Witness Seminar: Localisation of the Civil Service in colonial territories before and immediately after independence

Institute of Commonwealth Studies and OSPA (Overseas Service Pensioners' Association) Witness Seminar: Localisation of the Civil Service in colonial territories before and immediately after independence

Event Programme


Thursday 25 October 2012
In the Senate Room, Senate House, South Block, Malet Street, London. WC1E 7HU

11.00-11.15 Registration, tea/coffee

11.15-11.30 Welcome and introduction by Professor Philip Murphy (ICwS)

11.30-1.00 Session One: Education and Training  
Chair: Dr Tamson Pietsch (Brunel University)

Eric Cunningham: (Education Officer, Gold Coast 1952 – 62) Gold Coast localisation: a long history, and reflections on my own experience.
Professor Michael Lee: (University of Manchester; Seconded to Uganda, and Makerere University College) The contribution of Makerere College to Localisation in East Africa.
Peter Wood: (Tanzania 1957 – 69; Oxford University 1969 – 90, ODA and international consultant; Commonwealth Forestry Association (Vice-President) The role of the Commonwealth Forestry Institute, Oxford, in professional education and training.

1.00-2.00 Sandwich Lunch

2.00-3.30 Session Two: Training for the Localisation of Public Administration
Chair: Professor Philip Murphy (ICwS)

Wyn Reilly: (Tanganyika 1956-62; IDPM, University of Manchester. Involved in Public Administration and Training in numerous countries). The Administrative Training Centre, Mzumbe, Tanganyika and management training at IDPM, Manchester and overseas.
Colin Fuller: (Kenya 1956-68; Kenya Institute of Administration, then IDPM, Manchester). Africanisation of the Civil Service in Kenya with special reference to the Administration.
Chris Cochran: (Solomon Islands 1967-82; Public Service Office and then Commissioner for Labour) Localisation of the Public Service in the Solomon Islands 1960-82, either side of Independence in 1978.

3.30-4.00 Tea/coffee


4.00-5.30 Session Three: The Politics of Localisation
Chair: Dr Georgina Sinclair (Open University)

John Ducker: (Aden 1960-67; then with World Bank in Africa and Central Asia). A Comparative Study across the colonies generally.
Simon Gillett: (Served in Cameroons 1960; Bechuanaland/Botswana 1965-72). The political context of Localisation and Government Policies in the Bechuanaland Protectorate and Botswana.
Michael Waters: (Western Pacific –GEIC 1972-76; Hong Kong 1976-97, Civil Service Branch dealing with localisation and handover, and Deputy Political Advisor to the Governor). The security, political and nationality issues affecting Localisation in Hong Kong.

5.30-7.00 Drinks reception

To register and pay online for this event, please click here.

Registration form

IHR Seminars: Imperial and World History

IHR Seminars: Imperial and World History


Convenors: Richard Drayton (KCL), Sarah Stockwell (KCL), John Stuart (Kingston), David Todd (KCL), Jon Wilson (KCL).

Venue: As announced by each date
Time: Monday, 5.15pm

Our theme for the 2012-2013 academic year will be Economy and Society. In the other two terms of 2012-2013, we will have contributions to the seminar from, among others, Paul Kennedy (Yale), Emma Rothschild (Harvard), Jennifer Altehenger (KCL), Pernille Roge (Pittsburgh), and Tamson Pietsch (Brunel).

Intercalated with the Imperial & World History seminar is the Colonialism/Postcolonial New Researchers Workshop.

Colonial / Postcolonial New Researchers' Workshop
Venue: Athlone Room 102, Senate House, South block , 1st floor
Convenors: Hilary Ingram (UCL) hilary.ingram.09@ucl.ac.uk, Rob Waters (Queen Mary) r.w.waters@qmul.ac.uk, Feriel Kisson (KCL) feriel.kissoon@kcl.ac.uk, David Winks (Queen Mary) davidwinks250@hotmail.com

Autumn Term 2012 Date Seminar details

4 October Jon Lawrence (Cambridge), Jeremy Krikler (Essex), Camilla Schofield at UEA, with a response from Bill Schwarz (Queen Mary)
Memories of Empire: A Roundtable on Bill Schwarz's 'The White Man's World'
Joint session with the Modern British History Seminar and the Reconfiguring the British History Seminar
Please note: this session is being held on a Thursday, in room 349 (third floor of Senate House).

