic desire of the voyeuristic photographer, which fi nds its expression in the mise-enscène. The mass reproduction of photos marks a new dimension in commercialization with the dissemination of popular motifs. Evident here is the rigidity of the visual images. The artificial scenery disembodies the concrete female figures presented, allowing them to be inscribed with the male viewer’s fantasies. The Algerian author and poet Malek Alloula, who published these postcards in 1981 as Le Harem colonial interprets the stereotypical construction of the female body in the photographic medium as a reaction to the conqueror’s repeatedly frustrated gaze, which everywhere it looks fi nds veiled Arab women. Paid models, he argues, have to replace the unattainability of the Algerian woman as a kind of ‘imaginary epiphany,’ the colonial postcard becoming the medium par excellence for the symbolic appropriation and occupation of the female body. 34 He opens up an-other perspective on the representation of the colonized, exposing the colonial force normally ignored in a more superficial visual discourse. Yet the cultural difference created by the exoticist construction remains. The entanglement of the gaze with its object and the reciprocal gaze, the markings of the producer, is disregarded. 35 Conversely, in numerous postcards, the habitus of the viewer can be detected in the gaze of the women depicted (see Figure 8.3). Contrary to the Islamic ban on the female gaze, they aggressively stare into the camera— presumably at the behest of the famous photographer Jean Geiser from Algiers—and thus become unwelcome witnesses to a cultural encounter. “When we look at these photographic postcards today, something is visible that is not present in them materialiter. It’s the body of the women photographed, which is viewed and visually touched.”36 The women depicted on the postcards reflect the photographic moment, unveiling the phantasm of

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Figure 8.3

Postcard of Jean Geiser, Mauresques dans leur intérieur.37

their portrayal by reciprocating the voyeuristic gaze of the male onlooker and thereby unmasking it. Although they may be silent objects, their gaze turns them—in transgression of religious taboo—into subjects; watching back offers an answer to monopolization by the viewer, her gazes break through the constraints of colonial visual control. As in Bhabha’s mimicry, the women in the camera eye ostensibly conform to the viewer’s expectations, yet by imitating the colonial culture (“almost the same but not quite”)38 underline their otherness and hence the ambivalence of the colonial act of appropriation: Her gaze suggests that representation is frozen in stereotype. By looking back, staring imperiously at the photographer and his camera, they refer to the viewer, calling to mind the visual constructions of his own culture. After all, it is his own deeply rooted mode of interpretation that construes Arab women as erotic objects, prostitutes,39 lesbians, wild women, and so on. But behind these stereotyped visions, there is always a hybrid version of the supposedly clear representation.

REWRITING COLONIAL DOCUMENTARY FILMS In an intermedia extension of the colonial photo album, the filmmaker Djebar directs her camera at one of these postcards, focusing by way of example on the gaze that defines the picture.40 In her full-length film La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli from 1982, dealing with the medialization of memory and tradition and, more specifically, a female memoria of the Maghreb, she chooses a picture of a veiled woman, but adds to it something vitally new. Whereas in her prose work she gave voice to Delacroix’s muted women by

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 157 way of a fictive literary orality as a proxy for the stories of Algerian women, the medium of film allows for real-life—and not simulated—sound. The veiled women on the postcards are given voice in the form of an audio track. An off-screen female voice speaks, sings, and whispers the following line in Arabic, the language of the female memoria of the Maghreb41: “memory is the woman’s body, her free eye alone can fix its gaze on our present.”42 The sentence appears as a subtitle in French, a reference to the colonial medium, in contrast to the oral Maghreb culture. Changing camera settings animates the postcard—they imply a roaming gaze, the viewer setting fi xed motifs in motion.43 The women come to life and seem to move, the previously silent images talk back, as it were. The director enacts the significance of women—their bodies and voices—for the oral-affective form of memory, laying the foundation for a transmedia historiography out of memoria culture and film documentation. The addition of a sound track undermines the transfixation of the female body in the colonial allegorization of the Orient and the personification of the ‘other’ in female figures. The abstract photographic images of women are rewritten. The filmmaker Djebar succeeds in confronting colonial body politics. Through the medium of film, she undoes the expropriation of the female body in the colonial canon of images, the silencing of culture, and the excision of voice and sound. In this manner, the commandment of silence imposed on Arab women by their own culture, the ‘second mutilation,’ is broken.44 Djebar’s documentary fi lm also contains footage of a French reportage on a southern Algerian ‘tribal festival,’ apparently staged for the colonizers.45 Unlike the postcard, which was likewise taken from colonial image archives, but circulated, the film material she uses in La Zerda is made up of outtakes, the parts cut out by French censors. By adding an ironic commentary to the supposedly straightforward image discourse of French documentary films, the fi lm director demonstrates that it is possible to appropriate and rewrite audiovisual representations from the colonial period. Whereas the French camera lens focuses voyeuristically on the exoticized celebrants and enacts their otherness, Djebar applies the act of ethnological description to her commentary, which, turning the table, focuses on the French officers who appear in the film and assume a hegemonial stance (see Figure 8.4). In doing so, she repudiates the preestablished object–subject perspectivization of the images, turning the French conqueror into the object of her film. In a reversal of colonial logic, she expresses a lack of understanding for colonial subjugation and its ethical legitimacy. Djebar presents the French as the real ‘exotic ones’ at the Algerian festival, which was most likely organized expressly for their colonial masters. The varied camera angles indicate planned and strategic shots. The friendly French general ‘inspects’ a row of Arab women, kissing them on the cheek and demonstrating in the process his lack of knowledge of their native culture (see Figure 8.5). His ‘etiquette,’ or lack thereof, is an act of colonial arrogance and a display of power, but also an expression of his ignorance in regard to their religion and tribal traditions. His application of French customs in his dealings with colonial subjects is an

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Figure 8.4 Screenshot from Djebar’s documentary film La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli (1982).

attempt to establish closer contact, which the women and tribal members, in conformity with their own traditions, do not accept. Through the use of montage and commentary, Djebar distracts the viewer from the superficial visual language of the reportage film toward the cultural staging of film material, revealing that colonial representations can be reinterpreted and do not represent unambiguous, preestablished models for viewing historical reality. They can be reappropriated and turned around for revisionary colonial perspectives.

VISUAL MEDIA AND THE HYBRIDIZATION OF COLONIAL REPRESENTATION All of these strategies dealing with preexisting French materials—whether the paintings of Delacroix, the postcards of anonymous photographers, or colonial documentary fi lms—which Djebar writes over like a palimpsest by rearranging and supplementing them, show that, although a (male colonial) gaze may prefigure these images, the representations in their materialness contain more than just this one view. Just like cultural boundaries in the European discourse on identity, this view can be adjusted and reinterpreted. The examples show the varied contributions made by traditional

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 159

Figure 8.5 Screenshot from Djebar’s documentary film La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli (1982).

and technical visual media to the construction of the ‘other’ in the colonial discourse. Whereas in painting the visual fascination is manifest in the primarily aesthetic approach of an artist to his subject matter, through the use of color and composition, a more effective production of difference can be attained from the analogous media of photography and film due to the potential of mass reproduction. Yet all visual representations are distinctly ambivalent irrespective of the specific medium. An interpretation aimed at the interstitium and hybridization of the representation of otherness reveals that the processes of femininity and alterity are culturally produced. Unmasking these attributions for what they are opens up new possibilities for a comprehensive recodification of colonial image and text production as cross-cultural and intermedia memory, which is subject to a continual process of reappropriation and reinterpretation. It is important, however, that these ambivalent images circulate and are not hardened in an ideological quarrel like demonstrated by Leïla Sebbar46 and Jean-Michel Belorgy. The visual appropriation of a foreign culture is only possible through the use of force—Delacroix for instance can only penetrate the harem with the protection of the colonial powers—and it is colonial culture that turns women into photographic objects. Yet interpreting these images merely as colonial propaganda and eroticism fails to acknowledge that racism and sexism are also perpetuated within societies and cultures and that

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every representation contains various layers of meaning. Only by arresting them is a stereotype formed. Consequently, ‘colonial’ representations have to be historically and politically contextualized without, however, losing sight of other perspectives and categories of difference, whether aesthetic, cultural, gender-specific, and so on. Thus, for instance, even the so-called genre mineur colonial fi lms contain structures of meaning considerably more complex than mere colonial structures.47 Another question is who owns the colonial image archive. Djebar offers an answer in exemplary fashion by reappropriating parts of it, inscribing new perspectives onto the material and disclosing it, so to speak, as a, loan’ from the colonial culture by inquiring after the fates of those depicted. However, to fi nalize and absolutize every difference of women and colonized in general is problematic; focusing on the phenomena of hybridity illustrates the temporary and strategic character of such postulations. In this light, the essentialist interpretations of the ‘other’ produced in the colonial image discourse appear to be codifications that have arisen under specific historical and cultural conditions and that, consequently, are subject to new and continued interpretation. Arab women in the media of the conqueror appear not only as the ‘other,’ but show traces—sometimes without their intention—of a cultural encounter that, behind all the superficial dichotomies of native versus foreign, Orient versus Occident, and male versus female has yet to be deciphered. Concrete (visual) representations from the colonial period have been reinterpreted, revealing ambivalent gazes, an oscillation between different cultural patterns, and overlapping frames of reference in a transcultural historical perspective—not a (traditional) paradigm of static historical images and interpretations, but rather a process in which cultural boundaries, identities, and subjects are historically produced, that is, continually reestablished and altered. NOTES 1. Assia Djebar, Fantasia: an algerian cavalcade, translated by Dorothy Blair (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993), 6, 8. Original quote: “Aube de ce 13 juin 1830 ( . . . ) Devant l’imposante flotte qui déchire l’horizon, la Ville Imprenable se dévoile, blancheur fantomatique, à travers un poudroiement de bleus et de gris mêlés. Triangle incliné dans le lointain et qui, après le scintillement de la dernière brume nocturne, se fi xe adouci, tel un corps à l’abandon, sur un tapis de verdure assombrie. La montagne paraît barrière esquissée dans un azur d’aquarelle. Premier face à face. La ville, paysage tout en dentelures et en couleurs délicates, surgit dans un rôle d’Orientale immobilisée en son mystère. ( . . . ). Au départ de Toulon, l’escadre fut complétée par l’embarquement de quatre peintres, cinq dessinateurs et une dizaine de graveurs . . . Le confl it n’est pas encore engagé, la proie n’est même pas approchée, que déjà le souci d’illustrer cette campagne importe davantage.” Djebar, L’Amour, la Fantasia (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995 [1985]), 14, 16. 2. For depictions of the Latin American subcontinent as a woman and the female imagination of Las Indias, see Karl Hölz, “Die spanische Konquista

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 161

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

und die Imagination des Weiblichen. Untersuchungen zur Kolonialethik und zur Sexuierung des Fremden,” in Welterfahrung—Selbsterfahrung. Konstitution und Verhandlung von Subjektivität in der spanischen Literatur der frühen Neuzeit, eds. Wolfgang Matzat/ Bernhard Teuber (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000), 107–125. According to Deleuze, following an argument from the field of painting but applying it to American movies, even parodies of clichés serve to perpetuate them. Gilles Deleuze, Das Bewegungs-Bild. Kino I (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1997), 282. My translation. Original quote: “( . . . ) il n’est pas possible de mesurer dans toute sa dimension l’entreprise coloniale si l’on n’intègre pas, si l’on ne montre pas, si l’on analyse pas cette production d’images ( . . . ) pour mesurer combien la culture coloniale est un système.” See the interview with Blanchard conducted during an exhibition on the subject in April 2005 as part of the program Images et Colonies, http://www.flucuat.net/2456-Pascal-Blanchard (accessed January 12, 2007). The television documentary “Les trois couleurs de l’Empire” by Jean-Claude Guidicelli (2001) is informative on this subject. Djebar refers to painters, draftsmen, engravers—and later on photographers and cameramen—as the producers of colonial images. The work of the Algerian author, historian, and fi lmmaker, with its devotion to the intermeshing and ambivalences of European-Maghrebian history, is an important reference point for my own reading of images. A central theme is the roaming viewpoint among cultural perspectives. It was curiosity that could have held the key to understanding, curiosity with regard to foreigners and travel being a key to knowledge and learning in Islamic culture, particularly Sufism. See Sievernich, Gereon, and Hendrik Budde, eds., Europa und der Orient 800–1900, (Gütersloh-München: Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, 1989), 231–44. The aforementioned volume, covering a time span of 1,100 years, also deals with the European encounter with the Orient beginning in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through contacts with Islamic culture and the rediscovery of the Ancient Orient. The colonial gaze not only has an effect in more obvious contexts such as ethnographic zoos or world expositions (which the Surrealists André Breton, Paul Eluard, and Louis Aragon strongly objected to), but continues into the present in the media discourse or in designing objects of research based on outmoded perpetrator–victim schemes. See Sigrid Weigel, Topographien der Geschlechter. Kulturgeschichtliche Studien zur Lite ratur (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990), 130. This model became more prevalent during the Enlightenment because “(t)he fact that humankind is viewed as a creature of nature has particular ramifications for the female who, on account of her function in the biological reproduction process, seems more endowed with natural functions than the male” (my translation) [Lieselotte Steinbrügge, Das moralische Geschlecht. Theorien und literarische Entwürfe über die Natur der Frau in der französischen Aufklärung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 21992 (11987)], 73. On the discursive construction of a ‘female’ nature in French literature and theory of the eighteenth century, see the work of Steinbrügge. See Weigel, Topographie der Geschlechter, 121 (my translation). The abundant portrayals of women in the colonial canon of images also reveal the codification of a heterosexual norm that Jarrod Hayes, Queer Nations. Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), links to strategies of colonialism.

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14. The material body is, in line with Foucault, of great importance as a place of representation for power and politics: It is disciplined, conveys knowledge, while at the same time being subversive and unruly. See particularly Michel Foucault, La volonté de savoir. Histoire de la sexualité, vol. I (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). 15. Symbolic modeling of the body takes place in all cultures (e.g., through veiling in Islamic cultures). Despite the prohibition of representation, Islam does have artistic traditions depicting figures and Persian miniatures, for instance. 16. Meaning not only (racial) biological, but also the geographic construction of ethnic difference. 17. Revealingly, it was an American researcher of Argentinian descent who cited the Moroccan Khatibi, particularly the concept of the ‘pensée autre.’ See Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 67. 18. He investigates, in particular, the Orientalizing language that, embedded in metaphysics (Heidegger’s ontotheology), essentialism, positivism, and humanism produces simulacra following Deleuze. Compare Abdelkébir Khatibi, “L’Orientalisme désorienté,” in Maghreb pluriel, ed. Abdelkébir Khatibi, 113–145 (Paris: Éditions Denoël, 1983), 120–126, 128. 19. The question of interlacement within the colonial structure was fi rst raised in critical and (avant la lettre) postcolonial texts by Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and Aimée Césaire. 20. Homi Bhabha, “Culture’s In-Between,” in Questions of cultural identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, 58 (London: Sage, 2005 [1996]). Emphasis added. 21. Reference should be made here to the research on Latin American colonial discourses with its analysis of chronicles and other texts from the period of conquest. For early examples, see Edmundo O’Gorman, La invención de América. El universalismo de la cultura de Occidente (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1958); Tzvetan Todorov, La Conquête d’Amérique. La question de l’autre (Paris: Seouil, 1982). For a more recent analysis, see Alfonso de Toro, “Escenificaciones de la representación de la ‘Otredad’ y ‘Alteridad’: Estrategias de hibridación en discursos premodernos en Latinoamérica,” in Estrategias de la hibridez en América Latina. Del descubrimiento al siglo XXI, eds. Alfonso de Toro/Cornelia Sieber/Claudia Gronemann/ René Ceballos, 21–52 (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2007). 22. This privilege had been granted previously only to the court painter Jean Baptiste Vanmour, who was accredited in Istanbul. See Lynne Thornton, “Frauenbilder. Zur Malerei der ‘Orientalisten,’ ” in Europa und der Orient. 800–1900, eds. Sievernich and Budde, 342. Similar to ‘Orient,’ the concept of ‘harem’ is a popular projection surface for various cultural inscriptions, its forbidden nature serving to trigger off and intensify desire. 23. Sarga Moussa, “Rencontres en images. Regard du voyageur, regard du modèle,” in Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord XXXII (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1990), 224, presumes the painter got around the prescription by being led to the chambers of Jewish women, who were not subject to the visual ban. 24. It is precisely because the act is an expression of tremendous sexual energy that the jealous protagonists in Spanish baroque novels carefully bar the doors and guard the keys, for instance, in El celoso extremeño by Cervantes and a version by María de Zayas, El prevenido engañado. 25. Original quote: “J’ai eu l’immense chance de visiter un harem à Alger. C’est beau! C’est comme au temps d’Homère! La femme dans le gynécée s’occupant

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26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40.

des enfants, fi lant la laine ou brodant de merveilleux tissus. C’est la femme comme je la comprends.” Quoted in Rachid Boudjedra, Peindre l’Orient (Cadeilhan: Zulma, 1996), 25. Original quote: “( . . . ) là il (Delacroix, C.G.) put à loisir étudier l’homme et la femme dans l’indépendance et l’originalité native de leurs mouvements, et comprendre la beauté antique par l’aspect d’une race pure de toute mésalliance et orne de santé et du libre développement de ses muscles.” Charles Baudelaire, “Salon de 1946,” in Baudelaire. Pour Delacroix, ed. Bernadette Dubois, 78 (Paris: Ed. Complexe, 1986). Emphasis added. “Il y avait dans Eugène Delacroix beaucoup du sauvage; c’était lá la plus précieuse partie de son âme, la partie vouée toute entière à la peinture de ses rêves et au culte de son art.” Ibid., 174. The painting was purchased later by Louis-Philippe and is today to be seen in the Louvre. Boudjedra, Peindre l’Orient, 26 f. It is no coincidence that the theme was handed down to subsequent generations of painters, becoming a model for both European and Arab artists. Compare Beatrice Schuchardt, Schreiben auf der Grenze. Postkoloniale Geschichtsbilder bei Assia Djebar (Köln: Böhlau, 2006). See the convincing argument for Djebar’s postcolonial reading of the painting, ibid., 200–8. Schuchardt expertly refutes O’Beirne’s critique of Djebar. Assia Djebar, Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (Paris: Des femmes, 1999), 184. See manifold examples in Malek Alloula, Le harem colonial (Paris: Garance, 1981); Leïla Sebbar and Jean-Michel Belorgy, Femmes d’Afrique du Nord. Cartes postales (1885–1930) (Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule: Bleu autour¸ 2002); Christelle Taraud, Mauresques: Femmes orientales dans la photographie coloniale 1860–1910 (Paris: Michel, 2003). Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 18. Alloula criticizes the cultural subjugation of women in the medium of photography, but these women remain little more than static objects in his analysis. Their recognizable visual encounters with the photographer and the subversion of the colonial gaze are not dealt with systematically. My translation. Original quote: “Betrachten wir diese Fotopostkarten heute, dann ist in den Fotografien etwas sichtbar, das nicht in ihnen materialiter präsent ist. Es ist der Körper der fotografierten Frauen, der erblickt und im Blick berührt wurde.” Susanne Stemmler, “FotoTopoGrafien—Cartes postales d’Alger,” in Kulturelle Topografien, eds. Vittoria Borsò and Reinhold Görling, 119 (Stuttgart-Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2004). A much more critical stance toward Alloula is taken by Winifred Woodhull, Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization, and Literatures (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 37 ff.; Karina Eileraas “Disorienting Looks, Écarts d’identite,” in After Orientalism. Critical Entanglements, Productive Looks, ed. Inge E. Boer (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003). Both, however, fail to develop alternative interpretations of the postcards. Malek Alloula, Le harem colonial (Paris: Garance, 1981), 27. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 89. Blacks, Orientals, and Jews are historically branded on repeated occasions with the “whore stigma.” See Gail Pheterson, The Whore Stigma: Female Dishonor and Male Unworthiness (Den Haag: Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid, 1986). Laura Mulvey’s (“Visuelle Lust und narratives Kino,” in Frauen in der Kunst, eds. Gislind Nabakowski et al. (Frankfurt/M.: Band 1, 1980)) gender-specific

164 Claudia Gronemann

41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47.

cinematic perspective—male viewer molds female object—is translated here into colonial categories. Even if it seems to be High-Arabic in this case to provide a better understanding, Djebar intentionally does not use the colonial language. The woman, for her part, can steal a gaze from behind a protective veil: “Elle y paraît surtout silhouette fugitive, éborgnée quand elle ne regarde que d’un œil. ( . . . ) Mais cet œil libéré, qui pourrait devenir signe d’une conquête vers la lumière des autres, hors du confi nement, voilà qu’il est perçu à son tour menace; et le cercle vicieux se reforme. ( . . . ) Une femme—en mouvement, donc ‘nue’—qui regarde, n’est-ce pas en outre une menace nouvelle à leur exclusivité scopique, à cette prérogative mâle?” Djebar, Femmes d’Alger . . . , 151 f. See Stemmler’s phenomenological approach, which construes seeing as touching and as a space-creating power. The seeing subject of the conqueror perpetually loses and construes itself in the ‘other.’ Stemmler, “FotoTopoGrafien,” 102. See Djebar, Femmes d’Alger, 158. I wish to thank Susanne Gehrmann for making me aware of the Eurocentric nature of the term ‘tribe,’ which, although Maghreb authors do use it, is considered a deviant model of membership in family groups and ‘closed societies’ of this type. Leïla Sebbar, Femmes d’Afrique du Nord. Cartes postales (1885–1930) (Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule: Bleu autour, 2002). A similar approach to breaking up old dichotomies is presently emerging in the interpretation of colonial fi lms. During a symposium on colonial fi lms in Rabat, the Moroccan fi lm expert Benali pleads for a distinction between cinematic structures and the ideological patterns they give rise to. Compare Abdelkader Benali, “Le cinéma colonial: patrimoine emprunté,” Journal of Film Preservation 62 (2001) : 2, 4.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alloula, Malek. Le harem colonial. Paris: Garance, 1981. Baudelaire, Charles. “Salon de 1946,” in Baudelaire. Pour Delacroix, ed. Bernadette Dubois, 55–96. Paris: Ed. Complexe, 1986. . “L’Œuvre et la vie d’Eugène Delacroix,” in Baudelaire. Pour Delacroix, ed. Bernadette Dubois, 143–194. Paris: Ed. Complexe, 1986. Benali, Abdelkader. “Le cinéma colonial: patrimoine emprunté,” Journal of Film Preservation (Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film—FIAF, Brüssel) 62 (2001) : 2–6. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. . “Culture’s In-Between,” in Questions of Cultural Identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, 53–60. London: Sage, 2005 [1996]. Boudjedra, Rachid. Peindre l’Orient. Cadeilhan: Zulma, 1996. Deleuze, Gilles. Das Bewegungs-Bild. Kino I. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1997. Djebar, Assia. Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement. Paris: Des femmes, 1999. . L’Amour, la Fantasia. Paris: Albin Michel, 1995 [1985]. . Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade. Translated by Dorothy Blair. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993 . La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli. Documentary fi lm, 1982. Eileraas, Karina. “Disorienting Looks, Écarts d’identité,” in After

A Hybrid Gaze from Delacroix to Djebar 165 Orientalism. Critical Entanglements, Productive Looks, ed. Inge E. Boer, 23–44. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003. Foucault, Michel. La volonté de savoir. Histoire de la sexualité. Vol. I. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. Hayes, Jarrod. Queer Nations. Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb. Chicago/ London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Hölz, Karl. “Die spanische Konquista und die Imagination des Weiblichen. Untersuchungen zur Kolonialethik und zur Sexuierung des Fremden,” in Welterfahrung—Selbsterfahrung. Konstitution und Verhandlung von Subjektivität in der spanischen Literatur der frühen Neuzeit. eds. Wolfgang Matzat and Bernhard Teuber, 107–125. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000. Khatibi, Abdelkébir. “L’Orientalisme désorienté, (1976),” in Maghreb pluriel, ed. Abdelkébir Khatibi, 113–45. Paris: Éditions Denoël, 1983. Memmi, Albert. Portrait du colonisé. Précédée du Portrait du colonisateur. Paris: Éditions Corréa, 1957. Moussa, Sarga. “Rencontres en images. Regard du voyageur, regard du modèle,” in Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord XXXII, 217–30. Paris : CNRS Éditions, 1990. Mulvey, Laura. “Visuelle Lust und narratives Kino,” in Frauen in der Kunst, eds. Gislind Nabakowski et al., 30–46. Frankfurt/M.: Band 1, 1980. Said, Edward. Orientalism. Western Concepts of the Orient. London: Penguin, 1978. Schuchardt, Beatrice. Schreiben auf der Grenze. Postkoloniale Geschichtsbilder bei Assia Djebar. Köln: Böhlau, 2006. Sebbar, Leïla/Jean-Michel Belorgy. Femmes d’Afrique du Nord. Cartes postales (1885–1930). Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule: Bleu autour, 2002. Sievernich, Gereon/Hendrik Budde (Hg.). Europa und der Orient. 800–1900. Berliner Festspiele und Gütersloh/München: Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, 1989. Steinbrügge, Lieselotte. Das moralische Geschlecht. Theorien und literarische Entwürfe über die Natur der Frau in der französischen Aufklärung. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992 [1987]. Stemmler, Susanne. “FotoTopoGrafien—Cartes postales d’Alger,” in Kulturelle Topografi en, e Kulturelle Topografi en, eds. Vittoria Borsò and Reinhold Görling, 97–123. Stuttgart/Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2004. Taraud, Christelle. Mauresques: Femmes orientales dans la photographie coloniale 1860–1930. Paris: Michel, 2002. Thornton, Lynne. “Frauenbilder. Zur Malerei der ‘Orientalisten,’ ” in Europa und der Orient. 800–1900, eds. Gereon Sievernich and Hendrik Budde, 342–55. Berliner Festspiele und Gütersloh/München: Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag (Ausstellung des 4. Festivals der Weltkulturen Horizonte ’89 im Martin-Gropius-Bau), 1989. de Toro, Alfonso. “Escenificaciones de la representación de la ‘Otredad’ y ‘Alteridad’: Estrategias de hibridación en discursos premodernos en Latinoamérica,” in Estrategias de la hibridez en América Latina. Del descubrimiento al siglo XXI, eds. Alfonso de Toro, Cornelia Sieber, Claudia Gronemann, and René Ceballos, 21–52.Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2007. Weigel, Sigrid. Topographien der Geschlechter. Kulturgeschichtliche Studien zur Lite ratur. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rororo, 1990. Woodhull, Winifred. Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization, and Literatures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

9

In the Empire’s Eyes Africa in Italian Colonial Cinema Between Imperial Fantasies and Blind Spots Immacolata Amodeo

