Communal Violence in the British Empire: Disturbing the PaxJoint winner of the North American Conference on British Studies 2017 Stansky Book Prize for the best book on British Studies since 1800 Communal Violence in the British Empire focuses on how Britons interpreted, policed, and sometimes fostered violence between different ethnic and religious communities in the empire. It also asks what these outbreaks meant for the power and prestige of Britain among subject populations. Alternating between chapters of engaging narrative and chapters of careful, cross-colonial analysis, Mark Doyle uses outbreaks of communal violence in Ireland, the West Indies, and South Asia to uncover the inner workings of British imperialism: it's guiding assumptions, its mechanisms of control, its impact, and its limitations. He explains how Britons used communal violence to justify the imperial project even as that project was creating the conditions for more violence. Above all, this book demonstrates how communal violence exposed the limits of British power and, in time, helped lay the groundwork for the empire's collapse. This book shows how violence, and the British state's handling thereof, was a fundamental part of the imperial experience for colonizer and colonized alike. It offers a new perspective on the workings of empire that will be of interest to any student of imperial or world history. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
How British Imperialism Conjured the Very Violence It Sought to Suppress | 35 |
Belfast 1872 | 55 |
How Communal Riots Confirmed and Strengthened Britains Civilizing Mission | 79 |
Bombay 1874 | 103 |
How Cultural Assumptions Guided the Policing of Communal Riots | 127 |
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Common terms and phrases
1856 British Guiana 1874 Bombay Riots Antony MacDonnell attacked August August 22 Belfast riots Bengal Bodleian Library Bombay Riots Bombay Riots Reports Britain British Empire British Guiana British Guiana Riots British officials British rule Buddhist Catholics century Ceylon city’s civil colonial communal riots communal violence constabulary Creole Crosthwaite crowd Daily Examiner disturbances Dublin Elgin encl fanatical February February 24 fire force Gazette Georgetown Glasgow Herald government’s governor Guiana Riots Correspondence Harris Hindus History Ibid impartiality Ireland Irish Kimberley Labouchere Lansdowne Papers liberal London Lord Lord Lansdowne Lord Salisbury Lyall magistrates Mahomedans March military Muharram Muslims National nationalist newspapers Orange Orr’s outbreaks P. E. Wodehouse Parsees Parsis peace police policemen political Portuguese processions Protestant Provinces religious rioters Royal Irish Constabulary sabhas Secretary September soldiers Star and Ulster state’s Ulster Observer viceroy Wahhabis West Indies Wodehouse to H