Obtaining the ‘Due Observance of Justice’: The Geographies of Colonial Humanitarianism

Abstract

Within the context of contemporary discussion over geography and developmental ethics, this paper examines part of the genealogy of a modern British sense of responsibility for the plight of distant strangers. The frame of reference for this sense, known as humanitarianism, was first cast overseas through debates over the slave trade in the late 18th century, and its remit was further extended as a result of the contested processes of colonial settlement in the 1820s and 1830s. This geographically expansive discourse is analysed through a study of two exemplary statements of humane intervention: the Aborigines Committee (1835–37), and the military Court of Enquiry into the death of the African Xhosa King Hintsa (1836). Each demonstrated a new-found concern for the fate of colonised individuals. They established that the sufferings of distant others were inextricably connected to the everyday privileges enjoyed by Britons. However, they also formulated prescriptive principles targeted not only at the relief of suffering, but at the moral and material improvement of distant subjects—principles which continue to inform more recent debates over global ethics.

An agenda for thinking about ‘race’ in development

“…When a development ethos is framed around a language of charity, empathy, humanitarianism and justice (see Lester, 2002), and the role of developers is seen primarily to alleviate poverty, it might appear irrefutable that motives are wholly noble. This assumption of noble intention goes a long way in silencing the critical appraisal of development intervention in the form of financial assistance even when this is excessively profit-bearing for the western companies involved (Bracking, 2003).…”

Humanitarianism as liberal diagnostic: humanitarian reason and the political rationalities of the liberal will‐to‐care

“…It was in part the child of Enlightenment rationality, with its theories and instruments of rights, its new concepts of the social role of man and of the citizen, and its breaking of the religious stranglehold on people's understanding of their own fate. And it was inspired by the new belief that you could do something to intervene in what fate, or God, had in store for you, or others: as was most apparent in the movement to abolish slavery in the 1830s (Haskell , ; Lester ). Abolition is an oft‐cited founding moment for humanitarianism.…”

Contesting colonial rule: Politics of exile in the Indian Ocean

“…Lambert and Lester's edited collection includes life geographies of individuals who settled in and travelled across the empire, revealing the heterogeneity of empire and the connections created across it. These studies of 'spatially extended transactions' (Lester, 2002) that connect people, ideas and practices through the lives of individuals (Kothari, 2006) emphasise the need to identify the networks and social relationships, institutional forms and knowledge systems through which they are produced and mobilised (Bebbington and Kothari, 2006). Though these accounts have enabled a more nuanced understanding of the multiplicity, complexity and changing nature of imperial connections, most continue to focus on networks produced and reconfigured by colonisers rather than their colonised subjects.…”