8 October Patrick O'Brien (LSE)
Imperial Regimes and Mercantilist States in Narratives of Economic Divergence between the Occident and the Orient
Court Room, Senate House, first floor

15 October Tom Bentley (University of Sussex)
Reshaping the past: the lingering colonial present
Gary Blank (London School of Economics)
Whose Victim, Whose Struggle? Famine Iconography and Contested Representations of Biafra in Britain (1968-70)
Colonial / Postcolonial New Researchers' Workshop

22 October Maxine Berg (Warwick)
Locations of Global History: Manufacturing Diversity in 18th and 21st
Torrington Room (104), Senate House, first floor

29 October Peter Mitchell (Queen Mary, University of London)
'The Eye of History': the India Office Records, the Hakluyt Society, and the fantasy of the all-seeing imperial archive
Colonial / Postcolonial New Researchers' Workshop
Please note: this session begins at 17:30

5 November Lanver Mak (ICS)
Britons vs Britons: Class, crime and conflict among British non-elites in occupied Egypt, 1882-1922
Court Room, Senate House, first floor

12 November Andreas Heil (Leibnitz Institute of European History)
Missionary self-understandings in shifting circumstances. Missionaries in post-1947 India
Angharad Eyre (Queen Mary, University of London)
Converting Emotions: Possession and Power in Female Missionaries’ Writing about Native Converts
Colonial / Postcolonial New Researchers' Workshop

19 November Catherine Hall (UCL), Dan Matlin (KCL) and Anthony Pereira (KCL), with responses from Francisco Bethencourt (KCL) and Adrian Pearce (KCL) and contributors to the book.
Racism and Ethnic Relations in the Portuguese-Speaking World: A Roundtable
Torrington Room (104), Senate House, first floor

26 November Joanna Frew (University of Essex)
Identity and Improvement in Eighteenth Century South India
Adrian Thomas (King's College London)
Calcutta Botanic Garden as an imperial landscape
Colonial / Postcolonial New Researchers' Workshop

10 December Sabrina Rahman (School of Advanced Study, University of London)
Empires of Design: Austria, Britain, and the Global Consumption of Modernity, 1851-1934
Colonial / Postcolonial New Researchers' Workshop

For updates please see the IHR website http://www.history.ac.uk/events/seminars/

Colonialism and the African diaspora on postcards

Recently pointed out to us is a newish German picture database called "Colonialism and the African diaspora on postcards" (Kolonialismus und afrikanische Diaspora auf Bildpostkarten).

The database was created between 2009 and 2010, at the University of Colonge by PD Dr. J.  Jaeger, Prof. N. Finzsch and Prof. M. Szöllösi-Janze in collaboration with Cologne University Library.

It currently has 3027 digital objects, including many individual and group portraits. Some pictures reflect cultural ideas of the time, that may be seen more critically today, including pictures of minstrels and of erotic poses.
http://www.ub.uni-koeln.de/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fkolonial

Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers’ Workshop

The Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers’ Workshop is currently inviting abstract submissions for the 2012-13 academic year

 

"Established in 2008, the workshop is designed to provide a forum for postgraduates and new researchers to gather and present their work in an informal and friendly environment. Seminars run on a bi-weekly basis at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), intercalated with the Imperial and World History series (www.history.ac.uk/events/seminars/124). Papers are generally 25-30 minutes long, followed by discussion.

 

We welcome papers on any aspect of colonial or postcolonial history, and encourage new and interdisciplinary approaches (eg. anthropology, art, history, geography, literature). Potential paper topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Borders, Encounters, Conflict Zones
• Family, Kinship, Childhood, and Memory
• Bodies, Health, Welfare
• Sexualities, Genders, and Intimacies
• Indigenous Histories and Encounters
• Representation and Performance
• Environment, Social and Spatial Landscapes
• Diasporas, Migration and Identities
• Labour, Commodities, and Consumption
• Transnational Comparisons/Comparative Empires
• Technological and Scientific Advances (eg. medicine, communications, information exchange)
• Caribbean, Latin America, and Afro/Francophone Worlds
• Methodology, Current Issues in Colonial/Postcolonial Studies

Anyone interested in presenting their work, whether finished pieces or works in progress, is encouraged to submit an abstract of between 250-350 words to cpnewresearchers@gmail.com.
 

