Disrupting the British World 1600-1980

From South Africa, Sierra Leone and Mauritius, to Kenya, America, Cyprus and New Zealand, this book is a global sweep of resistance in the British Empire. It is also the third volume of Richard Brown's epic 'Rebellions Quartet'. This volume explores a diverse range of anti-colonial resistance within the British Empire from a broader chronological and geographical perspective using examples from the seventeenth through to the twentieth century. 'Rebellion' is seen as a broad concept encompassing resistance to the authorities as well as direct action. Rebellions include those of slaves, convicts, indentured workers, and indigenous peoples, rebellions caused by taxation, millenarianism, and nationalism; and the eminently 'British coup' in New South Wales, Australia, in 1808, when Governor William Bligh (he of the mutiny on the HMS Bounty) was removed from power by military and settler action. The book concludes by drawing together the differing modes of colonial resistance and rebellion, and how the institutional structures, motives and opportunities, and the relationships between colonists and colonised created the modern world we know today. The opening chapter examines the development and nature of Britain's burgeoning Empire from its origins in the seventeenth century, how it was peopled and governed. Chapter 2 considers the ways in which colonial authorities treated native peoples in Virginia, Australia and New Zealand in their quest for greater access to land and why that treatment, whether legalised by treaty or purchase or by brutal expropriation led to resistance and rebellion. Chapter 3 looks at the question of slavery in the British Empire and the nature of slave resistance and rebellion especially, in Africa and the 'middle passage', in the American colonies, the West Indies and in Mauritius. Although the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807 and slaves were emancipated after 1833, the consequences of slavery continued to be a problem and a cause of discontent and disturbance as can be seen in the Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica in 1865. Chapter 4 explores the question of convict labour. New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land were the only parts of the British Empire that was specifically founded as penal colonies, something later extended to Western Australia. Convicts proved to be a volatile group whose ability to resist colonial authorities was considerable and who in 1804 rose in rebellion in NSW. However, transportation of convicts was also an important feature of Britain's Empire before the establishment of NSW in 1788 and was used in other parts of the Empire especially in the nineteenth century. Their use in Singapore and the Andaman Islands is examined. Slaves and convicts satisfied the needs of the Empire for workers but indentured labour enjoyed a revival in the decades after 1834 as Asian and Pacific workers especially migrated to areas where there remained a need for cheap labour. Although there was less resistance among these workers than among slaves and convicts, rebellion was not uncommon when the terms of indentures were breached or workers were unjustifiably exploited. Increasingly, however, there was resistance among white settlers to these 'economic migrants' that led to the emergence of racist policies to restrict both the number of migrants and especially their rights, issues discussed in Chapter 5. Chapters 6-8 examine rebellions that had specific causes (taxation, millenarianism and nationalism) though underlying them all was a growing contempt for colonial rule. The final rebellion, if that is what it was, occurred in NSW in early 1808 when Governor William Bligh was arrested and removed from power by a combination of military and settler action is examined in Chapter 9. The last chapter draws together the discussion of different types of colonial resistance.