Subverting Empire: Deviance and Disorder in the British Colonial World

280 Pages·2015·0.899 MB·English

by  Will Jackson, Emily Manktelow (eds.)

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series
General Editors: Megan Vaughan, King’s College, Cambridge, and Richard Drayton, King’s
College, London
This informative series covers the broad span of modern imperial history while also exploring
the recent developments in former colonial states where residues of empire can still be found.
The books provide in-depth examinations of empires as competing and complementary
power structures encouraging the reader to reconsider their understanding of international
and world history during recent centuries.
Titles include:
Tony Ballantyne
ORIENTALISM AND RACE
Aryanism in the British Empire
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo
THE “CIVILISING MISSION” OF PORTUGUESE COLONIALISM, 1870–1930
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and António Costa Pinto
THE ENDS OF EUROPEAN COLONIAL EMPIRES
Cases and Comparisons
Peter F Bang and C. A. Bayly (editors)
TRIBUTARY EMPIRES IN GLOBAL HISTORY
Gregory A. Barton
INFORMAL EMPIRE AND THE RISE OF ONE WORLD CULTURE
James Beattie
EMPIRE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANXIETY, 1800–1920
Health, Aesthetics and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia
Rachel Berger
AYURVEDA MADE MODERN
Political Histories of Indigenous Medicine in North India, 1900–1955
Robert J. Blyth
THE EMPIRE OF THE RAJ
Eastern Africa and the Middle East, 1858–1947
Rachel Bright
CHINESE LABOUR IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1902–10
Race, Violence, and Global Spectacle
Larry Butler and Sarah Stockwell
THE WIND OF CHANGE
Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization
Kit Candlin
THE LAST CARIBBEAN FRONTIER, 1795–1815
Nandini Chatterjee
THE MAKING OF INDIAN SECULARISM
Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830–1960
Esme Cleall
MISSIONARY DISCOURSE
Negotiating Difference in the British Empire, c.1840–95
T. J. Cribb (editor)
IMAGINED COMMONWEALTH
Cambridge Essays on Commonwealth and International Literature in English
Bronwen Everill
ABOLITION AND EMPIRE IN SIERRA LEONE AND LIBERIA
Anna Greenwood and Harshad Topiwala
INDIAN DOCTORS IN KENYA, 1890–1940
Róisín Healy & Enrico Dal Lago (editors)
THE SHADOW OF COLONIALISM IN EUROPE’S MODERN PAST
B.D. Hopkins
THE MAKING OF MODERN AFGHANISTAN
Ronald Hyam
BRITAIN’S IMPERIAL CENTURY, 1815–1914: A STUDY OF EMPIRE AND EXPANSION
Third Edition
Iftekhar Iqbal
THE BENGAL DELTA
Ecology, State and Social Change, 1843–1943
Will Jackson and Emily Manktelow
SUBVERTING EMPIRE
Deviance and Disorder in the British Colonial World
Leslie James
GEORGE PADMORE AND DECOLONIZATION FROM BELOW
Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire
Robin Jeffrey
POLITICS, WOMEN AND WELL-BEING
How Kerala became a ‘Model’
Gerold Krozewski
MONEY AND THE END OF EMPIRE
British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–58
Zoë Laidlaw and Alan Lester (editors)
INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES AND SETTLER COLONIALISM
Land Holding, Loss and Survival in an Interconnected World
Javed Majeed
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, TRAVEL AND POST-NATIONAL IDENTITY
Francine McKenzie
REDEFINING THE BONDS OF COMMONWEALTH 1939–1948
The Politics of Preference
Gabriel Paquette
ENLIGHTENMENT, GOVERNANCE AND REFORM IN SPAIN AND ITS EMPIRE 1759–1808
Sandhya L. Polu
PERCEPTION OF RISK
Policy-Making on Infectious Disease in India 1892–1940
Sophus Reinert and Pernille Røge
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EMPIRE IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD
Jonathan Saha
LAW, DISORDER AND THE COLONIAL STATE
Corruption in Burma c.1900
John Singleton and Paul Robertson
ECONOMIC RELATIONS BETWEEN BRITAIN AND AUSTRALASIA 1945–1970
Leonard Smith
INSANITY, RACE AND COLONIALISM
Managing Mental Disorder in the Post-Emancipation British Caribbean, 1838–1914
Miguel Suárez Bosa
ATLANTIC PORTS AND THE FIRST GLOBALISATION C. 1850–1930
Jerome Teelucksingh
LABOUR AND THE DECOLONIZATION STRUGGLE IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Julia Tischler
LIGHT AND POWER FOR A MULTIRACIAL NATION
The Kariba Dam Scheme in the Central African Federation
Erica Wald
VICE IN THE BARRACKS
Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India, 1780–1868
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series
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Subverting Empire
Deviance and Disorder in the British
Colonial World
Edited by
Will Jackson
and
Emily J. Manktelow
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Will Jackson and
Emily J. Manktelow 2015
Individual chapters © Respective authors 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
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permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identifi ed as the authors of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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ISBN 978–1–137–46586–3
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Subverting empire: deviance and disorder in the British colonial world / Will
Jackson and Emily Manktelow.—1st published 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan.
