Anxieties, Fear and Panic in Colonial Settings: Empires on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies)

This book argues that the history of colonial empires has been shaped to a considerable extent by negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and embarrassment as well as by the regular occurrence of panics. The case studies it assembles examine the various ways in which panics and anxieties were generated in imperial situations and how they shook up the dynamics between seemingly all-powerful colonizers and the apparently defenceless colonized. Drawing from examples of the British, Dutch and German colonial experience, the volume sketches out some of the main areas (such as disease, native 'savagery' or sexual transgression) that generated panics or created anxieties in colonial settings and analyses the most common varieties of practical, discursive and epistemic strategies adopted by the colonisers to curb the perceived threats. Harald Fischer-Tinéis Professor of Modern Global History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zürich), Switzerland. Previous to his appointment in Zurich he taught at Jacobs University, Bremen, Humboldt-University, Berlin and the University of Heidelberg. He has published extensively on South Asian colonial history, the history of the British Empire and global history. His most recent monograph is the biography of an Indian revolutionary in European exile: Shyamji Krishnavarma: Sanskrit, Sociology and Anti-Imperialism(2014) Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction: Empires and Emotions....Pages 1-23 Front Matter....Pages 25-25 Minds in Crisis: Medico-moral Theories of Disorder in the Late Colonial World....Pages 27-47 The Poison Panics of British India....Pages 49-71 The Settler’s Demise: Decolonization and Mental Breakdown in 1950s Kenya....Pages 73-96 Front Matter....Pages 97-97 Mass-Mediated Panic in the British Empire? Shyamji Krishnavarma’s ‘Scientific Terrorism’ and the ‘London Outrage’, 1909....Pages 99-134 The Art of Panicking Quietly: British Expatriate Responses to ‘Terrorist Outrages’ in India, 1912–33....Pages 135-167 Mirrors of Violence: Inter-racial Sex, Colonial Anxieties and Disciplining the Body of the Indian Soldier During the First World War....Pages 169-197 Front Matter....Pages 199-199 Colonial Panics Big and Small in the British Empire (1865–1907)....Pages 201-224 Imperial Fears and Transnational Policing in Europe: The ‘German Problem’ and the British and French Surveillance of Anti-colonialists in Exile, 1904–1939....Pages 225-257 Repertoires of European Panic and Indigenous Recaptures in Late Colonial Indonesia....Pages 259-277 ‘The Swiss of All People!’ Politics of Embarrassment and Dutch Imperialism around 1900....Pages 279-303 Front Matter....Pages 305-305 Arrested Circulation: Catholic Missionaries, Anthropological Knowledge and the Politics of Cultural Difference in Imperial Germany, 1880–1914....Pages 307-344 ‘The Strangest Problem’: Daniel Wilberforce, the Human Leopards Panic and the Special Court in Sierra Leone....Pages 345-368 Critical Mass: Colonial Crowds and Contagious Panics in 1890s Hong Kong and Bombay....Pages 369-391 Back Matter....Pages 393-404 This book argues that the history of colonial empires has been shaped to a considerable extent by negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and embarrassment as well as by the regular occurrence of panics. The case studies it assembles examine the various ways in which panics and anxieties were generated in imperial situations and how they shook up the dynamics between seemingly all-powerful colonizers and the apparently defenceless colonized. Drawing from examples of the British, Dutch and German colonial experience, the volume sketches out some of the main areas (such as disease, native 'savagery' or sexual transgression) that generated panics or created anxieties in colonial settings and analyses the most common varieties of practical, discursive and epistemic strategies adopted by the colonisers to curb the perceived threats. Harald Fischer-Tinéis Professor of Modern Global History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zürich), Switzerland. Previous to his appointment in Zurich he taught at Jacobs University, Bremen, Humboldt-University, Berlin and the University of Heidelberg. He has published extensively on South Asian colonial history, the history of the British Empire and global history. His most recent monograph is the biography of an Indian revolutionary in European exile: Shyamji Krishnavarma: Sanskrit, Sociology and Anti-Imperialism(2014) This book argues that the history of colonial empires has been shaped to a considerable extent by negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and embarrassment as well as by the regular occurrence of panics. The case studies it assembles examine the various ways in which panics and anxieties were generated in imperial situations and how they shook up the dynamics between seemingly all-powerful colonizers and the apparently defenceless colonized. Drawing from examples of the British, Dutch and German colonial experience, the volume sketches out some of the main areas (such as disease, native ђب́savagerуђة́ or sexual transgression) that generated panics or created anxieties in colonial settings and analyses the most common varieties of practical, discursive and epistemic strategies adopted by the colonisers to curb the perceived threats This title argues that the history of colonial empires has been shaped to a considerable extent by negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and embarrassment as well as by the regular occurrence of panics. The case studies it assembles examine the various ways in which panics and anxieties were generated in imperial situations and how they shook up the dynamics between seemingly all-powerful colonizers and the apparently defenceless colonized Harald Fischer-tiné, Editor. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.