Three different types of Italian colonial fi lm1 are analyzed in this chapter. 2 The intention is to show how Italian colonialism during and after the fascist period recurred to the medium fi lm in order to reframe issues of class, race, and gender. Film was one of the favorite media of Italian fascism and was often turned to in order to develop, present, and represent its imperial fantasies. The fi rst film to be commented on is Corrado D’Errico’s black-and-white film Il cammino degli eroi (The path of the heroes, 1937), a propaganda film that was formed to appear as a documentary. The fi lm has no dialogues; instead, the scenes are accompanied by the voice-over commentary. This Istituto LUCE production was created for the purpose of illustrating the civilizing dimensions of the Italian colonial project in Africa and, thereby, making the African colonies attractive for Italians. Produced subsequently to the conquest of Ethiopia, Corrado D’Errico’s film makes humanitarian achievements of the Italian soldiers and the excellent living conditions in the colonies the main foci of its message. A special feature attributed to Italian colonialism is its strong commitment to the idea of ‘popolarismo.’ Italian colonialism was never presented as an elitist project, but rather as a populist movement having as its goal indiscriminate inclusion of all social classes and groups. Mussolini had launched the impero del lavoro (empire of work’), 3 which referred to a new form of colonialism different from and clearly opposed to the allegedly ‘plutocratic’ English and French colonialism. The plan of building settlement colonies in Africa was closely linked to this idea of people’s empire. One of Mussolini’s main objectives was to encourage immigration of a large part of the Italian population into the new African territories, ‘belonging’ to Italy, and in this way divert the streams of emigrants away from America. The fi rst part of the fi lm shows Italians working at the factories in their home country, but then proceeds to their work of ‘civilizing’ Africa. By the end of the Ethiopian war, Mussolini had sent to Africa the largest military corps that continent had ever seen: “By the end of the war, in march 1936,

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the corps of the expedition counted approximately 330.000 Italian soldiers, 87.000 askari, 100.000 Italian militarized workers, 10.000 machine-guns, 1.100 canons, 250 tanks, 90.000 quadrupeds, 14.000 automobiles, 350 efficient airplanes.”4 The fi lm gives a very clear idea of this immense transfer of Italian fighting and conquering machinery, which besides its immediate functions of ‘strongly discouraging’ any local resistance, served more practical civilian purposes. It is emphasized over and over in the fi lm, that airplanes would maintain the link between the Italians in Africa and their madre patria guaranteeing thus the steady supply of materials and enabling postal communication with Italy. However, inserted into the ideologically aesthetical frame of the film, airplanes take on some new, symbolic meaning. Not only do they embody the high speed of futuristic aesthetics and ideology, but they also suggest that the Italian colonialism project was efficient from the technical point of view. Ships are recurrently portrayed as an important means of transporting food supplies, construction materials, and other miscellaneous goods, which were meant to make life in the Italian colonies more pleasant. At a certain point, the film turns upon itself. On a big cinema screen, set up in the middle of the desert, pictures of fascist rallies are streamed. This self-reflecting mise-enabîme seems to be pointing toward the importance of the medium of cinema for the successful maintenance of Italy’s presence in Africa. This film was supposed to motivate as many Italians as possible to ‘move’ to the newly founded settlement in the African part of their empire. This is the reason that Il cammino degli eroi gives its impressive account of building roads and railways. In fact, to ensure comfort of relocation, special Italian ocean liners were built for the purpose of transporting people from Italy to the colonies in Africa. Not only are the prospective settlers guaranteed freedom of movement, they are ascertained of the excellent quality of the medical treatment from which both Italians and Africans were to benefit. For example, the film displays a nursing station set up in the middle of the desert, where vaccinations are performed. The connection between this medical center, especially its inoculating function, and the idea of Italians bringing civilization to Africa is compelling. To make ‘Italian’ Africa even more attractive for settlers (mostly recruited from the lower classes at home), it is shown as an ideal agricultural region. This is what the sequences of tractors working on fertile land at the end of the fi lm successfully convey. In this pseudodocumentary, the birth of the Impero is traced step by step from the increase in domestic production at every level (from the automobile and aviation industries to the textile and clothing factories) to the sophisticated transportation system for any kind of good and the establishment of an infrastructure in the region to be conquered. The inserted captions summarizing in French and in German the message contained in the presented film sequences show that the film in addition to

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the Italians was aimed at French and German audiences. Because annexation of the recognized sovereign kingdom of Ethiopia was forbidden under international law, Il cammino degli eroi had to present the Italian colonial project as an exemplary case, devoid of apprehension instilled in the colonial projects of other European countries. In other words, Corrado D’Errico’s fi lm was meant to counter the idea of violence of European conquest in Africa. All military actions in the movie are presented as the necessary response to the attacks of ‘wild, uncivilized hordes’ on unarmed and goodwilled Italian workers. Thus, the message here is that resistance has to be crashed in order to lead Ethiopia out of the Middle Ages and into modern times—to help it become a flourishing modern state. The Ethiopian people seem to be totally on the side of the colonizers in this fi lm. Whenever the Italian troops are presented, African soldiers are seen to be fighting on the Italian side. What certainly is not mentioned in Il cammino degli eroi is the fact that Italy’s ‘civilizing’ conquest of Ethiopia was in reality an extremely gruesome and brutal war, in which Italians even resorted to poisonous gas. 5 The question of the probity of using bombs against the ‘wild, uncivilized hordes’ remains unanswered in the fi lm. The plot of the fi lm leads to the proclamation of the Pax Romana by Mussolini, whereby the link between imperial ideology based on the Roman Empire and the Duce’s colonial strategy becomes clear. The film Il cammino degli eroi suggests how the issues of class differences within Italy—the poverty of a huge part of the population in the rural areas, the problem of unemployment in the big cities, the North– South dichotomy, and so on—were thought to be resolved through Mussolini’s colonial campaign in Africa.6 Using patriotism as a class-crossing ideological tool, Italian fascist cinema pretended to overcome internal class tensions. One of the goals was to encourage Italian audiences of all classes to identify with the empire and feel common patriotic pride in its achievements. According to the narrative of Il cammino degli eroi, all Italians, regardless of their class, were equally entitled to participate in the ‘truly humanistic’ process of civilizing the native ‘crudes.’ Another way in which Italian imperial cinema was successful in ‘dealing’ with the issues of class was by diverting public attention from the class contradictions/antagonism inherent in their own society toward the possibility of the idyllic future for all built on the African soil. My second example is another black-and-white fi lm, Scipione l’africano (1937; production: Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche ENIC) by Carmine Gallone. This monumental fi lm was awarded the Coppa Mussolini, the Duce’s Cup for Best Italian Film in 1937. This movie illustrates another fundamental aspect of Mussolini’s colonial ideology (i.e., the justification of the Ethiopian campaign by arguing that there had already been Italian [Roman] presence in Africa in antiquity). According to this scenario, Mussolini’s intended empire presented itself as nothing but a legitimate continuation of the Roman Empire.

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When Gallone’s film was released, the process of establishment and reinforcement of the Impero proclaimed in 1936 entered the stage of ideological idealization. Such idealization was being realized through insistent reference to the Roman Empire’s imperial African past and in this way suggesting a kind of racial continuity. A special feature of Italian colonialism was its emphasis on Ethiopia’s racial uniqueness in comparison with the rest of Africa. Ethiopia’s distinctiveness is rooted in its history, particularly its once being a part of the Roman Empire and its early acceptance of Christianity. These special features of Ethiopia gave rise to a discourse around Africa che non è nera (Africa which is not black).7 Actually, insistence on the racial specificity of Ethiopia in comparison to the rest of Africa was a typical element of Italian colonial racism.8 Obviously, this new discourse built around the topos of White Africa challenged and suspended the usual racial dichotomy of Black versus White for the sake of preserving the continuity of Italian race. Scipione l’africano is based on the Punic Wars in antiquity. The plot of the fi lm takes place in the time period of Scipio’s departure toward Africa and the battle of Zama in 202 BC. This historical backdrop was particularly well suited for adoption by Mussolini’s propaganda. Through the Hannibal/Scipio opposition, the contrast between a vandal’s project of conquest and civilizing conquest oriented toward the establishment of the Pax Romana is made clear. The parallel between Mussolini’s era and the era of the Punic wars can be drawn not only at the level of the subject matter. Particularly interesting in this respect are the scenes with the ‘masses,’ in which the semiotics of fascist rallies is translated into a Roman setting. From the rhetoric of Scipio, which bears obvious resemblances with Mussolini’s in both form and content, to the mass of hysteric people stretching their arms out in fascist greeting, brandishing torches, or launching into fascist songs. Thus, the perfect exchangeability between the two cultural contexts is made manifest. More elements of fascist aesthetics become apparent in Gallone’s mass scenes. It is especially in these sequences that the newest cinematic techniques, such as wide-angle lenses, are used. In addition to the horizontal accentuation of the battle sequences, the fi lm shows an accentuation of the verticals by having the cameras pan from below to above in a way well suited for showing the person of Scipio as the hero and military leader. Rendering the image of Scipio according to the conventions of representations of Mussolini suggests continuity between both legendary figures, in which Scipio becomes a prefiguration of the Duce in the 20th century. In the light of strong international criticism of the Ethiopian campaign of 1935–1936 on the one side and the intensity of the Ethiopian guerrilla resistance increasing by 1937 on the other, Scipione l’africano serves the purpose of ideological legitimization of the fierce action of the Italian troops during the violent operation of the annexation of Ethiopia. The Roman presence in Africa is presented as a historical fact dating all the way back

170 Immacolata Amodeo to antiquity. From Gallone’s cinematic narrative, the viewer understands that it was the Romans who, being a militarily and morally superior people, were able to create long-standing stable structures for socioeconomic prosperity in Italy and Africa. In the colonial propaganda, the Ethiopians usually were not represented as a wild, uncivilized people, but instead as a people with a valuable culture. In the same way, the Carthaginians in this film are represented as a rather civilized nation, which suffers from lack of unity, and whose elites are unfortunately susceptible to corruption, and which, therefore needs strong Roman leadership to develop fully. The figure of Massinissa, King of the Nubians and long-standing ally of the Romans, brings the ambivalence of the relations between Rome and Africa to the fore. On the one hand, he embodies the bonds between Nubia, which at that time included the territory of Ethiopia, and Rome, and, on the other hand, the fickleness of the Africans and their need for leadership. This becomes apparent when he falls in love with the Carthaginian Sofonisba and this emotional confusion puts his loyalty to Romans at risk. Seemingly little more than a melodramatic twist to the plot, this moment of Massinissa’s infi rmity points once again to the peculiar and rather difficult position of Ethiopia in relation to the rest of Africa. Union between her and any other African country would be injurious for her connection with Rome. The success of the movie in conveying its ideological message can be inferred from the following comment in the review by Filippo Sacchi published in Corriere della Sera from August 26, 1937: “By establishing a parallelism between events and ideas separated by a long period of time, the film seeks to bring to expression Africa’s destination to become once again, after more than two thousand years, the key to a new Mediterranean and Latin Impero.”9 My third example is the fi lm Tripoli bel suol d’amore (1954; production: Laura Film) by Ferruccio Cerio. The colonial discourse and the colonial imaginary in this fi lm are clearly interwoven with issues of gender. The images of Africa that this movie produces are highly exoticized, and their function is reduced to serving as a backdrop for military and amorous victories of Italian soldiers and devoted behavior of an Italian Red Cross nurse. At the beginning of the fi lm, we encounter Alberto, the protagonist, while he is still in Italy. Because of his behaving like a buffoon, Alberto is laughed at by a group of elegant Italian ladies and beaten by the gentlemen accompanying these ladies. However, as soon as Alberto enters the army and starts wearing the military uniform of a Bersagliere,10 a process of masculinisation is initiated. While still in Italy—before his departure for the war in Libya—he is able to win over the heart of the feverishly desired Maria, who, because of her love for him, is even willing to go to war in Africa as a Red Cross nurse to be near her lover.

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Before the departure of the Italian soldiers for Libya, the colonial imaginary receives its concretization in a long revue-like dancing and singing sequence, which is performed on a stage with exotic scenery. Remarkably, the dominant colors of the scenery are those of the Italian national flag. This spectacle takes place in a typical Italian Caffé concerto. We see some oriental-looking women performing as slaves and harem women. They are lashed by tall and strong-looking men with dark skin. This sequence might allude to the supposed oppression of women in oriental societies. In the Caffé concerto sequence, the song “Tripoli, bel suol d’amore,” from which the film derives its title, is enthusiastically sung by a revue girl who later on also decides to become a Red Cross nurse and serve in the Libyan War. This nationalistic and propagandistic war song was composed in 1911 and coined particularly for the Libyan war. The refrain of the song became extremely popular in Italy (and still is today): Tripoli, bel suol d’amore, ti giunga dolce questa mia canzon! Sventoli il tricolore sulle tue torri al rombo del cannon! Naviga, o corazzata: benigno è il vento e dolce la stagion. Tripoli, terra incantata, sarai italiana al rombo del cannon! Tripoli, beautiful soil of love, my song shall reach you sweetly! The tricolours flag shall flutter on top of your towers at the thunder of the guns! Navigate, oh battleship: the wind is benignant, and sweet is the season. Tripoli, enchanted land, you will be Italian at the thunder of the guns!

After the Caffé concerto sequence, right after the ‘oriental’ ballet, the narrative shifts to Libya because the army leaves for the war. In Libya, the Bersagliere Alberto is fully engaged in the war and, through his active involvement with the military action, obtains full masculinity. The only female individuals appearing in the African part of the film are the Italian Red Cross nurses, particularly those who had decided to join their lovers.11 It is as if there were no non-Italian women in Libya at all. The Red Cross nurses take part in a fight of the Italian army against a group of indigenous fighters in the Libyan Desert. One of the nurses (the former revue girl) is heavily wounded, but she seems to regain her strength when her Italian boy friend decides to marry her in an ad hoc decision before he has to leave for another battle. At the end of the film, the Bersagliere Alberto and his nurse

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girlfriend successfully return to Italy as a couple despite the numerous other lives that the war claimed. In this fi lm, the presence of a certain shift in gender dichotomy can be observed. The opposition is no longer between the male Italian soldiers (the Bersaglieri) and the female Italian Red Cross nurses. We see that both Alberto and his girlfriend become ‘masculinized’ in the process of the Libyan campaign. Instead it is the opposition between the masculine Italian colonizers both male and female and the effeminate Libyan soldiers. An interesting parallel in this regard can be drawn between the traditional attire of the African fighters, which in Western understanding evokes female dress and not male suit, and the exotic clothing of the female dancers from the Caffé concerto sequence in the beginning of the film. What are theoretically considered by a simplifying perspective to be binary oppositions—men versus women, colonial self versus colonized other—are intertwined in a particular way in this fi lm (colonial men and women vs. colonized other, colonial self vs. male colonized other, etc.) and embedded in the colonialist discourse as necessary to domination. What is remarkable is that Tripoli bel suol d’amore is a musical film with elements of opera buffa present in its plot. Situational humor, dance sequences, and numerous musical interludes, which feature in the fi lm, are well-recognized perennial operatic stylistic devices. With lightheartedness shocking from today’s perspective, this postwar fi lm12 presents Italian colonialism in Africa as a glorious Italian victory. The production of such a movie in the 1950s bears a strong witness to the persistence of colonial mentality in Italy even after the collapse of the short-lived imperio. What is even more interesting is the fact that the fi lm is still relatively popular in Italy and can be easily found in the market. Also, Alberto Sordi, who played the character of Alberto, is a popular actor today. In this brief analysis of Italian colonial films from the perspective of race, class, and gender, several characteristics of Italian colonialism become evident. Italian colonialism was delayed with respect to the other European colonial powers. One can take 1932 as its starting point because it was in that year (and not before) that Mussolini fi rst conceived of the plan to plant colonies in the northeastern part of Africa. He decided to project his colonial and imperial dreams on Ethiopia and establish there a colony of settlements that would be called Italian Impero. Italy’s need to demonstrate its national and imperial grandeur next to the great European colonial powers seemed to arise suddenly. It was clear that rivaling those well-established colonial powers would be impossible unless Italy established colonies of its own. Establishing colonies in the 1930s, however, was an anachronism because the debate about the legitimacy of European colonialism had begun as early as in the late nineteenth century and gained momentum by the beginning of the twentieth century, accelerated by the events in South Africa and India, where Gandhi appealed for passive resistance against colonial government. Given the growing doubts about the ‘providential’

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character of European colonial rule, Italy had to come up with a strategy that would make Italian conquest appear legitimate. Italian colonialism had to be presented as being radically different and actually opposed to the oppressive and cruel imperialism of England or France. Thus, it strived to disguise itself as a modernizing, rather than a colonial project, and thus an outcome of progressive political thought. One more characteristic of Italian colonialism was the attempt to redefi ne the concept of race. As Scipione l’africano shows, skin color is no longer the determining criteria in defi ning race; instead, it becomes an attribute of historical and cultural heritage. In Scipione l’africano, Ethiopians are not really Black; they are Roman, and therefore Italians. Interestingly, such recourse to common ancient roots echoes the rhetoric of the unification of Italy (Italian Risorgimento) in the nineteenth century. Acknowledging that there are diversities, but ignoring them as insignificant in the face of sameness of origin, was typical for this rhetoric. It is important to mention that the topography of Italian colonialism was crucial for the viability of the rhetoric of ‘Africa that is not black.’ The myth of Roman continuity probably would have hardly been a useful expedient for justifying colonial expansion, for instance, in sub-Saharan Africa. The redefi nition of gender roles was yet another feature we can discern in both the practice of Italian colonialism and its cultural representations. In a way, the Italian colonial project, in addition to removing the distinctive separation between classes, seems to promise within its frame some equality of genders. In Tripoli bel suol d’amore, Italian men and women are presented side by side, fighting militant Libyans. Thus, gender opposition is no longer constructed between men and women, but rather between the colonizers and the colonized. Gender, in other words, is given the status of the organizing principle of geopolitics. As has hopefully been demonstrated in this chapter, the medium of film proves to be a fruitful source for the analysis of the ideological dimensions of Italian colonialism. Actually, Italian colonialism depended heavily on the particular tendencies within the Italian media system. In comparison to France and other colonial nations in Italy, there was a lack of colonial literature. There was no Italian literature that inevitably placed itself entirely into the service of colonialism. In contrast to the situation in France, Italian publishing houses did not institute any series dedicated to colonial literature. Apart from isolated examples such as Mario Dei Gaslini’s Piccolo amore beduino13 or Riccardo Bacchelli’s Mal d’Africa,14 only few colonial novels in Italian existed.15 In his foreword to Riccardo Bacchelli’s Mal d’Africa, Luigi Goglia wrote: “Italian colonial literature has few titles and authors and, all in all, apart from Bacchelli, Marinetti, Denti di Pirajno, Orio Vergani and Emilio Salgari with reference to adventure stories, it is of little significance; it is entirely commensurate with our brief colonial experience.”16 In the interwar period, there were numerous Italian authors who, if not in entire agreement with the fascist regime, were at least relatively uncritical

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of it. Several authors were briefly or, over a longer period of time, fascinated by Mussolini’s politics of expansion and they supported it. These authors, directly or indirectly, were used by Mussolini for his propaganda. Gabriele D’Annunzio’s play Più che l’amore (premiere 1906 in Rome) and his Canzoni delle gesta d’Oltremare (published from October 8, 1911on Corriere della Sera) are in this respect early examples; Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (born in Alessandria d’Egitto) used Africa as a field of projection for his fantasies of masculinity and omnipotence in his novel Mafarka le futuriste (written in French and published in Paris in 1909) and in his play Tamburo di fuoco (1921); Curzio Malaparte had to provide the Corriere della Sera with reportages from Ethiopia.17 In comparison with the German intellectuals in the Third Reich, only few Italian artists and authors found their way into exile. Nevertheless, a large-scale Italian colonial literature never developed. The works, which survived the fi rst half of the twentieth century, were those of the antifascists—from Corrado Alvaro to Ignazio Silone and Carlo Levi. In the last few years, the ambiguities found in the texts of renown authors such as Elio Vittorini, who were heretofore perceived as unequivocally antifascist, made evident their profascist and procolonial tendencies.18 Despite fervent efforts, from the beginning of his coming to power in October 1922 (“Marcia su Roma”) until his deposition and arrest in July 1943, during the twenty years of his dictatorship, the so-called ventennio nero, Mussolini failed to establish a proper Italian colonial literature. What he successfully promoted, and what was undoubtedly well established, however, was Italian colonial film. Film was one of Italian fascism’s favored media19 because it was seen to have a particularly strong effect on the masses. 20 Moreover, it was considered ‘futuristic’ according to the terms of fascist ideology. Of course, fi lm was not the only media of propaganda machine, nor was it the fascist party’s fi rst attempt to enforce political conformity through the media. 21 The founding of the national broadcasting authority (Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche) in 1927 is also to be seen in this context. 22 In addition to the press23 and radio, however, fi lm acquires a special status thanks to its particular ability to disseminate a colonial mentality within a culture in which there was a lack of colonial literature. Out of all these popular cultural manifestations, radio and cinema were probably the most influential propaganda vehicles. 24 Numerous Italian films with colonial content had already been made during the era of the silent fi lm. Examples include Piero Fosco’s Cabiria (1914) and Kalida’a, la storia di una mummia (1918) and Augusto Camerini’s L’altra razza (1920). It was to a large degree this awareness of the lack of colonial tradition and national colonial collective imaginary, which could have found its expression in literature, that impelled Mussolini to turn to the mass media of newspapers, radio, and particularly film for intensifying his propaganda campaign for his Ethiopian war and the proclamation of the Impero. It was not by chance that in Italy the production of colonial films reached its highest point in the

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period between 1935 and 1942. The technical development of sound film coincided with the formation of colonial ideology, and the production of colonial fi lm greatly benefited from this technical development. During the ventennio fascista, numerous new cinemas were opened, their names testifying to the close and functional connection between fi lm and colonial ideology, for example, Impero, Adua, Eritrea. 25 Furthermore, the number of cinemagoers significantly increased at this time. In the early 1920s, the Istituto Luce (L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa) was founded. 26 It was supervised by the state and collaborated closely with the Ministries of War, Navy, Aviation, Colonies, Press, and Propaganda. It was responsible for the production of documentary fi lms. This production was under the complete control of the fascist regime. With the help of the Istituto Luce, Mussolini was able to produce films documenting his belligerent and colonial undertakings almost daily. In 1937, the Cinecittà fi lm studios were established and inaugurated in Rome in the Via Tuscolana. Its productions often were closely linked to colonial expansion. 27 Cinema has been one of the primary luoghi della memoria (lieux de mémoire) in postrisorgimento Italy. In the work on Italian collective memory edited by Mario Isnenghi, Gian Piero Brunetta, the editor of the monumental Storia del cinema mondiale, 28 describes the cinema as “un iperluogo, un luogo dei luoghi, uno spazio di spazi” (“a hyperplace, a place of places, a space of spaces”). He continues: “È al tempo stesso un collettore di più sistemi culturali e iconografici anteriori, un punto di raccordo e congruenza tra luoghi reali e immaginari e un mondo perfetto e autosufficiente.”29 That is why cinematic sources are a “luogo privilegiato della memoria collettiva” (“privileged place of collective memory”). Italian colonial film played an important role in developing, presenting, and representing the imperial fantasies of Mussolini and part of the Italian people. I hope that my comments on the three examples of colonial fi lm have been able to demonstrate that an analysis of Italian colonial film may lead not only to the reconstruction of some of these imperial fantasies, but also to pointing out some of the blind spots within the collective memory. NOTES 1. The following catalogues of exhibitions and documentations provided valuable information in order to select the three fi lms analyzed in this chapter: Liliana Ellena, Film d’Africa. Film italiani prima, durante e dopo l’avventura coloniale (Cinema Esedra 29 ottobre–7 novembre 1999). Turin: Archivio Nazionale Cinematografico della Resistenza Regione Piemonte 1999; Remo Romeo, Il cinema coloniale italiano dal muto al sonoro (Syracuse: Emarom, 1992). 2. This chapter has benefited a lot from the help of my teaching assistant at Jacobs University Bremen, Irina Chiaburu. I thank her for her careful critical comments and for many helpful suggestions that have been incorporated into the present version. The chapter leads back to and is partly based on the

176

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

Immacolata Amodeo results of a research project on Italian colonial fi lm, which, together with Claudia Ortner-Buchberger, I initiated in summer 2001 at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. I owe my thanks to Claudia Ortner-Buchberger for a fruitful and agreeable collaboration. Compare our joined article Immacolata Amodeo/Claudia Ortner-Buchberger, “Viewing Italian Colonial Cinema: From Propaganda Machine to Collective Memory,” Palabres. Art. Littérature. Philosophie VIII, Numéro Spécial: Écrire l’Afrique aujourd’hui; ed. by Papa Samba Diop and Sélom Gbanou (Paris: Éditions Dominique Guénoit, 2008), 47–67. Compare Nicola Labanca, Oltremare (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 309. “Alla fi ne della guerra, nel maggio 1936, il corpo di spedizione contava circa 330.000 militari italiani, 87.000 ascari, 100.000 lavoratori italiani militarizzati, 10.000 mitragliatrici, 1.100 cannoni, 250 carri armati, 90.000 quadrupedi, 14.000 automezzi, 350 aerei efficienti,” Oltremare, 189. For more details about the brutality of the Ethiopian War, cf. Angelo Del Boca, I gas di Mussolini: Il fascismo e la guerra d’Etiopia. Con i contributi di Giorgio Rochat, Ferdinando Pedriali, Roberto Gentilli (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1996). Cecilia Boggio attributes a similar function to the fi lm Lo Squadrone Bianco (1936) by Augusto Genina. Compare Cecilia Boggio, “Black Shirts/Black Skins. Fascist Italy’s Anxieties and Lo Squadrone Bianco,” in A Place in the Sun. Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unifi cation to the Present, ed. Patrizia Palumbo (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2003), 279–298, 294: “The conquest of a ‘place in the sun’ was represented as the solution to all economic and social problems, as it guaranteed a job and wealth for everyone.” It is not clear, however, why Cecilia Boggio considers the “genre” of “African fi lms” to consist only “of eight narrative fi lms” (294, footnote 1). For an accurate reconstruction of Curzio Malaparte’s position and the discourse on “Africa which is not black” in the example of Curzio Malaparte’s reportages on Africa in the Corriere della Sera, cf. Claudia Ortner-Buchberger, “L’Africa non è nera: les reportages est-africains de Curzio Malaparte,” in Littératures et Sociétés Africaines. Regardes comparatistes et perspectives interculturelles: Mélanges offerts à János Riesz à l’occasion de son soixantième anniversaire, eds. Papa Samba Diop and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 2001), 229–41. Compare Oltremare, 413: “Nell’Oltremare italiano si assisté ad uno specifico razzismo istituzionalizzato (per via legislativa, almeno a partire dal 1937), ad una politica del razzismo, o ad un razzismo politico (cioè legato alle grandi scelte della politica coloniale dell’Italia, liberale prima e fascista) e ad un razzismo quotidiano, diffuso e di massa.” “[ . . . ] il fi lm vuol esprimere, attraverso un lontano parallelismo di eventi e di ideali, una fatalità per la quale dopo più di duemila anni l’Africa ridiventa la chiave di un nuovo Impero mediterraneo e latino.” The Bersagliere (the word means ‘sharpshooter’) belongs to a quick-moving corps within the Italian Army and is trained to high physical and marksmanship standards. The Bersagliere wears a wide-brimmed hat decorated with capercaillie feathers. Such representation is quite inaccurate. It is well known that in reality many Italian women were present in Libya during the war. Compare Oltremare, 399: “Ci fu un numero non indifferente di donne italiane in Libia.” Further examples of postwar Italian fi lms (from Michelangelo Antonioni and Pier Paolo Pasolini to Ettore Scola) that deal with and represent Africa can be found in David Laurenzi, “Lo sguardo riflesso, ovvero ‘reflexivity’ e

