Insurgent Empire

by Priyamvada Gopal

  55. Carlyle, cited in Semmel, Governor Eyre Controversy, p. 106.

  56. Abigail B. Bakan, Ideology and Class Conflict in Jamaica: The Politics of Rebellion (Montreal/London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), p. 79.

  57. Underhill, Tragedy of Morant Bay, p. 90.

  58. Justin McCarthy, A History of Our Own Times from the Ascension of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, vol. 3 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1882), p. 269.

  59. Cited in Baptist Wriothesley Noel, The Case of George William Gordon, Esq. of Jamaica (London: James Nisbet, 1866), p. 6.

  60. Spectator, vol. 41, p. 665, emphasis in original.

  61. Cited in Noel, Case of George William Gordon, p. 7.

  62. Gordon, cited in ibid., p. 13.

  63. Ibid., p. 17.

  64. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, p. 270.

  65. JRC2, p. 379.

  66. Ibid., p. 444.

  67. JC1, p. 91.

  68. The Royal Commission’s conclusion was as follows: ‘Although, therefore, it appears exceedingly probable that Mr Gordon, by his words and writings, produced a material effect on the minds of Bogle and his followers, and did much to produce that state of excitement and discontent in different parts of the Island, which rendered the spread of the insurrection exceedingly probable, yet we cannot see, in the evidence which has been adduced, any sufficient proof either of his complicity in the outbreak at Morant Bay or of his having been a party to a general conspiracy against the Government.’ JRC1, p. 38.

  69. Geoffrey Dutton, The Hero as Murderer: The Life of Edward John Eyre, Australian Explorer and Governor of Jamaica, 1815–1901 (Sydney/London: Collins, 1967), p. 293.

  70. Cited in Sheller, Democracy after Slavery, p. 216.

  71. David King, A Sketch of the Late Mr G. W. Gordon, Jamaica (Edinburgh: William Oliphant, 1866), p. 9.

  72. This is English politician Justin McCarthy’s reading of Gordon as a type of man who every ‘really sensible politician’ likes to have in a legislative assembly. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, p. 269.

  73. Thomas Harvey and William Brewin, Jamaica in 1866: A Narrative of a Tour through the Island; With Remarks on Its Social, Educational and Industrial Condition (London: A. W. Bennett, 1867), p. 21.

  74. JRC1, p. 31.

  75. Ibid.

  76. ‘Report of W. F. March’, in JRC2, p. 888.

  77. ‘Paul Bogle and George William Gordon – Heroes or Idiots?’, Sunday Gleaner, 17 October 2004. Cited in Howard Johnson, ‘From Pariah to Patriot: the Posthumous Career of George William Gordon’, New West Indian Guide 81: 3–4 (2008), p. 215.

  78. Sheller, Democracy after Slavery, p. 146.

  79. Cited in Johnson, ‘From Pariah to Patriot’, p. 205.

  80. Cited in Sheller, Democracy after Slavery, p. 212.

  81. Ibid., p. 213.

  82. Ibid., p. 204.

  83. Ibid., p. 211.

  84. The Jamaica Royal Commission, cited in Underhill, Tragedy of Morant Bay, p. 136.

  85. For a meticulously compiled and useful list of activists, many of whom had ties to Gordon, see Sheller, Democracy after Slavery, pp. 214–15. They include, in addition to Bogle and McLaren, Kelly Smith, E. J. Goldson, S. Clarke and W. F. March, as well as several others whose signatures also appear on various documents.

  86. Morning Herald, 23 November 1865. Cited in Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians, pp. 198–9.

  87. JRC2, p. 993.

  88. Ibid., p. 619.

  89. Ibid.

  90. Underhill, Tragedy of Morant Bay, p. 23.

  91. Ibid., p. 24.

  92. JRC1, p. 14.

  93. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1995), p. 24. Sheller points out that by the 1850s ‘there seems to have been a new sense of agency among the less formally educated people that they too could make speeches and “put their hand to paper” ’. She notes more petitions ‘written in a local Creole idiom’, and an increasing frequency of anonymous threat letters, all of which were also to be seen in the days leading up to and following the Morant Bay uprising. Sheller, Democracy after Slavery, p. 185.

  94. Bakan, Ideology and Class Conflict in Jamaica, p. 79.

  95. JRC1, p. 14.

  96. Several white witnesses, including many planters, complained in their testimony to the Royal Commission about changed behaviour on the part of the Jamaican blacks they encountered in the months leading up to the rebellion. They speak of a marked difference in bearing, refusal to observe the rights of the road, and threatening comments. See, for instance, the testimony of Wellwood Maxwell Anderson in JRC2, p. 566.

