Youth against Empire

Insurgent Youth

Cross-posted from Comparative Studies in Society and History

STACEY HYND
Small Warriors? Children and Youth in Colonial Insurgencies and Counterinsurgency, ca. 1945–1960

MYLES OSBORNE
“Mau Mau are Angels … Sent by Haile Selassie”: A Kenyan War in Jamaica

Sometimes CSSH articles fit together remarkably well. One would almost think they were written to each other, like intellectual greeting cards, or the correspondence of old friends. Such is the case with two recent essays by Stacey Hynd (62/4: 684-713) and Myles Osborne (62/4: 714-744). Here’s how our editors characterized them:

INSURGENT YOUTH  The ranks of insurgencies are mostly filled by the young. The youth take to the streets and barricades more readily than do the aged, the propertied, and the established. Insurgencies depend on youth not only for their energy and hope, but also for the ways “youth” indexes the future, and presents a visage of innocence that seems relatively untainted by the stains and debris of historical wrongs. Yet insurgency can also be forced upon the young, even onto the fragile shoulders of children. The sources, networks, and reasons for recruitment are too often less than clear.

In “Small Warriors? Children and Youth in Colonial Insurgencies and Counterinsurgency, ca. 1946–1960,” Stacey Hynd explores how young insurgents are recruited and mobilized. Comparing Kenya and Cyprus in the 1940s and 1950s, Hynd shows that while some youth were coerced into armed rebellions, others joined of their own will. Teenaged warriors brought needed numbers but were especially valued for the ways they symbolized innocence and hope, helping to catalyze broader support for the movement.

Myles Osborne’s contribution also leads us to Kenya. In “‘Mau Mau Are Angels … Sent by Haile Selassie’: A Kenyan War in Jamaica,” Osborne examines the impact of Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising as the news of it circulated in Jamaica during the 1950s. The Mau Mau insurgency inspired Rastafari and other young and mostly poor Jamaicans, who saw it as a form of pan-Africanism much like Marcus Garvey’s. This version of Black Power in the Caribbean reveals intellectual frameworks developed by subaltern youth, and transnational circuits of pan-Africanism that formed even without direct contact or diffusion.

CSSH: We enjoyed reading your papers together. The overlaps in approach give incredible richness to the local insurgencies and global cultures of resistance you describe. Even more pleasant was learning that the close fit was as uncanny for you as it was for us. It wasn’t exactly a coincidence, but it’s fair to say you didn’t see it coming! Continue reading “Youth against Empire”

Researching Revolutions: A Staff-Student Collaborative Project

Reflections on Researching and Teaching a History of the French Empire: A Staff-Student Collaborative Project at the University of Exeter 

This multi-authored blog post details a collaborative project run by Dr Alex Fairfax-Cholmeley since January 2020. Seven History students at the University of Exeter (single and combined honours) were selected to work as Project Advisors alongside Alex as he researched and wrote a journal article on connections between the revolutions in France and the French colony of  Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) during the 1790s. Alex and the Project Advisors have also developed a series of teaching resources linked to the journal article. These will be made publicly available once the article has been published. The Project Advisors are Isaac Avery, Nick Collins, Ella Kennedy, Lizzie Laurence, Eleanor Lionel, Jessica Lloyd and Arlen Veysey. 

The French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the Caribbean, here outlined in green, was a plantation economy that became the world centre of sugar production in the eighteenth century. The sugar (and other products including coffee and indigo) was produced by the ruthless exploitation of the colony’s slave population. Detail from Guillaume Delisle, Carte de l’isle de Saint Domingue (1725) (source: gallica.bnf.fr/BnF)

Project overview 

Ella Kennedy writes: I applied to be a Project Advisor because this area of history really interested me. The project is centred around the idea of a ‘Dual Revolution’: the symbiotic influences of the infamous French Revolution and the Saint-Domingue slave revolution across the Atlantic (which is not so engrained in the public historical consciousness). The application process also declared an interest in making academic research more accessible for students. For me personally, the social foundations of this historical research were engaging. Alex’s work uses the proliferating French pamphlet culture during the mid-1790s as evidence for competing domestic French discourses about revolutionary events in Saint-Domingue, as well as underlying issues such as slavery. The project’s transatlantic approach helps explore a number of themes, including changing values within French Revolutionary society, public engagement with and education about revolutionary events (both in France and in Saint-Domingue), and the impact of empire on the issue of equality within France.

Inevitably, the project’s focus did evolve. For example, the original and expansive timeframe that we had intended to focus on (covering much of the 1790s) has narrowed, and a month from the middle of the period (Fructidor Year II in the French Revolutionary calendar, or August/September 1794) became more prominent. However, the educational purpose of the project has prevailed, with the group producing a set of learning resources to accompany the article for student readers. Hopefully, these resources will help to guide undergraduate students through the complexities of understanding the primary source material on which it is based (via worksheets with translated pamphlet extracts) and the dual historical contexts (via a timeline and biographies of key historical actors). These resources are intended to equip student readers with the tools necessary to tackle this and similar articles. Continue reading “Researching Revolutions: A Staff-Student Collaborative Project”

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From African Americans and the fate of Haiti to how Bridgerton erased Haiti, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.

Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History”

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

Mob that burned down the offices of the Wilmington Daily Record. Getty Images.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes to digitizing the Nuremberg trials, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History”

Spring Term @ExeterCIGH Seminar Schedule

The Spring Term is now upon us, and so please find the Centre for Imperial and Global History seminar schedule below for your calendars.

Please direct any inquiries about attending to the seminar convenor, Dr Lyubi Spaskovska.

Date and Location (Term 2) Speaker Paper Title
20th January 2021 (Week 2), 17:00h

 

CIGH-CMHS joint event

John Siblon (Birkbeck)

Commemoration as imperial hierarchy: The memorialization of African, Asian and Caribbean seamen after the First World War
3rd February 2021 (Week 4), 15:30h Cyrus Schayegh (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies,

Geneva)

The Middle East in the world: a modern history in documents

 

24th February 2021 (Week 7), 15:30h Kama Maclean (Heidelberg University) Coercive Institutions and the crisis of collaboration in late colonial India

 

3rd March 2021 (Week 8), 17:00h CIGH-CMHS joint event

Anyaa Anim-Addo (University of Leeds)

“Miss Jenny” in port: leisure and labour mobilities in the post-slavery Caribbean
17th March 2021 (Week 10), 15:30h

 

Joint event with Violence

Sarah Dunstan (Queen Mary University, London)

Race, Rights and Reform: Black Activism in the French Empire and the United States from World War I to Cold War

 

24th March 2021 (Week 11), 17:00h

 

Gajendra Singh in conversation with Neilesh Bose (University of Victoria) South Asian Migrations in Global History

 

 

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

Villagers in fancy dress during a New Year’s​ carnival.. Moldova. Undated (1950s-1970s). Photo by Zaharia Cusnir. Recovered by Victor Galusca in 2016.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From remembering India’s first rock band to Ireland coming to terms with its imperial past, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History”