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13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

177

cinema italiano: l’immaginario (post-)coloniale ribaltato; ipotesi intorno a frammenti,” in Permanenze e metamorfosi dell’immaginario coloniale in Italia, eds. Enrico Castelli and David Laurenzi (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000), 337–72. Mario Dei Gaslini, Piccolo amore beduino (Milan: L’Eroica, 1926). Riccardo Bacchelli, Mal d’Africa (1933) (Milan: Rizzoli, 1990). For a detailed reconstruction of some of the main manifestations of the colonial discourse in Italian literature, see the conference volume Immacolata Amodeo/Claudia Ortner-Buchberger eds., Afrika in Italien–Italien in Afrika. Italo-afrikanische Beziehungen (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2004), particularly the chapters by Gunther Verheyen, “Kolonialmythen während des Libyenkrieges 1911/12: Italien und die quarta sponda“ (45–60); Franziska Meier, “Der Abessinien-Feldzug innerhalb der faschistischen Debatte um die Idee einer nationalen Erneuerung” (81–90); Susanne Gehrmann, “Selva oscura–‘Frau Kongo’ als Allegorie der Fremderfahrung in Arnaldo Cipollas L’Airone” (91–103); Isabella von Treskow, “Disinteresse, distanza, disillusione: il colonialismo e la percezione del diverso in Guerra in camicia nera di Giuseppe Berto” (105–119); Charline Brun-Moschetti, “Note di lettura sul libro di Giuliano Pietri: A rivederci Africa o tra memoria e nostalgia, tre racconti di colonizzati” (121–132). Furthermore, important research fi ndings concerning the problem of Italian colonial literate have been made recently by Giovanna Tomasello, L’Africa tra mito e realtà. Storia della letteratura coloniale italiana (Palermo: Sellerio, 2004). “La letteratura coloniale italiana, esigua per numero di titoli e di autori, tutto sommato povera di valore se si eccettuano Bacchelli, Marinetti, Denti di Pirajno, Orio Vergani ed Emilio Salgari per la narrativa d’avventura, ci appare del tutto commisurata alla nostra non lunga esperienza coloniale” (Mal d’Africa, xxx–xxxi). For more details on these subjects, cf. Giovanna Tomasello, La letteratura coloniale italiana dalle avanguardie al fascismo (Palermo: Sellerio, 1984) and Charline Brun-Moschetti, Reminiscences africaines et littérature coloniale en Italie au vingtième siècle: (Thèse pour le doctorat, Université de la Sorbonne nouvelle Paris III. Paris, 1993/1994). The argument is formulated in Franziska Meyer, Mythos der Erneuerung: Italienische Prosa in Faschismus und Resistenza (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002). For a detailed examination of Italian intellectuals supportive of the regime and the development of fascist models of modernity, see also Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–45 (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2001). Colonial fi lm undoubtedly existed also in other colonial nations, but nowhere did it carry the same significance within the media system as in Italy. For details concerning French colonial fi lm, see Pierre Boulanger, Le cinéma colonial. De ‘L’atlantide’ a ‘Lawerence d’Arabie’ (Paris: Seghers, 1975); David Henry Slavin, Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919–1939. White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). For information on English colonial film, see, for example, Prem Chowdry: Colonial India and the making of empire cinema: Image, ideology and identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). For a detailed reconstruction of the history of the Italian fi lm during Fascism, cf. the following studies: Gianfranco Casadio, Il grigio e il nero. Spettacolo e propaganda nel cinema italiano degli anni Trenta (1931–1943) (Ravenna: Longo, 1989); Mino Argentieri ed., Risate di regime: La com-

178 Immacolata Amodeo

21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

28. 29.

media italiana, 1930–1944 (Venice: Marsilio, 1991); Mino Argentieri ed., Schermi di guerra: Cinema italiano 1939–1945 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1995); Mino Argentieri, Il cinema in guerra. Arte, comunicazione e propaganda in Italia, 1940–1944 (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1998). Concerning the importance of photography to the colonial propaganda, see Fotografi a e storia dell’Africa, ed. Alessandro Triulzi. Atti del Convegno Internazionale Napoli-Roma 9–11 settembre 1992 (Naples: I.U.O., 1995). Compare Philip V. Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso. Fascismo e mass media (Rome/Bari: Laterza, 1975). A more detailed analysis of the role of the press during the era of the Italian Fascism is documented in Valerio Castronovo, La stampa italiana dall’Unità al fascismo, 1st rev. ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1984); Oreste Del Buono ed., Eia, eia, eia, alalà. La stampa italiana sotto il fascismo 1919–1943. Antologia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1971). In the Italian context, the preeminence that performative and audiovisual media enjoy over the writing-related media is limited neither to colonial matter nor to the twentieth century. The Italian society repeatedly proved itself, in historically different forms, to be more a società dello spettacolo than a society in which a reading culture dominates. Nonliterary media have been and still are of fundamental significance for the representation, the reproduction, the transformation, the archiving, and the transmission of Italian culture. For details, cf. Immacolata Amodeo, Das Opernhafte. Eine Studie zum “gusto melodrammatico” in Italien und Europa (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2007), in print. Compare Gian Piero Brunetta, “Il cinema” in I luoghi della memoria. Strutture ed eventi dell’Italia unita, ed. Mario Isnenghi, 223–51 (Rome/Bari: Laterza, 1997), 229. For the history of the Istituto Luce, cf. Mino Argentieri, L’occhio del regime. Informazione propaganda nel cinema del fascismo (Florence: Valecchi, 1979); Massimo Cardillo, Il duce in moviola. Politica e divismo nei cinegiornali e documentari “Luce” (Bari: Dedalo, 1983); Gian Piero Brunetta/ Jean A. Gili, L’ora d’Africa del cinema italiano. Appendice documentaria a cura di Barbara Corsi, Rovereto: Materiali di lavoro. Rivista di studi storici 1990; Ernesto G. Laura, Le stagioni dell’aquila. Storia dell’Istituto LUCE (Rome: Ente dello spettacolo, 2000); concerning the photographic activities of the Istituto Luce, cf. the most recent Angelo Del Boca/Nicola Labanca, L’impero africano del fascismo nelle fotografi e dell’Istituto Luce (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2002). For details, see Gian Piero Brunetta, Cinema italiano tra le due guerre. Fascismo e politica cinematografica (Milan: Mursia, 1975); Gian Piero Brunetta, Storia del cinema italiano. Vol. II (Il cinema del regime 1929–1945) (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1993). Gian Piero Brunetta, ed., Storia del cinema mondiale (Turin: Einaudi, 1999). “It is at the same time a collector of many former cultural and iconographic systems, a nodal point of congruence for real and imaginary places and a perfect and self-sufficient world.” “Il cinema,” 226–27.

10 Rationalizing the World British Detective Stories and the Orient Margrit Pernau

The results of an investigation into the portrayal of the Orient in British detective stories seem quite foreseeable: Renouncing conspicuous violence, a detective solves mysteries by the power of his reasoning. He thus shows his readers that there is a rational explanation for everything and that it is possible to dominate the world through superior knowledge. The detective, hence, can be read as an embodiment of the middle classes’ values of civility and rationality. The Orient, one might assume, would symbolize the world’s mysteries, which at fi rst resists rational explanation, but then shows its triumph all the brighter. This triumph would, at the same time, be the triumph of European middle-class values. The detective story, one might thus presume, is a space in which the middle classes celebrate their own values and their triumph. By the mass production of the detective story and its consumption also by readers from a lower middle- and working-class background, it simultaneously serves as an introduction into dominant middle-class standards. These arguments can draw on an illustrious genealogy, encompassing no lesser authorities than Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Carlo Ginzburg.1 A touch of new imperial history may be added, showing one stance of the entanglement of metropolis and colonies and the centrality of the Orient for the creation of British middle-class identity. These ideas have been foundational for many of the recent interpretations of detective fiction in the nineteenth century, which have brought about a wealth of fascinating reinterpretations of old texts. 2 However, with these books being written already, I think it might now be possible to push the analysis a bit further. A wealth of comparative research on the middle classes in Europe has shown that the links among the middle classes, enlightenment and rationality, civil society and civility are by no means as close as the self-image of the representatives notably of middle-class liberalism, in both contemporary writings and academic investigations, has wanted to make us believe. Feminist scholarship and gender history have contributed to an important differentiation of this picture, but they were not the only revising forces. However, like good wine, historical knowledge seems to suffer if it is transported from one place to the other. In studies that implicitly or explicitly compare Europe with non-European

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regions, especially with the Muslim world, we still encounter the dominance of an image positing an inherent and quasi-indestructible relation among the middle classes, enlightenment, and rationality. This is only partly due to the fact that the latest research on European history takes some time to reach scholars of the Orient—the image that European historians present to a global audience is markedly different from the one that dominates their internal communication. Therefore, I would argue in favor of altogether abolishing the boundary between European and non-European history and to integrate both into a common frame of reference. In the following analysis of some wellknown detective stories, I hope to give an example of how this might work out and what would be the advantages for both European and nonEuropean history. Drawing on and further elaborating the approach of new imperial history as it is linked with works notably by Catherine Hall, Frederick Cooper, and Ann Laura Stoler, 3 the following interpretation of detective stories is structured by three theses. First, contrary to what one might assume, detectives are a highly ambiguous incarnation of middle-class values. What we encounter in detective stories is anything but a self-confident world explanation by the middle classes. On the contrary, to make sense of the world they are living in and to solve its riddles, the middle classes have to rely on outsiders to quite an extraordinary extent, be it nobles, foreigners, or at least men, who refuse to live up to middle-class values in their daily life. Second, gender history and the history of the working classes have shown how far middle-class identity has evolved in distinction from women and workers. This, as has been pointed out in recent works by Catherine Hall and others, needs the integration of a racialized Orient as a third category of difference, closely intertwined with the others. We start knowing the outlines of how the construction of gender images and the relation between the elites and the subalterns was influenced by the simultaneous discourse on the colonies. What has been elaborated much less has been the implications for the discussion of Orientalism, if the images of the Orient, too, cannot be understood without reference to distinctions taking place within European societies. What does it mean for our understanding of the creation of colonial knowledge if Orientalism was not produced for the Orient, but transferred from already existing distinctions? Third, drawing on the close link between identity and alterity, the Orient has been shown to be the recipient of all the qualities that white middleclass men wanted to get rid of. The Orient hence became ‘the Other,’ a difference that involved a hierarchization. This development has been well researched in the many excellent studies that spelled out Edward Said’s thesis through the analysis of travelogues and scholarly interpretations of the Orient. The detective stories, however, are much more ambivalent in their depiction of the Orient. The colonies certainly are the Other, which threatens the motherland’s civilization and civility, be it by corrupting British

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officers through too close a contact or through invasion. But the Orient, in its very barbarity, also embodies a hope for salvation. The colonies are the place where a middle-class masculinity threatened by decadence and boredom at home can prove that it is able to face dangers and become a hero, able to shoulder responsibility all by itself. These adventures, for which an industrializing Britain no longer provided the scope, then work as a source for rejuvenation and regeneration of the entire race.

THE GENRE OF THE DETECTIVE STORY Crime always played an important role in literature, in the tragedies of Shakespeare no less than in the tales of Thousand and one nights, in popular ballads, as well as in the epic novels of the eighteenth century. Detective stories, however, are a product of the nineteenth century. Their development starts with the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe in the United States, is continued with the novels of Emil Gaboriau in France, travels to England with Wilkie Collins where it takes up the tradition of the gothic novel and the sensation literature, and reaches a fi rst climax with Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories.4 The central topic of the detective story is neither the explanation as to which psychological forces drove the criminal nor the social account of why crimes happen, but the solution of the question of ‘whodunit,’ the identification of an unknown criminal by reading the traces he left behind (i.e., by rational explanation of what starts as a mystery). Although crime fiction is common to most literatures, the detective story developed in certain countries only—as far as I have been able to trace, there are no detective stories in Germany before the twentieth century5 —and is specific to a certain historical situation. The detective story links up with two developments of the early nineteenth century. On the one hand, the criminal procedure code, which earlier relied solely on eye witnesses or the confession of the criminal, now allowed the use of circumstantial evidence, thereby providing a legal rationale to the detective’s search for clues and giving sense to the effort to elucidate those secret crimes, which the criminal refuses to reveal even under torture. On the other hand, as magisterially drawn out by Foucault, the concept of penal justice was transformed, evolving from combating crime by inflicted violence on the body of the criminal to the prevention of crime by surveillance and the accumulation of knowledge.6 Remaining within the imagery used by Foucault, one might depict the detective as a panopticum on two legs: Not only the actual but also the potential criminal (hence, in the end, everyone) has to remain aware of the fact that a detective might either be observing him in disguise or at a later stage be able to retrace every of his movements from the clues left behind.7 The possibility to detect crime through investigation and the necessity to do so on a rational, bureaucratic, and efficient basis led to the setting up

182 Margrit Pernau of the London Metropolitan Police in 1829, which within a few decades replaced the system of watchmen and justices of peace all over England. However, this extension of the state’s surveillance did not take place without encountering a strong resistance, especially among the middle classes, who usually would be considered as its initiator or at least its supporter. Especially in Britain, not only the word, but also the institution of ‘police’ evoked associations with French absolutism and Fouchés secret police, considered irreconcilable with an English concept of freedom.8 This resistance found its expression in the detective novels. Unlike in the French model, where police and detective early on worked hand in hand, in England, it was not until well into the twentieth century that the central figure of the novel could be a member of the regular police force. Many of the earlier plots are built on the contrast between the officer and the private hand. Regularly, the detective not only outwits the dumb policeman by his superior knowledge and brilliant intelligence, but is also shown as far more adequate to his task, as he has the possibility to act not according to the law, but according to the code of honor of a gentleman and hence to suppress knowledge about a crime he considers justified or which might involve revealing the secrets of a lady to the general public and tarnishing her reputation.9 As Caroline Reitz has brought out, it was to a large extent through the mediation of the colonies that the intrusive figure of the police detective became respectable. In William Sleeman’s Thuggee narratives, English readers for the fi rst time were confronted with the necessity and possibility of detection to penetrate into a mysterious and threatening underworld. The fact that this panoptic activity occurred in an imperial context, playing on images of the opposition of sly, dark Indian robbers and murderers and British forces of light and justice contributed much to enable “the bad turn-of-the century cop to become good, to become English, and therefore to come home to a more receptive public.”10

WILKIE COLLINS AND THE ORIENT The novel The Moonstone was serialized from January to October 1868 in the journal All Year Round. The time of its publication is important because it situated the novel at the end of the fi rst great wave of memoirs and fiction on the great Indian revolt of 1857, gruesome tales of Indian treachery, British heroism, and just retribution.11 In more than one way, The Moonstone may be considered a response to these publications. Although Collins avoids directly challenging the Mutiny narratives by situating his tale some 60 years earlier, he nevertheless introduces ambiguities, which remind us that the British discourse on the Orient, even at a popular level, never reached anything approaching homogeneity.12 Born in 1824 as the son of a successful painter, Wilkie Collins started to study law before devoting

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himself to a career of painting and writing. He collaborated with Charles Dickens over a number of projects and joined him in the publication of the journal Household Words, but their friendship and partnership had come to an end in the early 1860s not least because of their differing views on India, the revolt, and the British civilizing mission.13 At this point in life, Wilkie Collins was already considered a highly successful author who was able to draw and hold a large number of readers. Moonstone is the name of a jewel that, once upon a time, adorned the statue of a Hindu God at the temple of Somnath.14 It fell prey to the greed of a succeeding number of Muslim invaders before it fi nally landed up in the treasury of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the south Indian princely state of Mysore. Here it was stolen during the battle of Seringapatnam in 1799 by a British officer, Hearncastle, who savagely murdered its Indian guards—a fi rst shift in the discourse, as the British no longer appear as the saviors from lawlessness, greed, and anarchy, but rather as their perpetuators. The blame for this crime, however, cannot be laid on the British at home. As soon as they come to know of Hearncastle’s colonial brutality, his relatives disown him and he has to fi nish his days as an outcast. As revenge, he gifts the diamond, which like every decent oriental jewel is of course followed by a curse, to his innocent niece Rachel for her eighteenth birthday. Since the fi rst theft, the diamond had been trailed by three Brahmins, who followed it generation after generation, with Oriental patience and Oriental devotion to their religion, waiting to recover it for their God one day. Although the depiction of the Indians follows many of the Orientalist stereotypes, notably pointing out their mysterious and magical powers, their religion and even more their devotion and their sacrifices are defi nitely accorded respect. Together with the “devilish Indian diamond,” the Brahmins too arrive at the “quiet English home.”15 The happenings in the colonies and in the motherland, Collins seems to tell us, cannot be kept apart. Perhaps it would be time to claim him not only as the fi rst writer of detective stories, but also as the foundation father of new imperial history. Although she has been warned, Rachel insists on wearing the diamond, which, as the reader has already anticipated, will get stolen in the fi rst night. Not only the Indians, but almost all of the principal characters in turn come under suspicion. Finally, it is revealed that Francklin, Rachel’s fiancé, had taken the diamond under the influence of opium that had been administered to him without his knowledge, a deed for which he was not to be held responsible and which he could not even remember. Contrary to him, Rachel’s cousin, Ablewhite, however, who took the diamond from Francklin, was conscious of what he was doing. At fi rst sight, Ablewhite, nomen est omen, may appear as the embodiment of Victorian middle-class values: pious, the heart and soul of a whole range of missionary and philanthropic societies. However, these values constitute but a mask that hides his true self, his greed, and his moral depravity. In love with a costly mistress, he

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appropriated all the donations gathered by his societies. It was to hide these misdeeds that he stole the diamond. Faster than the British police and detectives, the Indians unravel these mysteries, murder Ablewhite, and bring the diamond back to India. After reinstalling the diamond in its rightful place on the front of the idol of Somnath, they depart on a life-long and lonely pilgrimage to atone for breaking their religion’s laws. It is on this moving scene that the book ends. This novel may contribute to the elucidation of the questions and hypotheses posed in the beginning of this chapter in a number of ways. First, how and by whom does the rational explanation of the world take place? The fi rst to solve the riddles, to recognize Ablewhite as the thief, and, hence, to recuperate the diamond are the Indians. Because the reader is not taken into their confidence and, hence, not able to judge whether they reach their conclusion by rational deduction or through magical power (which would defi nitely disqualify them according to the rules of the detection novel), they do not contribute to the process of unraveling the mystery. However, their presence throws a disquieting shadow on the project of the West as the sole and legitimate owner of the power of rational world explanation. On the British side, the enquiries are taken up by a policeman, who is called in after the family discovered the theft. However, once he starts to probe too closely into the affairs of the family, alienating fi rst the servants and then the family members by not conforming to the implicit rules governing a gentry household, he is unceremoniously dismissed by the lady of house. Not only are the middle classes apparently quite unwilling to further any project of surveillance, be it of themselves or even of their servants, at least as long as it is only minor crimes that are involved, they are also successfully able to ward off any interference by state agents they cannot control. In front of the alternative to solve the case or protect their private sphere, the family chooses its privacy even if this implies the possibility that a mystery will not be solved and a crime not punished. However, once the policeman has returned to London, it is the family that takes turns playing detective, contributing some element to the solution of the puzzle. Surveillance, crime prevention, crime detection, and, in the end, the decision of whether and how crime should be punished rest not so much with the state as with civil society—a civil society that also relies on and protects the private sphere. Posed in such general terms, these fi nding might still be reconciled with the dominance of middle-class values and the self-confidence of their representatives. But a more detailed look at the persons who contribute to the solution of the mystery tends to throw doubts on this hypothesis. Francklin, who is the moving force in the detection process, certainly is male and middle class; however, because he spent too long a time on the continent, his solid British nature got mixed up with French frivolousness and a German philosophical mood, which tend to emerge all of a sudden. The servant girl Rosanna, in turn, who

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guessed the truth at a very early stage already, but chose to hide it for the love of Francklin, undoubtedly is British, but as a female subaltern, she too does not qualify as a symbol for the intimate relationship between British middle-class values and mystery-solving rationality. The person, however, who contributes more than any other to the elucidation of the riddles by discovering the role opium played in the theft is Ezra Jennings, an assistant to the country doctor. The illegitimate son of a British planter and a Caribbean woman, himself addicted to the oriental drug, straddles the races in the same way as his hair is divided between black and white, “the line between the colors no sort of regularity. At one place the white hair ran up into the black; at another the black hair ran down into the white.”16 Second, how does the Orient as a category of difference interact with other categories of difference? The central theme of the novel is the betrayal committed by the colonial power: Instead of protecting those entrusted to their care, they rob and violate them. This topic fi nds its echo at the level of gender relations. Rachel is by no means one of those gentle Victorian girls whose fair beauty is depicted all in white and pink, but so dark that she herself recalls the Orient for the reader. With the Orient she also shares her fiery temper, which calls for male control. But as Hearncastle, Francklin, too, betrays the trustee, whose protection was his mission, the theft of the most precious jewel of a young girl in the darkness of the night has unmistakable sexual undertones. Here patriarchal and colonial images and discourses point in the same direction, mix freely, and together generate middle-class male identity. How does this, however, link up with the category one would expect in the description of the Orient, namely with race? The perspective emerging from a careful lecture of The Moonstone is unexpected, to say the least. Although color and race are by no means absent from the description of the Indians, they are almost marginal compared with the importance accorded to religion.17 At this point of time, the identity of the novel’s protagonists is not yet “white, male and middle class,” as Catherine Hall describes it, but rather “protestant, male and middle class.” Although it would require more detailed studies, this might well open up possibilities for a new genealogy of the Orientalist images. It might well be that the topoi, which served to construct the difference between the West and the Orient in the nineteenth century, were not in the fi rst instance brought about by the wish to dominate the colonies, as we have been taught to expect since the seminal writings of Edward Said, but rather hailed back to older confl icts, opposing a protestant England to catholic nations.18 To illustrate this, it is convenient to recall another major work written by Wilkie Collins. Traditionally, a novel like The Women in White would fi nd no place in a paper on the Orient because no Indians, Arabs, or other colonials make their appearance.19 However, the description of the two Italians central to the plot corresponds to an astonishing extent to what were later

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to become the image of the good and the bad Oriental. On the one hand, we fi nd Pesca, a childlike figure, who looks up with devotion to his British savior, admires him, and attempts—without any success, but to make the reader smile—to imitate him in his habits and language. On the other hand, there is the Count of Fosco, a dangerous, lecherous, and cruel man who is all the more dangerous for his ability to perfect mimicry and who thereby illegitimately appropriates the English language and culture as well as women. 20 If we look even further back, these images are already found as the standard fare in the eighteenth-century gothic novel. The space for the uncanny, the horror, and the cruelty, with which mainly young, innocent English women are threatened, however, does not begin in Istanbul or Cairo, but already in the south of France and in Italy and later slowly wanders to the Balkans. 21 Pointing to this genealogy of Orientalism, of course, is not meant to imply that these images were not transformed and at times but not always profoundly transformed while traveling from one region to the other. However, the relations existing between them, their entanglements, translations, and reinterpretations, once again can only be gauged within a frame of reference that encompasses both European and non-European history. Third, what ambivalences toward the Orient are embodied in Wilkie Collins’ work? At fi rst sight, it might seem that The Moonstone uses the invasion and corruption by the Orient in an almost classical manner: the oriental jewel, which brings home violence to England’s peaceful shores, the colonial officer, who is barbarized in the Orient. Such an interpretation, however, overlooks that the thrust of the novel does not in the fi rst instance aim at the exclusion and domination of the Orient. Rather, its central theme is the critique of the middle class, who does not live up to the values it justly proclaims. Contrary to later stories, who hold the Orient and its nefarious influences responsible for the misdeeds of barbarized colonial officers, thus exonerating British culture and civilization and preserving its superiority, here it is Hearncastle who has to bear the full responsibility for betraying his civilizing mission and become a common criminal. He, and not the Orient, therefore, is to be held responsible for any violence that might reach the mother country. Where Collins draws a merciless caricature of British evangelical piety’s hypocrisy in the person of Ablewhite, he accords profound respect to the religiosity of the three Brahmins, who are ready to sacrifice all for their faith.22 Although the reader might perhaps not condone their murder of Ablewhite, still he will not help feeling some sympathy and understanding for the murderers—a reaction that is a far cry from the responses to the killings of British citizens by Indians in the aftermath of 1857. All this discussion certainly does not turn The Moonstone into an anticolonial text. At the same time, it decidedly refuses to participate in the dichotomization between the West and the Orient and the demonization of the latter, which was so current in the contemporary Mutiny narratives.