  97. JRC2, p. 619.

  98. Edward Bean Underhill, A Letter Addressed to the Rt Honourable E. Cardwell, with Illustrative Documents on the Condition of Jamaica and an Explanatory Statement (London: Arthur Miall, 1865).

  99. Heuman suggests that the ‘Petition of the Poor people of St Ann’s Parish’ had, in fact, been in preparation before Underhill’s own letter. Heuman, Killing Time, p. 48.

  100. ‘Petition of the Poor People of St Ann’s Parish, and the Reply Thereto, Entitled “The Queen’s Advice” ’, in Harvey and Brewin, Jamaica in 1866, pp. 101–2. Another petition, written in September, came from St Thomas-in-the-East, signed by forty persons, speaking of ‘heavy work’ not even experienced when ‘we were slaves’ and of the ‘advantage’ taken of them by estate managers. Cited in Noel, Case of George William Gordon, p. 27.

  101. Harvey and Brewin, Jamaica in 1866, p. 102.

  102. JC1, p. 9.

  103. Writing about the rebellion several decades later, Lord Olivier, himself a governor of Jamaica, would point out that the demand for land was based on ‘the essentially sound fundamental axiom of African law, that land belongs to the King (or Chief) as trustee for his people … to be held available for … families for whose support unoccupied land is required’. Olivier, Myth of Governor Eyre, p. 176.

  104. ‘In 1857 a coloured man of the name of Ripley Edie told the people that the Queen had given them the lands when she gave them freedom’. JRC2, p. 566.

  105. Ibid., my emphasis.

  106. As with the 1857 uprising, rumour could have a galvanizing effect in the organization of resistance. As Scott also observes: ‘As a rumour travels it is altered in a fashion that brings it more closely into line with the hopes, fears, and worldview of those who hear it and retell it’. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 147, 145.

  107. Jean Besson, cited in Sheller, Democracy after Slavery, p. 148.

  108. JRC1, p. 40.

  109. ‘Testimony of W. Anderson’, in JRC2, p. 165.

  110. The rumour was not without historical foundation: certainly in the decades following Emancipation, planters talked of leaving British rule and joining the United States, which would have meant the re-enslavement of the black population.

  111. ‘Testimony of Venerable Archdeacon Rowe’, in JRC2, p. 648.

  112. JRC1, p. 16.

  113. ‘Testimony of W. Carr’, in JRC2, p. 508.

  114. Anonymous, Jamaica; Who Is to Blame, p. 24.

  115. The Times, editorial, 13 November 1865.

  116. Cited in Bedford Pim, The Negro and Jamaica (London: Trübner & Co., 1866), p. 55.

  117. J. Radcliffe, ‘To the Editor of The Times’, The Times, 18 November 1865.

  118. According to The Times, editorial, 20 November 1865.

  119. Charles Savile Roundell, England and her Subject-Races: With Special Reference to Jamaica (London: Macmillan, 1866), pp. 25–6.

  120. Editorial, The Times, 20 November 1865.

  121. ‘The telegraphic news from Jamaica’, The Times, 4 November 1865.

  122. Pim, The Negro and Jamaica, p. 34.

  123. Ibid., pp. 64–5.

  124. James Anthony Froude, The English in the West Indies; Or, The Bow of Ulysses (London: Longmans, Green, 1888), p. 2
48.

  125. The Eyre Defence and Aid Fund (London: Pelican, 1866), p. 4, available at Rhodes House, Oxford (OC) 200.h.126 (1).

  126. Ibid., pp. 26–31.

  127. John Tyndall, ‘Professor Tyndall’s Reply to the Jamaica Committee’, Appendix B in Hamilton Hume, The Life of Edward John Eyre, Late Governor of Jamaica (London: Richard Bentley, 1867), p. 273.

  128. Ibid., p. 274.

  129. Ibid., p. 275.

  130. Ibid., p. 281.

  131. John Ruskin, ‘A Letter to the “Daily Telegraph” ’, 20 December 1865, in The Works of John Ruskin, vol. 18, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London: George Allen, 1905), pp. 550–1.

