Project MUSE®: Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2000) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Colonialism and Colonial HistoryTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History1532-5768Latest articles in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Rethinking Subalterns, Archives and Histories in the Present: a roundtable
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976717
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Today, curious readers coming to this Roundtable might find in the mention of the subaltern a distant, ghostly echo resonant of bygone years. And so, too, Subaltern Studies as a collective endeavour—one that explored such subordinate subjects—can signal in the present something of a done-and-dusted doodah from the past. Yet, is it possible for the figure of the subaltern to intimate instead a salient presence—exactly in the here-and-now, amidst all our grave immediacies? Might we now be in the face of a spectral-substantive subaltern that acutely haunts and severally shapes our habitations at large? Can the Subaltern Studies project in turn be approached and understood as an “archival formation”, one that sheds
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallRethinking Subalterns, Archives and Histories in the Present: a roundtable2025-12-10text/htmlen-USRethinking Subalterns, Archives and Histories in the Present: a roundtable2025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®1110232026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10The Architecture of the Bight of Biafra: Spatial Entanglements by Joseph Godlewski (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976718
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The site where the Calabar River debouches into the Bight of Biafra became a key node of transatlantic slavery, giving rise to a distinct colonial urban formation. Joseph Godlewski’s The Architecture of the Bight of Biafra: Spatial Entanglements narrates the historical transformation of this region between the sixteenth century and the present.Despite decades of scholarship on African cities, the legacies of colonialism, and the contribution made by Africans to the making of colonial cities, a myth of socio-spatial dysfunction persists in the characterization of African urbanism. Colonial-era dichotomies—foreign vs native, colonizer vs colonized, progressive vs primitive, modern vs traditional, global vs
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallThe Architecture of the Bight of Biafra: Spatial Entanglements by Joseph Godlewski (review)2025-12-10text/htmlen-USThe Architecture of the Bight of Biafra: Spatial Entanglements by Joseph Godlewski (review)2025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®107882026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10Revisiting Colonialism and Colonial Labour: The South Asian Working Class in British Malaya ed. by Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja and Shivalinggam Raymond (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976719
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One cannot but be envious of the ambition of a volume which aims, in barely 150 pages, to re-narrate the history of South Indian labor migration to Malayan rubber plantations, problematize many assumptions of colonial labor historiography, and provide fresh perspectives on the interactions of labor migrants, planters, colonial officials, and native capitalists. The book may for convenience’s sake be divided into two sections. In the first, the introduction through Chapter 3, Sundara Raja and Raymond extensively situate their historiographical, and, it bears saying, their polemical intervention.As they write in the introduction, this is not a book about indenture: “there has been little attempt at delineating the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallRevisiting Colonialism and Colonial Labour: The South Asian Working Class in British Malaya ed. by Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja and Shivalinggam Raymond (review)2025-12-10text/htmlen-USRevisiting Colonialism and Colonial Labour: The South Asian Working Class in British Malaya ed. by Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja and Shivalinggam Raymond (review)2025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®88962026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10Between Impulses of Colonial Hegemony and Respect for Legal Principles: France and the Implementation of Collective Fines Against Muslim Indigenous Population in Algeria, 1844–1897
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976720
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Introduced in 1844, the collective fine quickly became a cornerstone of colonial governance in Algeria, embodying both the authoritarian tendencies and legal inconsistencies of French rule in the nineteenth century. While it was justified as a means of maintaining order and security, this punitive mechanism represented a clear deviation from established legal norms, relying on the principle of shared responsibility. Initiated by Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, the gouverneur général de l’Algérie (Governor-General of Algeria), it sought to hold entire communities accountable for crimes committed within their midst, thereby blurring the distinction between justice and communal retribution.Initially conceived as a wartime
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallBetween Impulses of Colonial Hegemony and Respect for Legal Principles: France and the Implementation of Collective Fines Against Muslim Indigenous Population in Algeria, 1844–18972025-12-10text/htmlen-USBetween Impulses of Colonial Hegemony and Respect for Legal Principles: France and the Implementation of Collective Fines Against Muslim Indigenous Population in Algeria, 1844–18972025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®909252026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10Becoming Imperial Agents: British Experiences of “Stop-Off” Locations Encountered en route to the Indian Subcontinent, 1757–1835
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976721