For the first time, this year the IHR is offering to podcast seminars through their website (http://www.history.ac.uk/digital/podcasts). If you are interested in having your paper recorded, please indicate with your abstract submission."

Colonial administration records (migrated archives) to be released to The National Archives

The National Archives is working with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to transfer and begin releasing colonial administration records, referred to as the 'migrated archives' between April 2012 and November 2013, in accordance with FCO's published timeline on the FCO website.

The first batch will be made available in the reading rooms at The National Archives from Wednesday 18 April 2012. This release will contain records from Aden, Anguilla, Bahamas, Basutoland. Bechuanaland, British Indian Ocean Territories, Brunei, Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya, Sarawak and Seychelles.

On Wednesday 18 April 2012, a guide to the first batch of files will be published on The National Archives website and will provide more information on how to search the records.

In addition, there will be free public talks on accessing the records in the reading rooms at Kew at 11:00 and 14:00. Tickets are available on site on 18 April.

The collection will form record series FCO 141: Foreign and Commonwealth Office and predecessors: Records of Former Colonial Administrations: Migrated Archives.

The records cover a wide range of subject matter relating to colonial administration. The material reflects events in the territories generally pre-independence and Her Majesty's Government's views at that time.

For up to date information about the records and ongoing release, see the National Archives' Colonial administration records web page.

Institute of Commonwealth Studies and OSPA (Overseas Service Pensioners' Association) Witness Seminar: Indirect Rule – right or wrong?

ICwS and OSPA Witness Seminar: Indirect Rule – right or wrong?


Speakers:
Professor Philip Murphy (ICwS);

Session One: Nigeria, Bechuanaland/Botswana, and Aden Protectorate – Three contrasts
Mr John H Smith, CBE: Nigeria
Mr Simon Gillett: Bechuanaland/Botswana
Mr Godfrey Meynell, MBE: Aden Protectorate

Session Two: East and Central Africa
Mr Andrew Stuart, CMG, CPM: Uganda
Mr David Salmon: Northern Rhodesia
Mr Don Barton: Tanganyika

Session Three: Round Table Discussion
Professor Richard Rathbone (SOAS)
Professor David Killingray (ICwS)
Professor Simon C Smith (University of Hull)
Dr Karl Hack (Open University)

Date: Thursday 29 March
Time: 11:00 - 18:00
Venue: The Senate Room (Senate House, First Floor)
Contact: mailto:chloe.pieters@sas.ac.uk

Genealogies of Colonial Violence Conference, University of Cambridge, UK, 1-2 June 2012

Genealogies of Colonial Violence: Conference held at the Centre of South Asian Studies and the Centre for African Studies, University of Cambridge, U.K.
June 1-2, 2012

This two-day conference seeks to move past the standard debates that continue to dominate both public discourses and much scholarly research regarding violence and colonialism. This conference aims to bring together interdisciplinary researchers to suggest alternative interpretations, theoretical approaches, and future avenues of research relating to violence and colonialism. Proposals are welcome from established academics, early-career researchers and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences that work on colonialism and its postcolonial legacies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The conference will feature a keynote address by Professor Achille Mbembe (University of Witwatersrand).

Potential avenues of exploration include, but are no means limited to:
- How can we use the colonial experience to rethink and refashion categories of thought dominant in the western academy and its established disciplines? How do colonial experiences subvert a notion like sovereignty?
- How ideas of the human informed colonial violence.
- Universalism, ambivalence, and the colonial encounter.
- Was, and in what ways, colonial subjugation self-validating?
- Whether the recent historiographical turn to discourses and representations has come at the expense of the material. How violence constituted relationships between colonial subjects, the market, and global capitalism.
- Colonialism, violence, and the production of modern political subjects.
- Cultural and political meanings of the excess inherent to all violence.
- How did foreign control of the state produce alternative constructions of the political? That is, how was the right to take life and to protect life thought beyond the boundaries of the state? Was death rather than the protection of life the central category of political thought in the colonial context?
- Ways to rethink the relationships between violence and colonial law.
- How to write an intellectual history of colonial violence.
- The legacies of colonial violence and the making of a postcolonial order.
- How to read state archives of violence and colonialism.
- Aesthetics, language, and violence.


