An Empire of Justice: Britishness, Respectability, and Citizenship in Colonial South Africa, 1841-1923
FAIN: HB-282684-22
Charles Vincent Reed
Elizabeth City State University (Elizabeth City, NC 27909-9913)
Research and writing leading to an intellectual history of political activists and intellectuals of color in colonial South Africa, 1840-1923.
This book project explores how colonial subjects of color in southern Africa and their allies in Britain and the empire fought for an inclusive “empire of justice” against the assembled forces of white supremacy. It will trace the intellectual and political lives of three generations of activists and intellectuals of color in colonial South Africa who, through an imagined community of print, made claims on a non-racial imperial citizenship and co-ownership of Britain’s global empire.
Associated Products
The Non-Racial Franchise, Constitutionalism, and the Mother of Parliaments in South Africa, 1880-1922 (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Non-Racial Franchise, Constitutionalism, and the Mother of Parliaments in South Africa, 1880-1922
Author: Charles Reed
Abstract: In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela admitted, “When I thought of Western democracy and freedom, I thought of the British parliamentary system. While it is reasonable to understand this sentiment as an artifact of cultural imperialism, a left-over of empire, I would contend that it is something more meaningful and complicated. To that end, this paper explores Black British subjects made in and by empire and British traditions in South Africa, who expressed loyalty and belief in the idea of empire -- embracing arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes’ 1898 campaign promise of “equal rights for all civilised men south of the Zambesi” -- and criticized brutality and injustice as failures of empire. African newspaper editors, activists, educators, and other intellectuals interpreted and wrote histories of Britain and the empire, often with focus on the meaning and purpose of the British constitution and parliamentary traditions. They developed legal strategies and arguments based on those readings and took them all the way to the top of the imperial hierarchy: the monarchy, the government, and Parliament. Across considerable distances of multiple colonies, and even the great ocean itself, they organized, petitioned, and lobbied for their communities to demand justice at their district councils, colonial legislatures, and, in the end, the imperial Parliament, casting those who opposed their rights as British subjects, particularly to the franchise, as un-British and enemies of the empire.
Date: 4/12/2023
Writing Black British Histories of South Africa (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Writing Black British Histories of South Africa
Author: Charles V. Reed
Abstract: This paper aims to center Black British subjects made in and by empire and British traditions in South Africa -- men who expressed loyalty and belief in the idea of empire and criticized brutality and injustice as failures of empire -- in ascribing histories of South Africa past and present. Black intellectuals, activists, educators, and newspaper editors interpreted and wrote histories of Britain and the empire, often focused on the meaning and purpose of the British constitution and traditions in the empire and the history of colonialism in southern Africa. These works were often developed as campaign literature, in a sense, of larger campaigns and movements in defense of the non-racial franchise of the Cape Colony and more generally their rights as British subjects (as they saw them). But in a larger sense, the articulated an intellectual and historical argument against settler colonialism and dispossession through a lens of British constitutionalism and history. Through these works, these authors developed legal strategies and arguments based on those readings and, in some cases, took their arguments and claims all the way to the top of the imperial hierarchy. This paper aims to understand not only the ways in which history was employed as a “weapon of the weak” by Black colonial subjects in South Africa but also the significance and relevance of these histories, not merely as artifacts of a particular moment in South African history between colonization and the development of anti-colonialism nationalism, to global histories of Black Britishness and empire.
Date: 4/22/2023