Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867

by Catherine Hall

How did the English get to be English? In Civilising Subjects , Catherine Hall argues that the idea of empire was at the heart of mid-nineteenth-century British self-imagining, with peoples such as the "Aborigines" in Australia and the "negroes" in Jamaica serving as markers of difference separating "civilised" English from "savage" others.

Hall uses the stories of two groups of Englishmen and -women to explore British self-constructions both in the colonies and at home. In Jamaica, a group of Baptist missionaries hoped to make African-Jamaicans into people like themselves, only to be disappointed when the project proved neither simple nor congenial to the black men and women for whom they hoped to fashion new selves. And in Birmingham, abolitionist enthusiasm dominated the city in the 1830s, but by the 1860s, a harsher racial vocabulary reflected a new perception of the nonwhite subjects of empire as different kinds of men from the "manly citizens" of Birmingham.

This absorbing and detailed study of the "racing" of Englishness will be invaluable for students and scholars of imperial and cultural history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, 19th Century, European History

556 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2002

About the author

Catherine Hall is a professor of history at University College, London. She is the editor of Cultures of Empire: A Reader and coauthor of Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780 - 1850 and Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867.

"My research focuses on re-thinking the relation between Britain and its empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I am particularly interested in the ways in which empire impacted upon metropolitan life, how the empire was lived 'at home', and how English identities, both masculine and feminine, were constituted in relation to the multiple 'others' of the empire. ivilising Subjects looks at the process of mutual constitution, both of colonizer and colonized, in England and Jamaica in the period between the 1830s and the 1860s. My recent book, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (2012), focuses on the significance of the Macaulays, father and son, in defining the parameters of nation and empire in the early nineteenth century."

Reviews

[Inna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pretty amazing book about the convoluted history of various struggles for freedom. The author describes the various discourses Englishmen employed in struggle over legality of slavery in Jamaica. She shows that on both sides of the debate there were people who strongly believed in the superiority of the English and in inferiority of the Africans. The main difference was in willingness of these, largely missionaries, who resisted slavery to assume that even inferior people can develop and adopt the culture of their teachers from among the Englishmen. Thus while the claims of these objecting to slavery were adopted by many in England and eventually slavery was indeed made illegal, these who fought against it inevitably were disappointed. The former slaves were not, as thy used to claim, a tabula rasa, they were unwilling to give up their own culture and were less and less willing to tolerate patronage.
In addition, the next generation in England, particularly in Birmingham on which the author focuses, was less interested in discourse of human rights and more interested in discourse of race and of nation. Therefore fighting for the rights of former slaves in an economically deteriorating colony was considerably harder. The old organizations still existed, but their popular support vastly diminished. On the other hand, people were willing to fight for a right to vote and, to some extent, for widening of women's legal rights as well.
Overall, the author did a great job in analyzing the discursive complexities of any struggle for human rights with an emphasis on inevitable limitations on comprehension of what exactly is going on, on all sides.

[Becca w · Rating 4 out of 5]

Done!!! There is a lot of good stuff here but this is like three different books in one. The narrative and research are great but so much of the rich detail is lost unless you can take your sweet ass time to read the whole thing carefully

[Jerra Runnels · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my 700 level women and modern European history course. Hall discusses at length the relationship between England and mainly Jamaica during the 1830s-1860s by taking a close look at slavery and abolition, and the roles between the metropole and the people in Jamaica. She looks at the relationships of Baptist missionaries, planters, slaves, how they all relate to the changing ideology of race among the colonists and the metropole, and how race and gender play a role in it all. It gave the reader an in-depth look at a part of England’s history one usually doesn’t learn about. The differing ideologies of the time were interesting to learn about.

[Wessel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would say that this is a social history of missionaries in and of Britain and empire more then a postcolonial history of Jamaica in the Empire. That is a good thing because apart from the introduction and epilogue, there is very little post-colonial theory and the book is thus a readable account of some of those individual missionaries. My main point of critique, besides that the voices and agency of those other civilizing subjects (ie the black Jamaicans) are shown too little, is that her whole argument is built on some 10 to 15 individuals, all white man, all middle-class and all well-traveled in the Empire. How can these 15 men be representative of the relation between Empire and other British people who did not travel in the Empire and did not attend meetings in societies about the colonies or slavery? Also, how can these 15~ accounts be representative of the influence of Empire on what Britishness is?

Apart from that, I liked the book quite a lot, its informative, well written although a bit long.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I do not agree with the author's feminism or with the idea that "civilising" constitutes hidden racialism, nonetheless, she has done an immense amount of solid research. Her discussions relating to the Birmingham Congregationalists John Angell James and R. W. Dale are very helpful. Interestingly, the author was the daughter of a Baptist manse.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strength = how an individual's assumptions/values change. Weaknesses = not sure if as broadly applicable as she thinks, lots on family, but nothing on love as motivating factor, ideas not variable.