Friday, August 30, 2013
Intersections of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds
I came across this fascinating post from a blog I follow on Haiti. I suppose it's not that surprising that British colonial newspapers in early 19th century India reported on events in the Caribbean, such as Haitian independence, but it's interesting to note that readers there followed closely events in the Atlantic. The readership for the Courier is not stated to be primarily British/European colonists in India (which was the domain of the British East India Company, I believe, and not a direct colony under the authority of the British government), I would suspect that the majority of its readers were Europeans and assimilated and local India allies. Nonetheless, I am fascinated by the fact that readers in Bombay were following news from around the world! As the post explains, limiting ourselves into a single area of study or region ignores the plethora of instances of mutual influence and exchange, which also grew exponentially in the age of European dominance as the 19th century proceeded. Transnational/transcolonial history, my friends, transnational/transcolonial history.
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I don't get it, why are you so excited by this? What's so extraordinary about British colonists in India being informed about events in the Caribbean where some of them probably owned property? The most interesting about this newspaper was the fact that it speculated about the weakening of France as a rival to the British Empire. If there's more to this, please expound on it.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great question. It's not that surprising but for some reason I'm fascinated by links between Asia and the Caribbean. I do believe some of the readers and editors of the newspaper were local Indians (hardly representative of the majority of the Indian population at the time), but most were probably white British. There's not much more to it, just that some colonial Indian subjects and the colonists read about news in Haiti. I know the Haitian Revolution was in probably all the European newspapers, so it's no surprise European colonies would contain commentary on it.
DeleteI'm surprised nobody has done extensive analysis of newspaper commentary on the Haitian Revolution. Okay, someone probably has, but if not, it could be a new field.
Actually, the import of material of this nature is that it suggests a difference of sensibility from the way something is known.
ReplyDeleteHow much of the world was literate at the time? In London, just for the sake of argument? Who had access to the larger cosmopolitan world? Who can afford the access? Yet that world produced a Darwin, a Dumas, and the literary, cultural and scientific attainment of the Enlightenment. The elites of whatever sphere were expected to be educated and worldly, and because they were meant to rule, they had the "white man's burden" and the responsibilities that entailed. The concept of the social elite as having a mandate existed in dynastic China; the French expropriated "mandarin" for the same purpose. This sense of elite entitlement and responsibility appears even in such popular works today as thematic elements in le Carre spy novels and Graham Greene's "entertainments", as marking the transition from the privilege world to one that is democratic, crass, and well, American. You even get this refrain in contemporary historical works in regard to when "blue bloods" run the CIA, social institutions, and well, America - before the Catholics, the couple from Arkansas, and well, Barak. Was there such "noblesse oblige" among the ruling class? Sad to say, yes there was, some. Compare Teddy Roosevelt to, say, Mitt Romney. Or the Bush dad and the idiot that came after.
There is oftentimes a tendency to see the past thru the lens of the present. Think about this: When you took your flight to Johannesburg as part of your studies at UW, did you think it was a big deal? When my grandfather left China, he stole passage on a china-clipper, he was headed for the "Gold Mountain", leaving behind a young bride (perhaps forever) and headed for a future as dark as the sea. Today, you and I have Wiki at the tip of our fingers, but as a polity, I believe we're dumber than ever before.
Hartley said "The past is a foreign country." It is.
George, thanks for commenting! I have been meaning to call Miguel and James lately. I see what you mean, the newspaper would speak to how elites of British India in the early 19th century began to see themselves as part of a broader Enlightenment/Western intellectual project as well as sharing a universal belief in the elite's mandate to rule.
DeleteI did think about it as a big deal, traveling elsewhere, but probably because the past is like a foreign country, like traveling into another time (both literally and figuratively as we move into different time zones. Unfortunately, you're probably right, we are dumber than ever in many ways despite the accessible information all around us.