  132. John Ruskin, ‘Liberty’, in ibid., pp. 123–4.

  133. From ‘A Petition to the House of Commons’, drawn up by Thomas Carlyle. Cited in Gillian Workman, ‘Thomas Carlyle and the Governor Eyre Controversy: An Account with Some New Material’, Victorian Studies 18: 1 (1 September 1974), p. 99.

  134. Thomas Carlyle, ‘Shooting Niagara, and After?’, in Works of Thomas Carlyle, vol. 30 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1869), p. 12.

  135. Harrison, Jamaica Papers No. V, p. 39.

  136. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, p. 274.

  137. Semmel, Governor Eyre Controversy, p. 64.

  138. Dickens, ‘Letter to William de Cerjat, 30 November 1865’, p. 397.

  139. ‘Gordon meant only to agitate, as men do here with us, and as men must ever be allowed to do in every free country; but he was unwise in his estimate of the materials with which he had to deal’, wrote the barrister B. T. Williams. B. T. Williams, The Case of George William Gordon, with Preliminary Observations on the Jamaica Riot of October 11th, 1865 (London: Butterworths, 1866), p. 58.

  140. ‘Statement of the Jamaica Committee’, in Jamaica Committee No. III: Statement of the Jamaica Committee and Other Documents (London: Jamaica Committee, 1866), p. 3. Also included as Appendix E, ‘Jamaica Committee: Public Documents’, in John Stuart Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 21, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984).

  141. John Stuart Mill, Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger (London: Routledge, 1981), p. 281.

  142. JC1, p. 17.

  143. JC1, p. 10.

  144. Ibid.

  145. ‘Statement of the Jamaica Committee’, in Jamaica Committee No. III, Statement of the Jamaica Committee and other Documents, p. 7.

  146. ‘The Jamaica Committee’, in JC1, p. 68.

  147. Northumbrian, ‘The Negro Revolt in Jamaica’, Reynolds Newspaper (hereafter RN), 12 November 1865.

  148. Northumbrian, ‘The British Atrocities in Jamaica’, RN, 26 November 1865.

  149. Ibid.

  150. ‘The Blood-Thirsty Butcheries in Jamaica’, RN, 3 December 1865.

  151. Ibid.

  152. Ibid., my emphasis.

  153. Ibid.

  154. ‘Reported Negro Insurrection in Jamaica’, RN, 12 November 1865.

  155. Northumbrian, ‘Jamaica and Its Tyrants’, RN, 24 December 1865.

  156. Ibid.

  157. Ibid.

  158. Ibid.

  159. ‘Indignation Meeting on the Eyre Southampton Banquet’, RN, 2 September 1866.

  160. Ibid.

  161. ‘Ex-governor Eyre at Southampton’, RN, 26 August 1866.

  162. Northumbrian, ‘The Negro Revolt in Jamaica’, RN, 12 November 1865.

  163. ‘Indignation Meeting’.

  164. Ibid.

  165. E. S. Beesly, ‘Professor Beesly on the Trial of Mr Eyre’, RN, 4 November 1866.

  166. Ibid.

  167. Ibid.

  168. Ibid.

  169. Ibid.

  170. E. S. Beesly, ‘Military Atrocities in Jamaica’, Bee-Hive, 25 November 1865.

  171. Ibid.

  172. Ibid.

  173. Ibid.

  174. Ibid

  175. E. S. Beesly, ‘The Trial of Mr. Eyre’, Bee-Hive, 16 August 1866.

  176. Plain Dealer, ‘The Working Men of Jamaica’, Bee-Hive, 16 December 1865.

  177. Plain Dealer, ‘The Next House on Fire’, Bee-Hive, 1 September 1866.

  178. Ibid.

  179. Ibid.

  180. Ibid.

  181. Plain Dealer, ‘The Threefold Adversaries of the People’, Bee-Hive, 15 September 1866.

  182. Plain Dealer, ‘Next House on Fire’.

  183. Ibid.

  184. Ibid.

  185. Ibid.

  186. Goldwin Smith, ‘Public Liberty’, Bee-Hive, 8 September 1866.

  187. Ibid.

  188. Harrison, Jamaica Papers No. V, pp. 37, 4.

  189. Ibid., p. 38.

  190. Ibid., p. 39.

  191. Ibid., p. 23.

  192. Ibid., p. 38.

  193. Ibid., p. 41.

  194. Ibid., p. 38.

  195. Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 154.

