the second boom in the price of sugar, the fear of increasing costs resulting from the abolition of slavery, and growing difficulties in obtaining property sales of plantations encumbered by high mortgages and with the abandonment of certain estates, a dramatic change occurred, in perceptions of both the fabulously wealthy West Indian and the value of a close colonial relationship. The change leads
us, and perhaps two generations, who have been formed by [the cricket ethic] not only in social attitudes but in our most intimate personal lives, in fact there more than anywhere else” ( 1963 , p. 41). He continued: All of us knew our West Indian cricketers, so to speak, from birth, when they made their first century
By expanding the geographical scope of the history of violence and war, this volume challenges both Western and state-centric narratives of the decline of violence and its relationship to modernity. It highlights instead similarities across early modernity in terms of representations, legitimations, applications of, and motivations for violence. It seeks to integrate methodologies of the study of violence into the history of war, thereby extending the historical significance of both fields of research. Thirteen case studies outline the myriad ways in which large-scale violence was understood and used by states and non-state actors throughout the early modern period across Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Atlantic, and Europe, demonstrating that it was far more complex than would be suggested by simple narratives of conquest and resistance. Moreover, key features of imperial violence apply equally to large-scale violence within societies. As the authors argue, violence was a continuum, ranging from small-scale, local actions to full-blown war. The latter was privileged legally and increasingly associated with states during early modernity, but its legitimacy was frequently contested and many of its violent forms, such as raiding and destruction of buildings and crops, could be found in activities not officially classed as war.
Bordering intimacy is a study of how borders and dominant forms of intimacy, such as family, are central to the governance of postcolonial states such as Britain. The book explores the connected history between contemporary border regimes and the policing of family with the role of borders under European and British empires. Building upon postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the investigation centres on how colonial bordering is remade in contemporary Britain through appeals to protect, sustain and make family life. Not only was family central to the making of colonial racism but claims to family continue to remake, shore up but also hide the organisation of racialised violence in liberal states. Drawing on historical investigations, the book investigates the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government – family visa regimes, the policing of sham marriages, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics, integration policy. In doing this, the book re-theorises how we think of the connection between liberal government, race, family, borders and empire. In using Britain as a case, this opens up further insights into the international/global circulations of liberal empire and its relationship to violence.
’ good afternoon.” It end up dat he was my brother-in-law Trevor’s buddy, and it wasn’t a baker’s uniform but cricket clothes he wearing. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I say “You play cricket?”, stunned. I thought he’d say, “You know, just a few West Indians get together every once in a while
the Monday. One black Antiguan-American player from the New York team referred to his first trip to Canada as “such a good party. Could hardly believe we were in Canada. So many other West Indians came [to watch the game]. The music, food, the weather even! I told my boys we gotta come back. We been coming back each year since 1981.” These long-standing travel traditions are central to the making of
an exceptional player by their [Canadian] standards. There were lots of guys at my level back home … I played for the Ontario team and the Canadian national team versus the USA for three to four years, but at that time it was 80–90% West Indian. Even the selectors were West Indian … I was selected to play for Canada in the World
interests. The argument that is made here is that while the late colonial period was a high-water mark for state-led development in Britain’s colonies, a time when there was unprecedented emphasis on science and much talk of planning, the vision of British West Indian economic development employed by the Colonial Office was essentially liberal in character. Aside from providing a resolution to a central issue in the political economy of industrial development, knowledge and expert advice also became increasingly important to the maintenance of Britain’s control over
by this very aspect of conquest. Portal civilisations create institutions and practices of power capable of extensive contacts and relationships without conquest of vast territories. To be sure, they build empires and extend spheres of commerce, culture and travel in which explicit power is created. My synopses of the Venetian Mediterranean (during the era of Venice’s naval dominance) and the Omani West Indian Ocean (with its flows of slave trading) are indicative of the balance of engagement and explicit power. Nonetheless, they are distinct from oceanic
those born in the Empire and Commonwealth an equal legal status to that of Britons: government became obliged to allow the free movement of all those now effectively designated British subjects.71 Few officials anticipated blacks would want to take advantage of the Act and settle in Britain, so the arrival of the Empire Windrush came as an unpleasant surprise; but it was something they could do nothing about. Doubts about black immigration were apparently confirmed when West Indians became quickly associated with a variety of social problems.72 As with earlier waves