![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Education was a crucial transfer point within modern imperial projects; it was a key domain through which relationships between the state, religious institutions, various agents of reform, and Indigenous, colonised and enslaved peoples were negotiated. Exploring a range of case studies, this article highlights the multiple trajectories of colonial education in the modern British empire and the Pacific region, charting both continuities and moments of change, commonalities and divergences. Particular emphasis is placed on the centrality of evangelicalism in fashioning strong connections between education and social reform, both within the project of empire and in a range of indigenous social reform and anti-colonial movements. Within this context, the article also highlights the strong interplay between education and the construction of cultural difference, including through the changing shape of ethnological and anthropological knowledge. Exploring these questions, it is suggested, opens up fundamental questions about empire, colonialism and modernity itself.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
2 Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
3 Randall Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 33, 74–5, 112, 128; Tony Waters, Max Weber and the Modern Problem of Discipline (Lanham: Hamilton Books, 2018), 36, 48, 74, 94.
4 Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage, 1990); Diane Reay, ed., Bourdieu and Education (London: Routledge, 2019).
5 Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States 1760–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
6 Harold Silver, ‘Knowing and not Knowing in the History of Education’, History of Education 21, no. 1 (1992): 97–108.
7 Deirdre Raftery, ‘Religions and the History of Education: A Historiography’, History of Education 41, no. 1 (2012): 41–56.
8 Rebecca Rogers, ‘Conversations About the Transnational: Reading and Writing the Empire in the History of Education’, in The Transnational in the History of Education, ed. Eckhardt Fuchs and Eugenia Roldán Vera (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 101–24.
9 Parimala V. Rao, ‘Modern Education and the Revolt of 1857 in India’, Paedagogica Historica 52, no. 1–2 (2016): 25–42; Parimala V. Rao, Foundation of Tilak’s Nationalism, Discrimination, Education and Hindutva (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2010); Parimala V. Rao, ‘Women’s Education and the Nationalist Response in Western India: Part I – Basic Education’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 14, no. 2 (2007): 307–16.
10 Ana Isabel Madeira and Luís Grosso Correia, ‘Colonial Education and Anticolonial Struggles’, in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Education ed. John L. Rury and Eileen H. Tamura (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 411–24. On missionary education, African intellectual history and the Négritude movement see Emmanuel Ngara, Ideology & Form in African Poetry: Implications for Communication (London: James Currey, 1990), 23, and Emmanuel Ngara, Art and Ideology in the African Novel: A Study of the Influence of Marxism on African Writing (London: Heinemann, 1985), 30. On Gandhi and missionaries see J. T. F. Jordens, Gandhi’s Religion: A Homespun Shawl (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), and Yasmin Khan, ‘Gandhi’s World’, in The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi ed. Judith M. Brown and Anthony J. Parel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), especially 12–14. For a useful reading of religion, education and politics in colonial India see Hayden J. A. Bellenoit, Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860–1920 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015).
11 Such works include Ruth Watts, ‘Breaking the Bounds of Victorian Imperialism or Extending a Reformed “Paternalism”?’, History of Education 29, no. 5 (2000): 443–56; Tanya Fitzgerald, ‘Categories of Friendship: Mapping Missionary Women’s Educational Networks in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1823–40’, History of Education 32, no. 5 (2003): 513–27; Patricia Pok-kwan Chiu, ‘“A Position of Usefulness”: Gendering History of Girls’ Education in Colonial Hong Kong (1850s–1890s)’, History of Education 37, no. 6 (2008): 789–805; Fiona Leach, ‘Resisting Conformity: Anglican Mission Women and the Schooling of Girls in Early Nineteenth-Century West Africa’, History of Education 41, no. 2 (2012): 133–53; Rebecca Rogers, ‘Teaching Morality and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Algeria: Gender and the Civilising Mission’, History of Education 40, no. 6 (2011): 741–59. Such work should also be read alongside the landmark work of Margaret Jolly, such as ‘“To Save the Girls for Brighter and Better Lives”: Presbyterian Missions and Women in the South of Vanuatu: 1848–1870’, Journal of Pacific History 26, no. 1 (1991): 27–48. Also note the important long-term perspective on indigeneity and education in Kuni Jenkins and Kay Morris Matthews, ‘Knowing their Place: The Political Socialisation of Maori Women in New Zealand through Schooling Policy and Practice, 1867–1969’, Women’s History Review 7, no. 1 (1998): 85–105. An important, more literary approach is suggested by the scholarship of Barnita Bagchi, for example, ‘Tracing Two Generations in Twentieth Century Indian Women’s Education through Analysis of Literary Sources: Selected Writings by Padmini Sengupta’, Women’s History Review 29, no. 3 (2020): 465–79.
