Opposition to British Rule
Key issue(s)
Rise of nationalism: India and Gandhi, Kenya and Kenyatta, Nkrumah and Ghana, and Pan-Africanism
Rise of nationalism: India and Gandhi, Kenya and Kenyatta, Nkrumah and Ghana, and Pan-Africanism
In all these cases, the intersection between imperial policy and local actors is very important to highlight, as well as the degree to which that also produced internal civil struggle as the definitions of what a post colonial society should look like were played out.
Internet Resources
Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah
Kenya and Kenyatta
See Depth study: Kenya
African History
Pan Africanism
Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah
- Source about Kwame Nkrumah.
- The end of British rule in Ghana, a case study from the National Archives Educational portal.
Kenya and Kenyatta
See Depth study: Kenya
African History
- African and African American Studies Research Guide (Northeastern University) for general advice on teaching about African history.
- General resources on Africa: colonialism and independence.
- Online debate on how Africans resist colonial rule.
- Teaching kit for African colonialism (Boston University).
Pan Africanism
- Brief background about development of a Pan African vision.
- About the Pan African Congresses up to 1945.
- A good exhibition about Pan-Africanism with source materials.
- Henry Sylvester-Williams
- W. E. B. DuBois: resources site
- Marcus Garvey: resources site
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Ways of seeing Gandhi: South Asian historiography There has been much debate amongst historians of South Asia about the way in which we should understand the principal factors driving social and political change in this region and how we should see it in relation to the rest of the world. Nationalist Nationalist histories of India put a great deal of emphasis on the ‘great men’ of the nationalist movement. This approach has been criticised by those who argue that it presents Gandhi and Nehru as all-powerful individuals, who reached out to and mobilised a passive and unthinking population. These histories tend to see Indian independence as a battle between British rule and a clear-cut, well defined nation-in-waiting. Marxist These histories have much in common with nationalist historiographies in that they see history as a process driven by clearly defined interest groups and socio-economic forces – class conflict is the main cause of historical change. Like the older nationalist historians, Marxist historians of India have tended to see the prelude to India’s independence as a battle between imperialism and nationalism, attributing all of India’s social, political and economic problems to imperialism and seeing nationalism as the absolute antithesis of this. The oppression of imperialism created a national ‘consciousness’ amongst Indians and the conflict between these ideologies or political systems is what drove change in the interwar period. ‘The Cambridge school’ In the late 1960s, Anil Seal presented a radical new understanding of modern Indian history that influenced the work of many prominent scholars in this period. Seal argued that the real mechanism driving Indian history was not the emergence of a ‘nation in waiting’ or conflict between the bourgeois elites and the masses, but competition between Indian elites themselves, as a result of colonial politics. Seal does not believe that ideas or ideology played any role in shaping Indian politics, which was formed by realpolitik-style competition between Indians. ‘Indian nationalism’, in this argument, was simply the product or the weapon of a tiny Indian elite that sought to take over power from a tiny elite of British officials in India. Subaltern Studies This approach to looking at Indian history grew out of a critique of the Cambridge School and Marxist historiography. Led by Ranajit Guha, the Subaltern Studies collective argued that Seal and the Cambridge School were wrong to dismiss the power of ideology in Indian politics, but also rejected Marxist/nationalist historians’ narrative of the clear opposition between two well defined power structures: imperialism and nationalism. Focusing on the mobilisation of peasant communities in the interwar period, the Subaltern Studies collective wanted to study the dynamic between elite leaders and non-elite participants in the nationalist movement. The Subaltern Studies collective argued that political authority and leadership did not simply come from the top down (as it was seen in the ‘great man’ theory and the Cambridge School argument). Gandhi and Nehru could issue orders and manifestos, but people would respond to them according to their own interests and worldviews. These historians saw nationalist politics as something that was not simply created by elites and passed down to the masses, but as something that really began with the masses. Gandhi influenced and shaped the actions of the peasants, but the peasants also shaped and influenced Gandhi’s ‘message’ and, in turn, his ability to present himself as a powerful political leader to the British and wider world. More discussions on different views in South Asian History in Depth Study: British India |
Internet Resources India and Gandhi Very good and comprehensive sources on Gandhi
Other primary materials on Indian anti-colonial nationalism
Apatani crowd and man with binoculars, 1944. PP MS 19/6/APA/0020 (SOAS manuscript number). Photograph: Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf. © Nicholas Haimendorf.
Internet Resources Key texts of different views on Indian nationalism Nationalist Jawaharlal Nehru, The discovery of India (1946). B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, History of the Indian National Congress, 2 vols. (Delhi, 1969). Marxist Bipan Chandra, Indian national movement: the long-term dynamics (Delhi, 1988), ch. 1-5. A.R. Desai, Social background of Indian nationalism (Bombay, 1954). ‘The Cambridge school’ John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal (eds.) Locality, province and nation: essays in India politics 1870-1940, (Cambridge, 1973). Judith Brown, Gandhi’s rise to power: Indian politics 1915-1922, (Cambridge, 1972). Subaltern Studies Shahid Amin, ‘Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-2’ in R. Guha (ed.) Subaltern Studies III, (Delhi, 1984) p. 1-55. |