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THE ORIENT IN ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE’S SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES With Arthur Conan Doyle, we not only pass from the still somewhat moderate imperialism of the mid-century to the high imperialism of the late nineteenth century, but also from the liberal spectrum of British public opinion to its most conservative counterpart. Born to an Irish family of noble origin, but migrating to Britain and unable to keep up their standard of living, Doyle had been trained as a doctor and worked on board a ship traveling to the colonies for some years before he found that he could make a living by writing. Always committed to the imperial cause, the Boer War saw him back in active medical service. Although it was through his detective stories and novels that Doyle became known, they only ranked second for him: More than a professional writer of popular fiction, he imagined himself as a writer of historical fiction in the tradition of Sir Walter Scott. 23 With Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Watson, the British detective story found its classical form. Since the fi rst story appeared in the Strand Magazine and within a short time doubled its circulation from 200,000 to 400,000 copies, 24 they have never been out of print. They have been translated into many languages and have found innumerable imitators and adaptors. From the many stories in which the Orient has some repercussion on the motherland—by poison and wild animals, by treason and mysterious illnesses, in the shape of natives and of opium—two will be picked out here, The Sign of Four and, for an amplification of certain aspects, The Speckled Band. 25 At fi rst sight, the plot of The Sign of Four bears much resemblance to The Moonstone. Once again, the story is triggered off by the theft of Indian jewels, which results in Oriental violence spilling over to the homeland. At the height of the battles of 1857, Jonathan Small is entrusted with guarding the Fort of Agra against the rebels. One night he is half forced, half convinced by three Indian troopers to join them in murder and theft and to appropriate the “Agra treasure.” However, in this plot, the jewels no longer belong to an Indian deity, but to a simple Raja; where in The Moonstone their theft had pointed to the plunder of the colonies by the British, Doyle’s Raja had forfeited his claim to his property by rebelling against the British even before the theft. Thus, India was not being robbed, but rather the British Crown as the new proprietor of the treasure. Unlike Inspector Cuff in The Moonstone, the colonial police was highly efficient and within a short time managed to unravel the plot and arrest the culprits. Jonathan Small and the three Indians were banished to the Andaman Islands, not without fi rst hiding their treasure. In the attempt to trade part of the jewels for his freedom, Small is cheated by the British prison officer, who takes hold of the treasure and returns to Britain, where he lives in Oriental luxury. With the help of an Andaman tribal, Small succeeds in escaping from prison. He arrives too late to kill the traitor; in the attempt to recuperate the treasure

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from his heirs, his son is brutally and unnecessarily murdered by the savage tribal with the help of poisoned darts. Although Sherlock Holmes arrives too late to prevent the murder and also fails to redeem the treasure, at least he is successful in arresting Jonathan Small and explaining most of the mysteries, which induces the latter to confess the crime and provide the missing links. In The Speckled Band, Dr. Roylott attempts to murder his two stepdaughters to get hold of their inheritance. Although as a descendant of the oldest Saxon nobility he should embody the noblest English values, a long, indeed too long, stay in Calcutta has corrupted him and brought forth a streak of cruelty and violence of temper—emotions that otherwise would have remained under the control of the civilizing forces of the West. With the help of a poisonous tropical snake, he murders the fi rst young woman— “the empire bites back” this murder has been called by Laura Otis26 —while her sister is only saved by the timely and fearless intervention of the detective, who turns the snake back on its owner. Again, these stories contribute to the elaboration of the hypotheses and questions sketched out in the introduction in various respects. First, how and by whom does the rational explanation of the world take place? Obviously, the confidence of the middle classes in their ability to rationally explain the world has not gained much ground in the thirty years separating Arthur Conan Doyle from Wilkie Collins. Sherlock Holmes certainly is a counterimage to the Orient. His ability for a rational unraveling of mysteries, Eastern and others, his logical deductions, and his willingness to refuse all supernatural explanations as long as the natural play of cause and effect has not been tested to the end certainly draw him apart from British ideas about a mysterious and mystic East. However, this same rationality also separates him from the middle classes. A precise social location of Sherlock Holmes is not possible. His fi nancial conditions induce him to share his apartment with Watson in the fi rst place, but he can afford to select his cases or not to work at all if he so fancies. It is his habitus, however, that profoundly separates him from Victorian middleclass morality. He is unable to support the routine of regular work, which again and again leads him to take refuge in the dream world of cocaine. He shrinks back from all emotions, which might impair his faculty of logical reasoning, and thus refuses love, marriage, and family life. He is described as “an automaton—a calculating machine,” “positively inhuman at times”27; although he has a specialized knowledge in some areas, he is far away from any middle-class notion of general education. All this makes him but an improbable candidate for an embodiment of the middle classes, in which they might celebrate their own faculty to dominate the world through reasoning and rationality. It is Watson who provides the image of the British middle class man, but then he is of course completely unable to penetrate any mystery on his own or even to draw rather obvious logical conclusions.

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Second, by which categories is the boundary between the West and the Orient drawn and how do these categories intermingle with other criteria of differentiation? Although Collins’ Indians were, as we have seen, still to a large extent defi ned by their religion, Conan Doyle is so little bothered about religious identification that he creates Sikhs with Muslim names. Instead, it is race that constitutes the prime difference. This is true among Indians, where the “martial races” of the northern hill areas are opposed to the Bengalis, deemed to be sly and cowardly, and at the bottom of the scale, the tribals, hardly human, “naturally hideous,” with “misshapen heads” and “distorted features,” fierce and cruel cannibals, impermeable to the efforts of any British civilizing mission.28 But race also becomes a central category of differentiation between the Orient and the British. The latter now have indeed become “white, male and middle class.” Next to race, class gains importance. Here the images depicting the Orient and the subaltern classes merge to an extent to become almost indistinguishable. 29 The ‘urban jungle,’ the ‘darkest London’ correspond in their gloominess to the African Heart of Darkness.30 The adventures that Sherlock Holmes lives through in the London East End, among seamen on shore leave, occasional workers and criminals, in taverns and opium dens, take the reader to an Orient that is all the more terrifying because it is no longer placed in Italy, in the Balkan, in the Near East, or in India, but right next door, threatening to spill over at any moment. In the colonies, too, the subalterns—represented by Jonathan Small in The Sign of Four—are viewed with suspicion because they lack the essential Britishness necessary for the upkeep of racial and cultural boundaries. Although British officers may be corrupted by the debilitating and barbarizing influence of the Orient, only subalterns descend so deep as to make common cause with the natives, thus endangering the entire colonial project. Third, what ambivalences toward the Orient fi nd their expression through Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories? The boundary between the Orient and the middle classes, which seems so safely constructed by both race and class, in reality remains permanently vulnerable. The threat may come in the shape of an invasion—the poisonous snake and the Andaman tribal are instances in the stories presented here, in other plots, this role may be taken by representatives of the lower working class. But even more dangerous is the possibility that the British may remain unsuccessful in their civilizing mission and even become barbarized through too close a contact with another culture. The fear of colonial officers being transformed into despotic Oriental rulers goes back at least to Edmund Burke and the Warren Hastings process in the closing years of the eighteenth century. In a shift from Burke’s belief in universal values, what is dreaded now is a breakdown of the boundaries that keep the Orient separate from the Metropolis, leading to brutalized colonial officers returning to their homeland, no longer being able to distinguish between the behavior

190 Margrit Pernau admissible toward the natives and the rules of civilization among British, Dr. Roylott is a case in point. Or else they may be seduced by Oriental languor, losing the energy of the middle-class work ethic. They are then seized by doubts and boredom and seek a refuge in sensual delights and drugs. Even Sherlock Holmes himself is not immune to this danger; on the contrary, his overbred intellect makes him all the more susceptible to the temptation of decadence. 31 Beholding a threat, the Orient nevertheless also offers hope for salvation. Where the civilization of the motherland, especially in its modern, industrialized variety, led to a slackening of energy and virility, and hence to the danger of degeneration of the whole race, it is the Orient in its wilderness and barbarity that promises the redemption from boredom and decadence. Here the adventures and dangers are still to be found, in which an individual can prove his sterling value, no longer bound or protected by laws, but thrown back only on his own resources. It is here that the middleclass male can redeem his threatened masculinity. As soon as he is able to fight, against snakes or malicious natives, Sherlock Holmes can forgo his cocaine: His eye becomes bright, his limbs straighten up, and he is turned into the explainer and conqueror of the world who can be sure of Watson’s and the reader’s admiration. However, as in the work of Wilkie Collins, these Oriental topoi do not remain fi rmly located in the geographic Orient, but tend to wander: Both the danger of brutalization and the hope for regeneration are not limited to the jungles and deserts of Asia and Africa, but fi nd their place, perhaps even their most important place, in the empty plains of the White settler colonies.32 Detective stories, at least in their Sherlock Holmes variety, certainly did play a role in the popularization of a knowledge system legitimizing the establishment of imperial power and contributed to its popular support in the motherland. Nevertheless, this was not the knowledge system based on clear-cut boundaries between the West and the Orient, between the metropolis and its colonies, that we have been led to expect since Edward Said. The Orient is neither strictly divided from the West, but redoubled in the heart of Britain in the shape of British women and lower classes. Nor is it geographically stable, at times including Italy and Germany or the Balkan, at other times the Unites States and the White settler colonies.

ORIENTAL APPROPRIATION OF MIDDLE-CLASS RATIONALITY? It is not only within the detective stories that entanglements occur, entanglements among the images and discourses on women, subalterns, and the Orient. Even before the spreading of media of mass communication, motifs, plots, and even individual heroes also traveled across a wide geographical range, at times being reproduced with little or no change, but more often

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adapted to local genres and traditions.33 As Carlo Ginzburg has shown, the method that Sherlock Holmes uses for reading signs can be traced back to folktales traveling among Turkmens, Tartars, and Kirghizes. From there, they reached Venice and, fi nally, through Voltaire’s Zadig, became part of the European literary history.34 It is from this source that Arthur Conan Doyle drew his inspiration. As a symbol of British middle-class culture and modernity, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes wandered back to the Orient, the fi rst translation to Bengali being brought out only a few years after the original had appeared in London. They were followed by adaptations that turned Holmes and Watson into Bengalis and underlined the claim of a rising colonial middle class to modernity. A little later, the motifs were transferred to northern India, giving birth fi rst to detective stories in Hindi, a genre that sold extremely well. 35 Once the genre reached the Urdu community, the tales linked up with the dastan tradition of orally transmitted tales of mystery and imagination. Although some motifs (e.g., the use of the magnifying glass, the identification of fi nger prints, and notably the figure of the detective) are preserved, this genealogy tends to relegate scientific inquiry and rationality and their importance for the solving of mysteries to the second plan.36 Turning to the twentieth century, a detective story written in English in 1999 by the Tibetan author Jamyang Norbu is of particular interest. 37 Aficionados of the Sherlock Holmes stories have always been curious to know more about the two years the detective spent in hiding after his battle with the arch villain Mortiary and of which until then nothing was known but Watson’s brief remark that he spent this time in Tibet. Jamyang Norbu solves this mystery by the publication of the memoirs of Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, the tracing of the manuscript in a dilapidated house in Darjeeling being in itself worth all the detection skills the author could muster. Mookerjee, known to some readers already through his work for the Criminal Investigation officer Strickland, whose exploits have been published by Rudyard Kipling, takes up the role of a Bengali Watson and accompanies Holmes to Tibet in this book. The story starts in accordance with the format provided by Doyle, Holmes giving proof of his extraordinary rational capacity right after his arrival in Bombay by solving a murder case and narrowly escaping a murderous attack himself. However, the further the story evolves, the further the reader is led into an almost Tolkiensian universe of flying swords, magical stones, and, in the end, a dramatic battle between the forces of good and evil, between light and darkness. Despite all of his rational powers, Sherlock Holmes is only able to win the battle because in the last moment he is able to recall his previous incarnation as the highest lama, the monk-abbot of the White Garuda Dharma Castle. Hereby, he not only found his true identity, but also inner peace. The same qualities that cast doubts on his middle-class identity—his refusal to marry, his extraordinary ability for concentration, his fasting during work, and his amazing

192 Margrit Pernau mental capacities—are now turned into a sign that he was ‘one of us’ for the Tibetans, an Oriental among Orientals. This novel could be dismissed as an appropriation of the figure embodying British rationalism and the British capacity for explaining and dominating the world—delightful, but not quite legitimate. But the history of entanglement is not reduced to a history of transfer that easily. During the last twenty years of his life, Conan Doyle became an ardent propagator of spiritism. Like Sherlock Holmes, his author, too, discovered his true identity through the encounter with an Orient, deemed to be mystical, mysterious, and highly rational at the same time. Hence, in the detective stories, neither the threat through nor the redemption by the Orient, neither Victorian middle-class values nor the ability for a rational interpretation of the world, are to be neatly classified according to geographical categories. Instead of a world with stable limitations as envisaged by Orientalism, which clearly demarcate the West and the Orient, the motherland and the colonies, the stories discussed here depict a labyrinth of criss-crossing boundaries. These boundaries, however, can only be traced and explained once we give up the academic division of Oriental and European studies.

NOTES 1. Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish. The Birth of the Prison (London: Allen Lane, 1977); Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978); Carlo Ginzburg, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes. Clues and Scientific Method”, in History Workshop 9 (1980): 5–37. 2. D. A. Miller, The Novel and the Police (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Caroline Reitz, Detecting the Nation. Fictions of Detection and the Imperial Venture (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004); Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, Crime and Empire. The Colony in 19th Century Fiction of Crime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 3. See the already classic works: Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class. Explorations in Feminism and History (Oxford: Polity Press, 1992); Idem, Civilizing Subjects. Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830–1867 (Oxford: Polity Press, 2000); Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Kathleen Wilson, ed., A New Imperial History. Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 4. Martin Priestman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 5. Crime and mystery figure prominently in stories like Friedrich Schiller’s Der Geisterseher and Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Das Fräulein von Scuderi and in Annette von Droste Hülshoff’s Die Judenbuche, but neither of them knows the figure of a detective. Detection happens mostly by the confession of the criminal, but it is not brought about by a process of logical deduction.

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6. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (London: Allen Lane, 1977). 7. Reitz, Detecting the Nation, XXI. 8. Clive Emsley, The English Police. A Political and Social History (London: Longman, 1996). 9. For middle-class fear of surveillance through a link between the police and their own servants, see Brian W. McCuskey, “The Kitchen Police. Servant Surveillance and Middle-Class Transgression,” Victorian Literature and Culture 28, no. 2 (2000): 359–75. 10. Reitz, Detecting the Nation, 22–42, quotation 23. See also Mike Brogden, “An Act to Colonise the Internal Lands of the Island. Empire and the Origins of the Professional Police,” International Journal of Sociology of Law 15 (1987): 179–208; Idem, “The Emergence of the Police. The Colonial Dimension,” British Journal of Criminology 27 (1987): 4–14. 11. Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 199–227. 12. Jaya Mehta, “English Romance, Indian Violence,” Centennial Review 39 (1995): 611–57. 13. Lillian Nayder, Wilkie Collins (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997); Tamar Heller, Dead Secrets. Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 14. Quotations follow the Penguin Popular Classics edition of Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (London: Penguin, 1994). 15. Ibid., XX. 16. Ibid., 321. 17. For a comparison with Wilkie Collins’s Poor Miss Finch, the only novel where he explicitly refers to color and race as a category of difference, but characteristically in order to subvert it, see Lillian Nayder, “ ‘Blue like Me.’ Collins’s Poor Miss Finch and the Construction of Racial Identity,” in Reality’s Dark Light. The Sensational Wilkie Collins, eds. Maria Bachmann and Don Richard Cox (Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 2003). 18. Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 19. Wilkie Collins, Woman in White (London: Penguin, 1996). 20. Gabrielle Ceraldi, “The Crystal Palace, Imperialism and the ‘Struggle for Existence’. Victorian Evolutionary Discourse in Collins’s Women in White,” in Reality’s Dark Light, 173–95. 21. Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Ann Radcliffe, The Italian (London: Penguin, 2000); Idem, The Mysteries of Udolpho (London: Penguin, 2001); Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900 (London: Verso, 1998). 22. Lillian Nayder, Unequal Partners. Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Victorian Authorship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). 23. Catherine Wynne, The Colonial Conan Doyle. British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism and the Gothic (Westport: Greenwood, 2002); Rosemary Jann, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Detecting Social Order (Toronto: Twayne, 1995). 24. Jon Thompson, Fiction, Crime and Empire. Clues to Modernity and Postmodernism (Chicago: Urbana Publishers, 1993), 61. 25. Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Sign of Four,” in Idem, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (New York, Gramercy Books, 2002), 40–70; Idem, “The Speckled Band,” in ibid., 111–18. 26. Laura Otis, “The Empire Bites Back. Sherlock Holmes as an Imperial Immune System,” Studies in Twenty Century Literature 22.1 (1998): 31–60.

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27. The Sign of Four, Chapter 2. 28. All quotations from The Sign of Four, referring to Tonga, the native from the Andaman Islands. 29. For one of the origins of this merger of discourses, the missionary movement, see Susan Thorne, “The Conversion of Englishmen and the Conversion of the World Inseparable: Missionary Imperialism and the Language of Class in Early Industrial Britain,” in Tensions of Empire, 238–63. For the similarly entangled history of the Salvation Army, see Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Global Civil Society and the Forces of Empire. The Salvation Army, British Imperialism and the ‘Pre-History’ of NGOs (ca. 1880–1920),” in Competing Visions of World Order. Global Moments and Movements, 1880s-1930s, eds. Dominic Sachsenmaier and Sebastian Conrad, 29–67 (New York: Palgrave, 2007). 30. Joseph McLaughlin, Writing the Urban Jungle. Reading Empire in London From Doyle to Eliot (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000). 31. Stephen Arata, Fiction of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 32. See, for instance, the stories The Valley of Fear and A Study in Scarlet for America, The Boscombe Valley Mystery for Australia, and The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier for South Africa. 33. The concept of traveling traditions was developed in a project at the Center for Advanced Studies (Berlin) by Angelika Neuwirth and Friderike Pannewick; see: www.eume-berlin.de/index.php?id=20&L=O 34. Ginzburg, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes.” 35. Francesca Orsini, “Detective Novels. A Commercial Genre in NineteenthCentury North India,” in India’s Literary History. Essays on the 19th Century, eds. Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 435–83. 36. Markus Daechsel, “Zalim Daku and the Mystery of the Rubber Sea Monster. Urdu Detective Fiction in 1930s Punjab and the Experience of Colonial Modernity,” Journal of the Royal Asian Society 13, no. 1 (2003): 21–43. 37. Jamyang Norbu, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes. Based on the reminiscences of Hurree Chunder Mookerjee C.I.E., F.R.S., F.R.G.S., Rai Bahadur (Delhi: Harper Collins, 1999).

11 African Americans in West and Central Africa in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Agents of European Colonial Rule? Katja Füllberg-Stolberg

Christian missionaries who preceded or followed the European flag in Africa are in general regarded as part of the colonization effort. In the nineteenth century, missionaries saw themselves as pioneers, bringing the ‘blessings’ of Western civilization and the Christian gospel to the ‘Dark Continent,’ often at the price of deprivation, illness, and even death. As W. T. Stead, a Baptist missionary to the Congo, aptly put it: “The African frontier has advanced on the stepping-stones of missionary graves.”1 With the beginning of the consolidation of colonial rule in the early 1880s, the “century of missions”2 reached its climax. Missionary activities spread out into several parts of the African continent, and some regions became playgrounds for various Christian mission societies from Western Europe and the United States.3 Looking more deeply into Christian mission history, questions arise in how far the general notion of the missionary as an agent of colonial rule can be fully accepted. The relationship between mission and colonial state was not always a harmonious one. A confl ict of interest arose between colonial powers and the mission church, and the idea of Christian conversion collided with the colonization effort. Several historians stress the point that colonial governments, whose primary goal was the exploitation of economic resources and African labor, interfered as little as possible with traditions and value systems of African societies for not endangering social peace.4 The Congolese philosopher Valentin Mudimbe, however, points out that Christian mission churches tried to alter African societies to a much larger extent than colonial powers: “ . . . [t]hey (the churches, K.F.-S.) aimed at a radical transformation of indigenous society. . . . They sought, whether consciously or unconsciously, the destruction of pre-colonial societies and their replacement by new Christian societies in the image of Europe.”5 Other authors, although not defi ning missionaries as colonial collaborators, unanimously agree that missionaries gave colonialism and imperialism a more human face: “ . . . [T]he missionary always gave the colonial set-up an aura of humanitarianism [and] anointed the European as the superior

196 Katja Füllberg-Stolberg custodian of values, morals and ethics and as the sole measurer of culture, civilisation and history,” in doing so, the missionary sought to make imperialism “look like humanitarian responsibilities.”6 Karen Fields takes up a more radical position when she stresses the conflict of interest and characterises missionaries as anticolonial champions in their fight against the implementation of colonial rule. She describes two cases in Malawi and Zambia (former Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia) where missionaries confronted the introduction of indirect rule, meddled with local government, and even tried to deprive the local representatives of colonial administration of their power.7

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE ‘CIVILIZING MISSION’ Christian mission history is mainly focusing on the work and experiences of European and White American missionaries, thereby neglecting the contribution of African Americans to the evangelization of Africa. The following study concentrates on the role that African Americans from the United States and the Caribbean played as an active part of the ‘civilizing mission’ in European colonies in Africa. Black Americans left as individuals and in small groups for Africa to escape racial suppression and to build up an independent existence on the continent of their forefathers. But “blacks have never spoken with one voice about Africa’s heritage or about their own responsibility to their ancestral homeland,”8 as Robert Weisbord points out. The African-American relationship with Africa was dominated by ambivalence, at least, more often by a feeling of superiority in regard to so-called ‘uncivilized’ Africans in need of moral uplift. The chapter explores how Black Americans tried to come to terms with their prejudiced attitudes toward the African continent and its inhabitants. In the face of racism, oppression, and exploitation that increasingly marked European policies in various colonized societies in Africa, Black Americans developed their own ideas and actions to bring about changes in their own position, as well as that of Africa. The majority of these repatriates went as missionaries and teachers and were sponsored by White North American Protestant mission societies. Black churches, due to fi nancial shortcomings and lack of trained personnel, only sporadically sent individuals to Africa. Therefore, a large Black missionary movement did not exist before the mid-twentieth century.9 The biographies of the repatriates illuminate the engagement of African Americans in the ‘civilizing mission’ effort on the background of European imperialism. They show the desire to bring the Christian gospel to the brothers and sisters living in ‘darkness.’ This is combined with the hope the mission movement could aid African Americans to gain respect from the White society and thereby improve race relations. “We can no longer hope to retain the confidence and respect of other people of the world unless we

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do more for the redemption of the heathen, especially those of our fatherland,” declared E. C. Morris, the president of the National Baptist Convention in 1899.10 Until the late 1890s, the Black-educated communities in the United States, as well as in the Caribbean, to a large extent shared the same perspective on the European scramble for and partitioning of Africa as the colonial powers. Many of them believed that the influence of Western ‘civilization’ on Africa would have the effect of ‘developing’ the principle of racial unity and nationality in Africa. Archibald Grimké, for example, an attorney from Boston, claimed: It is the seed of African Christian brotherhood, human brotherhood if you please, that the west is to plant in the dark bosom of darkest Africa, in spite of the white man’s prejudice. The Anglo-Saxon, the German, the French, the Belgian with their genius for organization, must begin the great work of organizing the African tribes into national units. This is the fi rst step in the redemption of Africa.11 Grimké, like many other prominent members of the Black community, believed in the ‘civilizing mission’ concept and felt that African Americans should help in the ‘development’ of the African continent. Among the advocates of European imperialism were some journalists like T. Thomas Fortune and John Edward Bruce. Fortune, editor of the influential New York Age, wrote: “With imperialism the physical and mental forces now dissipated in tribal wars, in savage methods of industry, will give place to peaceful administration of government and to concentrated methods of industry.”12 Bruce, an outspoken freelance journalist and influential Black activist who discussed European imperialism in many of his articles, also saw some advantages to European colonial rule in Africa. He encouraged African Americans not only to “take up the white man’s burden” of Christianization but also to join the Europeans in African commercial investment.1313 Booker T. Washington, one of the most famous Black leaders at the turn of the century, noted that it was impossible to keep the Europeans out of Africa because of the commercial advantages of settlement and control. All of Europe, especially Great Britain, France, and Germany, had been “running a mad race for the last twenty years, to see which could gobble up the greater part of Africa,” he argued, and the tide could not be turned back. Washington advised that it was to the advantage of the African people to use European imperialism as a means of ‘uplifting’ themselves and developing their resources.14 By the end of the nineteenth century, these rather positive views of colonial rule and imperialism were gradually changing. More and more, African Americans argued about whether the advantages of colonialism really outweighed the disadvantages. Slowly, imperialism was becoming

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identified with exploitation and discrimination. Undoubtedly, the reaction of the Black community to American imperialism and the Spanish-American War of 1898 contributed to this perspective on European imperialism in Africa. African Americans began to question the United States’ professed intentions for involvement in the war. At the beginning, there was much support as the Black troops went to Cuba and the Philippines. But even then African Americans differentiated between ‘expansion,’ which gave commercial advantages to the United States and took ‘civilization’ to the peoples of the Spanish colonies, and ‘imperialism,’ which consisted of forcible annexation of territory. Black Americans responded favorably to American imperialism as long as they believed that this humanitarian spirit would have reverberations within their own country.15 By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Blacks had come to view imperialism as only another element in the ideology of White supremacy, as Willard Gatewood has pointed out.16 Previously in the early 1880s, the period of the so-called ‘scramble for Africa,’ the Black religious communities in the Americas were among the strongest supporters of colonial rule in Africa and whole-heartedly favored the ‘civilizing mission.’ They regarded colonization as a necessary prerequisite for economic development and to transform Africa to the Western idea of civilization. Religious leaders like Alexander Crummell, who spent almost twenty years in Liberia as a minister and teacher, interpreted imperialism as part of God’s plan to open up the African continent ‘for Westernization and enlightenment.’ In a letter he wrote in 1891, he elaborated on his interpretation: “I rejoice in this [imperialist] movement. I have the largest expectations of good and beneficence from its operations. I have the most through conviction of its needs, its wisdom, and its practicality.”17 Although the majority of Black Americans did not strive for a colonial empire in Africa, they still wanted to contribute in a totally altruistic way to an African development based on Western standards. Disillusioned with their socioeconomic situation, many of them responded to the call of various missionary societies to join them in the redemption of the African continent. These missionary societies encouraged Black and White brethren alike to take up the mission to Christianize Africa and so redeem their brothers and sisters from the so-called ‘spiritual darkness.’ Many African Americans felt a moral obligation to liberate Africa from heathenism and barbarism. However, this ‘noble’ cause was not the primary reason for Black Americans to take the religious path to Africa. African Americans turned to the continent of their ancestors in the hope for individual advancement in status and prestige. Mission work offered one of the few professional careers open to Black Americans. It opened up a way to escape racial discrimination and repression, and therefore the engagement in mission work can be interpreted as an escape in two respects: “Missionary work was not an escape to a ‘promised land’ as much as it was an escape from a situation that held no promise.”18

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AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MISSIONARY TO THE CONGO: THE CASE OF JOHN E. RICKETTS John Edward Ricketts was one of the African Americans who hoped to combine the Christian redemption of the continent of his forefathers with his own social uplift. He was born in 1857 in the Caribbean island of Jamaica. His ancestors were slaves from West Africa, probably Igbo. He was educated at a school run by Baptist missionaries and later worked as a Sunday school teacher at the Stewart Town and Gibraltar Baptist Church near the Island’s capital Kingston.19 The church had strong relations to the American Baptists, and in 1887, at the age of 30, Ricketts went as a missionary of the American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU) to the Congo.20 Since the early 1870s, the Congo had been the playground for several mission societies, Protestant and Catholic alike. The ABMU started work there in 1884 when they took over seven mission stations from the British Baptists. 21 This vast territory was under the control of Leopold II, the King of Belgium, who regarded the Congo as his private property. In 1876, the King had founded the International African Association as an instrument to facilitate his dream of a colonial empire in the Congo. The organization was believed to be dedicated to ‘humanitarian and philanthropic’ pursuits and to bring civilization and Christianity to Central Africa. By the time of the Berlin Africa Conference in 1884–1885, the Association was formally recognized by most European Powers, as well as the United States and the so-called Congo Free State was established as an ‘independent’ area under the dominion of the Belgian King. 22 Leopold II turned out to be an absolute, autocratic ruler. The ‘Congo Free State’ suffered from lack of capital and ineffective administration. As a result, the Belgian King embarked on a policy of monopolies and concessions to make the Congo profitable. The issue of forced labor and the ensuing atrocities followed on the heels of the introduction of concessionary companies. John Ricketts was stationed in the small village of Mukumvika, located at the mouth of the Congo River. Shortly after his arrival, however, he fell into serious difficulties with his colleague, the medical doctor Theophilus E. S. Scholes, a Jamaican like Ricketts. There were disputes between the two colleagues over the conduct of the mission station and their work among the African population. The situation escalated when the two missionaries started assaulting each other in public. The whole conflict is in detail documented in Ricketts’ and Scholes’ letters to the corresponding secretary of the ABMU, J. M. Murdock. While Ricketts’ complained about the wounds and bruises he received from Scholes,23 the latter declared his colleague incompetent for mission work.24 The African elders in Mukumvika obviously took the side of Ricketts and begged for a replacement of Scholes.25 Finally, Ricketts asked for a transfer, and in early 1890, he left for the station in Lukunga, located further inland, more than 300 kilometers off the coast. There he worked as a missionary helper harmoniously together

200 Katja Füllberg-Stolberg with Reverend Hoste, a veteran of the Baptist Church in the Congo, who was in charge of the station. Ricketts was quite happy at his new post, especially when his wife Letitia joined him some months later. At fi rst Letitia Ricketts was not enthusiastic to settle in Africa. As her son Josuah A. Ricketts remembered in some biographical notes, he wrote about his father: “It took some persuasion to get his wife to consent to their coming to Dark Africa, which seemed darker to her than to her husband.”26 Obviously, Mrs. Ricketts changed her mind about living in Africa and eventually joined her husband in the missionary work. Ricketts built his own house, worked together with his wife as schoolteachers, and took care of the Sunday school. But over time, Ricketts complained about Hoste’s behavior in his reports to the corresponding secretary. According to Ricketts, Reverend Hoste refused to cooperate with him any longer. There were quarrels between the colleagues, as well as with the African converts, who seemed unwilling to follow Ricketts’ instructions. After falsely accusing one of the local evangelists for having stolen tools from the workshop, the local community was shocked and outraged by Ricketts’ harsh behavior. The whole affair was reported to his superior, Reverend Duncan, who wrote in his comment on Ricketts: “Brother Ricketts seemed to be bent upon pursuing a course that was sure to lead to a rendering asunder of the mission, and his conduct was exceedingly grievous and troublesome to Brother Hoste.”27 No charges were brought against Ricketts, and his Christian character was not questioned. However, because he had shown in several cases his “inability to avoid serious disagreements with his fellow-workers,”28 the Foreign Mission Board refused to renew his work contract. In 1892, Ricketts and his wife had to return to Jamaica. He admitted failures, promised betterment, and begged the mission board to send him back, but in vain. In 1893, the American Baptist Missionary Society severed its connection with John Edward Ricketts.29 The archival documents suggest that Ricketts was dismissed due solely to his personal misbehavior. He was described as a difficult, aggressive, and awkward character who was unable to cooperate. A different light is shed on Ricketts’ dismissal when the whole affair is looked at considering the background of the American Baptists’ mission policy in the years of the scramble when racial discrimination became a dominant part of the church’s relations to Black Americans.

