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Title: Captives : The story of Britain's pursuit of empire and how its soldiers and civilians were held captive by the dream of global supremacy by Linda Colley ISBN: 0-375-42152-1 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (4 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Publishing Agendas?
Comment: Colley takes what at first seems an interesting subject that fashionably appears to be "previously uncovered" or left "at the margins" of contemporary revisionist imperial historiography. She is a genuine historian with a legitimate interest and professional weight in the discipline. But if she claims to be at odds with or neutral when it comes to the contemporary political context and agendas in which her argument to look at what will always be interpreted as "white slavery", she is vastly naive. She most certainly is in danger of being complicit with empire revisionists only too happy to make the claim that "ours wasn't all that bad". Edward Said mentioned this in his review of Catherine Hall's "Civilising Subjects" in the London Review of Books just months before he past away.
Furthermore, the decision of the publishers to publish the paperback edition of "Captives" with a cover that is almost the spitting image of Routledge's new edition of Paul Gilroy's "There Ain't no Black in the Union Jack" is just baffling. Somebody knows what they're doing and I don't like it.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Cost of Empire
Comment: Colley makes it easy to understand why English is the world standard language today: a small population could only control as much as it did by co-opting vast numbers of people and this meant expending captives at a fairly high rate.
Their story is the story of the Empire at its bleeding edge.
Using captives to illuminate imperial expansion is a novel idea and well done.
Rating: 4
Summary: If you know nothing about the British Empire...
Comment: ...this would be a good book. But if you know more this book will be slightly disappointing. Welcome to Linda Colley's new book about the British Empire which looks at it through the unusual prism of captive narratives. Colley's new book is oddly similar to her last book, "Britons", having approximately the same number of pages (c.380), the same number of illustrations (c.75-80), and the same number of notes. Colley's book is part of a particular British history genre. Following in the path of Simon Schama's "Citizens," these books are often lavishly illustrated and rely less on systematic research than amusing and telling anecdotes. Although the authors often have strong opinions, their interest lies less in their originality than at their ability to bring to the public an element of scholarly research that hitherto been overlooked. Similar authors include Orlando Figes, Niall Ferguson, and, in a pinch, Andrew Roberts.
Colley's book can be divided into three parts. First, she discusses the narratives of Britons captured by the Barbary and Algiers Corsairs in the 17th and 18th centuries. Second, she uses the narratives of those captured by Native Americans to highlight the relationship between the Britons and their American colonies. Thirdly, she looks at those Britons captive in India, either at the hand of rival kingdoms, or as soldiers captive in their own army. Throughout this book, Colley has a sharp turn of phrase ("The thin red [Imperial army] line was more accurately anorexic.) And she has an eye for fascinating detail. We learn that in the 1820s, two out of every five soldiers in Bermuda were whipped, and we are told about a particularly horrifying one in which the victim was whipped to death such that his back was "as black as a new hat." We learn that Irish soldiers in the 1680s in Algiers spoke in Gaelic to each other so that the English Protestants helping the besieging Moroccans wouldn't understand. We learn that not only did the British have campaigns for the benefit of the French prisoners they caught during the Seven years War, but the French held similar campaigns for the British prisoners they caught. We also get a sense of the continual expansion of the Empire. In the relatively quiet decade of the 1840s alone, Great Britain gobbled up New Zealand, Natal, the Punjab, and Hong Kong among other places.
Colley has two messages from her captivity narratives. First, there is the constant ambiguity of response. The British often could not help admitting the civilization of the Ottomans, the courage of the native Americans, and the resourcefulness of their Indian rivals. Many Britons admitted even more, and many crossed over to the other side, although the attempt to do so had their own difficulties and ambiguities. Colley constantly, indeed somewhat repetitively, argues that there was no monolithic racism. Secondly, she points out the constant vulnerabilities of the empire. Imperial overstretch was always a problem. Consider the example of the Barbary captives. Why would the British spend decades paying ransom for thousands of captives? The answer is that the Mediterranean was vital for British ambitions, and since the Spanish were not likely to subsidize their hold on Gibraltir, Muslim trade was vital for British provisions, and for the British hold on it. Similarly, British control of India required a tactful attitude towards its Native sepoys.
Much of this is interesting, and the chapter on British soldiers in India is very informative. But I have a number of reservations. (1) The constant use of illustrations shows a weakness in comparison with "Britons." There, Colley's discussion of national iconography was acute and informative. Here the illustrations are much less so. (2) Colley's arguments about racism, like those of her husband David Cannadine in "Ornamentalism," are based on a straw man. "There are those who argue, with the utmost sincerity, that were the British to remind themselves of their empire it would only further incite the racism inextinguishably associated with it." (376) Who are those people precisely? Post-colonial scholars, such as Barbara Fields, or Theodore Allen or David Roediger and others are well aware that racism has a history, and is not an invariable constant. David Brion Davis pointed out in the sixties that 18th century writers agreed that Africans did not live in a state of simple savagery. Yet Colley quotes none of these writers. (3) Colley's chapter on the American revolution is based on limited research. Allen Kulikoff is much more interesting on the viciousness of the war, and Colley does not even mention Bernard Bailyn, Edward Countryman, J.C.D. Clark, Gordon Wood and other scholars. (4) Finally, the constant emphasis on ambiguity and nuance tends to blur the fact that many indigenous populations were defeated, devastated, and in the case of Newfoundland and Tasmania, exterminated. Many of the subjects of the Ottoman and Mughal empires would fall under British rule. Some discussion of whether this was a good thing or a bad thing would be in order. And Empire and imperialist ideology did not only affect the Empire's subjects and citizens. Conquering the world would inspire other countries: Hitler was an admirer of the British empire.
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Title: Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power by Niall Ferguson ISBN: 0465023282 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 by Linda Colley ISBN: 0300059256 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1994 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: The British Atlantic World 1500-1800 by David Armitage, Michael J. Braddick ISBN: 0333963415 Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Pub. Date: 09 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Ideological Origins of the British Empire by David Armitage ISBN: 0521789788 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 04 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The Many-Headed Hydra : The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh, Marcus Rediker ISBN: 0807050075 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 16 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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