12 Tim Allender, Learning Femininity in Colonial India, 1820–1932 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).
13 C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
14 C. A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
15 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
16 C. A. Bayly, Remaking the Modern World 1900–2015: Global Connections and Comparisons (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), 78, 112, 140, 191, 202, 268.
17 Ranginui Walker, Ka whawhai tonu matou: Struggle without End (Auckland: Penguin 1990), 146–7.
18 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998), 13.
19 Ibid., 59.
20 Wananga Capital Establishment Report, WAI (Waitangi Tribunal reports) 718 (Wellington: Waitangi Tribunal, 1999), 7.
21 Paul Christoffel, The Provision of Education Services to Maori in Te Rohe Potae, 1840–2010 (Waitangi Tribunal, 2011), WAI 898, # A27, 3–6.
22 Francis G. Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 27; T. M. Thomas, Indian Educational Reforms in Cultural Perspective (New Delhi: S. Chand, 1970), 87; Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 [1959]), 46, 57; Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 27; Harish Trivedi, Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 63.
23 J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883), 253.
24 Ibid., 251.
25 Percival Spear, ‘Bentinck and Education’, Cambridge Historical Journal 6, no. 1 (1938): 78–101; Elmer H. Cutts, ‘The Background of Macaulay’s Minute’, American Historical Review 58, no. 4 (1953): 824–53; Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India.
26 Martin Moir and Lynn Zastoupil, ‘Introduction’, in The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist–Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843, ed. Martin Moir and Lynn Zastoupil (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), ix.
27 Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 77.
28 Ibid., 77–8.
29 Standish Meacham, Henry Thornton of Clapham, 1760–1815 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 110–1.
30 Charles E. Trevelyan, On the Education of the People of India (London: Longman, 1838), 181.
31 William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (Leicester: Ann Ireland, 1792), 69–70.
32 Hannah More, ‘An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World’, in The Works of Hannah More in Seven Volumes, vol. 5 (New York: Harper, 1835), 226.
33 Ibid., 231.
34 Tony Ballantyne, ‘Empire, Knowledge and Culture: From Proto-Globalization to Modern Globalization’, in Globalization in World History, ed. A. G. Hopkins (London: Pimlico, 2002).
35 Rachel Standfield, Race and Identity in the Tasman World, 1769–1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012).
36 Anna Johnston, The Paper War: Morality, Print Culture, and Power in Colonial New South Wales (Crawley: UWA Publishing, 2011).
37 Sydney Gazette, December 2, 1804.
38 Anette Bremer, ‘Domestic Disclosures: Letters and the Representation of Cross-Cultural Relations in Early Colonial New South Wales’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 28, no. 1–2 (2007): 77–95.
39 Marsden to Commissioner Bigge, December 28, 1819, in Historical Records of New Zealand (Wellington: Government Printer, 1908), vol. 1, 449–50.
40 For example, Samuel Marsden to Ruatara, March 9, 1814, ‘Correspondence 1814–1815’, Samuel Marsden Collected Papers, Hocken Collections, Dunedin, PC-0119.
41 Kendall to CMS, October 19, 1815, ‘General Inwards Letters, February 1813–December 1817,’ Church Missionary Society, Records Relating to the New Zealand Mission, Hocken Collections, Dunedin, MS-0498/002.
42 Kendall to Wood, October 16, 1816, ‘Correspondence March 1816–February 1817’, Samuel Marsden Collected Papers, Hocken Collections, Dunedin PC-0130.
43 Judith Binney, The Legacy of Guilt, 2nd ed. (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2005), 57; Valerie Carson, ‘Submitting to Great Inconveniences: Early Missionary Education for Maori Women and Girls’, in Mission and moko: Aspects of the Work of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, 1814–1882, ed. Robert Glen (Christchurch: Latimer Fellowship, 1992), 62.
