Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Anyone with interest in the British Empire, read it!, 3 Dec 2003
This is an important work reassessing the empire-building of Britain, the identities of ‘Englishness’ and ‘Britishness’ as well as the process of ‘othering’ and the concept of 'Orientalism'. Linda Colley does this by looking at various captives. These ‘captives’ come in many guises - the people treated in this book are mainly Britons (used here as a shorthand to avoid the perennial problem of English/British) captured in various parts of the world; the first part of the book looks at those who were captured in the Mediterranean area by the Barbary corsairs based in North Africa; the second analyses the captives in North America taken by the native Americans, the Revolutionary Americans and other European powers (mainly France); and third points to India. Colley deals with ‘captives in uniform’, British soldiers stationed abroad towards the end of her book.These three theatres of captive narratives shadow the outline of the emergence of the British Empire. Very many people from the Atlantic Isles were captured by various non-Europeans and hence were in a position of vulnerability. There was never and could not be a binary difference between the superior, colonising and aggressive imperialists on one hand and the inferior, battered and subjugated ‘other’ on the other. One practical problem limited England/Britain – its population, or lack of it. Until the Malthusian idea became popular, and even after it, the British Empire simply did not have enough manpower to maintain dominance without assistance or at least acquiescence of the (subjugated) non-Europeans. The possibility that Britons could become captives of non-Europeans, different in religion and race, remained all the time. While on occasions, stark ‘othering’ took place by dehumanising the opponents, they tended to be exceptions rather than the norm. Furthermore, since the British were not a homogenous group and many of the rank and file soldiers manning the frontiers of the Empire were of the poorer sorts at home, they were different from those who were leading them either militarily or politicians deciding their fates. They were captives of their own state. Colley’s main sources are narratives written by or ghost-written for the British captives. Of course, it is asking too much but it would have been hugely interesting to know about the captives from the other side to compare their attitudes so that the British experiences can be placed within a broader context. There is always a grey zone as regards how much an historian can generalise from the particular. Colley is absolutely right to stress that the teleological picture of ever-ascendant British Empire needs correcting in view of her research, however there seems to be a slight void: how do you explain the nascent British Empire? It is legitimate to seek contemporary parallels (especially with the US in discussing empires) as Colley does, but on the whole they remain valiant attempts rather than something concrete. Or put it another way, it is thought-provoking but doubts linger. This reviewer has a few reservations about her prose, even though admittedly it is largely a matter of personal taste. In general, it is extremely readable but sometimes it becomes excessively so and even ‘chatty’. It may well be true that one thing, be it a fact or an argument, has be repeated at least three times for it to be registered by the brain, yet the recurrent themes pop up every so often and are unnecessarily repetitive. Furthermore, uses of italics, of hyphens for – emphasis/repetition – and the word ‘emphatically’ are slightly overdone. If anything it is a shame since Colley writes very lucidly and clearly thus requires no such literary and optical devices to get her message across. Notwithstanding points mentioned above, this book is an incisive and insightful work and questions some of the widely and deeply-held ideas and concepts. Thus it should be a required reading for those interested in the British Empire and indeed deserves to find an even larger and broader readership.
|
|
|
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Captivating Colley, 18 Dec 2002
I love books that get you to reexamine your attitudes or to at least look at something familiar in a new way- and not just for the sake of "novelty", but because the author has something important to say. "Captives" is such a book. What more can be said about the British Empire? The answer turns out to be lots more! Ms. Colley takes a look at four areas: North Africa, North America, India and Afghanistan and examines the "captivity experiences" of white Britishers...soldiers, East India Company representatives and their families, merchant seamen, etc. This alone would be fascinating, because it is a subject that is rarely dealt with. But in addition to the "human interest/storytelling" aspects of the book Ms. Colley has some serious, scholarly points to make. One is that, for the period covered in this book, it was certainly never clear, not even to the British, that there was going to be a British Empire. Britain was geographically small, had a small population and therefore a small army, and technology wasn't yet so far advanced that the British could feel confident that their weapons were automatically going to win battles or intimidate people. Another point the author makes is that due to consistent manpower shortages, the British could never just rely on their own forces. They had to rely on local, native troops. This was most obviously true in India, but it was also true in North America. The British had no choice except to use Native Americans against the French during the Seven Year's War and Native Americans and Blacks against the "rebels" during the Revolutionary War. Since the British needed these "outside" forces it influenced the way these "outsiders" were perceived and treated. For example, while Americans of European ancestry would caricaturize Native Americans as "savages", the British, in paintings of the period, would tend to show Native Americans in a way which, they felt, made them look "civilized" i.e.