pages cm.—(Cambridge imperial and post-colonial studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–137–46586–3 (hardback: alkaline paper)
1. Great Britain—Colonies—History. 2. Great Britain—Colonies—Social policy.
3. Great Britain—Colonies—Race relations. 4. Commonwealth countries—
Civilization. 5. Great Britain—Civilization. 6. Imperialism. I. Jackson, Will,
1980– author editor of compilation. II. Manktelow, Emily J., author editor of
compilation.
DA16.S95 2015
909'.0971241—dc23 2015012836
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
1 Introduction: Thinking with Deviance 1
Will Jackson and Emily J. Manktelow
2 From Pawns to Players: Rewriting the Lives of
Three Indigenous Go-Betweens 22
Kate Fullagar
3 ‘Washing the Blackamoor White’: Interracial Intimacy
and Coloured Women’s Agency in Jamaica 42
Meleisa Ono-George
4 ‘The Starched Boundaries of Civilization’:
Sympathetic Allegiance and the Subversive Politics
of Affect in Colonial India 61
Andrew J. May
5 ‘Base and Wicked Characters’: European Island
Dwellers in the Western Pacific, 1788–1850 85
Malcolm Campbell
6 Thinking with Gossip: Deviance, Rumour and Reputation
in the South Seas Mission of the London Missionary Society 104
Emily J. Manktelow
7 Producing and Managing Deviance in the Disabled
Colonial Self: John Kitto, the Deaf Traveller 126
Esme Cleall
8 Expelling and Repatriating the Colonial Insane:
New Zealand before the First World War 145
Angela McCarthy
9 Devious Documents: Corruption and Paperwork
in Colonial Burma, c. 1900 167
Jonathan Saha
10 Not Seeking Certain Proof: Interracial Sex and
Archival Haze in High-Imperial Natal 185
Will Jackson
v
vi Contents
11 Empire and Sexual Deviance: Debating White
Women’s Prostitution in Early 20th Century Salisbury,
Southern Rhodesia 205
Ushehwedu Kufakurinani
12 R. v. Mrs Utam Singh: Race, Gender and Deviance
in a Kenyan Murder Case, 1949–51 226
Stacey Hynd
Bibliography 245
Index 262
Notes on Contributors
Malcolm Campbell is Associate Professor in History and Head of the
School of Humanities at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
A graduate of the University of New South Wales, he has taught at uni-
versities in Australia, the United States and New Zealand, principally in
the fields of Australian history, global history, Irish history, and histori-
cal theory and method. He is the author of many books and articles on
the history of Irish migration and settlement in the British Empire and
beyond, including Ireland’s New Worlds: Immigrants, Politics and Society in
the United States and Australia 1815–1922. His current research projects
focus on Irish settlement in the Pacific world from the mid-eighteenth
century and cultural exchanges between the Indian and Pacific oceans
from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.
Esme Cleall is Lecturer in the History of the British Empire at the
University of Sheffield, UK. She previously taught at University College
London and the University of Liverpool. Her research is on the politics
of colonial difference and of exclusion in the context of the British
Empire. Her current research focuses upon how the relationship
between disability and race was expressed in various colonial contexts.
She is the author of Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating
Otherness in the British Empire, c.1840–1900 (2012), as well as articles in
a range of international journals. 
Kate Fullagar is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Macquarie
University, Sydney. She received her PhD from the University of
California at Berkeley in 2004. She was a University of Sydney post-
doctoral fellow from 2007 to 2010. She has held visiting fellowships
at the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of York
(British Academy Fellowship) and the John Hope Franklin Center for
Humanities at Duke University. Her most recent books include The
Savage Visit: New World Peoples and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain,
1710–1795 (2012) and (as editor) The Atlantic World in the Antipodes:
Effects and Transformations since the Eighteenth Century (2012). She has
also published articles and chapters on New World travellers, the exotic
portraits of Joshua Reynolds and Pacific historiography. She is currently
completing a monograph on the interconnected lives of Ostenaco, Mai
and Joshua Reynolds.