44 Carson, ‘Submitting to Great Inconveniences’, 62–4.
45 See Tony Ballantyne, Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Māori, and the Question of the Body (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).
46 Judith Simon, ‘Education Policy Change: Historical Perspectives’, in Politics, Policy, Pedagogy: Education in Aotearoa/New Zealand, ed. James Marshall, Eve Coxon, Kuni Jenkins and Alison Jones (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 2000), 45.
47 ‘Report by Hugh Carleton, Esq., on Native Schools in Auckland’, April 1862, Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1862, E4: Native Schools, Reports of Inspectors, 18.
48 Simon, ‘Education Policy Change’, 48–50; John Barrington, Māori Schools and the Crown 1867–1969 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2008), 15.
49 Simon, ‘Education Policy Change’, 48–50.
50 A report from Pope quoted in ‘Extract from the Thirty-Second Annual Report of the Minister of Education’, Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1909 Session II, E-03, 9.
51 Although Europeans were not precluded from attending native schools. See Barrington, Separate but Equal, 15.
52 See, for example, Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Bhavani Raman, Document Raj: Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial South India (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012).
53 Robert Samuel Maclay, Life Among the Chinese: With Characteristic Sketches and Incidents of Missionary Operations and Prospects in China (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1861).
54 Ryan Dunch, ‘Mission Schools and Modernity’, in Education, Culture, and Identity in Twentieth-Century China, ed. Glen Peterson, Ruth Hayhoe and Yongling Lu (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), 111–13.
55 Ibid., 114–15.
56 Susan Rigdon, ‘National Salvation’, in China’s Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900–1950, ed. Daniel Bays and Ellen Widmer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
57 Jeffrey Cox, Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
58 Ibid., 208–9.
59 Michael Philipp Brunner, Education and Modernity in Colonial Punjab: Khalsa College, the Sikh Tradition and the Webs of Knowledge, 1880–1947 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); also see Tony Ballantyne, Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
60 Peter Henry Buck, The Decline of the Maori Race: The Causes and Remedies (Southbridge: Ellesmere Guardian Office, 1899), 3.
61 John Barrington, ‘Thornton, John’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Te Ara – the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2t42/thornton-john (accessed September 16, 2022).
62 Buck, The Decline of the Maori Race, 3.
63 Ibid., 4.
64 Ibid.
65 Good examples are Hannah More, Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess (London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1805); Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife Comprehending Observations on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals (London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1808).
66 Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 79–81; Tony Ballantyne, ‘Mr Peal’s Archive: Mobility and Exchange in Histories of Empire’, in Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Antounette Burton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 108.
67 Henry Yu, ‘The Cantonese Pacific in the Making of Nations’, in The Relevance of Regions in a Globalised World: Bridging the Social Sciences–Humanities Gap, ed. Galia Press-Barnathan, Ruth Fine and Arie M. Kacowicz (London: Routledge, 2018); Henry Yu, ‘Unbound Space: Migration, Aspiration, and the Making of Time in the Cantonese Pacific’, in Pacific Futures Past and Present, ed. Warwick Anderson, Miranda Johnson and Barbara Brookes (Honolulu: University of Hawaiî Press, 2018), 178–206.
68 McLeod, ‘Educating for “World-Mindedness”: Cosmopolitanism, Localism and Schooling the Adolescent Citizen in Interwar Australia’, Journal of Educational Administration and History 44, no. 4 (2012): 340.
69 Felix Keesing, Education in Pacific Countries: Interpreting a Seminar-Conference of Educators and Social Scientists Conducted by the University of Hawaii and Yale University, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1936 (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), 79.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Tony Ballantyne
Tony Ballantyne is a Professor of History and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, External Engagement, at the University of Otago. He has published widely on empires in modern world history, the cultural history of the British empire in the nineteenth century, and colonialism and its consequences in New Zealand. His most recent monograph is Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Māori and the Question of the Body (Duke University Press and Auckland University Press) and he is co-editor, with Lachy Paterson and Angela Wanhalla, of Indigenous Textual Cultures: Reading and Writing in the Age of Global Empire (also from Duke). He has a long-standing collaboration with Antoinette Burton and their most recent publication is the second, expanded edition of their collection World Histories from Below: Disruption and Dissent, 1750 to the Present (Bloomsbury).