Paper proposals of no more than 300 words should be sent to Sunil Purushotham and Derek Elliott at colonialviolence@gmail.com no later than April 10, 2012. Successful applicants will be notified no later than April 15, 2012. For more information and updates, please visit us at:

http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/research/conferences/genealogies-colonial-violence

Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire

Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire is a website holding detailed information on over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 of these films are available for viewing online.
You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword.

Topics include: Administration, Development, Education, Health, Independence, Industry, Leisure, Religion, Travel, War, Empire in Revolt, and Empire on Display

Films were produced by a range of organisations including: Bekefilm, British Armed Forces Film Units, British Instructional Films, Central African Film Unit, Colonial Film Unit, Empire Marketing Board, Gaumont British Instructional, Gold Coast Film Unit, Indian News Parade, Information Films of India, Jamaica Film Unit, Malayan Film Unit , Ministry of Information /Central Office of Information, Missionary Societies, and the Nigerian Film Unit.

Over 350 of the most important films in the catalogue are presented with extensive critical notes written by the projects academic research team.


The Colonial Film project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and  united universities (Birkbeck and University College London) and archives (British Film Institute, Imperial War Museum and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum) to create a new catalogue of films relating to the British Empire with an ambition "to allow both colonizers and colonized to understand better the truths of Empire".

Foreign and Commonwealth Office - Colonial administration/migrated archives to be made available

The Foreign and COmmonwealth Office will soon be making available to the public a large collection of files from former British territories, sometimes known as the "migrated archives". The files will be made available between April 2012 and November 2013.

The Foreign Secretary made a Written Ministerial Statement to Parliament on 5 May about the colonial administration files held by the FCO and subsequently informed Parliament on 30 June that he had appointed Professor Badger from Cambridge University as the Independent Reviewer.

Professor Badger has approved a timetable for the transfer of the migrated archive files to The National Archives (TNA). The first batch of files, representing around 16% of the total collection, is expected to be available at TNA in April 2012.

The files are being transferred in alphabetical order of the colonial territory concerned with the exception of prioritised release for Kenya, Cyprus, British India Ocean Territories (BIOT) and Malaya files where there has been particular interest.

Further details are available on the FCO website.

CFP: Colonization and Domestic Service: historical and contemporary perspectives

CFP: Colonization and Domestic Service: historical and contemporary perspectives
16-17 July 2012, Newcastle, Australia

The aim of this symposium is to bring together scholars to share insights and to enter into a conversation about the connections between domestic service and colonization. This symposium will provide an opportunity to workshop individual papers in a collegial environment, drawing out key themes, topics and issues across different sites and times. A selection of the workshopped papers will be included as peer-reviewed chapters in a book published by an international academic press.

Scholars of domestic service from all disciplines are invited to submit proposals for papers offering specific studies, historical or contemporary, of domestic service and colonization, or broader comparative and reflective studies. Established scholars, emerging scholars, and postgraduate researchers are encouraged to submit proposals for papers to workshop, and all are welcome to attend.

Confirmed keynote speakers are Professor Mary Romero (Arizona State University) and Associate Professor Swapna Banerjee (Brooklyn College of CUNY).

Proposals should include a title, a 250-word abstract, a brief (one-page) CV and full contact details. They should be addressed no later than December 1, 2011 to:

colonization.domesticservice@newcastle.edu.au


For further information see: www.newcastle.edu.au/institute/research-institute-for-social-inclusion-and-wellbeing/activities-and-events/colonization-and-domestic-service-symposium.htm

Or contact: Associate Professor Victoria Haskins Victoria.Haskins@newcastle.edu.au
Research Institute for Social Inclusion and Wellbeing, The University of Newcastle, +61 2 4921 5221

Dr Claire Lowrie Claire.Lowrie@newcastle.edu.au
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Newcastle

Last chance to book for Colonial Blue Books workshop

Commonwealth Studies Library Workshops


Our programme of free workshops offer short practical sessions to help you discover and make use of the wealth of information available at the Commonwealth Studies Library. Book your place by emailing icommlib@sas.ac.uk (please indicate any particular areas of interest so workshops can be tailored to your needs)


Colonial Blue Books and Annual Reports: Discover the wealth of statistical and social data contained in these annual reports, full of rich information on all aspects of colonial administration and life in the colonies.

