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History Notes British History - 1832-1911 Notes

Empire And Race Notes

Updated Empire And Race Notes

British History - 1832-1911 Notes

British History - 1832-1911

Approximately 37 pages

Notes on British political history post-1832 Reform Act. ...

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British History VI (1815-1924)

Empire and Race

Was the British Empire justified in increasingly racial terms in the late Victorian and Edwardian period?

- 1880-1914

Race and Empire in British Politics: P.B. Rich

- The debate about race and inter-racial contact began to gather pace in the last quarter of the 19th century.

- There was a sense of imperial duty and ‘trusteeship’ held in Britain towards colonial possessions.

- Racial thinking in Britain in the late Victorian period was shaped by imperial expansion overseas and industrial growth and class conflict at home1.

- Blacks were portrayed simultaneously as savage and bestial, in need of control, and passive and helpless, in need of care and protection.

- The anti-slavery movement that achieved its aims in the early Victorian period gave way to racial hostility.

- There was a necessity to instil British labour practices on non-Western societies.

- The late-nineteenth century also saw the emergence of anthropological and scientific foundations for racism, with texts such as R. Knox’s The Races of Man (1859) claiming the British superior over native races.

- Anthropologists in Britain, who has argued over racial differences throughout the nineteenth century, reached agreement on the cephalic index in 1886, seemingly re-enforcing ideas on racial classification.

-It was felt that understanding of other races was a necessary precursor to making them trading partners for Britain: ‘the half-clothed savage…is a human being capable of being educate…into a customer for British trade.’2

- It was felt likely that, given the apparent suitability of native peoples to work in tropical climates, British white colonialists would be reduced to a supervisory and managerial capacity.

- The popularity of such thought supressed dissenting liberal voices as the European powers entered the most ambitious phase of imperialism in Africa3.

- At the turn of the twentieth century there emerged in some circles the view that ‘backward’ nations were taking the place once occupied by unskilled workers within developed nations, and that the world was becoming divided along class lines4.

- The desire to spread British ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’ to undeveloped nations underlined a sense of imperial mission.

- Dilke, in Greater Britain, saw imperialism as the expansion of Britain onto an international basis.

- By the end of the Edwardian period more subtle anthropological analysis of race was beginning to emerge.

- in India race relations were defined by cultural rather than physical differences. British despotism was justified because it was felt that ‘no other sort of government would suit a vast population of different races and tongues, divided by religious animosities.’5

- India:

- India was seen as highly resistant to religious proselytization and, after the Boer War, missionary efforts were concentrated in Africa and the Caribbean.

- Whilst Company rule had lasted until 1858 and Victoria was made Empress of the sub-continent in 1876, India was a nation largely mysterious to the British, who believed there existed an unbridgeable racial divide.

- India was judged by the standards of the West and no allowance was made for Indian culture as independent and valid on its own terms.

- Mary Kingsley was the intellectual leader of a growing group in late Victorian Britain who sought to highlight the cultural value of African societies.

- However, much of her writing was done in pursuit of improving West African trade relations. Additionally, she thought that by ‘insulating’ benign African cultures from Western influences amiable relations could be more readily preserved.

- She likened the state of African societies to thirteenth century Europe. In particular, she highlighted the absence of strong religious culture in Africa vis-à-vis India.

- She was one of the progenitors of the concept of ‘indirect rule’.

- In his 1902 book Imperialism J.A. Hobson highlighted the need for the Empire to make better use of native troops in tropical climates, citing the poor fitness and unsuitability of British soldiers for the task. His proffered solution was that of a British retreat from the military responsibility of Empire, to be passed instead to colonial soldiers, whilst retaining a managerial role.

Colour, Class, and the Victorians: D.A. Lorimer

- To the mid- Victorians, differences between classes seemed more apparent than racial similarities. Class was the main indicator of ‘difference’ in Britain, and attitudes towards race relations within the Empire where considered within a class context.

- Blacks were identified with unskilled working-class roles, and the middle-classes in Britain displayed attitudes towards native peoples accordingly; ethnic stereotypes reinforced this association6.

- Elements of British society saw class differentials as part of a natural order, and their views on race were consistent with this.

- Stereotypes affording black men uniform attributes, in particular low intelligence and a propensity for labour contributed to the social acceptability of their servile treatment within the Empire.

- The abolitionist rhetoric present among intellectual Britain’s in the early nineteenth century came to be replaced by attitudes towards race and class that saw perpetual superiors and inferiors: white and black, rich and poor7.

- Scientific racism and racial attitudes:

- We must not overestimate the impact of science on attitudes towards race, ignoring the social and political context which proved so fertile for these ideas.

- Prevailing scientific opinion was that the races were independent in origin, immutable yet capable of evolution and change. This provided a justification for historical subservience of non-whites to whites.

- During the 1860s the Anthropological Society of London published material which claimed, among other things, ‘that the Negro becomes more humanized when in his natural subordination to the European.’8

- Darwinism rendered much of the...

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