5. Volume 3: Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980, First edition

My two previous books on colonial rebellions have concentrated on particular developments in Britain, Canada and Australia between the 1830s and 1880s. The final volume in the trilogy explores anti-colonial rebellions within the British Empire in a broader chronological and geographical perspective using examples from the seventeenth through to the twentieth century. In addition, ‘rebellion’ is seen as a broad concept encompassing resistance to the authorities as well as direct action.

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 though underlying them all was a growing contempt for colonial rule. Taxing goods, such as tea or property or land have historically been the ways by which the state raised revenue. Taxation is never popular but its ability to magnify grievances was especially evident in Britain’s colonies where its arbitrary nature and frequent inept implementation led to rebellion and, in the case of the American colonies, to revolution. In the context of the British Empire, taxation was frequently seen by those affected as unfair and exploitative. The consequences of this were seen across the Empire in the American colonies, Australia and in Africa and are examined in greater detail in Chapter 6. The inexorable pressure of Empire and the loss of hope especially among native peoples created an environment where millenarian movements, which sought to transform the world and liberate people from colonial oppression, could thrive. For the Xhosa in South Africa, the Māori and the Metis in Canada, the belief in the imminence of a divine kingdom and the importance of prophets led to resistance to imperial rule and is considered in Chapter 7. The role of nationality and nationalism in challenging the hegemony of colonial power and calls for independence from imperial authority in Cyprus, Kenya and Southern Rhodesia forms the basis of Chapter 8. Ultimately, the most successful form of resistance since it contributed to the collapse of Britain’s imperial ambitions, nationalist movements drew on ethnic or tribal identity and an often imprecise and ambiguous concept of ‘nationhood’. Yet the ‘armed struggle’ often proved far less effective or significant in achieving independence than the subsequent rhetoric and emerging mythologies of liberation movements suggest. Decolonisation was the result less of military resistance than political negotiation between British governments that were prepared to agree to independence and nationalist politicians eager to take the reins of power in post-colonial constitutions.

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. It expressed the Lockean right of resistance to tyrannical authority and was, in many respects, a rebellion within the colony’s governing elite. Its epithet, the ‘Rum’ Rebellion, was not given until almost half a century later but, as historians later argued, it had nothing to do with rum and could hardly be called a rebellion. Unlike the other rebellions explored in this volume, it was neither populist nor violent; it was in essence a very British coup. The last chapter draws together the discussion of different types of colonial resistance and rebellion and provides an explanation of how they can be explained in terms of institutional structures, relationships between colonists and colonised and motives and opportunities and reconsiders the place of ‘borderlands’ in explaining the incidence of resistance and rebellion.

Resistance and Rebellion was published on 18 December 2012 and is also available as a Kindle.