Beyond sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 1880–1950

258 Pages·2007·1.464 MB·English

by  Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine, Frank Trentmann (eds.)

Beyond Sovereignty
Also by Kevin Grant
A CIVILISED SAVAGERY: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926
Also by Philippa Levine
GENDER AND EMPIRE: Oxford History of the British Empire Companion
Series
PROSTITUTION, RACE AND POLITICS: Policing Venereal Disease in the British
Empire
WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE: Citizenship, Nation and Race
(co-edited with Laura Mayhall and Ian Fletcher)
FEMINIST LIVES IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND: Private Roles and Public
Commitment
VICTORIAN FEMINISM 1850–1900
THE AMATEUR AND THE PROFESSIONAL: Historians, Antiquarians and
Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886
Also by Frank Trentmann
FOOD AND CONFLICT IN EUROPE IN THE AGE OF THE TWO WORLD WARS
(co-edited with Flemming Just)
CONSUMING CULTURES, GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES: Historical Trajectories,
Transnational Exchanges (edited with John Brewer)
THE MAKING OF THE CONSUMER: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the
Modern World (editor)
CIVIL SOCIETY: A Reader in History, Theory and Global Politics (edited with John
Hall)
WORLDS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY: Knowledge and Power in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries (edited with Martin J. Daunton)
MARKETS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXTS: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World
(edited with Mark Bevir)
PARADOXES OF CIVIL SOCIETY: New Perspectives on Modern German and
British History (editor)
CRITIQUES OF CAPITAL IN MODERN BRITAIN AND AMERICA: Transatlantic
Exchanges (edited with Mark Bevir)
Beyond Sovereignty
Britain, Empire and Transnationalism,
c. 1880–1950
Edited by
Kevin Grant
Hamilton College, New York
Philippa Levine
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
and
Frank Trentmann
Birkbeck College, University of London
Editorial matter,selection and introduction © Kevin Grant,Philippa Levine and
Frank Trentmann 2007.All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2007
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-8643-6
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beyond sovereignty :Britain,empire,and transnationalism,c.1880–1950 / edited by
Kevin Grant,Philippa Levine,and Frank Trentmann.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Commonwealth countries—Social conditions.2.Imperialism—Social
aspects—Great Britain.3.Human rights—Commonwealth countries.
4.Transnationalism—History.5.Great Britain—Civilization—19th century.6.Great
Britain—Civilization—20th century.I.Grant,Kevin,1965- II.Levine,Philippa.III.
Trentmann,Frank.
DA16.B556 2007
909’.09712410821—dc22 2006050836
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
Contents
List of Contributors vii
1 Introduction 1
Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann
2 Sovereignty and Sexuality: Transnational Perspectives
on Colonial Age of Consent Legislation 16
Philippa Levine
3 After the Nation-State: Citizenship, Empire and Global
Coordination in the New Internationalism, 1914–1930 34
Frank Trentmann
4 Towards an International Human Rights Regime during
the Inter-War Years: The League of Nations’ Combat of
Traffic in Women and Children 54
Barbara Metzger
5 Human Rights and Sovereign Abolitions of Slavery,
c. 1885–1956 80
Kevin Grant
6 Beyond Sovereignty?: Protestant Missions, Empire and
Transnationalism, 1890–1950 103
John Stuart
7 A Shadow Nation: The Making of Muslim India 126
Faisal Devji
8 ‘A Well Selected Body of Men’: Sikh Recruitment for
Colonial Police and Military 146
Thomas R. Metcalf
9 Valleys of Fear: Policing Terror in an Imperial
Age, 1865–1925 169
Robert Gregg
v
vi Contents
10 Screening Empire from Itself: Imperial Preference,
Represented Communities, and the Decent Burial of
the Indian Cinematograph Committee Report (1927–28) 191
Madhavi Kale
11 The Persistence of Privilege: British Medical
Qualifications and the Practice of Medicine in
the Empire 214
Douglas M. Haynes
Index 240
List of Contributors
Faisal Devji is Associate Professor of History at The New School, New
York. He is the author of Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality,
Modernity(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
Kevin Grantis Associate Professor of History at Hamilton College. He is
the author of A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa,
1884–1926(New York: Routledge, 2005).
Robert Gregg is Associate Professor of History and Dean of Arts and
Humanities at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. His publica-
tions include Sparks from the Anvil of Oppression (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1993) and Inside Out, Outside In (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 2000).
Douglas M. Haynes is Professor of British History at the University of
California, Irvine. His publications include Imperial Medicine: Patrick
Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease(Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2001).
Madhavi Kale is Associate Professor of History at Bryn Mawr College.
She is the author of Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery and Indentured
Labor in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1998).
Philippa Levine is Professor of History at the University of Southern
