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Bringing the Empire Home: Race, Class, and Gender in Britain and Colonial South Africa
How did South Africans become black? How did the idea of blackness influence conceptions of disadvantaged groups in England such as women and the poor, and vice versa?
Bringing the Empire Home tracks colonial images of blackness from South Africa to England and back again to answer questions such as these. Before the mid-1800s, black Africans were considered savage to the extent that their plight mirrored England's internal Others—women, the poor, and the Irish. By the 1900s, England's minority groups were being defined in relation to stereotypes of black South Africans. These stereotypes, in turn, were used to justify both new capitalist class and gender hierarchies in England and the subhuman treatment of blacks in South Africa. Bearing this in mind, Zine Magubane considers how marginalized groups in both countries responded to these racialized representations.
Revealing the often overlooked links among ideologies of race, class, and gender, Bringing the Empire Home demonstrates how much black Africans taught the English about what it meant to be white, poor, or female.
Bringing the Empire Home tracks colonial images of blackness from South Africa to England and back again to answer questions such as these. Before the mid-1800s, black Africans were considered savage to the extent that their plight mirrored England's internal Others—women, the poor, and the Irish. By the 1900s, England's minority groups were being defined in relation to stereotypes of black South Africans. These stereotypes, in turn, were used to justify both new capitalist class and gender hierarchies in England and the subhuman treatment of blacks in South Africa. Bearing this in mind, Zine Magubane considers how marginalized groups in both countries responded to these racialized representations.
Revealing the often overlooked links among ideologies of race, class, and gender, Bringing the Empire Home demonstrates how much black Africans taught the English about what it meant to be white, poor, or female.
216 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 30, 2016
This is an academic and thoroughly researched tome which looks at images of blackness (and whiteness) in the nineteenth century; initially in South Africa and Britain and then in the US. Magubane looks at groups that are marginalised in both societies; her analysis is primarily Marxian, but seen also through the prism of gender. She looks at the nature of the discussions about the colonised world have not been taken into account by economic historians and neither has their effect. Magubane argues that that western modernity is very much based on constructions of racial identity and imperialism.
Magubane states that;
“The premise that guides this book is that figurative language, whatever form it takes and although it is frequently and unthinkingly and imprecisely, matters – particularly when we are speaking about race and blackness.… Figurative language matters precisely because of what it can tell us about the intentions of the individuals who deploy it.”
Magubane also examines “the transformation of commodification into sexuality” arguing that racial and sexual embodiment was central to the construction of capitalist ideology.
There are several trains of thought and arguments which I found particularly interesting. In nineteenth century Britain there were increasingly punitive laws concerning vagrancy and much was written about it. Henry Mayhew when he wrote his report on the London poor he drew a distinction between “Those that will work, those that cannot work and those that will not work”. For his time Mayhew was relatively liberal, but he went on to say this;
“Of the thousand millions of human beings that are said to constitute the population of the entire globe, there are – socially, morally and physically considered – but two distinct and broadly marked races, viz., the wanderers and the settlers – the vagabond and the citizen – the nomadic and the civilised tribes.”
Mayhew specifically uses the examples of the Khoikhoi and San and draws direct comparison with the vagrants and vagabonds he describes at home and Magubane shows how blackness was used and constructed in the minds of the general public in Britain.
Another interesting analysis evolves around the spread of minstrelsy from the US and into South Africa and beyond and the different ways it was conceptualised by both the black and white communities. Magubane also looks at how whiteness was perceived by the black community as well. There are focuses on gender, some very interesting analyses of suffragism, the Boer War and the way pro war and anti-war suffragists constructed their arguments. It’s not an easy read, but is worth the effort.
Magubane states that;
“The premise that guides this book is that figurative language, whatever form it takes and although it is frequently and unthinkingly and imprecisely, matters – particularly when we are speaking about race and blackness.… Figurative language matters precisely because of what it can tell us about the intentions of the individuals who deploy it.”
Magubane also examines “the transformation of commodification into sexuality” arguing that racial and sexual embodiment was central to the construction of capitalist ideology.
There are several trains of thought and arguments which I found particularly interesting. In nineteenth century Britain there were increasingly punitive laws concerning vagrancy and much was written about it. Henry Mayhew when he wrote his report on the London poor he drew a distinction between “Those that will work, those that cannot work and those that will not work”. For his time Mayhew was relatively liberal, but he went on to say this;
“Of the thousand millions of human beings that are said to constitute the population of the entire globe, there are – socially, morally and physically considered – but two distinct and broadly marked races, viz., the wanderers and the settlers – the vagabond and the citizen – the nomadic and the civilised tribes.”
Mayhew specifically uses the examples of the Khoikhoi and San and draws direct comparison with the vagrants and vagabonds he describes at home and Magubane shows how blackness was used and constructed in the minds of the general public in Britain.
Another interesting analysis evolves around the spread of minstrelsy from the US and into South Africa and beyond and the different ways it was conceptualised by both the black and white communities. Magubane also looks at how whiteness was perceived by the black community as well. There are focuses on gender, some very interesting analyses of suffragism, the Boer War and the way pro war and anti-war suffragists constructed their arguments. It’s not an easy read, but is worth the effort.
September 9, 2015
Heavy on the theory, but an interesting look at race and class in the U.S. and South Africa. I enjoyed the emphasis on how South African culture impacted the British empire, rather than the historiographically common story of the empire's impact on its colonies.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews