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This book is the first full-length study of the 1947 drawing of the Indo-Pakistani boundary in Punjab. It uses the Radcliffe commission, headed by Sir Cyril Radcliffe , as a window onto the decolonisation and independence of India and Pakistan. Examining the competing interests that influenced the actions of the various major players, the book highlights British efforts to maintain a grip on India even as the decolonisation process spun out of control. It examines the nature of power relationships within the colonial state, with a focus on the often-veiled exertion of British colonial power. With conflict between Hindus , Muslims and Sikhs reaching unprecedented levels in the mid-1940s , British leaders felt compelled to move towards decolonization. The partition was to be perceived as a South Asian undertaking, with British officials acting only as steady and impartial guides. Radcliffe's use of administrative boundaries reinforced the impact of imperial rule. The boundaries that Radcliffe defined turned out to be restless divisions, and in both the 1965 and 1971 wars India and Pakistan battled over their Punjabi border. After the final boundary, known as the 'Radcliffe award', was announced, all sides complained that Radcliffe had not taken the right 'other factors' into account. Radcliffe's loyalty to British interests is key to understanding his work in 1947. Drawing on extensive archival research in India, Pakistan and Britain, combined with innovative use of cartographic sources, the book paints a vivid picture of both the partition process and the Radcliffe line's impact on Punjab.
colonial power. Specifically, I trace the reluctant cooperation of South Asian elites with British leaders in setting up the Radcliffe commission. The decisions made by these elites, operating under British pressure, in some cases ran counter to popular welfare. This work therefore seeks to add complexity to debates about the nature of colonial power and postcolonial legacies. Second, I contend that it was
work back in their home institutions. These activities not only reflected the ever-changing environment in which they took place, but they also shaped the way in which science was conducted in that relatively uncontrolled environment, and beyond. As the sites of such activities, Egyptian hotels, I argue, functioned as Egyptological think-tanks. Egyptology began and operated under the umbrella of a European colonial system, and for the time period in this book, specifically British colonial power. In that context, I analyse the influence of ephemeral hotel spaces in
justifying colonialism. I trace the line between the honing of processes of 12 EL-ENANY PRINT.indd 12 02/01/2020 13:38 Introduction categorisation in the colonial era and immigration law as a practice of racial ordering in modern Britain. I argue that British immigration law is a continuation of British colonial power as enacted in the former British Empire. The categorisation of people into those with and without rights of entry and stay sustains and reproduces colonial racial hierarchies. Contemporary immigration law thus maintains the global racial order established
valley. David Scott was appointed Political Agent in 1823, and in 1829 became the first Commissioner of Revenue and Circuit of Assam. Headquartered at Guwahati, as ambassador to the Syiems , he acted for the Governor in representing British colonial power in the region. The effective role of the agent was as political advisor and diplomatic mediator, and he could also
languages for official purposes. Majeed states that James Mill was motivated by ideas of improvement and liberating change in his views on education in general, and on education in India in particular. 37 Besides, while parrying a too-extreme condemnation of Mill’s views on India, Christopher Bayly has underlined the fragile nature of the British colonial power in India, with its wide reliance on
and seventeenth centuries. The presence of British colonial power in Ireland created a dichotomous relationship between ‘Irishness’ and ‘whiteness’. David Cairns and Shaun Richards place an emphasis on ‘the reality of the historic relationship of Ireland and England; a relationship of the colonised and the coloniser’. 9 This complex relationship had a
colonial roots seriously in analysing law. I argue that British immigration law is a continuation of British colonial power as enacted in the former British Empire, an explicitly white supremacist project.2 The categorisation of people into those with and without rights of entry and stay sustains and reproduces colonial practices of racial ordering. People without a right of entry to Britain, predominantly the racialised poor, are barred from accessing colonial wealth as it manifests in Britain today. Whether or not those whose movement is hindered have ancestral or
British colonial power was threatened, for example, in the case of the Ilbert Bill in 1883 and the Gillies case of 1859 (See Chaudhuri and Strobel, 1992). 4 The one space which seemed to be more clearly designed as a separate zone was interestingly enough the hill stations – those settlements that were built by the British so that women and children could escape from the heat of the plains during the summer. 5 The hill stations such as Simla and Kodaikanal were built with the main aim of providing protection and leisure opportunities for
the future of Iraq. 31 It was the interplay between these institutions that structured British colonial power and the new political order in Iraq in the aftermath of the war. When Iraq was occupied and became effectively a part of the British Empire in 1917, its future remained unclear. On his entry to Baghdad, General Frederick Stanley Maude declared that he had liberated