Thursday January 14th, 2.00pm, NG14, Ground Floor Library, Senate House.

Workshops start at 2.00 and last for approximately an hour. Places are limited so please pre-book in advance.

We can also arrange workshops for specific research groups or groups of students. For advice or assistance, telephone David Clover, Commonwealth Studies Librarian, 020 7862 8840 or email icommlib@sas.ac.uk

New online resources - 19th Century British Pamphlets

Members of the library now have access to the new 19th Century British Pamphlets collection. This collection, created by RLUK (Research Libraries UK), contains a number of the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in UK research libraries. Pamphlets were an important means of public debate, covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of their day. They have been underutilized within research and teaching because they are generally quite difficult to access – often bound together in large numbers or otherwise hard to find in the few research libraries that hold them. The digitization of more than 20,000 pamphlets from seven UK institutions will provide researchers, students, and teachers with an immensely rich and coherent corpus of primary sources with which to study the socio-political and economic landscape of 19th century Britain. This collection was created with funding from the JISC Digitisation Programme

Significant collections within the resource for colonial history include:

Earl Grey Pamphlets Collection

Still owned by the family, this collection was largely accumulated by the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Earls Grey. Charles was Foreign Secretary (1806-07) and Prime Minister (1830-34). Henry George was Under Secretary for Home Affairs (1830) and the Colonies (1830-34), Secretary at War (1835-39), and Secretary of State for the Colonies (1846-52). Albert Henry George was Administrator of Rhodesia (1896-97) and Governor-General of Canada (1904-11). The Greys were particularly interested in parliamentary reform, colonial affairs and Catholic emancipation.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collection

On deposit from the FCO, this collection comprises the earlier collections of the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office. Both include rare publications from overseas. The Foreign Office Collection consists largely of pamphlets sent back to London by British ambassadors to help with policy formation. It is particularly rich in material related to South America, the Near East, and to the various great European political "questions" of the 19th century. The Colonial Office Collection is chiefly comprised of pamphlets sent back from Britain's colonies, including some unique early material from Australasia.

Knowsley Pamphlet Collection

The Knowsley collection reflects the political careers of the Earls of Derby. Edward George, the 14th Earl, was successively Irish Secretary (1830-33), Colonial Secretary (1833-34, 1841-44), and three times Prime Minister (1852, 1858-59, and 1866-68). His son, Edward Henry, 15th Earl, was Colonial Secretary and later Indian secretary in his father's administration of 1858-59.

LSE Selected Pamphlets

LSE has a substantial number of 19th century pamphlets. Among its pamphlets are comprehensive collections of political party materials, including election manifestos and political cartoons. There are also collections from pressure groups such as the Fabian Society, Imperial Federation Defence Committee, Poor Law Reform Association, Workhouse Visiting Society, Liberal and Property Defence League, and from cooperative movements such as the Cooperative Women's Guild.

Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection

A collection of 19th-century anti-slavery pamphlets received in 1923 from the executors of Henry Joseph Wilson (1833-1914), the distinguished Liberal Member of Parliament for Sheffield. The collection is of particular importance for the study of the activities of the provincial philanthropic societies, such as the Birmingham and Midland Freedmen's Aid Association, the Birmingham and West Bromwich Ladies' Negro's Friend Society, the Glasgow Emancipation Society, the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society, and the Sheffield Ladies Female Anti Slavery Society. Of interest is the prominent role of women in the movement, who formed themselves into societies which lobbied MPs and printed pamphlets on the conditions of slaves. Here we have details of what was sold at their bazaars to raise funds and lists of names of subscribers, the minutiae which bring alive the history of the movement.