  196. Ibid., p. 151.

  197. HC Deb 31 July 1866, vol. 184, c. 1800.

  198. Ibid.

  199. Cited in Pitts, Turn to Empire, p. 158.

  200. Ibid.

  201. Ibid., p. 160.

  202. Semmel, Governor Eyre Controversy, p. 61.

  203. Goldwin Smith, Reminiscences, ed. Arnold Haultain (New York, Macmillan, 1910), p. 358.

  204. Ibid.

  205. J. M. Ludlow, Jamaica Papers No. IV: A Quarter Century of Jamaica Legislation (London: Jamaica Committee, 1866), p. 1.

  206. Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1903), p. 407.

  207. Ibid.

  3. The Accidental Anticolonialist

  1. I have modernized the English spelling to ‘Urabi’, which is phonetically closer to the Arabic pronunciation; Victorian writers typically used ‘Araby’ or ‘Arabi’.

  2. Cited in John Marlowe, Anglo-Egyptian Relations, 1800–1953 (London: Cresset, 1954), p. 118.

  3. Wilfred [sic] S. Blunt, The Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (Dublin: Nonsuch Publishing, 2007), p. 196.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. The term is Nicholas Owen’s.

  8. The term ‘contact zone’ refers to ‘the space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality and intractable conflict’. See Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 6.

  9. Ibid., p. 7.

  10. By Urabi’s own account, he had given the canal engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had pleaded with him, his personal assurance that he would respect the canal’s neutrality. The British forces dispensed with these scruples, claiming that Urabi was planning to attack it. See A. M. Broadley, How We Defended Arábi and His Friends: A Story of Egypt and the Egyptians, illustrated by Frederick Villiers (London: Chapman & Hall, 1884), pp. 135–6.

  11. The list of charges against Urabi is cited in ibid., p. 51.

  12. Newsinger notes that ‘Gladstone benefitted financially from the invasion of Egypt’. John Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire (London: Bookmarks, 2013), p. 104.

  13. The Times described Urabi thus: ‘all kinds of projects are attributed to him, and public opinion invests him with an unnatural kind of importance. English members of Parliament interview him as a political notoriety, distinguished Orientalists make him an object of their study, Mahomedans go so far as to endow him with sacred descent’. ‘Egypt: From Our Correspondent’, 30 December 1881, p. 6. A few weeks later it would downgrade him to ‘nothing more than a colonel of a regiment who has twice broken through all the rules of military discipline in the most flagrant manner’. ‘Egypt’, 14 January 1882, p. 8.

  14. For a useful fuller discussion, see
Marlowe, Anglo-Egyptian Relations.

  15. Juan Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt’s ‘Urabi Movement’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 45.

  16. Gregory Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire 1850–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 37.

  17. Edward Walter Hamilton, cited in ibid. Malet himself would note that he had found it useful to deploy Blunt on missions of mediation.

  18. Blunt, Secret History, pp. 183–4. Despite the obvious conflict of interest, British officials in Egypt like Auckland Colvin, the financial controller, doubled as correspondents to The Times and the Pall Mall Gazette – in a capacity we might today conceive of as that of an ‘embedded’ journalist, in similar contexts.

  19. Claeys, Imperial Sceptics, p. 38.

  20. See Michael D. Berdine, The Accidental Tourist: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, and the British Invasion of Egypt in 1882 (New York/London: Routledge, 2005), p. xviii. Blunt gives this description of Gladstone in Secret History, p. 52. Blunt briefly joined the Liberal Party, running unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate.

  21. For a lavishly illustrated account of the Blunts’ journeys, drawing extensively on Lady Anne’s journals, though with no interest in their political dimensions, see Richard Trench, Arabian Travellers (London: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 164–87.

  22. Lady Anne Blunt, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (London: J. Murray, 1879); and Lady Anne Blunt, A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race: A Visit to the Court of the Arab Emir and ‘Our Persian Campaign’ (London: Cass, 1968 [1881]). For a useful scholarly engagement with this work, see Chapter 5 of Ali Behdad, Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution (Durham, NC/London: Duke University Press, 1994). Behdad notes that Wilfrid’s authority over his wife also gave the ‘discursive authority’ of the male orientalist to her work. See also Lady Anne Blunt, Journals and Correspondence 1878–1917, ed. Rosemary Archer and James Fleming (Cheltenham: Alexander Heriot, 1986).

  23. Dane Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 230.

  24. Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 26.

  25. Ibid., p. 28.

  26. Wilfrid S. Blunt, ‘The Thoroughbred Horse – English and Arabian’, Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review, September 1880.