Mapping Orientalism: Representations and Pedagogies

In order to understand Orientalism it is necessary to realize, as Vincent T. Harlow has noted, that there were “two British empires.” The first empire consisted of the colonies in America and the West Indies and was established in the seventeenth century, with the explorations in the Pacific, and the trading networks that developed with Asia and Africa. The “second British empire” dates from 1783 and resulted from the loss of America, which in turn forced Britain to formulate new ideas about and approaches to its empire. The Colonial Office was set up in 1801, and, as Harlow observed, Britain experienced a “Swing to the East,” to India and the Asian colonies (Harlow, 2:1–11)

Putting Indian christianities into context: Biographies of christian conversion in a leprosy colony

Gandhian and Hindutva-inspired discourses around conversions to Christianity in India over-simplify the historical nexus of relations between missionaries, converts and the colonial state. Challenging the view that conversions were ever only about material gain, this paper draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with leprosy-affected people in South India to consider the role that conversion has also played in establishing alternative, often positively construed, identities for those who came to live in leprosy colonies from the mid twentieth century onwards. The paper draws out the distinctive values associated with a Christian identity in India, exploring local Christianities as sets of practices through which, for example, a positive sense of belonging might be established for those otherwise excluded, rather than being centred upon personal faith and theology per se. Biographical accounts are drawn upon to document and analyse some of the on-the-ground realities, and the different implications - depending on one's wider social positioning - of converting from Hinduism to Christianity in South India. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014

EAST AND WEST, THE TWAIN SHALL MEET:A Cross-cultural Perspective on Higher Education

Both India and the U.S. were once colonies of Great Britain, the world''s first but short-lived global power. And both India and the U.S. ultimately threw off the imperialist yoke. Despite independence, both democracies inherited certain things from Great Britain. Whereas India inherited the English language, parliamentary governance, socialism, and, last but not least, the English educational system; the U.S. inherited the English language, the Judeo-Christian value system, and the .white. racial identity. The English educational system of India was augmented by Soviet-style central planning which resulted in several .Institutes. that have come to dominate higher education in India. Despite being ethnically closer to Great Britain, the U.S. evolved its own system of political governance, and, more important, its own educational system. While American higher education has come to define the .gold standard. for higher education, India still lags considerably behind in higher education. This paper seeks to explain certain cultural differences that may have contributed to this imbalance between the Indian and American higher education systems.

Space and Colonial Alterity: Interrogating British Residential Segregation in Nigeria, 1899-1919

The policy of segregation is undoubtedly a resented feature of colonial rule in Africa. However, discussions of the residential racial segregation policy of the British colonial administration in Africa invariably focus on “settler colonies” of South, Central, and East Africa. British colonial West Africa hardly features in such discussions since it is widely believed that these areas, which had no large-scale European settler populations, had no experience relevant to any meaningful discussion of multi-racial colonial relationships. Some studies even deny the existence of racially segregated areas in places other than the settler colonies. Despite evidence that residential racial segregation formed one of the principles that facilitated the implementation of British colonial policy in Nigeria, the Nigerian experience has not been given a fully coherent treatment. This paper examines Nigeria’s experience of officially directed residential segregation. It argues that while residential segregation policies were justified along policies related to health, sanitation, and disease prevention, the motive also derived from the demonstration of racial supremacy and civilization, which was the ideological justification for empires in Africa. It also argues that Lugard may have been impacted by the execution of this policy in India, where he left to become Governor of Nigeria in 1913. While the settler colonies had important dimensions in this inter-racial relationship, colonial Nigeria was not spared the experience of such racially motivated segregation, as the indigenes took to petitions and other means to protest this racial policy. Although Nigeria cannot claim the same intensity of deprivation as was associated with this policy in many British colonies, the pattern that emerged endured throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods

Evaluation of Local Bacillus thuringiensis from the Soils of Westernghats, Karnataka and their Biocontrol Potential against White Grub, Holotrichia serrata (F.) (coleoptera) and House Fly, Musca domestica L. (Diptera)

he Western Ghats of India is one of the world's "biodiversity hotspots" that runs along the western part of South India through four states including Karnataka. As a result, Western Ghats are expected to yield high diversity of any taxon. With a view to understand this aspect study on the diversity of Bacillus spp. in the soils of Western Ghats was conducted. A total of 292 Bacillus isolates were identified as Bacillus thuringiensis which were recovered from 35 soil samples collected from different habitats of Western Ghats of Karnataka. Soils of different habitats varied tremendously in the natural load of Bacillus CFUs. Lowest CFU load was observed in soil W15 (2.6 x 106 ) whereas the soils W13, W20, W24, W29 (8.1 x 106) yielded the highest number of Bacillus CFUs/g of soil, with an overall mean of 6.07 x 106 CFUs per g of soil. On an average, 8.34 ( 1.95) colonies were picked from each soil sample. These colonies were subjected to standard biochemical tests to identify the B. thuringiensis colonies. On an average, 5.6 (67.12 %) of the picked colonies per soil sample were observed to be B. thuringiensis colonies. Tests of activity of these isolates against a species of white grub, Holotrichia serrata (F.) and a fly pest, Musca domestica revealed 14 isolates to be active against H. serrata and 10 against M. domestica, with three of these against both the species. The study thus demonstrated that there is potential for the use of these isolates in pest management