California. She is author, most recently, of Prostitution, Race and Politics:
Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003)
and Gender and Empire: Oxford History of the British Empire Companion
Series(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Thomas R. Metcalf is Emeritus Professor of History of the University
of California, Berkeley. His most recent publications include A Concise
History Of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
revised edition, 2006) edited with Barbara D. Metcalf; and Imperial
Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007).
Barbara Metzger is Associate at the Centre of International Studies in
Cambridge. She received her PhD in history from Cambridge University.
vii
1
Introduction
Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann
Fifteen years ago, Francis Fukuyama declared in his influential The End
of History and the Last Man that the future had been settled by the end
of the Cold War in 1989 and by the apparent victory of liberal democ-
racy and capitalism over communism. In the intervening years, and
particularly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in
2001, the significance of the collapse of communism has increasingly
become uncertain. As the widening gyre of so many global relationships
pivots upon the Middle East, the end of the Cold War appears to have
been the end of an interlude, rather than the end of history.1Politicians
and commentators have been confounded by the continuities of the
worlds before and after the Cold War, worlds in which the borders of the
nation-state have been permeated and undermined by global processes
that governments and civil societies have more often encouraged than
resisted. Debates over the limits and future of sovereign nation-states, of
transnational terrorism, of the impact of migration and the emergence
of pluralistic identities, and of global civil society are far from new. This
collection of essays illuminates their antecedents between the late nine-
teenth and mid-twentieth centuries, demonstrating how transnational
dynamics challenged the concept and practice of sovereignty in the age
of empire.
This volume is a historically informed critical intervention into the field
of transnational studies, a field that has been built in large part by politi-
cal scientists, legal scholars, sociologists, and anthropologists. Steven
Vertovec defines transnationalism as the ‘multiple ties and interactions
linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states.’2Ethnic
diasporas are, perhaps, the paradigmatic case of a transnational formation
that transcends borders. But the significance of transnationalism reaches
beyond spatial movements and physical connections, involving distinct
1
2 Introduction
multilocal sets of identities and memories, fluid and hybrid forms of cul-
tural reproduction, and transnational flows of money and expertise. For
all its creative momentum, however, the field of transnational studies has
mainly restricted its focus to topics after the end of the Cold War or to cur-
rent developments. Some social scientists have argued that transnational
phenomena, such as the back-and-forth movement of migrants, have
only recently acquired ‘the critical mass and complexity necessary to
speak of an emergent social field’ that warrants the development of
transnational studies.3
This is not to say, of course, that other scholars have not considered
ideas and movements that moved beyond sovereignty in an earlier peri-
od. For example, a major body of scholarship has examined the inte-
gration of financial markets, capital flows, labor migrations, and the
expansion of trade in the decade before the First World War. Such work
has been complemented by an anxious concern about whether any-
thing may be learnt from this earlier period of globalization in order to
avoid the catastrophic down-turn marked by the First World War and
the Great Depression.4 In this narrative, the era of the two world wars
marks a fundamental rupture in the process of globalization, which was
then repaired by several decades of affluence and American-led trade
liberalization.
This volume, however, offers an alternative framework of analysis. It
emphasizes additional aspects and dynamics of transnationalism and
points to a profoundly different periodization. The seeds of transnatio-
nalism are imperial, rather than post-colonial. Empires, we argue, were
critical sites where transnational social and cultural movements took
place. These movements took the shape of a triadic relationship, in which
flows between colonies were as important as those between metropole
and colony. Empires, and here most decisively the British Empire, devel-
oped concepts and practices of international law that sought to come to
terms with issues that palpably transcended the sovereign nation-state,
such as slavery and the rights of minorities. It was in a context of impe-
rial society, culture, and rivalry that new ideas of political citizenship
developed and challenged inherited notions of nation-state sovereignty.
These new ideas moved instead toward conceptions of rights and political
participation that anticipated elements of what is currently called ‘cos-
mopolitanism’ and ‘global civil society.’ At the same time, empires pio-
neered instruments of policing that sought to respond to challenges to
imperial power arising from the transnational movement of people and
ideas. Finally, empires were sites of social and political movements that
developed critiques of national sovereignty and explored transnational