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
Stacey Hynd gained her DPhil in History from Oxford in 2008 with
her thesis on murder and capital punishment in British colonial Africa.
She lectured at Cambridge, and is now Senior Lecturer in African History
at Exeter as part of the Centre for Imperial and Global History. She has
published widely on capital punishment, gender, crime and punish-
ment in colonial Africa. Her current research project focuses on the
history of child soldiering in Africa, c.1870–2010. She also researches
histories of criminal law, state violence, childhood and gender in British
colonial Africa, and histories of human rights in Ghana.
Will Jackson is Lecturer in Imperial History at the University of Leeds. His
first book, Madness and Marginality: The Lives of Kenya’s White Insane was
published in 2013. He is currently researching the history of migrant fail-
ure in Southern Africa and Australia. He has particular interests in histories
of the colonial family, the life course, mental illness and the emotional
dynamics of race and empire. His wider interests concern settler colonial-
ism in Africa, travel and tourism and the cultures of decolonisation.
Ushehwedu Kufakurinani has been a lecturer in the Department of
Economic History at the University of Zimbabwe since 2009. He is also
doing his PhD studies with the same department. His research interests
are largely gender and empire with a particular interest in social histo-
ries of European/Western/colonial women in pre-independent Southern
Africa. He has also worked on conflicts in land resettlement and on
post-colonial migration.
Emily J. Manktelow is Lecturer in British Imperial History at the University
of Kent. She is interested in the social, cultural and familial history of the
British Empire in the nineteenth century, as well as colonial and post-
colonial history more broadly. In the past, her research has focused on the
familial history of the missionary enterprise in the nineteenth century,
a project which culminated in the MUP monograph Missionary Families:
Race, Gender and Generation on the Spiritual Frontier (2013), among other
publications in international journals. Her current research explores the
social history of gossip in the British Empire. She jointly runs the Family
and Colonialism Research Network and the Christian Mission in Global
History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research.
Andrew J. May is Professor of History in the School of Historical and
Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. His most recent
book is Welsh Missionaries and British Imperialism: The Empire of Clouds in
North-East India (2012). As a social historian with broad interests across
urban, colonial and imperial history, he has also published widely on
Notes on Contributors ix
the public culture and social experience of the Australian city, and
his works include Melbourne Street Life (1998) and The Encyclopedia of
Melbourne (2005, as co-editor).
Angela McCarthy is Professor of Scottish and Irish History at the
University of Otago, New Zealand. She has published extensively on
Scottish and Irish migration, including Irish Migrants in New Zealand,
1840–1937: The Desired Haven (2005), Personal Accounts of Irish and
Scottish Migration, 1921–65: ‘For Spirit and Adventure’ (2007) and
Scottishness and Irishness in New Zealand since 1840 (2011). McCarthy
has also edited several books including A Global Clan: Scottish Migrant
Networks and Identities since the Eighteenth Century (2006), Ireland in the
World (2015), (with Lyndon Fraser) Far from ‘Home’: The English in New
Zealand (2012) and (with Catharine Coleborne) Migration, Ethnicity and
Mental Health: International Perspectives, 1840–2010  (2012). Her book on
migration, ethnicity and madness in New Zealand is published in 2015.
Meleisa Ono-George obtained both an undergraduate honours degree
and a master’s degree in history from the University of Victoria.  In
2010 she completed her masters thesis, ‘The Planter’s Fictions: Identity,
Intimacy, and the Negotiations of Power in Colonial Jamaica’, under the
supervision of Dr Elizabeth Vibert. Her thesis explored the intimate rela-
tionship between a wealthy white planter and his mixed-race mistress.
In 2014 she completed a PhD at the University of Warwick in England
under the supervision of Dr David Lambert and Dr Gad Heuman. Her
dissertation, entitled ‘“To Be Despised”: Sexual-economic Exchange in
Nineteenth-Century Jamaica’, focuses on the changing discourses around
women’s involvement in sexual-economic exchange and the increasing
attempts to define and regulate the ‘common prostitute’. She is currently
Teaching Fellow of Caribbean History at the University of Warwick. 
Jonathan Saha is a lecturer in Modern History at the University of
Bristol. He specialises in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century colonialism in South and Southeast Asia, focusing particularly
on British Burma. His research to-date has been into the history of cor-
ruption within the colonial state, exploring how the state was experi-
enced and imagined in everyday life. This has recently been published
as a monograph titled Law, Disorder and the Colonial State: Corruption in
Burma c.1900. Apart from corruption, he has published on crime, medi-
cine and ‘madness’ in colonial Burma. He is increasingly interested in
the history of animals, particularly the ways in which they shaped, and
were shaped by, the colonisation of Burma.