FROM COOPERATION TO DISCRIMINATION: CHANGES IN COLONIAL AND MISSION POLICIES At the beginning of the American Protestant missionary movement in the fi rst decades of the nineteenth century, Black missionaries, because of their African ancestry, were believed to have a special racial affi nity to African people and a stronger resistance to the climate and fevers of Africa. The

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myth began to perpetuate that they were better suited than their White counterparts for African mission work. Black Baptists, in particular, heard the call from their White co-religionists to join in a ‘cooperative’ venture in Africa. White churches offered to supply the bulk of the funds and Black men the personnel. But most Black Baptist leaders recognized such offers were not the bargains they seemed. Black missionaries had always been denied roles of leadership, and, in some cases, social relations with White colleagues were even discouraged. The archives of the ABMU are full of files documenting examples of discrimination against African Americans. 30 Increasing racial discrimination was an expression of a general change in mission policy in the 1880s, when stimulated by denominationalism, paternalism, and imperialism, missionary goals shifted from the idea of the formation of a self-governing and self-supporting African church to the development of Christian colonial outposts.31 Paternalism and the idea of trusteeship gradually replaced that of conversion.32 Mission societies insisted that Africans were ‘naturally’ inferior and did not have the qualities needed for pastors and bishops, and that African churches must be ruled by Europeans or White Americans. This new ‘White missionaries only’ policy coincided with a shift in colonial policy toward trusteeship as well. British colonial administrators in particular emphasized their “moral responsibility” toward their “colonial subjects and acted as trustees both in the interest and for the protection of the native population, and in the interest of the whole world.”33 In this context, by the early twentieth century, European colonial governments in Africa regarded the presence of African American missionaries as threatening. Colonial administrators feared that the growing influence of African independent churches and Marcus Garvey’s ‘Africa for the Africans’ campaign would jeopardize the colonial system. African Americans who were Christianizing and educating the Africans were accused of preaching revolution and encouraging political revolts. Based on the premise that the African American presence caused unrest and disturbances of law and order in Africa, European imperialists tried to exclude Black Americans from any activity in their African colonies. Although there were no special legislative restrictions directed against Black missionaries, most European governments in Africa became strongly opposed to sending African Americans to the African continent. By 1920, White American mission societies stopped to employ Black Americans in Africa at all. The changes in colonial and mission policy coincided with growing social and political repression against Black citizens in the United States. From the 1890s onward, disfranchisement and the loss of civil rights for Blacks in general prevailed, and White mission boards frequently displayed mistrust and hostility toward Black missionaries and their engagement in Africa. In the case of the ‘Congo Free State,’ the atrocities against the African population and growing repression of the state against religious freedom

202 Katja Füllberg-Stolberg that was granted all denominations by the Berlin Conference Act in 188534 led American Baptists to reconsider their involvement in the Congo mission and reduce the number of mission staff cuts. They used the political situation to get rid of the Black missionaries they no longer regarded useful and competent. John Edward Ricketts and T. E. S. Scholes, who was forced to resign, might have fallen victim to this racist policy. 35 It is interesting to note that neither Ricketts nor Scholes mentioned in their correspondence the precarious situation of the Congo population. They must have been aware of that, but were obviously too much occupied with their own problems and confl icts. There were widespread rumours among missionaries about atrocities already in the late 1880s. 36 The African-American historian and journalist George Washington Williams wrote about “a general policy of cruelty . . . to the natives” in an open letter to the Belgian King after a visit to the Congo in 1890. 37

TOWARD AN INDEPENDENT AFRICAN CHURCH John Edward Ricketts’ return to Jamaica was not the end of his missionary engagement. In 1895, he was back in Africa, this time in the British colony of Nigeria.38 Ricketts went back to Africa via Great Britain, where he attended–with fi nancial support from a British philanthropist–the African Institute at Colwyn Bay in Wales. The Institute was founded in 1889 as a practical training center for indigenous missionaries from Africa by a returned missionary from the Congo, William Hughes. 39 The Institute catered specifically for the training of Africans, although some African Americans like Ricketts were admitted as well. The students were equipped to work independently of Western denominational missions or else in a nondependent partnership with White missionaries by plying the trade learned at Colwyn Bay. Students were apprenticed to the town’s craftsmen while also receiving academic training, some later qualifying in medicine and law. When the African Institute was closed down in 1912 for fi nancial reasons, more than 90 students had passed its program. The concept of industrial training was introduced in the United States after the Civil War to provide some basic education for the former slaves. The most influential African American proponent of vocational training was Booker T. Washington. His idea of industrial education became popular among African Americans when he opened his Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881. Washington and “an entire generation of conservative Black educators”40 were convinced that practical education would enable African Americans to gain economic independence so that in the long run they could achieve equal political rights within the American society.41 Africans who studied at Black colleges in the United States helped to spread the idea of industrial education on the African continent. The British colonial authorities supported the concept as an appropriate form of

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education for Africans, and several training institutes were founded at the turn of the century. Industrial education became popular among Africans at a time when, in the United States, Washington’s approach was more and more criticized and Black educators demanded stronger emphasis on higher education for the African American population.42 Colwyn Bay Institute was much more than a mere educational training institution, but brought together Africans from various African colonies and Liberia, as well as African Americans. Its sphere of influence was enlarged by virtue of its connections with various bodies in Africa, particularly the African independent churches and their educational institutions along the West Coast, and also by the fact that it was a popular venue for Christians both black and white.43 At Colwyn Bay, Ricketts made contact with several Africans, among them two Nigerian students, Prince Ademuyiwa Haarstrup and Mojola Agbebi. Agbebi was a church reformer, political agitator, and founding pastor of the first African independent church in the Colony of Lagos, Nigeria, the Native Baptist Church. Agbebi belonged to the small group of African Christians who, in the first decades of the twentieth century, perceived “that the road to heaven did not lead through Europe.”44 Rather than men leaving their cultural context, the gospel was to become ‘enculturated.’ Christianity was no longer the religion of the abolitionists, but of the White conquerors. Gratitude, which blinded discrimination in cultural appropriation, had given way to anger as imperialism grew in the metropoles of Europe and manifested itself against the African elite. Many in Lagos had accepted Christianity because of its association with Western ‘civilization’: The fact that ‘conversion’ did not bring the expected recognition provided the opportunity for the Christian message to be expressed in a more meaningful context. As a result, Africans founded more and more independent churches. Agbebi, although not unique, was at the forefront of such a movement.45

THE AGBOWA INDUSTRIAL MISSION Mojola Agbebi, a Yoruba by birth, encouraged Ricketts, who was three years his senior, to start an industrial mission in the southwestern region of Nigeria, a British colony and protectorate at this time. In late 1895, Ricketts arrived in Lagos, accompanied by Ademuyiwa Haarstrup. With the support of Haarstrup, he found a suitable place in the little town of Agbowa, in the Jebu Remo District, the home region of Haarstrup.46 He introduced him to the local authorities, and Ricketts was given land by Bale Ogujah, the local ruler, to build a house and a church. The Jamaican learned the Yoruba language easily and soon was able to communicate with the people who, due to Haarstrup’s introduction, were friendly toward him.47

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Ricketts was soon busy preaching the gospel and also opened a Sunday school, where both children and grown-ups were taught reading and writing. When the adult population was not responding eagerly, Ricketts and his wife concentrated their efforts on the education of the children. Besides the school and the church, the ‘industrial farm’ became the center of the mission. The Agbowa Industrial Mission opened on February 1, 1896. A variety of crops—bananas, coffee, sugar, and cocoa—were produced, not only for home consumption, but also for the markets as far as Lagos. The young pupils visited and attended the school in the morning, and in the afternoon they worked in the fields or received some vocational training. Ricketts offered various courses (e.g., in carpentry and joinery). Ricketts’ concept of an industrial mission is best documented in an article that he published in the Lagos Standard with the aim to raise funds for his project within the Lagos Christian community. He explained his idea: . . . [T]he people will be converted to the Lord and the children of the Land will be able to receive an Elementary education and at the same time be trained to become better farmers, carpenters, and in other useful arts. The object of this mission is to become self-supporting as early as possible so as not to depend on foreign support. And in order to effect this, beside teaching the people Christianity I also teach industry in the way of both scientific and practical agriculture and carpentry and joinery in same way.48 Mojola Agbebi was highly impressed with the “practical salvation” of Ricketts’ industrial mission, where student time was split between farm and school. “Evangelize! Attack Africa with industrial institutes, move her through her sons and daughters; and if you do not succeed in redeeming her spiritually, you will have the assurance that you have benefited her materially,”49 he wrote enthusiastically about Agbowa, while his own attempts at an industrial mission in Lagos had failed. 50 One year after opening the mission, Ricketts’ five children and his sister Mary Manroe (Monroe) came to Nigeria. Mrs. Hinds-Smith, the British philanthropist, who had already paid for Ricketts and his wife’s passage to Wales and to Nigeria, took care of the travel expenses of the rest of the Ricketts family as well. They arrived in June 1897. Three more children were born in Nigeria, one of whom died in infancy. The eldest son, Gershom, explained how the Ricketts’ family life functioned: We remained with our parents until we were old enough to travel about. We then set about to learn technical knowledge and such work as would support us and enable us to help our sisters and brothers in higher school education of the time. When all was moving along, we joined together in the work of the Mission, as we are still doing today.51

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Ricketts regarded himself as a ‘representative missionary’ of the Colwyn Bay Training Institute. He was, however, affiliated with the American Baptist Mission at Lagos, which partly sponsored Ricketts’ endeavor fi nancially. The Agbowa Industrial Mission presents a rather unique combination of independent church, mission station, and commercial family business. John Ricketts’ achievement was rather impressive, although it is difficult to verify how successful his enterprise actually was. Besides the church and the schoolhouse, more buildings were erected, at school different courses were offered, and the rent for the land was paid regularly. But there are no reliable statistics available about the number of students. In an article about the Agbowa Industrial Mission in the Lagos Weekly Record, the author was highly impressed with all the work that had been done by: a single-handed and a repatriate like Mr. Ricketts. . . . The Mission has invariably been a prize-winner at every Agricultural Show in Lagos and at present . . . a Farmers’ Association is being organized embracing about 800 people. . . . Under his direction the town has become remarkable for its state of cleanliness and durable buildings have been erected. Hygienic measures have been introduced which have driven away smallpox . . . and regulations on marital relationships have been recommended which brought peace and quietness to many a home, and the healthy influence proceeding from Agbowa has permeated the district. . . . Mr. Ricketts serves as a physician, farmer, advisor, police, school teacher, and common labourer at Agbowa, and yet he is not without his trials and sorrow. 52 The problem was, although the Agbowa community highly regarded Ricketts’ economic achievements, Christianity was not always a welcome gospel to all people in the Ijebu District and its vicinity. Not everybody was pleased with the preaching of Reverend Ricketts, who told the people the idols that they worshipped were useless and that many of their beliefs were mere superstitions. His strong interference in African local customs was met with some reluctance. As his son Joshua remembered: “In his teaching Daddy sought to encourage the destruction of idols and fetish groves and discouraged even the installation of chiefs under such rites.”53 Although Ricketts, on the one hand, preached economic and religious independence, on the other hand, he relied on the British colonial system and was to a large extent dependent on the good will of the British authorities. He could not operate on his own; to establish a mission station, he needed not only the approval of the local rulers, but that of the British colonial administration as well. In the eyes of the local people, Ricketts was fi rst of all a representative of the colonial state. Beyond preaching and teaching, he was stationed as a policeman in the rank of corporal in

206 Katja Füllberg-Stolberg Agbowa. Together with two other policemen, he organized forced labor for road construction and collected taxes. Ricketts’ son Joshua remembered his father’s collaboration with the British colonial authorities: There were two other policemen stationed at Agbowa. They took orders from him. With their help the town was kept clear of weeds and clean of unburnt offerings. They greatly assisted in building the fairweather road between Agbowa and the waterside. This was built by the townspeople on Ikosi market days. 54 Obviously, Ricketts had found a comfortable place within the colonial system. The existence of colonialism did not seem to bother him or to contradict the Christian tenets on which his work was based. When John Edward Ricketts suddenly died in October 1908, a dispute broke out over the ownership of the mission and the premises among the surviving sons, the local community, and the Baptist Church. The local ruler asked for the land back he had given to Ricketts senior. The sons, believing that church leadership was hereditary, claimed to be the virtual successors of their father. They tried not only to assume full control of the farm business, but the church as well, while the Baptist Church in Lagos made a claim for the mission house and the church building. Reverend Moses Stone, a Nigerian pastor at the First Baptist Church in Lagos, who had preached in Agbowa before, was instructed to take over the church service. Stone belonged to the new generation of Christian converts, educated at mission schools, who, with the consent of the missionary societies, founded independent African churches in their home regions. 55 The Ricketts family protested against Stone’s presence in Agbowa, and during his fi rst preaching, Stone was severely beaten up at church by one of Ricketts’ sons and chased out of the town. “While he (Stone, K.F.-S.) was saying the fi rst prayer, Mr. E. R. Ricketts, one of the sons of the late Rev. Ricketts stealthily entered, threw dirty water over the pastor and began to flog him with an iron rod.”56 In a next step, the family liquidated the church funds. As a result of this dispute, the local church community split, some members founded a new church, while others stayed with the Ricketts family. The confl ict over the Agbowa Industrial Mission between Ricketts’ descendents and the Agbowa community carried on into the 1930s. All this is documented in a protest letter by people from Agbowa resident in Lagos to the Christian community in Lagos, in which they complained about “sufferings of our brethren from the hands of the late Rev. J.E. Ricketts’ family at Agbowa.”57 None of John Edward Ricketts’ sons showed a desire to preach the Gospel. Two of the sons, together with some local inhabitants and two Jamaicans who had worked with Nigerian Railway in Lagos, changed the Agbowa Industrial Mission into a total commercial enterprise. The Ikosi Industries, Ltd., a boat-building and launching industry, was finally registered in 1930.

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The company, an example of an early Pan-African enterprise, survived the 1960s and was still in business in independent Nigeria.

CONCLUDING REMARKS John Edward Ricketts’ extraordinary biography illustrates the different facets of African American missionary involvement in Africa in the high years of European imperialism and colonialism. Although Ricketts’ fi rst missionary encounter in the Congo was characterized by personal failure and racial discrimination, he did not give up. Influenced by the independent church and missionary movement that was initiated by Mojola Agbebi and others as a reaction to the discriminating attitude and unequal treatment of European and White American mission churches, he carried on to fulfill his dream of an independent industrial mission. Many African Americans of Ricketts’ generation and generations before him regarded Africans in general as backward, even ‘uncivilized.’ They were convinced that their African brothers and sisters needed a lot of material and spiritual support and that only they could provide it. However, they were unable to realize that Africa could give them something in return. “The chance to see themselves as a black Elect coming to save a continent was, not surprisingly given their backgrounds, irresistible[. . . . ]. Unfortunately, this elevated self-image was at the expense of understanding and appreciating African cultures.”58 Ricketts was eager to bring, as a representative of Western ‘superiority,’ Christian redemption and education to the African people and forge stronger ties with his African brothers and sisters, but he was unable to fully overcome his prejudices and ambivalent feelings. Ricketts acted within the colonial framework. His success in Nigeria would have been impossible without the consent of the British colonial authorities in Western Nigeria. He never became an outright critic of colonial rule in general, but encouraged European values. The Agbowa Industrial Mission, however, opened new economic venues for the local population. The activities encouraged to forge mutual relations between Africans on both sides of the Atlantic and paved the way for PanAfrican initiatives that in the long run helped to overcome colonialism.

NOTES 1. W.T. Stead quoted in Helen Barrett Montgomery, Following the Sunrise: A Century of Baptist Missions, 1813–1913 (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1913), 217. See also Robert G. Torbet, Venture of Faith. The Story of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society and the Women’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society 1814–1954 (Philadelphia: The Judson Press, 1955), 318.

208 Katja Füllberg-Stolberg 2. The expression was fi rst used by Kenneth S. Latourette in his History of the Expansion of Christianity. 7 vols. (New York: Harper, 1937–1945). 3. See Christoph Marx, Geschichte Afrikas von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), 90. 4. For this position, see, for example, Rainer Tetzlaff, “Die Mission im Spannungsfeld zwischen kolonialer Herrschaftssicherung und Zivilisierungsanspruch in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” in Imperialismus und Kolonialmission. Kaiserliches Deutschland und koloniales Imperium, ed. Klaus J. Bade, 189– 204 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1984). 5. Mudimbe quotes A. J. Christopher, Colonial Africa (London: Croom Helm,1984), 83, in Valentin Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa. Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 47. 6. Godfrey Z. Kapenzi, The Clash of Cultures: Christian Missionaries and the Shona of Rhodesia (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1979), 2–3. Kapenzi is also quoted in Karen E. Fields, “Christian Missionaries as Anticolonial Militants,” Theory and Society 11, no. 4 (1982): 95–108. 7. Fields, “Christian Missionaries.” See also Karen E. Fields, Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 8. Robert G. Weisbord, Ebony Kinship. Africa, Africans, and the Afro-American (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1973), 7. 9. It is interesting to note that in the nineteenth century, there was always opposition to the sending of African Americans to Africa. Several religious leaders like Daniel Payne, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church asked to consider that the money spent on African missions was desperately needed in the United States: “[T]housands of our own churches are suffering for lack of money to support them. All our schools are suffering for lack of endowment.” Payne cited in William H. Becker, “The Black Church. Manhood and Mission,” in African-American Religion. Interpretative Essays in History and Culture, eds. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, 179–199 (New York: Routledge, 1997), 186. See also Katja Füllberg-Stolberg, Amerika in Afrika. Die Rolle der Afroamerikaner in den Beziehungen zwischen den USA und Afrika, 1880–1910 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2002), 137. 10. E. C. Morris quoted in Walter L. Williams, Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa 1877–1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 102. 11. Grimké quoted in Sylvia M. Jacobs, The African Nexus. Black American Perspectives on the European Partitioning of Africa, 1880–1920 (Westport: Greenwood, 1981), 51. Archibald Henry Grimké served as consul at Santo Domingo (1894–1898) and was president of the prestigious Negro Academy between 1903 and 1916. 12. T. T. Fortune quoted in Walter L. Williams, “Black Journalism’s Opinions About Africa During the Late Nineteenth Century,” Phylon. The Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture 34, no. 3 (1973): 228. See also Jacobs, African Nexus, 48–9. 13. Bruce quoted in Jacobs, African Nexus, 49. For Bruce, see also Williams, Black Journalism, 229–30. 14. Washington quoted in Jacobs, African Nexus, 49. Washington was involved in several ‘development projects’ in various African countries, among them Togo, Liberia, and the Congo. See Louis R. Harlan, “Booker T. Washington and the White Man’s Burden,” American Historical Review 71, no. 2 (1966): 441–67. 15. See Jacobs, African Nexus, 53 ff.

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16. Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898–1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975). 17. Alexander Crummell, Africa and America. Addresses and Discourses (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 320–21. Reprint of the fi rst edition from 1891. 18. Lillie M. Johnson, “Black American Missionaries in Colonial Africa, 1900– 1940: A Study of Missionary Government Relations”(PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1991), 40. 19. The Baptist Church was established in Jamaica already in 1783 by George Liele, an African American from the United States, and was connected with the American Baptist Church in the United States. 20. In cooperation with the Missionary Convention of Western States and Territories. 21. The American Baptists began missionary work in Africa in Liberia in 1821 among African American repatriates. The Congo was their second missionary field on the African continent. See Torbet, Venture, 321ff. 22. Leopold II proclaimed by royal decree the formal existence of the ‘Congo Free State’ and in August 1886 named himself sovereign ruler. For the situation in the Congo and King Leopold’s role, see Barbara Emerson, Leopold II of the Belgians. King of Colonialism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979); Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost. A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Miffl in Co., 1998). 23. Ricketts wrote in detail about the assaults: “Yesterday I received two wounds and a blow in the side from Dr. Scholes by which I am suffering now much pain in my eye and side.” Ricketts to Murdock, Mukumvika, October 12, 1888. Africa Correspondence. Ricketts, Rev. John E., Congo Belge, 1887– 1895. Archives of the American Baptist Historical Society, Valley Forge, PA (hereafter cited as ABHS). 24. “I desire without further delay to state that his (Ricketts, K.F.-S.) conduct is by no means satisfactory. . . . Mr. Ricketts education being very slender disqualifies him for teaching.” Scholes to Murdock, Mukumvika, February 13, 1888. Africa Correspondence. Scholes, T.E.S., M.D., Congo Belge, 1886–1891. ABHS. 25. “But we sent now to tell you that the headman now of the Station here, whose name is MD Scholes, is very unkind to all of us here, he is treating us badly. . . . We do not want him to remain here in our district.” King Nemvika a.o. to the ABMU, Mukumvika, October 15, 1888. Africa Correspondence. Scholes, Rev. Dr. T.E.S., Congo Belge, 1886–1891. ABHS. 26. Josuah A. Ricketts to Rev. Cecil Robertson, June 6, 1966, Agbowa, Nigeria. Southern Baptist Convention, Nigeria. African Biographies: John Edward Ricketts. Archives of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richmond, VA. 27. Sam W. Duncan to Reverend J. J. Coles, Richmond, VA, November 3, 1893. Africa Correspondence, Ricketts, ABHS. 28. Ibid. 29. See last entry of Ricketts’ fi le in the missionary register of the American Baptist Missionary Society. 30. See, for example, Kimpionga Mahaniah, “The Presence of Black Americans in the Lower Congo, 1878–1921,” in Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, ed. Joseph Harris, 405–20 (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1993); Sylvia M. Jacobs, “Afro-American Women Missionaries and European Imperialism in Southern Africa, 1880–1920,” Women’s Studies International Forum (1990): 381–94. 31. Henry Venn, secretary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) from 1841 to 1872 in England and Rufus Anderson, secretary of the American Foreign

210

32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

38.

Katja Füllberg-Stolberg Mission in the United States from 1832 to 1866 were the major proponents of the idea of a self-supporting mission in Africa. One of the best-known disciples of this school of missionary thought was Samuel Ajayi Crowther, who established the Niger Mission and became the fi rst African bishop of the Anglican Church in 1864. Crowther, however, felt the change in mission policy personally when young British missionaries sharply criticized his conduct of the Niger Mission. In 1891, Crowther resigned from his post and died embittered shortly after. See Emmanuel Ayankanmi Ayandele, The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1842–1914. A Political and Social Analysis (London: Longman, 1966); John Loiello, “Bishop in Two Worlds: Samuel Ajayi Crowther (c. 1806–1891),” in Varieties of Christian Experiences in Nigeria, ed. Elizabeth Isichei, 34–61 (London: Macmillan, 1982). Sylvia M. Jacobs, ed., Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa (Westport: Greenwood, 1982), 16. Rudolf von Albertini, Decolonization, The Administration and Future of the Colonies, 1919–1960 (New York: Doubleday, 1971), 80. See Frank Thomas Gatter, ed., Protokolle und Generalakte der Berliner Afrika Konferenz, 1884–85 (Bremen: Veröffentlichungen aus dem Überseemuseum, 1991), appendix. American Baptists were enthusiastic about the prospects the Berlin Act seemed to offer: “That unprecedented political autocracy the ‘Conference of Berlin’ has made central Africa the land of the free. . . . No restrictions are to be laid upon the incoming and the voluntary acceptance by the people of the religious institutions and enterprises, scientific and charitable schemes which a land so rich in resources will inevitably invite.” Annual Report 1885, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Archives of the ABMU. Scholes suffered the same fate as Ricketts. He came as well in confl ict with Reverend Hoste and was forced to resign in 1891. Scholes, T.E.S., M.D., Congo Belge, 1886–1891. ABHS. For Scholes’ further career, see Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (London: Verso, 1998), 44 ff.; Patrick Bryan, “Black Perspectives in Late Nineteenth Century Jamaica: The Case of Dr. Theophilus E.S. Scholes,” in Garvey: His Work and Impact, eds. Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan, 47–51 (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research and the Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of the West Indies, Mona, 1991). See Hochschild, Leopold’s Ghost and Füllberg-Stolberg, Amerika in Afrika, 345 ff. “Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo, by Colonel the Honorable Geo. W. Williams, of the United States of America,“ in John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams. A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 208 and appendix I, 243–54. The Open Letter was partly published in the United States in 1891 in the New York Herald. Ricketts’ second turn to Africa is documented in the Archives of the Southern Baptist Convention in Richmond, Virginia. Thanks to the dedicated work of Reverend Cecil Roberson, who collected biographical material written by members of the Ricketts family as well as newspaper articles, pamphlets, and so on, we have good knowledge of Ricketts’ activities after 1895. Robertson was a missionary to Nigeria in the 1960s. He not only collected written material on Ricketts and other missionaries, but interviewed one of Ricketts’ sons, Joshua. See Nigeria. African Biographies: John Edward Ricketts. Foreign Mission Board. Archives of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richmond, VA (hereafter cited as ASBC).

