Imperial Institutions and the Government of Empire

Burroughs, Peter

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205654.003.0009

Cited by 43 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…On the other hand, the draft ordinance and other ideas were tactfully ‘suggested’ to self-governing colonies (CO, 1864: 18). Newcastle knew that ‘we have no power to enforce’ (quoted in Cell, 1970: 127) beyond advice, warning, cajolery or disallowing legislation (Burroughs, 1999: 189).…”

Section: Policy Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sir William Molesworth, Secretary of State (1855), considered that the immense powers and authority of Crown colony governors turned them into petty despots, with an inverse relationship between a colony’s size and the degree of despotism (McLintock, 1958: 117). Mediating between imperial instructions and local circumstances, a governor was like a railway points-man between stations (Benyon quoted in Burroughs, 1999: 176). The analogy of a postman may better suit the governor of a self-governing colony.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘At variance with the most elementary principles’: the state of British colonial lunatic asylums in 1863

Brunton

2015

Hist Psychiatry

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In 1863 the Colonial Office reviewed colonial hospitals and lunatic asylums in those parts of the British Empire it administered - probably the first and widest international comparative study up to that date. This article outlines the background, process and scope of the review of asylums, and considers its significance. The resulting 'digest' is an important source to explain how, why, when and by whom metropolitan ideas acquired official endorsement and spread throughout the British world. Using the review's general findings and suggestions, a tool is provided for comparing inter-colonial achievements. With New Zealand as a case study, the article concludes that, relative to other influences, the digest played a limited and largely indirect part in shaping New Zealand's mental health policy before 1876.

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Section: Policy Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘At variance with the most elementary principles’: the state of British colonial lunatic asylums in 1863

Brunton

2015

Hist Psychiatry

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“…The decision-making process was defined by a constant centre-periphery exchange mediated by socalled 'men on the spot'. These individuals -Governors, Proconsuls, and Viceroysplayed a key role in the information flow back to London and in the interpretation of directives, frequently acting in a semi-autonomous manner (Burroughs, 1999).…”

Section: Ontological (In)security and Empirementioning

confidence: 99%

Imperial ontological (in)security: ‘Buffer states’, International Relations and the case of Anglo-Afghan relations, 1808–1878

Bayly

2014

European Journal of International Relations

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This article offers a new perspective on 'buffer states'-states that are geographically located between two rival powers-and their effect on international relations with a particular focus on the imperial setting. The paper argues that such geographic spaces have often been analysed through a structuralist-functionalist lens, which has in some cases encouraged ahistorical understandings on the role of buffer states in international affairs. In contrast, the article offers an approach borrowing from the literature on ontological security and critical geopolitics in order to access the meanings that such spaces have for their more powerful neighbours. The paper draws upon the case study of Afghanistan and Anglo-Afghan relations during the nineteenth century and finds that in this case, due to the ambiguity of Afghanistan's status as a 'state', and the failure of British policy-makers to establish routinized diplomatic engagement, Anglo-Afghan relations exhibited a sense of ontological insecurity for the British. These findings suggest previously unacknowledged international effects of 'buffer states', and may apply to such geographic spaces elsewhere.

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“…17 Whereas the Colony was a self-governing entity within the Empire, the Protectorate "proclaimed Britain's effective paramountcy in a designated territory" and served as a means to promote "order" and "regularity" without establishing a formal colony. 18 The Protectorate would remain more or less autonomous, with Cardew supplanting the local authorities by acting as the "paramount chief" of the interior. 19 By the 1890s it was the trade with the colony that badly needed ordering and regulation.…”

Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Removing the Blinders and Adjusting the View: A Case Study from Early Colonial Sierra Leone

Magaziner

2007

Hist. Afr.

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Mende raiders caught Mr. Goodman, “an educated young Sierra Leonean clerk,” at Mocolong, where he “was first tortured by having his tongue cut out, and then being decapitated.” His was a brutal fate, not unlike those which befell scores of his fellow Sierra Leoneans in the spring of 1898. Others were stripped of their Europeanstyle clothes and systematically dismembered, leaving only mutilated bodies strewn across forest paths or cast into rivers. Stories of harrowing escapes and near-death encounters circulated widely. Missionary stations burned and trading factories lost their stocks to plunder. Desperate cries were heard in Freetown. Send help. Send gun-boats. Send the West India Regiment. Almost two years after the British had legally extended their control beyond the colony of Sierra Leone, Mende locals demonstrated that colonial law had yet to win popular assent.In 1898 Great Britain fought a war of conquest in the West African interior. To the northeast of the Colony, armed divisions pursued the Temne chief Bai Bureh's guerrilla fighters through the hot summer months, while in the south the forest ran with Mende “war-boys,” small bands of fighters who emerged onto mission stations and trading factories, attacked, and then vanished. Mr. Goodman had had the misfortune to pursue his living among the latter. In the north, Bai Bureh fought a more easily definable ‘war,’ a struggle which pitted his supporters against imperial troops and other easily identified representatives of the colonial government. No reports of brutalities done to civilians ensued. In the south, however, Sierra Leoneans and missionaries, both men and women, joined British troops and officials on the casualty rolls.

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Imperial Institutions and the Government of Empire

Cited by 43 publications

References 0 publications

‘At variance with the most elementary principles’: the state of British colonial lunatic asylums in 1863

‘At variance with the most elementary principles’: the state of British colonial lunatic asylums in 1863

Imperial ontological (in)security: ‘Buffer states’, International Relations and the case of Anglo-Afghan relations, 1808–1878

Removing the Blinders and Adjusting the View: A Case Study from Early Colonial Sierra Leone

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