Multivariate morphometric analysis of Apis cerana of southern mainland Asia

Multivariate morphometric analyses were performed on a series of worker honeybees, Apis cerana, representing 557 colonies from all of southern mainland Asia extending from Afghanistan to Vietnam south of the Himalayas. Scores from the principal components analysis revealed five statistically separable but not entirely distinct morphoclusters of bees: (1) the Hindu Kush, Kashmir, N. Myanmar, N. Vietnam and S. China; (2) Himachal Pradesh region of N. India; (3) N. India, Nepal; (4) central and S. Myanmar and Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, S. China and peninsular Malaysia; (5) central and S. India. The major morphoclusters are distributed coherently with the different climatic zones of the region. While populations are definable, nomenclatural adjustments remain for the future

The dynamics of inequality in a newly settled, pre-industrial society: The case of the Cape Colony

One reason for the relatively poor development performance of many countries around the world today may be the high levels of inequality during and after colonisation. Evidence from colonies in the Americas suggests that skewed initial factor endowments could create small elites that owned a disproportionate share of wealth, human capital and political power. The Cape Colony, founded in 1652 at the southern tip of Africa, presents a case where a mercantilist company (the Dutch East India Company) settles the land and establishes a unique set of institutions within which inequality and development evolve. This paper provides a long-run quantitative analysis of trends in asset-based inequality (using Principle Components' Analysis on tax inventories) during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, allowing, for the first time, a dynamic rather than static analysis of inequality trends in a newly settled and pre-industrial society over this period. While theory testing in other societies has been severely limited because of a scarcity of quantitative evidence, this study presents a history with evidence, enabling an evaluation of the Engerman-Sokoloff and other hypotheses.South Africa, settler societies, Kuznets, income distribution, asset index, institutions, mercantilism, Dutch East India Company

Victor's Law?: colonial peoples, World War II and international law

Contemporary world order rests on a fault-line. On the one hand it is an interstate system founded on the legal equality of all states. On the other hand it establishes institutions that privilege a small number of states in economy and politics. This article examines the fault-line, which has widened in recent times and threatens to destabilise the order established after the end of World War II. The ‘world’ in World wars is because of the global scope of the inter-European wars. The world wars were fought over colonies, in colonial territories, with the manpower and material resources of the colonies. Yet dominant narratives about the world wars speak about the wars as a European war between European nations and write-out colonial questions, colonial contributions and more importantly for this article the colonial impulses in the writing of contemporary international law and establishment of international organisations. This paper examines the human, monetary and material contributions of India in World War II. Britain was the preeminent Empire during the world wars and India the ‘jewel in the British Crown’. India was crucial to British conduct of the world wars. At the same time racism and repression during the interwar period fuelled powerful anti-colonial movements in India. Those struggles ended the British Empire. The irony of racism against millions of people who fought and died for Britain presents many perplexing questions about the legacies of World War II for racism and international law. This article examines the responses of different European powers to the independence movements in India during the world wars and argues that the responses of different Empires of the time to the anti-colonial struggles holds the cues to understanding the widening fault-line in the international order today

A pilot study on genetic diversity in Indian honeybees-Apis cerana of Karnataka populations

Unravelling the genetic diversity studies of Apis cerana, the indigenous strain of India is very much essential as it provides significant guidance to beekeepers about breeding strategies that would aide in their colonies to survive. There are two predominant species of Indian honey bees, Apis cerana cerana (black strain) and Apis cerana indica (yellow strain). Currently there are no reports on diversity studies on these subspecies are available. The current research in this paper describes the pilot study undertook to evaluate the genetic diversity of Apis cerana from populations of Karnataka. Bee colonies from 12 localities of Karnataka have been genetically characterized through COI gene of mitochondrial genome, providing discreet characteristics for intra-specific diversity studies. This has led to infer the taxonomic status of two subspecies of Apis cerana. The results suggest that Indian populations have larger effective size and genetic diversity. The paper discusses the possibility of introduction of honeybees in India in evolutionary time frame and resolving the diversity in Indian honeybees by assessing the phylogeography

“As If”: Equifinality, Institutional work, and accounting in the Eastern Mail Service Arbitrations 1866-1905

I examine the negotiations among the UK and its colonies to allocate the cost of operating the Eastern Mail Service (UK to India, Hong Kong and Australia) among national post offices benefitting from its service. Four key sets of negotiations are identified during the period 1866 – 1905. I consider how negotiations were affected by the changing institutional context of the postal system and relationships between the UK and its colonies during this period; in particular, the negotiations capture the confrontation between the liberal social and economic philosophies that had risen to prominence within the UK and the existence of empire. The results demonstrate that parties to the negotiations had an intuitive sense of the cost allocations that would be consistent with economic liberalism (and modern “as if” economic theories of cost allocation) but varied from this baseline in favour of settler colonies versus non-settler colonies, and an Imperial centric view of the benefits of the mail network. The emergence of cost allocations approximating current theoretical norms occurred within an emerging institutional context that favoured political independence between nations and liberalized international trade