- in European dress or they would give them somewhat European features or mannerisms. Politically speaking, the British had to be careful not to antagonize or alienate these "mercenary" forces. They needed them too much. So, for example, if Native American forces killed prisoners who had surrendered or scalped civilians, the British sometimes just had to look the other way. In India, the absolute necessity to rely on native Indian troops influenced the way the British saw these troops. Ms. Colley cites quotations showing the sepoys were seen to be abstemious, intelligent and reliable, while the common soldier from Britain was seen to be a drunken, thieving brute who had to be kept in line with the lash. This punishment was much more likely to be used on the soldier from Britain, by the way. If the sepoys mutineed or deserted, that would result in the loss of about 85% of the British forces! As far as North Africa went, since they needed to hold onto Gibraltar and Minorca, the British had to "cut a deal" with the Barbary states and pay protection money. Once again, they weren't powerful enough to do otherwise. In Afghanistan, in the 1840's, the British would have to make alliances with certain warlords in order to try to defeat other warlords. The Royal Navy couldn't help you in a landlocked country! And, in a parallel with the present, Ms. Colley shows that it's a lot easier to invade Afghanistan than it is to accomplish what you want to accomplish and to get out. As you can see by what I've been writing, Ms. Colley doesn't just deal with the actual, physical nature of captivity. (She does deal with that, in detail, also. There are numerous "captivity stories" based on published and unpublished diaries and manuscripts.) Much of the restraint is political (what policies are necessary and what actions are acceptable) or intellectual/emotional (needing "outsiders" affects the way you think or feel about them). Ms. Colley is far too intelligent and too good a scholar to ever present any simplistic conclusions about any of this material. For even though many people could look on Native Americans, Blacks and sepoys, etc. in a favorable light, there were many people in Britain (both civilians and in the military) who could look down on those they considered to be their "inferiors". Hence, while during treaty negotiations at the end of the American Revolution British representatives would make sure to bend over backwards to protect the rights of loyalists, Blacks and Native Americans would be ignored. And condescending, racist attitudes would certainly contribute to the Indian Mutiny of 1857. And while some physical captives would "go native"- adopt native dress and learn native language, convert to Islam, take a native spouse, etc., others would never look on their captors, even after long periods of time and even if treated well, as anything other than "barbarians". As Ms. Colley points out, history is never just about the past. The lessons and nuances of the "captivity experiences" of 200-300 years ago are still being learnt and felt today. There are still plenty of examples of racism (a worldwide phenomenon...obviously not confined to Britain) but Ms. Colley also notes that Britain has the highest instance of interracial marriage in the world. So, perhaps we can all hope that familiarity sometimes breeds something much more positive than contempt.
|
|
|
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Airbrushed from history . . . ", 25 Aug 2004
Once, i hoped for a truly comprehensive survey of the British Empire and its global impact. This excellent book is almost the response i wished for. Colley examines "a quarter of a millennium" in an overview of three stages of Britain's expansionist adventure. From the start, she reminds us, Britain's miniscule population and limited resources made it an unlikely candidate for global expansion. Contending with nations better prepared or more experienced in empire-building, the founding of the British Empire was typified by false starts and unlikely events. In using the accounts of prisoners - kidnappees, prisoners of war or other captives, Colley is able to point out how both public views and policies changed during the growth of the Empire. Most important, she argues, is the need to dispel notions that the empire was monolithic in concept or development.Clearly organised and written with clarity and intensity, Colley opens her study with an example of glaring failure. How many remember Britain's occupation of Tangier on the west coast of Africa? The city was part of a queen's dowry in 1661, giving Britain a control point over the Mediterranean trade routes [Gibraltar came under British power in 1701]. With Spain, France and Italy, not to mention the Dutch, all expanding their sea-going commerce, Tangier was a key location. The British poured immense sums into Tangier to create a fortified city, but it was lost less than a generation later. Colley explains how relations with the "Barbary" states of North Africa drove British foreign policy for many years. Those relations included ongoing efforts to redeem captives taken by corsairs, swift vessels that even raided coastal areas of the British Isles. Britain's next expansionist efforts were even less calculated - the settlement of North America. While religious and other dissident groups founded communities along the eastern shores of North America, Britain's policy toward them remained ambivalent. Unlike the mostly military Mediterranean and Indian ventures, Colley says, North America focussed on settlements. When captives were taken, they might thus be whole families, with a wide age range and including more women that would be the case elsewhere. Accounts of captivity, therefore, were different from Tangier. Men taken by the Barbary corsairs might adopt local dress, customs, language, even Islam. This blurred the image of Muslims as the Other - an identifiable enemy figure. In North America, as colonies expanded, the Native Americans became more demonised in tales of warfare and capture. Even so, she notes, the North American enterprise was "poly-ethnic", with many nationalities arriving and the use of favoured Native American tribes as allies. Britain's Indian incursions, Colley points out, added new dimensions to imperial imagery. Severe defeats and sepoy [Indians acting for British rulers] uprisings forced reflection on colonial costs and eroded prestige. Captivity accounts expanded knowledge of the culture of the subcontinent, demonstrating how many aspects of Indian life might be adopted - even brought home to Britain. Yet, captive accounts are generally sparse or non-existent. The Mysore wars created a population of captive soldiers held in recessed dungeons, but not one account of their ordeal reached print in their lifetimes. By the era of Victorian Britain, tales of captive life were nearly "airbrushed from history". Given the location of some of her areas of study force comparisons to modern situations. Afghanistan has been the subject of outsider invasion more than once. Each time, while declaring they intended "no war on the Afghan people", people died as the intruders sought to install unpopular leaders on them. Inevitably, the result was embarrassment for the invaders and incarceration of their troops and civilians. Thus, even at the end of the period of Colley's study, she notes that the British Empire was still being consolidated haltingly. Uniformity, never a well-defined condition of the enterprise, remained lacking. Defeats and losses through captivity brought criticism and demands for redemption of captives. It failed to halt the expansionist nature of British policy, however. Colley's book opens a new phase in historiography. Her eloquent style keeps this book alive for the reader at all times. Those thinking history can only be "dry" when written by an academic are in for a pleasant shock in picking up this book. Well illustrated and containing a rich bibliography, students of empire will welcome this book on their shelves. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Linda Colley
by L Colley
by David Cannadine
by Edward W. Said
See all Product Description
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home