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39. See Hazel King, “Cooperation in Contextualization. Two Visionaries of the African Church—Mojola Agbebi and William Hughes of the African Institute, Colwyn Bay,” Journal of Religion in Africa 16, no. 1 (1986): 2–21. 40. Manning Marable, “Booker T. Washington and the Political Economy of Black Education in the United States, 1880–1915,” Education with Production 4, no. 2 (February 1986): 10. 41. Booker T. Washington, Working With the Hands (New York: Arno Press, 1969). For Booker T. Washington, see Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington. The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). 42. See J. F. A. Ajayi, Lameck K. H. Goma, and Ampah Johnson, The African Experience With Higher Education (Accra: Association of African Universities, 1996). 43. King, Cooperation, 2. 44. Ibid., 5. For Agbebi, see Nigeria. African Biographies: Mojola Agbebi. ASBC. There is no information available about Haarstrup. 45. King, Cooperation, 6. 46. African Biographies: J. E. Ricketts. ABMS. 47. Letter from Joshua A. Ricketts to Reverend Cecil Roberson, Agbowa, June 6, 1966. African Biographies: J. E. Ricketts. ASBC. 48. “Industrial Mission,” Lagos Standard, April 29, 1896. ASBC. 49. Agbebi quoted in King, Cooperation, 8. 50. King, Cooperation, 10. 51. Gershom Ricketts in an interview with Cecil Roberson, October 17, 1948. African Biographies: J. E. Ricketts. ASBC. 52. “Agbowa Industrial Mission,” The Lagos Weekly Record, April 25, 1908, p. 6. African Biographies: J. E. Ricketts. ASBC. 53. Letter from Joshua A. Ricketts to Rev. Cecil Roberson, Agbowa, June 6, 1966, 4. African Biographies: J. E. Ricketts. ASBC. 54. Letter from Joshua A. Ricketts to Rev. Cecil Roberson, Agbowa, June 6, 1966, 5. Ibid. 55. Moses Ladejo Stone (ca. 1850–1913) was educated at the Ijaye Baptist mission that was established by American Baptists and in 1894 became the fi rst African Baptist pastor in Nigeria. See Nigeria. African Biographies: Moses Ladejo Stone. ASBC. 56. Letter of Natives of Agbowa resident in Lagos to Baptist Church in Lagos, May 20, 1932. African Biographies: J. E. Ricketts. ASBC. 57. Ibid. 58. Jacobs, Missionary Movement, 114.

12 The Boundaries of Blackness African-American Culture and the Making of a Black Public Sphere in Colonial South Africa Zine Magubane

This chapter explores the role that African-American performance culture played in the construction of a Black public sphere in late nineteenth-century colonial South Africa. The ‘Black public sphere” has been defi ned as a transnational space whose violent birth and diasporic conditions of life provide a counter narrative to the exclusionary national narratives of Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. The black public sphere is one critical space where new democratic forms and emergent diasporic movements can enrich and question one another.1 Black South Africans came to know and experience Blackness through a variety of different cultural channels. Indeed, what makes this particular case of cross-cultural communication and exchange so interesting is the way in which ‘high’ and ‘low’ or ‘popular’ cultural forms played equal and complementary roles in forging new syncretic cultural styles. Thus, a central aim of this chaper is to demonstrate how competing notions about what constituted the Black public sphere, what its politics would be, and how its aims were came to be expressed through African-American cultural styles, particularly those influenced by music. Specifically, this chapter analyzes how minstrelsy and Jubilee choirs were harnessed by different African communities (as well as by Whites) in their efforts to construct competing visions of a Black public sphere. For Whites, African-American culture was a vehicle for importing the ‘Tuskegee model’ of industrial education and the ‘Southern Style’ of segregationist race politics to South Africa. For mission-educated Africans, in contrast, African-American culture was a vehicle for constructing an alternative vision, which, through its emphasis on middle-class respectability, religion, and capitalism, accommodated key elements of the Tuskegee model, but nevertheless offered important challenges to it as well. For working-class African men in the diamond mining industry, African-American culture provided yet another model for a way of being in the world. This model was quite different in that it

The Boundaries of Blackness 213 drew on key stylistic elements from the minstrel tradition and, in so doing, directly challenged the notions of respectability, racial subordination, and accommodation, which were hallmarks of the Tuskegee plan.

MINSTRELSY AND THE CONSTRUCTION AND ERASURE OF BOUNDARIES At its core, minstrelsy is about the construction and erasure of boundaries. As Eric Lott explains, minstrel performances were “preoccupied with racial marking and racial transmutation.”2 They were, likewise, a way to both mark and transgress class and gender boundaries. “[B]lackface stars inaugurated an American tradition of class abdication through gendered and cross racial immersion.”3 Minstrelsy also foregrounded the issues of mimicry and authenticity (in performance and in life). The art form was an exaggerated copy of slave culture that nevertheless borrowed heavily from that culture. According to W. E. B. DuBois: [T]he songs of white America have been distinctively influenced by the slave songs or have incorporated whole phrases of Negro melody, as “Swanee River” and “Old Black Joe.” Side by side, too, with the growth has gone the debasements and imitations—the Negro “minstrel” songs, many of the “gospel” hymns, and some of the contemporary “coon” songs- a mass of music in which the novice may easily lose himself and never fi nd the real Negro melodies.4 Some minstrel performers prided themselves on the fact that they had learned their music and dance repertoire from slaves or former slaves. In the 1820s and 1830s, professional Euro-American entertainers started incorporating African-American music, dance, and performance styles into their repertoire. Furthermore, slaves and ex-slaves actually participated in the construction and consumption of minstrelsy. As Cockrell explains, “African-American musicians could be heard to play and sing minstrel songs during this period, and there is some evidence that African Americans attended the theaters and heard minstrel songs performed there.”5 After the Civil War, African-American entertainers began forming their own minstrel troupes. Indeed, Black minstrels were some of the fi rst Black popular songwriters in American music history. However, as Erlmann noted, “their attitudes toward racial oppression [were] marked by ambiguity” from the start.6 Oftentimes their stage shows made use of the same derogatory stereotypes as White minstrels. They were not above portraying African Americans as thick-lipped buffoons, razor-toting criminals, or affable simpletons. Thus, although minstrel shows worked to reinforce negative stereotypes, they also provided a platform for performers to incorporate genuine

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elements of African-American culture. It is largely through minstrelsy that slave music, slave culture, and the dances of the rural South were given expression and exposure to the outside world. Thus, it was combination of minstrelsy (performed by Blacks) and gospel music that was primarily responsible for the revival of slave music and the creative expression of antislavery sentiment. Many of the songs and performances on the minstrel stage not only featured Whites mimicking Blacks, but the content of the shows was about mimicry in everyday social interactions—the poor mimicking the rich, the uneducated mimicking the educated, Southerners mimicking Northerners, and so on. A staple on the minstrel stage, which later came to play a central role in South African performance culture, was the Dandy or ‘Zip Coon,’ whose role was to represent the dire social consequences that befell people who tried to ‘class pass.’ As Cockrell explains: Zip Coon . . . in his aspirations to be “a larned skoler” [a learned scholar], and in his mien and bearing was the antithesis of the way common people—and especially, of course, black people—should act. The genius of the [character] from the perspective of the white working class audience, was its ability to ridicule both up and down the social ladder simultaneously. . . . Zip (a name dressed up from the common African-American name ‘Scipio’) gives character to the reason why blacks cannot possess the ‘honorable’ status accorded to whites and, at the same time, expression to the abstract, distant, unnatural, and, fi nally, unworkable pretensions of the powerful.7 These questions of mimicry, authenticity, and passing are central to South African politics in the late nineteenth century. This was a period when capitalist social relations became ascendant, and the resulting changes in social and economic life resulted in a tremendous amount of class-based anxiety and insecurity on the part of White males. “These anxieties and insecurities were not only caused by the presence of black men as sources of economic competition but were also projected onto them in the form of fantasies about hyper-sentient black male bodies.”8 On the diamond fields, the question that most perplexed working-class White men was what role clothing and consumption were playing in assisting Africans to ‘class pass’ and mimic their White betters. At the same time, South Africans, Black and White, were debating the political consequences of Africans accepting a different set of educational standards from those of the dominant group. Missionaries, government officials, and captains of industry were all concerned about what impact a liberal education would have on the African mind. They were all of the mindset that a liberal education might turn Blacks into dangerously impotent ‘mimic men,’ determined to seek equality in and assimilation to a European society for which they were hopelessly unsuited. As a result, “there came a gradual recognition that Tuskegee

The Boundaries of Blackness 215 might have a peculiarly relevant lesson to teach traditionally minded missionaries in Africa” and “a growing white conviction that what was good for the Negro in the Southern States was good for the Negro in Africa.”9 The simultaneous development of these related and cross-cutting political questions provided the backdrop to the emergence of minstrelsy and African-American spirituals as popular forms of entertainment in colonial South Africa.

THE TRANSRACIAL POLITICS OF A TRANSNATIONAL BLACK PUBLIC SPHERE African-American culture was introduced to South African Blacks and Whites alike in two forms. Jubilee singers came from the Southern states and performed gospel hymns and Negro spirituals largely for audiences at mission schools. The Virginia Jubilee Singers were the fi rst Black performers to offer Negro spirituals as popular culture in South Africa. Enormously successful, they toured South Africa between July 1890 and June 1898, and their performance style, modes of personal adornment, and political messages provided a template through which the Black South African elite forged a relationship to and opened up a dialogue about Blackness. Ironically, minstrelsy was an equally important means whereby Africans in South Africa came to know ‘Blackness.’ The stereotyped images of African Americans that appeared on the minstrel stage provided African people with a template from which to fashion their own identities as Blacks in the modern world. The image of the new world African, albeit presented in caricatured form, was the catalyst for the emergence of new forms of identity in South Africa that reimagined Blackness in ways quite distant from the one-dimensional stereotypes about Blackness that could be found in the racial discourse produced by Whites. When African-American art forms began to circulate transnationally, the already porous boundaries between minstrelsy and Jubilee performances became even more so. DuBois accurately summed up their interchangeability in The Souls of Black Folk when he lamented that the Fisk Jubilee singers “came to New York and Henry Ward Beecher dared to welcome them, even though the metropolitan dailies sneered at his ‘Nigger Minstrels’.”10 The Fisk Jubilee singers, far from being minstrels, were exceptionally well trained and talented African-Americans singers who performed at the White House and before Queen Victoria. At the time, however, few Blacks (or representations of Black characters) appeared on the public stage, except in minstrel shows; therefore, any Black performer or character would likely be characterized as a minstrel. Just as Stuart Hall asked the question, “What is this ‘Black’ in Black popular culture,”11 we might very well ask, “What is this ‘Black’ in the Black public sphere?” To assert the idea of a Black public sphere is to

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immediately bring forward the question of racial authenticity. Catherine Squires makes the important point that “differentiating the ‘dominant’ public sphere from ‘counterpublics’ solely on the basis of group identity tends to obscure other important issues, such as how constituents of these publics interact and intersect. . . .”12 We might ask the question, just who were the Jubilee Singers? It would be too easy to declare the Jubilee singers who emerged in South Africa and America a Black public sphere based on the racial identity of the performers. However, focusing solely on the pigment of the performers does not adequately account for the cross-racial collaboration that was the essential condition of their emergence. Fisk University was a university in name only. In actual fact, it was a freedman’s school, established in an abandoned army hospital barracks and run by the American Missionary Association. George Leonard White, a White missionary, was the treasurer and choir master at Fisk. In 1871, the school was on the verge of bankruptcy, and White decided to take the singers on a fundraising tour of the North. Because White intended for the tour to raise money, he targeted a mainly White Christian audience. The same audiences he performed for were the ones who already supported the American Missionary Association and its aims. Thus, the Jubilee singers were descendents of slaves or former slaves, singing to raise money for a University founded by White American missionaries to provide higher education for liberated slaves. As such, they embodied both the terrors of slavery and the humiliation of its aftermath and the pursuit of progress, rationality, and accumulation. They used the artistic medium of those deliberately pushed to the fringes of modernity to both critique its aims and appeal to its loftier aspirations. All the while, they remained acutely aware that music was their ticket to middle-class comfort and bourgeois respectability. As such, the Fisk Jubilee singers aggressively exploited their schizophrenic identities. They self-consciously chose to perform music that spoke of the evils of slavery in an era wherein highly ritualized and stilted portrayals of slavery’s descendents were big business. The Virginia Jubilee Singers came to South Africa under the leadership of Orpheus Myron McAdoo, a graduate of Fisk University and one of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers. McAdoo was a member of the Fisk ensemble when it undertook its legendary fundraising tour to India, Australia, England, and the Far East in 1871. Upon his return to America, McAdoo formed his own company, the Virginia Jubilee singers, which included some of the original members of the Fisk Jubilee. The Virginia Jubilee undertook a tour to England, but ran into fi nancial difficulty in less than three months. In order to recover fi nancially, McAdoo abandoned the European tour and took his ensemble to South Africa.13 Although individual genius, stylistic borrowing, and political aspirations all play important roles in determining what kind of art gets produced and how it is received, any attempt to understand the production of culture in a capitalist society must consider the role of capital in influencing production

The Boundaries of Blackness 217 and consumption patterns. By the end of the nineteenth century, the American music industry was rapidly becoming a capitalist enterprise, and music was produced as a commodity to be marketed for profit. Decisions about repertory and style were largely in the hands of capital and entrepreneurs. Thus, much of what came to be called ‘authentic’ African-American music, such as minstrels, gospel hymns, and spirituals, was “selected and mediated for commercial presentation to American whites, who purchased the great majority of the printed music and phonograph discs produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”14 Minstrel shows were clearly produced by White entertainers for White audiences. However, even the ‘sorrow music’ that was the stock-in-trade of the Jubilee singers were arranged by Whites and were initially intended for White audiences. “Most ‘Afro-American’ music imported into South Africa before the middle of the twentieth century was mediated by and acceptable to white Americans. It was imprinted with white tastes and white styles.”15 Thus, much of the African-American musical styles that South Africans were exposed to had already passed through the filters of the White-dominated American music industry. Soon after the Jubilee’s arrival, African students who attended mission schools began to form similar singing groups. Their repertoire included spirituals from the American South, African choral compositions, and traditional music. The South African Native Choir is an excellent example of how a transnational performance culture, forged in the crucible of colonialism, became a site for forging new political identities and articulating new political demands. The South African Native Choir was brought together by English missionaries who hoped to raise money to build more mission schools in Africa. An English Journal, The Ludgate Monthly, described the conditions of their founding thus: Mr. Letty went on to tell how an idea had crossed his mind, in conjunction with one or two other gentlemen, to do something in the way of helping the educated natives; such people as had been brought under the influence of various missionary organizations, and who, in some cases, had reached a high pitch of education. . . . But the idea of erecting schools immediately involved elaborate outlay of money, and this seemed an almost insurmountable difficulty until the happy thought of bringing to England an African native choir, who should sing to the people of this country in their own strange tongues, and in their own native costume, dawned upon these enterprising young Englishmen as the only solution of the difficulty. As musical men, they knew the value and beauty of the native voice, and immediately set about devising a scheme to gather together a suitable choir.16 The South African Native Choir traveled in the footsteps of the Fisk Jubilee singers. Like the Fisk Jubilee, they performed all over England, in Scotland, and before the Queen. The August 1891 edition of the Review of Reviews

218 Zine Magubane drew explicit comparisons between the two groups and actually found the Fisk singers wanting. Since the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, Tennessee, there has been no troupe to compare with them in interest, and compared with the South African Choir, the Jubilee Singers are nowhere.17 For Africans who aspired to a middle-class lifestyle, “music became a bond of interest and association and a means of expressing social aspiration.”18 Participation in churches, choral groups, and social clubs helped to establish membership in the middle class and built social cohesion among its members. The mission-educated elite championed the Enlightenment values of progress through hard work, increased social mobility through education, the equality of men as ordained by God, and the inevitability of rationality’s ultimate triumph. The early African-American visitors to South Africa seemed to embody all of those values. As Erlmann explained: Apart from McAdoo’s musical abilities, it was his reports on black educational achievements in the United States that left the deepest impression on young and aspiring Africans. . . . Personal contacts with members of the troupe and McAdoo’s short lectures on Afro-American history and culture that frequently opened the show provided valuable points of reference for self-conscious young Africans.19 In South Africa, as was the case in the United States, performance, education, religion, and money were deeply intertwined. Clearly, the Church and the School are, in both instances, key sites for the emergence of an incipient Black public sphere. In an essay called “Of the Training of Black Men” in The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois made this link explicit when he wrote: I cannot hesitate in saying that nowhere have I met men and women with a broader spirit of helpfulness, with deeper devotion to their lifework, or with more consecrated determination to succeed in the face of bitter difficulties than among Negro college-bred men. . . . With all their larger vision and deeper sensibility, these men have usually been conservative, careful leaders. They have seldom been agitators, have withstood the temptation to head the mob, and have worked steadily and faithfully in a thousand communities to the South. As teachers, they have given the South a commendable system of city schools and large numbers of private normal-schools and academies. . . . In the professions, college men are slowly but surely leavening the Negro church, are healing and preventing the devastations of disease, and beginning to furnish legal protection for the liberty and property of the toiling masses. 20

The Boundaries of Blackness 219 DuBois concludes the essay by declaring, “I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas. . . . I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will and they come graciously with no scorn nor condescension.”21 DuBois’ insistence on declaring his comfort with the highest forms of European culture was by no means accidental. In the United States and South Africa, a fierce war was being waged over what shape the Black public sphere should take, what its aims and goals should be, and who should play the lead role in its formation. The debate over what type of education was suitable for Blacks, both in South Africa and in America, was a key arena where this debate over the future shape of the Black public sphere took place. As Reilly explains, these discussions emerged in a transnational frame and were shaped by transnational flows of persons, practices, and ideologies: [B]etween U.S. policymakers and those who were in charge of ‘native colonies’ in Africa in general (and South Africa in particular) personal relationships were established which would play an important role in the formulation of colonial education policies. . . . Government level cooperation and exchange, resulting in close personal bonds between key actors, guided much of the decision making process. For example, Thomas Jesse Jones, an American educator who worked for the Hampton Institute at the turn of the century and became a leading education analyst . . . did much to nourish relations with his South African counterparts. After the publication of Jones’ influential study on education for African-Americans in the Southern United States in 1917 the most significant South African policy analyst of education, Charles T. Loram, published a study of “native” education modeled entirely on the Jones’ report.22 The key question at hand was whether Africans and African Americans should be given a ‘liberal’ education that would train them for the higher professions or whether they should be content to be trained in the technical fields to equip them to do manual labor. DuBois famously argued for the necessity of the former. Booker T. Washington and many missionaries (including those who sponsored the South African Native Choir) argued for the latter. The Ludgate Monthly, for example, made it clear that the funds raised by the South African Native Choir would go toward founding industrial and technical schools based on the Tuskegee model. There was a general feeling that if these people could be induced to study in trade and technical schools, it would be founding, in the darkness of Africa, a new means of enlightenment. 23 Earlier in this chapter, I alluded to the fact that class passing was one of the primary preoccupations of minstrel performances. The Dandy or Zip

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Coon came to symbolize the monstrous social consequences of Black men aspiring to attain the same socioeconomic achievements as Whites. Interestingly, the Dandy came to play an equally important symbolic role in debates over the future of African education (and, by defi nition, African political and social representation) in South Africa. Black South Africans (mostly mission-educated) who aspired to socioeconomic equality were often derisively characterized as ‘dandies’ or ‘Christie minstrels.’ This epithet had a double meaning. It referenced minstrelsy and the artifice, pretending, and mimicking that was its raison d’être. By likening educated Blacks to Christie minstrels, they were not only drawing a direct link between the degraded images of Blacks on the stage and Blacks in public life, but they were also making reference to the fact that Blacks’ efforts to attain social equality were yet another form of mimicry that was destined to fail. Educated Blacks, like Blacked-up minstrels, were nothing more than mimic men. Thus, A. J. Tremearne, writing in 1912, warned against “changing the loveable native into a ludicrous Christy Minstrel, the happy child of nature into the obnoxious product of a misdirected civilization.”24 Most White South Africans were in agreement that the educated African had no place in a White-ruled South Africa. In a speech he delivered in 1894, Cecil John Rhodes, founder of the DeBeers mining company and one-time prime minister of the Cape Colony, shared his views on the importance of providing Africans with industrial and technical, rather than liberal, educations and denounced mission schools for tuning out what he called “Kaffi r25 parsons” who were too arrogant to perform manual labor. I have traveled through the Transkei, and have found some excellent establishments where the natives are taught Latin and Greek. They are turning out Kaffi r parsons, mot excellent individuals, but the thing is overdone. . . . There are Kaffi r parsons everywhere—these institutions are turning them out by the dozen. They are turning out a dangerous class. . . . The country is overstocked with them. These people will not go back and work, and this is why I say the regulations of these industrial schools should be framed by the Government; otherwise these Kaffi r parsons would develop into agitators against the Government. 26 The ideas articulated by Rhodes were shared by a large majority of the White population in South Africa, particularly those in leadership positions. The South African Native Races Committee, for example, published a report in 1908 entitled “The South African Natives,” which concluded that “the instruction given in many of the [mission] schools is ill adapted to the needs of native children. The education has generally been too bookish.”27 It is noteworthy that the depictions of so-called ‘School Kaffi rs’ were almost identical to the descriptions of minstrel dandies. What is particularly striking is the way in which both the minstrel Dandy and the School Kaffi r were feminized. Langham Dale, for example, decried what he termed the

The Boundaries of Blackness 221 “listless, gossiping, lounging life of a gentleman Kaffi r.”28 Rhodes echoed Dale in his 1894 speech before the Cape Parliament wherein he depicted the educated African as an effeminate gadabout who never did “one stroke of work.” He complained that: “Their present life is very similar to that of the young man about town who lounges about the club during the day and dresses himself for a tea-party in the afternoon, and in the evening drinks too much and probably fi nishes up with immorality.”29 The widespread acceptance and popularity of this image is best illustrated by the fact that South Africa’s fi rst popular novel in English, Sitongo, was a paean to the follies of the overeducated native. The author, James Ensor, claimed that he was inspired to write the book by the evidence he had to take in his capacity as one of the stenographers to the Commission on Native Laws and Customs. Ensor paints Sitongo, the protagonist, as the consummate African dandy—effeminate, irresponsible, and incompetent. Thus, we hear of Sitongo’s “very affected manner of speaking,” as well as his failed efforts to “dress like what I imagined a fi ne gentleman” even though he was a “poverty pinched dandy.”30 Sitongo eventually becomes the “leader of fashion” at his mission school despite the fact that “the small monthly sum allotted to him for pocket money by the mission did not even pay for cigars, much less suffice for the purchase of the many other luxuries which he soon began to think requisite to a gentleman of refi ned tastes.”31 Eventually, Sitongo (presumably like all others of his ilk) turns to a life of crime. When I left college, and as the Mission did not know exactly how to dispose of me, I lived for six months very happily . . . and amused myself by flirting and falling in love . . . I have naturally a great aversion to labour of any description, and therefore directed my ingenuity to the devising of sundry schemes whereby I might not only rid the Mission of the burden of my support, but earn a livelihood in the easiest possible manner.32 Thus, the educated African was not only “between heaven and earth, neither an orthodox white man nor a regulation black one,”33 a “fish out of water” and “unnatural product,”34 he also was (symbolically at least) a hermaphrodite. This depiction of the African as biologically male, yet socially female, was imported directly from the minstrel stage into debates over the position Africans were to occupy in social and political life. The centrality of the Dandy caricature in these discussions is by no means accidental. Education represented the surest means to assimilation, equality, and the eventual eclipse of White supremacy. The Dandy figure had a specific role on the minstrel stage and referenced specific social processes and perceived social threats. As Eric Lott explains, “the association [of] the rioting of abolitionism with black dandies, not to mention amalgamation, was so strong as to mark a confusion of one hated object with another. . . . [T]he black dandy figure referenced an increasing population

222 Zine Magubane of middle-class blacks.”35 Thus, the Dandy literally embodied the threat of equality, racial amalgamation, and the upending of the racial order. Hence, his downfall on the minstrel stage symbolically rehearsed what they wanted to achieve in real life: a system of economic exploitation bolstered by political disenfranchisement and social subordination.