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Throughout the second half of the long eighteenth century, thousands of Britons travelled to the Indian subcontinent to take up imperial duties, be they administrative, economic, military, domestic, ideological or, indeed, “reproductive.”2 Most of these individuals were in the employ of the British East India Company (hereafter EIC) or travelling with a family member in the EIC’s employ. Others travelled as part of informal EIC circles, for example as artists under the patronage of wealthy EIC officials. Drawing on Susan Broomhall’s concept of the “transformative agent,” I use the term “British imperial agent” to describe these individuals who not only exercised forms of agency that sustained Britain’s imperial
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallBecoming Imperial Agents: British Experiences of “Stop-Off” Locations Encountered en route to the Indian Subcontinent, 1757–18352025-12-10text/htmlen-USBecoming Imperial Agents: British Experiences of “Stop-Off” Locations Encountered en route to the Indian Subcontinent, 1757–18352025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®1760082026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by Nicholas Radburn (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976722
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The British Transatlantic slave trade is probably the most thoroughly researched among the Western trade in human cargoes. Nevertheless, Nicholas Radburn’s book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of this Modern Age’s pivotal business (though gruesome), providing deep and extensive information about it.The book is divided into five chapters plus Introduction and Conclusion. In the Introduction, Radburn delineates his approach to what he sees as the transformation of the British slave trade in the eighteenth century, connecting the “different stages of enslavement across the vastness of the Atlantic world” (17), so going beyond the focus on the Middle Passage. The changes in the British slave trade
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallTraders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by Nicholas Radburn (review)2025-12-10text/htmlen-USTraders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by Nicholas Radburn (review)2025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®134892026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India by Leela Prasad (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976723
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Leela Prasad’s The Audacious Raconteur offers a compelling case for rethinking hegemony, sovereignty, and subjugation in colonial India by examining “that acre of ground” where the empire lacked jurisdiction (1). By analyzing the lives and narratives of four audacious raconteurs, Anna Liberata de Souza, P. V. Ramaswami Raju, M. N. Venkataswami, and S. M. Natesa Sastri, Prasad uncovers the ways stories are powerful tools for critiquing empire. She takes readers on a journey of discovery as she locates narratives, analyzes their historical and contemporary import, and illumines methodological interventions along the way. The Audacious Raconteur teaches readers the importance of examining and amplifying the voices of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallThe Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India by Leela Prasad (review)2025-12-10text/htmlen-USThe Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India by Leela Prasad (review)2025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®79292026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10The Micro-dynamics of Violence in Colonial Kenya: A History of the Hayward Case, 1952–1960
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976724
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The Mau Mau War (1952–1960) in colonial Kenya was one of the most brutal counterinsurgency campaigns since 1945 and had a detrimental impact on the Kikuyu community of Kenya. Over 20,000 people died, and 80,000 Kenyans were held in detention camps at the war's peak.2 The state of emergency, declared by Governor Evelyn Baring in October 1952, enacted a ruthless campaign against Kikuyu, Embu and Meru peoples, which entailed forced villagisation, the restriction and requirement of identity cards for cross-regional travel, the introduction of curfews and mass arrests. During these eight years, Kenya became a police state. The counterinsurgency campaign is notably marked by the British use of ‘internment’ and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallThe Micro-dynamics of Violence in Colonial Kenya: A History of the Hayward Case, 1952–19602025-12-10text/htmlen-USThe Micro-dynamics of Violence in Colonial Kenya: A History of the Hayward Case, 1952–19602025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®774092026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10The Global Journey of Racism by Michelle Christian (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976725
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In 1994 I published a book with Manchester University Press entitled Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain, 1815–1945. The chapter on racism began with the phrase “All minorities in all societies in all historical periods have endured hostility from the government and the majority populations in the countries in which they live,” which caused some controversy in reviews. Since the publication of my volume, critical race theory has developed to essentially argue what I contended.Sociologist Michelle Christian’s volume takes this perspective by demonstrating how racism expanded from Europe as a result of imperialism from the early modern period to cover the rest of the world. As a sociologist, she uses a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/29/image/coversmallThe Global Journey of Racism by Michelle Christian (review)2025-12-10text/htmlen-USThe Global Journey of Racism by Michelle Christian (review)2025-12-102025TWOProject MUSE®77422026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002025-12-10