WHAT MAKES A COUNTERPUBLIC? PERFORMANCE, PROTEST, AND POLITICS One of the key issues anyone writing about a counterpublic sphere must grapple with is the question of whether a counterpublic can be said to exist if it is not actively engaged in progressive political action. Cathleen Squires provides a helpful way out of this impasse by suggesting that, although progressive political action is undeniably important, “we need to differentiate between public spheres using other criteria.” She goes on to differentiate between public spheres by concentrating on “how they respond to dominant social pressures, legal restrictions, and other challenges from dominant publics and the state.”36 Squires identifies “enclaved public spheres” as emerging during periods of intense repression when interactions with dominant publics are highly scripted and members of marginal groups are compelled to conform to a “public transcript” which reinforces unequal social positions and frustrates natural impulses to perform reciprocal actions on the oppressor. To alleviate some of this frustration and to address their own interests, Blacks have created “hidden transcripts” in safe spaces.37 The actions undertaken by members of the South African Native choir are typical of those of an enclave public sphere in that they engaged in the politics of “hidden communication networks and group memory to guard against unwanted publicity of the group’s true opinions, ideas, and tactics for survival.”38 From the beginning, White missionaries and the English press repeatedly insisted on presenting the Choir members as savages who would have been lost and hopeless had they not had the benefit of Christian Conversion and exposure to European culture. For example, although the Choir members were described as having come to the group already to speak English and Dutch, with one young woman conversant in five languages, the Ludgate Monthly still described their achievements as inauthentic, arguing that “Kaffi rs are very fond of mimicry, and are always ready to pick up anything to imitate.”39 Further, the missionaries who arranged the European tour and brought the group together saw themselves as having the right to exert absolute and complete control over the singers, their lives, their destinies, and their identities. Mr. Letty, who organized the group, was quoted as saying:

The Boundaries of Blackness 223 We had plenty of applications, but had to be very careful in the selection. We wanted representatives of the principal southern tribes, people with good moral characters, good education, good musical ability, and as far as possible good looking as well.40 To reinforce the image of the singers as untutored savages, they were required to wear traditional African clothes, although this was not their normal way of dressing. It was such that the Christian Express, a South African missionary publication, lamented: One thing we do regret [is] the adoption, almost exclusively on the stage, of the old barbarian dress, a dress none of them ever wore at home. This costume would do occasionally, but it is a mistake otherwise, and physically and morally dangerous. Of course the decision to dress in this way is the act of the managers and will, we hope, soon be modified.41 Despite their best efforts to exert control, the White organizers quickly realized that they could not control the actions, movements, or opinions of the singers. For example, the author of an article on the Choir that appeared in the English magazine Review of Reviews expressed surprise at the independence of the group members and was clearly befuddled by the fact that the choices made by one member about what sights he wanted to see clearly did not accord with the image of an untutored savage. One day he [a group member] wandered away from their lodgings, and was missing for some time. After some hours, however, he turned up safe and sound, and announced that he had not been able to rest until he had found his way to Paternoster Row and had seen with his own eyes the place where our Bibles came from. The same pilgrim had gone off by himself, when the choir was visiting Dover, to see the battlefield of Hastings, and he was much interested on being shown by the guide the exact spot where King Harold fell pierced by the Norman arrow.42 The author concluded by musing, “What material there is here for a poem, in this wooly-headed, swarthy skinned Basuto making his pilgrim way to Paternoster Row, and then musing on the battlefield where eight centuries ago our ancestors had fled before the sword of the invader!” What material, indeed. Although the author could not imagine the “wooly headed, swarthy skinned Basuto” having anything other than romantic or sentimental reactions to what he saw, we might imagine that the Bibles he saw at Paternoster Row might have represented the same spirit of revolution and rebellion that they did for the freedmen in America. DuBois described how, for the free Negro leader, “religion became darker and more intense, and into his ethics crept a note of revenge, into his songs a day of reckoning close at

224 Zine Magubane hand.”43 Likewise, the trip to the Hastings might have reinforced in him the idea the injustice and inhumanity of conquest and invasion. The same article includes an interview with a female member of the Choir who also expressed sentiments at odds with her White benefactors. When asked what she would like to say to the English people “on behalf of her race,” she agreed that her ultimate goal was to build a school for Africans in South Africa. However, her vision of what that school would do and the role it would play in African lives was different from that expressed by Cecil Rhodes, the South African Native Races Committee, and the Choir’s organizers. Instead of seeing the technical colleges as places where Africans would learn to be subservient to Whites and would garner skills that would make them useful servants and dependents, she saw the schools as providing the foundation for socioeconomic independence. Help us to found the schools for which we pray, where our people could learn to labour, to build, and to acquire your skill with their hands. Then could we be sufficient unto ourselves. Our young men would build us houses and lay out our farms, and our tribes would develop independently of the civilization and industries which you have given us.44 She went on to dispute one of the most fundamental tenets of missionary ideology and the Civilizing Mission—mainly, that the Europeans had been an unequivocally positive influence on African culture by requesting that the English “shut up the canteens and take away the drink.” Thus, the South African Native Choir is an important example of how “marginalized groups create territorial and epistemological communities for themselves as a consequence of their subordinate location within the bourgeois public sphere.”45 Thomas Holt makes the important point that “the material and political environments we inhabit are central elements for defi ning the ‘conditions of possibility’ for black publics. . . . [I]t makes a difference where people lived, how they lived, and what was happening in the world(s) in which they lived.”46 In the next section, I turn to a discussion of yet another counterpublic that emerged in consort with that of the South African Native Choir and African American performance cultures—minstrel troupes and the influence they had on the consciousness, clothing, and comportment of working-class men on the Kimberley diamond fields.

MINSTRELSY, MIMICRY, AND MASCULINITY: THE BLACK MALE BODY AND THE MAKING OF A COUNTERPUBLIC SPHERE Minstrel shows enjoyed as much popularity in South Africa as they did in the United States. No doubt this was one of the factors that motivated

The Boundaries of Blackness 225 McAdoo to take the Virginia Jubilee singers there. English colonists had introduced minstrel shows into South Africa as early as the 1850s. By the 1890s, Blackface minstrel shows were the most popular form of White musical and theatrical entertainment in South Africa. There were amateur troupes in major industrial cities like Cape Town and Kimberley, as well as in rural farming towns. These troupes found acceptance among the English bourgeois settlers as well as the frontier Dutch. The Virginia Jubilee, although not a minstrel troupe, was able to use the White South African’s love of minstrelsy to their advantage. McAdoo’s audiences were predominantly White, and, as a professional performer, his success depended on his ability to satisfy his audience’s musical and ideological tastes. When performing for White audiences, the Virginia Jubilee followed a standard three-part minstrel format. The singers also performed classical music and opera “in an attempt to control a sector of the competitive entertainment market.”47 On the minstrel stage, “darkies were conned and swindled, run down by trolleys, shocked by batteries, and jailed for violating laws they didn’t understand. They [Whites] ultimately assuaged an acute sense of class insecurity by indulging feelings of racial superiority.”48 Given that South Africa was a society based on the exploitation of Black labor, it is easy to see why minstrelsy was so popular among the British and the Dutch. It is harder, however, to understand why it was received with such favor by African and Colored people. Perhaps Africans, like slaves in the South, “invented and commodified performative practices for their own gain in an already frightfully commodified setting, momentarily dominating by the superior powers of grace and invention a world that attempted to drain every atom of life and feeling out of them.”49 Whatever the reason, by 1880, at least one African minstrel troupe was performing in Durban, and by the turn of the century, the fashion had penetrated to even more remote areas where Africans formed troupes with names like the ‘Pirate Coons’ and the ‘Yellow Coons.’50 The caricatures displayed on the minstrel stage provided White South African miners with a vocabulary to articulate and a set of images to organize their feelings of racial hostility and aggression. It was largely due to the popularity of minstrelsy that Africans who worked on the fields were often forced to endure being called ‘nigger.’51 A writer to the Diamond Field of September 9, 1874, for example, complained that he and his fellow workers were “robbed right and left by the niggers squatted along the river.” The Diamond Field of May 19, 1875, agreed that “the Native Question is the difficulty of the day, not only here but in the United States of America, the West Indian Islands, and wherever the Anglo-Saxon race fi nds itself face to face with the irrepressible nigger.” There was one stock image from the minstrel stage that assimilated into the South African racial vernacular with particular ease—that of the ‘dandy’ or ‘swell’—the consummate symbol of the urban Black and thus

226 Zine Magubane the most distinctive and culturally loaded character of the minstrel stage. White miners, particularly those who had experienced downward class mobility, were the most likely to vent their hostility at Africans by castigating them with the label ‘swell nigger’ or ‘nigger dandy.’52 For example, an irate digger complained in the Diamond News of June 1, 1875, that there were: “constantly in our streets a number of colored men, dressed in fi ne clothes, with belts for carrying diamonds and money round their waists. Many of them are great dandies in their way.” The dandy played a specific role on the minstrel stage. His ill-fitting suits and malapropisms were meant to symbolize the fact that Black Americans had absolutely no chance of ever gaining equality with Whites. The dandy was depicted as a hopeless mimic man—doomed always to fail in the quest to attain elite status. The dandy of the minstrel stage was marked out as a distinctive character by virtue of the manner in which he adorned his body—the cast-off gentlemen’s clothes that, alongside his mangled and comic attempts to reproduce bourgeois speech patterns, confi rmed the impossibility of class mobility. White miners were forever reiterating the impossibility of Blacks ever attaining the status of Whiteness through their material possessions by virtue of their innate racial characteristics. The Diamond News of June 1, 1875, for example, scoffed that, although many of the Black miners were “great dandies in their way,” they “carried their clothes and limped in high heeled boots very uncomfortably, having more the appearance of Apes in fashionable attire than men accustomed to fi ne linen and broadcloth.” The writer’s decision to characterize the Africans in question as “apes in fashionable attire” is quite deliberate. It suggests that it is not so much the case that Blacks’ attempts to impersonate Whites are futile, but that their attempts to impersonate human beings are futile. Whites became fascinated with minstrelsy precisely because it countenanced treating race as a field of play and racial identities as costumes that could be put on and taken off at will. Their intention, of course, was that Blackness would be the only identity available for this kind of fantasy and play. In actuality, however, the same social forces and pressures that made minstrelsy compelling to Whites in the fi rst place were the same ones that opened up Whiteness as a field of play for Blacks. Contemporary accounts indicate that African workers may have been deliberately adopting some elements of style from the minstrel stage. The Africans who adopted the Swell persona made the choice to use the cash wages they earned to acquire material goods that, at the time, symbolized a degree of status and success deemed inappropriate for Blacks. Although their decisions certainly leave them open to the charge of commodity fetishism, when placed in the context of intense White opposition to the accumulation of assets of any kind by Africans, we can see the desire of Blacks to own luxury items as entailing an implicit challenge to White supremacy. To adopt the Swell persona was to take a stance toward Whiteness and bourgeois respectability that entailed mockery as well as mimicry. Spending money

The Boundaries of Blackness 227 on the same clothes and carriages that were markers of status and respectability in the White community can be read as a desire to become White— what Frantz Fanon called narcissist mimicry.53 It can also, however, be read as a deliberately mocking stance towards Whiteness. The relish and ease with which Africans acquired the commodities that symbolized Whiteness amounted to a resolute exposing of its vulnerability. The dandy persona was an ideal vehicle for effecting this reversal precisely because it was the outgrowth of a performance genre that already admitted the possibility of racial crossing and impersonation. Once the doors to racial impersonation had been opened, it was impossible to fully police who went in and how. On the minstrel stage, the Swell enacted the hilarious scenario of White transforming into Black by means of masking and costume. On the diamond fields and in the streets and public spaces of Kimberley, however, the so-called ‘Swell Nigger’ embodied the real physical horror of Black transforming into White through the medium of money, rather than the artifice of masking. Adopting and adapting certain key attributes of an invented Black persona was thus an integral component of the quest to claim public space. Rather than engaging in a politics of reversal, which would have involved actively disarticulating the connections among Blackness, aggressiveness, danger, and impropriety, some African workers instead embraced and reworked these negative associations in their pursuit of heightened visibility. The number of letters penned by White miners accusing African ‘swells’ of ‘insolence’ indicates that those Africans who took on the Swell persona when negotiating the public spaces of Kimberley were simultaneously making stylistic and social statements. As Houston Baker points out, “what seems passively consumed as culture as a whole, whether popular, high, commercial, mass, or otherwise, may be psychologically and affectively appropriated.”54 We might read the “insolent swagger” of the African worker as he “rolled along the sidewalks of the town, with cigar in mouth, giving inside place to no one”55 as a refusal to submit to what a letter that appeared in Imvo’s October 12, 1909, edition called “the low type of Europeans [who] think that every nigger requires kicking, beating, thrashing, and all kinds of ill treatments.” If we recall that the Swell was an affable figure on the minstrel tradition, the menacing attributes that the Swells adopted when traversing the streets and public by-ways of Kimberley (particularly when traveling in groups) might well be indicative of their desire to, in the words of Ralph Ellison, “change the joke and slip the yoke.”56 The Swells, above all, refused to adopt the posture of silence that was demanded by Blacks in a White supremacist culture. One White digger, writing in the Diamond News of June 1, 1875, for example, reported the existence of “a large number of natives dressed in superfine clothes, swaggering about the towns and round about the various mines all day” who “if spoken to, retort with the grossest abuse.” The Swell persona, therefore, allowed for the cultivation and expression of a certain type of ‘antisocial’ sociality that did not seek White approval and repudiated

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bourgeois standards of propriety. Africans who adopted the Swell persona were able to disrupt traditional social patterns whereby antisocial behavior on the part of Whites toward Blacks was not only tolerated, but was actually a critical component of White sociality and make Black antisocial behavior toward Whites a resistive form of black sociality. On the minstrel stage, representations of Black enjoyment were orchestrated to facilitate further White enjoyment. Black enjoyment was, thus, always yoked to the needs and desires of Whites. The aggressiveness with which the so-called ‘Swells’ pursued leisure, however, insisted on the autonomous nature of Black pleasure. Adopting the persona of the Swell was a means of demanding the right to pursue pleasure in ways that were not only completely disconnected from the wishes and desires of Whites, but were also read by them as a direct and deliberate affront. Hence, Blackness, rather than standing for obedience, subjugation, and despair, could instead represent irreverent joy, raucous enjoyment, and proscribed pleasure. When read against the practices of racial exclusion that denied Africans what Lipsitz has called “the promises of universal inclusion through participation in market relations and consumption,” the complexity of the meanings behind the acquisition of commodities becomes much more apparent.57 The acquisition of commodities and access to leisure took on enhanced social significance for Africans precisely because of the oppressive forms of racial power that legally restricted their access to certain types of work and the wages they would receive while denying them the opportunity to purchase wealth accumulating assets. Buying clothes and fancy cars clearly affi rms, rather than challenges, the dominant values of capitalism and is a limited form of resistance at best. When we consider, however, how closely the systematic effort to deny Africans access to the most superficial consumption goods was coupled to the campaign to render Africans less than human, it is possible to read a concern with personal adornment as a muted plea for recognition as a human being. It is important to recognize that the attempts on the part of White miners to deny Africans the right to purchase depreciating assets like clothing and carriages were part of a much larger and more systematic state-sponsored campaign to impair the ability of Africans to accumulate wealth and acquire financial independence. White miners’ intense opposition to Africans acquiring clothes, carriages, and cigars cannot be isolated from the broad range of actions undertaken by White miners to deny Blacks the opportunity to engage in wealth-accumulating activity. Indeed, the word ‘nigger swell’ first emerged as a term of abuse in the course of White miners’ agitation for restricting claim ownership to persons of European descent.58 White miners were also prone to castigate Africans as ‘swell niggers’ when trying to persuade the government of the urgency of and the necessity for racially discriminatory forms of labor market intervention—pass laws, laws restricting the privilege of acquiring digging licenses and registering employees to Whites, and so on. The state, acting partially on behalf of White miners and partially on the behest of mining capital, played a major role in erecting barriers to Black

The Boundaries of Blackness 229 economic self sufficiency. The most damaging piece of legislation was that which legally denied Africans the privilege of owning their own claims. This law not only relegated Africans to the status of wage labor, but also permanently denied them the opportunity of ever accumulating any real capital and thereby achieving financial independence. White wealth accumulation and Black poverty were deeply implicated precisely because the same systematic policies that denied wealth-accumulating opportunities to Africans fostered the accumulation of wealth for Whites. When Africans were denied the opportunity to amass assets and secure fi nancial status, they were also denied the opportunity to pass wealth onto succeeding generations. State policies, which determined under which conditions it was possible to own mining claims, acquire land, and register workers, were premised on invidious racial distinctions. As a result, citizenship became racialized by virtue of the fact that wealth-accumulating activity was legally restricted to select members of society. The “sedimentation of racial inequality” that was the result would affect Africans well into the twenty-fi rst century—long after they would have the liberty to buy what they wished and dress as they wanted.59 Thus, when we place the Swell persona within the context of the total ensemble of efforts to erect barriers to economic self-sufficiency and deny Blacks their claims to ‘personhood,’ it is possible to see it as a statement (however muted) about the connections among citizenship, consumption, and social power. Indeed, Regina Austin has argued that, in so many areas of public life, blacks are condemned and negatively stereotyped for engaging in activities that white people undertake without a second thought. Among the most significant of these is buying and selling goods and services. . . . Given the experiences of blacks’ endeavoring to shop, there should be little doubt that black consumption is constructed as a form of deviance.60 Consumption, therefore, can legitimately be seen as a form of counterpublic activity: Consumption is also the site of a struggle to exploit the transformative potential of commodities by revealing the repressed or negated contradictions that underlie their production and distribution . . . or by altering the image of, or ‘blackening’ the most mass of mass produced goods so as to subvert the generally received meaning of things.61

CONCLUSION Although the rhetoric of imperialism continually referenced the sanctity of imperial boundaries and was predicated on the rigid segregation of races, classes, and genders, in actual fact, colonialism was, at its core, an exercise

230 Zine Magubane in boundary transgression. As a system and process, it was marked by the transnational circulation of currency and commodities, images, and ideologies. Imperial rulers struggled mightily to control the direction and impact of these transnational flows. Practically speaking, however, this was impossible. As the transnational circulation of the images and ideologies associated with African-American performance culture demonstrates, cultural artifacts are tremendously slippery in their uses and effects. Even the Dandy, a cultural icon and representative of an extremely racist, classist, and sexist worldview, could no wholly be contained by the social circumstances and social actors who created and disseminated minstrelsy. As the performance genre made its transnational journey, it became, if not an empty signifier, at least an elastic one. Its elasticity allowed for its incorporation into a counterpublic sphere, thus demonstrating the “intrinsic and inescapable links between the sphere of dominance and of opposition.”62 The emergence of a transnational Black public sphere demonstrates, however, the impossibility of drawing neat boundaries between Africa and America, Black culture and White culture, accommodation and resistance, and culture and politics. The ways in which images and ideologies moved from the plantation to the theater pit to the government document and the city streets all point to an essential truth: “the image, the imagined, the imaginary . . . [have] become an organized field of social practices, a form of work . . . and a form of negotiation between sites of agency and globally defi ned fields of possibility.”63

NOTES 1. Black Public Sphere Collective, ed., The Black Public Sphere. A Public Culture Book (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995), 1. 2. Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 6. 3. Ibid., 51. 4. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Avon, 1965), 382. 5. Dale Cockrel, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 84. 6. Veit Erlmann, African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 29. 7. Ibid., 94. 8. Zine Magubane, “Mines, Minstrels, and Masculinity: Race, Class, and Gender in the Formation of the South African Working Class. 1870–1900,” Journal of Men’s Studies, 10, no. 3(2002): 272. 9. Kenneth James King, Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 18. 10. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 379. 11. Stuart Hall, “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?”, in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. David Morley and KuanHsing Chen, 465–75 (London: Routledge, 1996).

The Boundaries of Blackness 231 12. Cathleen Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres,” Communication Theory 12, no. 4 (2002): 446–68, esp. 447. 13. Erlmann, African Stars. 14. Charles Hamm, Afro-American Music, South Africa, and Apartheid (New York: Institute for Studies in American Music. 1988), 13. 15. Ibid. 16. Gowing E. Scopes, “The Music of Africa,” The Ludgate Monthly 2 (1891): 109. 17. “Native Choristers,” The Review of Reviews 4 (August 1891): 257. 18. David Coplan, In Township Tonight!: South Africa’s Black City Music and Theater (Johannesburg: Raven Press, 1985), 40. 19. Erlmann, African Stars, 43. 20. Ibid., 280. 21. Ibid., 284. 22. “Teaching the ‘Native:’ Anthropology in South African Education. A Study of the History of Ideas that were the Foundation of ‘Native’ Education Policy in South Africa, 1900–1936” (PhD Dissertation: University of Connecticut, 1995), 5. 23. Scopes, “The Music of Africa,” 24. Quoted in ibid., 190. 25. Kaffi r is an Arabic term meaning ‘infidel’ that came to be a term of racial abuse like ‘nigger.’ 26. John Veryschoyle, Cecil Rhodes: His Political Life and Speeches (London: Chapman Hall, 1900), 382. 27. SANRC 1908, 177. 28. Langham Dale, Technical Instruction and Industrial Training (Lovedale: Missionary Institution Press, 1892), 14. 29. Veryschoyle, Cecil Rhodes, 381. 30. James Ensor, Sitongo: A South African Story (Cape Town: A. Richards, 1884), 64. 31. Ibid., 128. 32. Ibid., 133. 33. R. D. Clark, The Native Problem: A Lecture (Pietermaritzburg: P. Davis and Sons, 1894), 20. 34. F. Bell, The South African Native Problem: A Suggested Solution (Transvaal: The Transvaal Leader, 1909), 14. 35. Lott, Love and Theft, 134. 36. Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” 456–57. 37. Ibid., 458. 38. Ibid. 39. Scopes, “The Music of Africa,” 111. 40. Ibid., 109. 41. The Review of Reviews, November 2, 1891. 42. Reference in Review of Reviews. 43. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 345. 44. “Native Choristers From South Africa.” 45. Michael Hanchard, “Black Cinderella? Race and the Public Sphere in Brazil,” in The Black Public Sphere, 171. 46. “Afterword: Mapping the Black Public Sphere,” in The Black Public Sphere, 327. 47. Erlmann, African Stars, 35. 48. Lott, Love and Theft, 64. 49. Ibid., 43.

232 Zine Magubane 50. Christopher Ballantine, Marabi Nights: Early South African Jazz and Vaudeville (Johannesburg: Raven Press, 1993). 51. See the Diamond News of January 20, 1872; November 10, 1874; June 1, 1875; and January 23, 1877. 52. White diggers who were frustrated and frightened by the rapidity with which they were descending down the class ladder and frustrated by the loss of independence and autonomy that entailed were the primary originators of the swell stereotype. Largely as a result of the hegemony of monopoly capital in the diamond mining industry, White miners had fi rst lost their status as independent diggers, who owned claims and hired Africans to work them and, subsequently, lost status as share-workers, who no longer owned claims but still supervised African laborers. See also Robert Turrell, “Kimberley, Labour, and Compounds, 1871–1882,” in Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture, and Consciousness, 1870–1930, eds. Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, 45–76 (London: Longman, 1982); William Worger, South Africa’s City of Diamonds: Mine Workers and Monopoly Capitalism in Kimberley, 1867–1895 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 53. Frantz Fanon, Black Skins: White Masks (New York: Grove, 1967). 54. Houston A. Baker, “Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere,” in The Black Public Sphere, 5–38, esp. 15. 55. Diamond News, June 1, 1875. 56. Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: Vintage, 1972). 57. George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 165. 58. See Diamond News, January 23, 1877; November 10, 1874; June 1, 1875; Diamond Field, May 19, 1875. 59. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1997), 5. 60. Regina Austin, “A Nation of Thieves: Consumption, Commerce, and the Black Public Sphere,” in The Black Public Sphere, 229–52, esp. 229. 61. Ibid., 239. 62. Thomas C. Holt, “Afterword: Mapping the Black Public Sphere,” in The Black Public Sphere, 325–29, esp. 327. 63. Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 269–95.

PERIODICALS CONSULTED The Christian Express The Diamond Fields Advertiser The Diamond News Imvo Zabantsundu (Native Opinion)

Index

A Act II (1864), 48 Africa, 12, 15, 110, 174; Christianization of, 198–201; culture of, 205, 223; development of, 110, 114; native governance of, 11, 108–109, 118; propaganda and, 166, 170; ‘scramble for’, 35, 197–198, 202 African American missionaries, 15–16, 195–196, 198–202, 207 African Americans, 15, 17, 198, 218; Christianity and, 16, 195–200; culture of, 16, 212–218, 223–224, 230; education and, 202–203, 218 African Institute, 202–203, 205 Africans, 8, 116; consumption patterns of, 17, 214, 217, 226, 228–229; statistics on, 114–115, 122 African workers, 25, 110 Agbebi, Mojola, 203–204, 207 Agbowa Industrial Mission, 203–207 Age, 197 Agence Générale des Colonies, 147 agriculture, 27, 74, 91, 167 Agulhon, Maurice, 129 Algeria, 153, 155, 157; France and, 108, 110–111, 113, 119, 122–123, 148; literature and, 13, 146, 151 Allahabad, 89, 94, 97 Alloula, Malek, 155 All Year Round, 182 Alvaro, Corrado, 174 American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU), 16, 199–202, 205 American Missionary Association, 216 Andaman Islands, 32, 51, 53–57, 187

Anderson, Benedict, 30 Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association (AIDEA), 10, 97–99, 101. See also Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association (EAIA) Anglo-Indians, 70, 78, 95, 97–98 Angoulvant, Gabriel, 79 Annam, 77 anthropology, 2, 6, 33–34 Antilles, 77 anti-Semitism, 30, 34–35 Arab women, 13, 155–157, 160 architecture, 2, 148 Arnold, David, 90 askaris, 167 Atkins, F. T., 94 Austin, Regina, 229 Australia, 32, 44, 67, 70, 78, 216

B Bacchelli, Riccardo, 173 Baker, Houston, 227 Balibar, Etienne, 33 bananas, 204 Baptist Church, 195, 197, 199–202, 206. See also American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU); National Baptist Convention Barron, John, 53 Barthes, Roland, 150 Batavia, 74 Baud, Jean Chétien, 71 Baudelaire, Charles, 152 Beecher, Henry Ward, 215 Belgium, 70, 199 Belorgy, Jean-Michel, 159 Bengal, 45–48, 50–51, 97, 189, 191 Bentham, Jeremy, 26 Berber resistance, 148

234 Index Berlin, 24, 28, 30 Berlin III, 28–29 Berlin Africa Conference (1884–85), 199, 202 Berlin Mission Society, 28 Berque, Jacques, 150 Bersaglieri, 170–172. See also Italy, armed forces of Bethel, 27, 29–30 Bhabha, Homi, 13, 67, 86, 148, 150–151, 156 Bibo, Hermann, 26 Bihar, 47 Bismarck, Otto von, 28 blackface. See minstrelsy theatre Blackness, 5, 15, 17, 212, 215, 226– 228. See also racial ideology Black public sphere, 212, 215–216, 218–220, 224, 230 Blanchard, Pascal, 147 Bodelschwingh, Friedrich von, Rev., 8, 23, 27–31. See also workers’ colonies body politics, 150, 157. See also femininity, gender Boer War, 187 Bombay, 47, 89, 97, 191 Bosma, Ulbe, 69 botany, 136 Boudjedra, Rachid, 152 Bourdieu, Pierre, 26, 68 bourgeois society, 23, 30–32, 88, 141, 226, 228. See also middle class Brazil, 70 Breslau, University of, 32 Britain, 70, 78, 134, 184, 202; bureaucracy of, 88, 96, 100; crime fiction and, 15, 181; professional education in, 94, 96, 99; public sphere of, 53–54, 182, 187, 222; punishment regimes and, 45, 48 British India, 10, 101, 216; colonial authorities in, 45–46, 86–90, 92, 96–97, 99; crime fiction and, 15, 189; nationalism and, 78, 172; punishment regimes in, 9, 43–47, 56–57; Viceroy of, 97–99 Bruce, John Edward, 197 Bruck, Felix Friedrich, 32–33 Brunetta, Gian Piero, 175 Buchner, Charles, 29 Buckley, R. B., 94 Burke, Edmund, 189 Burma, 79, 89

C Cabiria (1914), 174 Calcutta, 44, 46–53, 89, 91, 97 Cambridge, University of, 87 Camerini, Augusto, 174 Canada, 70, 78 Cannadine, David, 6 cannibalism, 150 Canzoni delle gesta d’Oltremare, 174 Cape Colony, 220 Cape Town, 225 capitalism, 130, 214, 216–217, 228 caste system, 55, 86 Catholicism, 8, 25, 48, 185, 199. See also Christianity censorship, 147, 157 Cerio, Ferruccio, 170 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 3 Chatterjee, Partha, 34, 107 child labor, 25 children’s literature, 71 China, 32, 66, 69, 75, 79–80 Chivas-Baron, C., 136 choirs. See Jubilee choirs Christian Express, 223 Christianity, 78, 150, 216; Africa and, 15–16, 116, 169, 195, 198–201, 204–206, 222; domiciled community and, 88, 91; prisons and, 48, 55; workers’ colonies and, 8, 23–25, 28. See also missionaries Cinecittà film studios, 175 Citizen-Mothers, 135, 142 citizenship, 11, 107–123, 203, 229 Civilisés, Les (Farrère), 138 civilizing mission, 1, 7, 86, 224; African Americans and, 195–198, 207; Christianity and, 8, 23–24, 28, 199; French colonialism and, 129–130; 41–42, 48; cultural representations of, 12, 14, 166–168, 170, 183, 189; punishment regimes and, 9; women and, 136–137, 140, 142, 149 class passing, 214, 219 cocaine, 188 Cockrell, Dale, 213–214 cocoa, 204 coffee, 204 collective memory, 67–68, 156–157, 175 Collège de France, 150 Collins, Wilkie, 15, 181–183, 185–186, 188–190

Index colonial civil service, 32, 91, 115; recruitment policies of, 10, 86–87, 89, 94, 96, 98–99; reforms of, 87–88, 101. See also Indian Civil Service; Provincial Civil Service; Public Service Commission colonial exhibitions, 12 colonial iconography, 130, 147, 185; gender and, 12–13, 129, 131–132, 135–136, 141. See also mère-patrie colonialism: aims of, 195; perceptions of, 197–198 colonial literature, 12, 14, 136, 140, 173–174, 221. See also children’s literature; crime fiction Colonial Masculinity (Sinha), 87 colonial studies, 1–6 colons, 76 Colwyn Bay. See African Institute Commission on Native Laws and Customs, 221 Committee on Prison Discipline, 44 Communauté Française. See French Empire Conan Doyle, Arthur, 15, 181, 187– 189, 191–192 confederalism, 118, 122 Congo Free State, 16, 195, 199, 201–202 Congo River, 199 Connell, Bob, 43 convicts. See European convicts; Indian convicts; military convicts Cooper, Frederick, 5–6, 88, 180 Cooper’s Hill, 94 Coorg, 97 Coppa Mussolini, 168 Cottaar, Annemarie, 71 counterpublics, 222, 224 Cornell, R. W., 8 Corriere della Sera, 170, 174 Côte d’Ivoire, 111, 120 Coté, Joost, 72 Crawfurd, John, 71 creoles, 9, 77 Cribb, Robert, 69–70 crime, 8, 31, 41–42, 55, 221; investigation of, 181, 184. See also punishment regimes Crime and Criminality in Colonial India (Yang), 41

235

crime fiction, 14–15, 179–183, 187, 189–192 Crummell, Alexander, 198 Cuba, 198 cultural studies, 2, 4, 6, 150 Curzon, Lord, 95, 98–101

D Dahomey, 120 Dakar, 109, 111, 120 Dale, Langham, 220–221 Dalhousie, Gov. Gen., 45 Dalhousie Institute, 96 Dandy. See minstrelsy theatre D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 174 D’Arboussier, Gabriel, 118 Dar-es-Salaam, 29 Darwin, Charles, 71. See also social Darwinism Davies, E. D., 55 D’Cruz, L. W., 93–94 DeBeers mining company, 220 decolonization, 1, 68, 78, 81, 101 De Gaulle, Charles, 11, 110, 119 Dei Gaslini, Mario, 173 Delacroix, Eugène, 13, 146, 151–154, 156, 158–159 deportation, 32–33, 35 D’Errico, Corrado, 166, 168 detective stories. See crime fiction De Valbezen, E., 79 Devine, James, 53–56 De Waal Malefijt, Mr., 81 Dezentjé family, 75 Dia, Mamadou, 118, 120–121, 123 Diamond Field, 225 diamond mines, 16, 212, 214, 220, 224, 226–227 Diamond News, 226–227 diasporas, 1, 67, 212 Dickens, Charles, 183 Dien Bien Phu, 77 Djebar, Assia, 13, 146, 152–154, 156–160 Döring, Paul, 29 domiciled Europeans: education of, 93–94; employment of, 87, 90; grievances of, 89–91, 96–100; pauperization of, 10, 89, 91, 95, 101; utility of, 88, 90, 93 DuBois, W. E. B., 213, 218–219, 223 Duncan, Rev., 200 Durban, 225 Dutch Indies Company (VOC), 73

236

Index

Dutch Indonesia, 6, 70–71, 75–82; independence of, 68, 74, 76, 81; nationalism in, 10, 73, 76, 78; population of, 9, 66, 74. See also Indisch

E Ecole Coloniale, 136 education, 47, 74, 110; civil service and, 10, 86–88, 92–96, 99, 101; race and, 214, 219–221; workers’ colonies and, 23–27, 29–31, 33, 35. See also industrial education; sexual education Egypt, 80, 148 elections, 111, 113 elites, 41, 180; Black, 17, 215, 221; Indisch, 76; native, 6, 86–87, 218; White, 6, 10, 15, 44, 86, 91–92, 220 Ellison, Ralph, 227 enclaved public spheres, 222 Englishman, The, 90 Enlightenment, 41, 149, 152, 179, 180, 218 Ensor, James, 221 Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche, 174 Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche (ENIC), 168 enteric fever, 46 entomology, 48 epilepsy, 29 equality, 218, 220, 222, 226; citizenship and, 110–111, 114, 116, 122 Erlmann, Veit, 213, 218 Ethiopia, 14, 166, 168–170, 172–174. See also Italian colonialism ethnography, 136 ethnology, 44. See also racial ideology Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association (EAIA), 10, 86, 89, 91–97. See also Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association (AIDEA) Eurasians: employment of, 10, 87–88, 90, 92–94, 96–97, 99; legal status of, 98, 100; poverty of, 89, 91, 95, 101. See also Indisch; Indo-Europeans Europe, 8, 110; culture of, 28, 146, 179–180, 186, 188, 190, 219, 222 European convict-overseers, 53–55

European convicts, 41, 48; climate and, 45–47, 50, 57; treatment of, 9, 43–44, 49, 51–57 European Education Code (1883), 95 Europeanization, 87–88, 92–97, 101. See also colonial civil service; domiciled Europeans; Eurasians European penitentiaries, 9, 44–50; budgets of, 51–52. See also punishment regimes European women: colonial role of, 133, 135–137, 140–142; images of, 136–137, 150; literature and, 136, 186, 190 Evangelical Mission Society for German East Africa. See Berlin III Exposition Coloniale de Vincennes (1931), 132

F Fabri, Friedrich, 28 Fanon, Frantz, 35, 227 Farrère, Claude, 138–139 fascism, 13–14, 35, 166–167, 169, 173–175 Fasseur, Cees, 66 federalism, 110, 113, 118, 120, 122–123 femininity, 147, 151, 155, 157 feminism, 2, 4, 179 Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (Delacroix), 13, 152–154 Ferry, Jules, 129 Fields, Karen, 196 film, 2, 6, 12–14, 147–148, 156–160, 175. See also Italian colonialism, film of First Baptist Church, 206 First World War. See World War I Fisk Jubilee Singers, 215–218 Fisk University, 216, 218 forced labor, 11, 109–110, 114, 122, 199 Foreign Mission Board, 200 Fortune, T. Thomas, 197 Fosco, Piero, 174 Foucault, Michel, 2, 8, 30, 41, 179, 181 France, 32, 70; allegories for, 129, 131, 137, 142; armed forces of, 110, 133; citizenship and, 11, 77, 108–109, 111, 113–115, 117–120, 122–123; civil code of, 108, 114–116; constitutions of, 11, 111–117, 119–120;

Index government of, 112–116, 123; literature and, 181–182, 186 Francophonie, La, 11 free Blacks, 109 Free French, 109–110 Freeman, John, 54 French Africa, 11, 107–109, 111, 120 French Cameroun, 108 French Caribbean, 77, 108–109 French Empire, 10; evolution of, 11, 110–111, 113–114, 116–122; structure of, 108, 114, 116, 118; visual representations of, 129–130, 132 French India, 108 French Indochina, 77, 108; iconography and, 12, 129–130, 138; instability in, 111, 139 French Revolution, 77, 109 French Union. See French Empire Freud, Sigmund, 148 Friedrich, Prussian Crown Prince, 23 Friend of India, and Statesman, The, 89, 96, 100 Furnivall, J. S., 79

G Gaboriau, Emil, 181 Gallone, Carmine, 168–170 Gandhi, Mahatma, 172 Garvey, Marcus, 201 Geiser, Jean, 155–156 Gender: construction of, 149–150, 160, 172–173, 180; visual representation of, 129, 147, 170, 180 gender studies, 2, 4, 6, 43 German Colonial Congress (1902), 24, 26 German East Africa, 7, 23 German East Africa Society, 24 German South-West Africa, 32–33 Germany, 32, 68, 174, 197; colonies and, 8, 24, 30; crime fiction and, 181, 190; legislation in, 30, 33–35; poverty in, 27, 31; workers’ colonies and, 7–8, 23, 27–28 Ginzburg, Carlo, 179, 191 Godley, Arthur, 96 Goglia, Luigi, 173 Gombong, 80 gospel hymns, 213–215, 217 Gossner Mission Society, 28 gothic novel, 181, 186 Gouda, Frances, 79, 81

237

Grimké, Archibald, 197 Groslier, Georges, 136, 140 Guadelopue, 113 Guèye, Lamine, 111–112, 114 Guinea, 119–120 Guyana, 113

H Haarstrup, Prince Ademuyiwa, 203 Haille, Ducos de la, 132 Hall, Catherine, 180, 185 Hall, Stuart, 215 Hamilton, Lord George, 96 Hampton Institute, 219 Handelsvereeniging Amsterdam (HVA), 81 Hannibal, 169 Hardy, Georges, 136 Harem colonial, Le (Alloula), 155 harems, 152–153, 171 Hastings, Warren, 189 Hazaribagh, 46–47, 49–50, 52- 53 Heindl, Robert, 32 Herero War (1904), 31 Her Majesty’s 1–10th Regiment, 56 Herriot, Edouard, 112–113 Hewett, J. P., 99 high imperialism, 1–2, 187 Hinds-Smith, Mrs., 204 Hinduism, 4, 100, 183 Holt, Thomas, 224 Holy Trinity, 26. See also Christianity Hohenfriedberg, 29 Holland. See Netherlands Holmes, Sherlock, 187–192 homeless. See work-shy Home, Robert, Col., 94 Hometown Hostels, 27, 31 homosexuality, 138, 156 Hoste, Rev., 200 Houphouët-Boigny, Félix, 11, 111, 114, 116, 120 Household Words, 183 hygiene, 26

I Ikosi Industries, Ltd., 206 Ilbert Bill controversy, 90–91 Il cammino degli eori (1937), 14, 166–168 impero del lavoro, 166 Imvo, 227 India. See British India Indian Central Prisons, 47, 51–52

238

Index

Indian Civil Service, 92–96, 101 Indian convicts, 41, 54; discrimination against, 44, 57, 80; living conditions of, 50–52, 55, 57, 80 Indianization, 87, 92–93, 101. See also colonial civil service; domiciled Europeans; Eurasians Indian Medical Record, The, 99–100 Indian Mutiny (1857), 182–183, 186–187 Indigénat regulations, 11, 109, 113, 122. See also French Empire; racial ideology Indisch, 66, 68, 80–82; history of, 73, 79; identity of, 9–10, 67–70, 72, 74; perceptions of, 68–72, 76; poverty of, 74–75. See also new Indisch history Indo-Europeans, 70, 75. See also Eurasians Indo-Europeesch Verbond (IEV), 74, 76 Indonesia. See Dutch Indonesia industrial education, 17, 188, 202–204, 220 industrialization, 8, 31, 181, 190 International African Association, 199 Irwin, Henry, 94 Islam, 82, 100, 108, 112–114, 155; literature and, 180, 183, 189 Istituto LUCE, 166, 175 Isnenghi, Mario, 175 Italian colonialism: film of, 14, 166–168, 170, 172–175; Roman Empire and, 14, 168. See also Ethiopia Italian North-East Africa, 14 Italian Risorgimento, 173 Italy, 14, 70, 168, 175, 186, 190; armed forces of, 166–172

J jail. See punishment regimes Jail Conference (1864), 48 Jalhaij, S. M., 80 Jamaica, 16, 199–200, 202–203, 206 Japan, 68–69, 76, 78, 110 Java. See Dutch Indonesia Jones, Thomas Jesse, 219 Jong, Lou de, 68 journalism, 57, 141 Jubilee choirs, 16–17, 212, 215–218, 223 Judaism, 30, 33. See also anti-Semitism

K Kala Pani, 53 Kalida’a, la storia di una mummia (1918), 174 Khatibi, Abdelkébir, 150, 162, 165 Kimberley, 224–225, 227 Kingston, 199 Kipling, Rudyard, 191 Koran, 152. See also Islam krontjong music, 72. See also Indisch

L labor, 24, 26–28, 34, 48 Lagarde, Paul de, 33 Lagos, 203–206 Lagos Standard, 204 Lagos Weekly Record, 205 L’altra razza (1920), 174 L’Amour, la Fantasia (Djebar), 146 La Réunion, 77 Laura Film, 170 Laurentie, Henri, 110 Law Against Work-Shyness (1912), 26 Law for the Punishment of Vagabonds, Beggars and the Work-shy (1843), 31–32 League of Nations, 108 legal systems, 41–42, 66, 77, 90, 108–109, 112–115 Leopold II, King of Belgium, 199, 202 Levi, Carlo, 174 Liberia, 198, 203 Liberty Leading the People (Delacroix, 1830), 130 Libya, 14, 170–172 Lipsitz, George, 228 liquor, 54, 56. See also rum literary studies, 4, 6, 14 Lobetal, 29 loi cadre, 117 London, 53, 87, 184, 189, 191; Metropolitan Police of, 182 Loram, Charles T., 219 Lott, Eric, 213, 221 Ludgate Monthly, The, 217, 219, 222 Lukunga, 199 Lutheran Inner Mission, 27 Lutindi, 29

M Macassar, 74 Macaulay, Lord Thomas B., 44, 92 machine-guns, 167

Index Madagascar Plan, 33. See also deportation Maddock, Herbert, 44 Madge, W. C., 94, 96 Madras, 45–47, 50–51, 89, 91 Mafarka le futuriste (Marinetti), 174 Maghreb, 13, 110, 146, 156–157 Maigret, Julien, 140 Malaparte, Curzio, 174 Mal d’Africa, 173 Mali Federation, 120–121 March on Rome (1922), 174 Marianne, 12, 130. See also colonial iconography Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 173–174 mark system, 48–49. See also punishment regimes martial race theory, 189 Martinique, 113 Masculinities (Connell), 43 masculinity, 43, 87, 129, 136, 140, 170–172, 174, 181, 185, 190, 224 Massignon, Louis, 150 mass media, 174, 190 maternalism, 129–130 Mauresques dans leur intérieur (Geiser), 156 McAdoo, Orpheus Myron, 216, 218, 225 medicine, 2, 34, 135, 167 Mediterranean Sea, 13, 170 Meijer, Hans, 69 mère-patrie, 12–13, 129, 132, 136–137, 140. See also colonial iconography mestizos. See mixed-race communities métis. See mixed-race communities métissage. See miscegenation middle class, 182, 184, 189; critique of, 186; values of, 14, 179–180, 183, 185, 188, 190–192, 212, 216, 218, 222, 226 migration, 28, 66–70, 73–74, 76, 91, 166–167 military convicts, 47 Milner, A. J., 93 Minahasa, 74 miners, 16–17, 225–228 minstrelsy theatre, 212, 215, 217, 224; Dandy and, 17, 214, 219–222, 225–228, 230; stereotypes and, 213–214, 225

239

Minute on Education (Macaulay, 1835), 92 miscegenation, 66, 73, 75, 78, 102, 133–134. See also mixed-race communities mise en valeur, 130, 132, 134, 137 missionaries 183; aims of, 195, 201, 224; discrimination and, 201– 202, 222; education and, 25, 214–217, 220; workers’ colonies and, 23–25, 28–29. See also African American missionaries; Christianity mission civilisatrice. See civilizing mission mission stations. See missionaries Mitchell, Timothy, 80 mixed race communities, 66, 77–78, 90, 102, 185. See also Indisch; miscegenation modernity, 14, 16–17, 26, 30, 35, 41, 67–68, 86, 108, 114, 149, 168, 173, 190, 191, 216 Moluccas, 68 Money, J. W. B., 79 Montaigne, Michel de, 149 Moonstone, The (Collins), 182–187 Morocco, 108, 117, 150 Morris, E. C., 197 Mouat, Frederic, 46 Mudimbe, Valentin, 195 multiculturalism, 67, 114, 116 Murdock, J. M., 199 music, 72, 172, 212–215, 218, 223, 225; commoditization of, 217 Mussolini, Benito, 13–14, 166, 168–169, 172, 174–175 Mysore, 97, 183

N Napoleon, 109, 148 National Baptist Convention, 197. See also Baptist Church nationalism, 10–11, 43, 86, 90; African, 11, 107–108; European, 122, 171; Indian, 78, 172; Indonesian, 10, 73, 76, 78 nationality, 11, 108, 116–121, 123 National Socialism, 35, 110 native women, 133–134, 137, 151–152, 171 Netherlands, 9–10, 66–68, 70–72, 74, 77, 79, 81–82, 134. See also Dutch Indonesia

240

Index

Netherlands East Indies. See Dutch Indonesia Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NOW), 69 New Caledonia, 32 new imperial history, 3, 15, 179–180, 183 new Indisch history, 69, 72–73, 75–76, 78, 82. See also Indisch New York, 197, 215 New Zealand, 70, 78 Nigeria, 16, 202–204, 206–207 Nigerian Railway, 206 noble savage, 149, 152 Norbu, Jamyang, 191 North Africa, 110, 146, 148, 151 North West Province, 97 Nubia, 170

O Ogujah, Bale, 203 Old Black Joe, 213 Ootacamund, 45–47, 50–51, 54 oral culture, 157, 191 opera, 148, 172, 225 opium, 138, 183, 185, 189 organized labor, 90, 111, 117 Orient. See Orientalism Orientalism, 13–15, 30–31, 147–152, 157, 160, 171, 179, 180–183, 185–192. See also postorientalism Orientalism (Said), 14, 150 Ornamentalism (Cannadine), 6 otherness, 12–15, 30, 32, 67, 111, 137–138, 146–151, 157, 159–160, 180 Otis, Laura, 188 Oudh, 97 Oxford, University of, 87

P Pakistan, 78. See also British India Paris, 111, 117–118, 123, 174 patriarchal dividend, 43 patriarchy, 185 patronage, 119 Pauperism Committee (1891), 91, 95 Pax Romana, 168–169 penal colonies, 33, 53. See also punishment regimes penal systems. See punishment regimes penology. See punishment regimes philanthropy, 101, 183, 202, 204 Philippines, 198

phonograph discs, 217 photography, 12–13, 147–148, 155, 159 Piccolo amore beduino (Dei Gaslini), 173 Pirie, Capt., 96 Più che l’amore, 174 plantations, 8, 24–26, 74, 80 plutocracy, 166 Poe, Edgar Allan, 181 poison gas, 168 Poliakov, Léon, 30 policing, 42, 46, 206; crime fiction and, 182, 184 polygamy, 26, 112, 115–116 Popular Front, 109 populism, 166 Port Blair, 53–54, 56 Portugal, 70 postcards, 155, 157–158 postcolonial period, 9, 67–68, 71, 76 postcolonialism, 13, 24, 41, 67, 150, 154 postorientalism, 15 Pratt, John, 42 prison chaplains, 48 prisons. See punishment regimes propaganda, 33, 133–134, 137, 152 , 159; film and, 166, 169, 170– 171, 174–175; literature and, 174; photography and, 155 prostitution, 138, 140, 156 Protestantism, 25, 27, 33, 185, 196, 199–200. See also Christianity Provincial Civil Service, 96 Prussia: vagrancy laws of, 8, 26, 31. See also Germany Public Service Commission, 92–95 Punic Wars, 14, 169 punishment regimes: administration of, 44, 47, 49, 51, 55–56; aims of, 32, 43, 46; theory of, 41–42, 48–49, 181. See also penal colonies; European penitentiaries Punjab, 97

Q Quatres Communes, 108, 111, 114. See also Senegal

R Raben, Remco, 69 race relations, 196 racial dividend, 9, 43, 50, 55–57

Index racial ideology, 96, 136; challenges to, 17, 139, 212; civil service and, 92, 97; culture and, 15, 138, 159, 169, 173, 181, 185, 189, 213–214, 221–222, 225–229; domiciled community and, 86–90, 98, 100, 102; hybridity and, 67, 71–81; law and, 66, 109–110, 112–114, 117; missionary work and, 196–198, 200–202; prisons and, 44–46, 48, 50–52, 54–57; workers’ colonies and, 23, 30–31, 33–35 radio, 14, 174 railways, 90, 92, 101, 167, 206 railway workers, 43; recruitment of, 90 Raj. See British India rationality, 14, 179–181, 184, 188, 190–192, 216, 218 Red Cross, 170–172 refugees, 25 Reich Criminal Code (1871), 32 Reid, Anthony, 79 Reitz, Caroline, 182 religious freedom, 201 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 152 Republic Feeds and Instructs Her Children, The (Daumier, 1848), 130 Retour à l’argile, Le, 136 Réunion, 113 Review of Reviews, 217, 223 Rhodes, Cecil John, 220–221, 224 Ricketts, E. R., 206 Ricketts, John Edward, 16, 199–200, 202–207 Ricketts, Josuah, 200 Ricketts, Letitia, 200 River Hughli, 93 Roberts, Lord, 96 Roman Empire, 14, 168–170, 173 Rome, 170, 174–175 Ross Island, 53, 55 Roubaud, Louis, 139, 141 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 149, 152 Royal Indian Engineering College, 94 Rudolph, Mr., 81 rule of law, 41–43 rum, 56 . See also liquor Rurki, 94 Ryland, W. H., 96–97

S Saada, Emanuelle, 77 Sacchi, Filippo, 170

241

Said, Edward, 3, 14, 150–151, 179– 180, 185, 190 Saigon, 78, 138–139 sailors, 43, 189 Salon de Paris, 152 Sarraut, Albert, 130, 139 Sebbar, Leïla, 159 Scholes, Theophilus E. S., 199, 202 School Kaffirs, 220 Scipio, 169 Scipione l’africano (1937), 14, 168– 169, 173 Scotland, 45, 217 Scott, Sir Walter, 187 Second World War. See World War II Secretary of State for India, 45, 93, 96 segregation, 80, 212 Semaine de Suzette, La, 135 semiotics, 169 Sen, Satadru, 54 Senegal, 77, 108, 110–111, 114, 118, 120–121 Senghor, Léopold, 11, 111, 113, 118, 120–121, 123 sexual education, 26 sexual relations, 9, 97, 133–134 Shakespeare, William, 181, 219 Sign of Four, The (Doyle), 187, 189 Sikhism, 189 Silone, Ignazio, 174 Simla Imperial Circle, 94 Sinha, Mrinalini, 87 Sitongo (Ensor), 221 slavery, 153, 171, 199, 202; abolition of, 24, 109, 221; culture and, 213–216, 225 Sleeman, William, 182 Smith, Samuel, MP, 45 smuggling, 90 social Darwinism, 66, 71 Social Democrats, 31, 33 social theory, 33 soldiers, 54, 129, 135; African, 110, 168, 172; Italian, 166–172 Sordi, Alberto, 172 Souls of Black Folks, The (DuBois), 215, 218 South Africa, 172, 223; Black identity in, 16, 212, 214–221, 224–227, 229; diamond mines of, 16–17 South African Native Choir, 217–219, 222, 224 South African Native Races Committee, 220, 224

242 Index Spain, 70, 147, 198 Spanish-American War (1898), 198 Speckled Band, The (Doyle), 187–188 Spencer, Herbert, 90 Squires, Catherine, 216, 222 state surveillance, 182, 184 Stead, W. T., 195 Stewart Town and Gibraltar Baptist Church, 199 Stoler, Ann Laura, 6, 34, 66, 80, 88, 142, 180 Stone, Moses, Rev., 206 Storia del cinema mondiale (Brunetta), 175 Strand Magazine, 187 students, 120 subaltern groups, 6, 70, 75, 138–139, 180, 189 Subaltern Studies, 3 Sudan, 120–121 suffrage: African subjects and, 110– 114, 117; women and, 110–111 sugar, 80, 204 Sumatra. See Dutch Indonesia Surinam, 68 Surveiller et Punir (Foucault), 8 Swanee River, 213 Swell. See minstrelsy theatre

T Tahiti, 77 Tamburo di fuoco (Marinetti), 174 Tan, Mrs., 81 tanks, 167 teachers, 29 telegraph, 90 Temple, Sir Richard, 96 Tennessee, 218 textile industry, 167 theatre, 2, 174 The Hague, 69 Third Reich, 35, 174 Thomason College, 94 Thompson, E. P., 41 Tibet, 191–192 Tirefort, Alain, 135 Togo, 108 Tonkin, 77–78 torture, 181 totok, 70, 73–74, 80–81 travel writing, 148 Tremearne, A. J., 220 Tripoli, 171

Tripoli bel suol d’amore (1954), 14, 170–173 Tunisia, 108 Tuskegee model, 17, 202, 212–213, 219. See also industrial education Tweeddale, C. A., 93–94

U unemployed. See work-shy unemployment, 27 Unheimliche, Das (Freud, 1919), 148 United Nations, 107–108 United Railway and Government Servants Association, 94 United States, 1, 78, 150, 166; Africa and, 197, 199; Black identity and, 212, 216, 218–219, 223–225; Civil War of, 17, 202, 213; crime fiction and, 181, 190; Indisch population in, 67–68, 70; missionary work and, 16, 196, 207 Upper Volta, 120 Urdu, 191 Usambara, 29

V vaccines, 167 Vagabundennot, 31 Venice, 191 Veur, Paul van der, 68, 80 Vichy France, 109 Victoria, Queen of England, 215 Viet Minh, 78 Vietnam, 77–79, 110, 117 Viollis, Andrée, 141 Virginia Jubilee Singers, 215–216, 225 visual art, 2, 12, 148, 159 Vittorini, Elio, 174 vocational training. See industrial education Voltaire, 191

W Wales, 202, 204 Wallace, James R., 96–100 Warwick school, 41 Washington, Booker T., 197, 202–203, 219 Weber, Ernst von, 33 Weisbord, Robert, 196 welfare state, 33, 89, 95, 115

Index Westphalia, 8, 23, 29. See also Germany White, D. S., 91 White, George Leonard, 216 Whitehall, 96 White House, 215 Whiteness, 5, 22–27; domiciled community and, 10, 86–88, 90–91, 97–99, 101–102; punishment regimes and, 43, 53; supremacy of, 12, 71, 198, 221, 225, 227. See also European penitentiaries; racial ideology White penitentiaries. See European penitentiaries Wilhelm II, German Emperor, 29, 35 Wilhelmsdorf, 23, 27 Wilhelmstal, 29 Willems, Wim, 69, 71 Williams, George Washington, 202 Wilson, Henry J., 96 Woman in White, The (Collins), 185 women. See Arab women; European women; native women

243

work, 33–35 workers’ colonies, 8, 23, 27–32 workhouses, 8, 30–33 work-shy, 8, 23, 26–28, 30–34. See also unemployed World War I, 132, 142 World War II, 10, 67–69, 76, 82, 107–110, 122

X xenophobia, 123

Y Yang, Anand, 41 Yee, Jennifer, 140 Young, Robert, 67, 82

Z Zadig (Voltaire), 191 Zama: battle of, 169 Zambia, 196 Zerda et les chants de l’oubli, La (1982), 13, 156–159