Purba Hossain (University of York)

“Calcutta in the Eyes of Indentured Migrants, c.1837-1920”

Between 1837 and 1920, more than a million Indian labourers migrated to British plantation colonies in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. Destined to sugar plantations as contractual workers, many of these indentured Indians passed through the city of Calcutta – the capital of British India and a major port in the subcontinent. This paper investigates how indentured migrants moving through Calcutta experienced, inhabited and remembered the city. In the migrant’s universe, Calcutta was at once the site of work, of separation and of return; a space of opportunity for some, but a space of precarity and loss for others. By exploring memoirs, interviews, diaries and reports from commissions of inquiry, this paper focuses indenture scholarship on Calcutta and foregrounds migrant experience and agency.

Sahith Mandapalli (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

“Freedom, Tradition and Nationalism: Revisiting the Debates on Free Speech in the Indian Constituent Assembly”

This article critically engages with the debates on sedition and free speech in the Indian constituent assembly. Some of the most influential leaders in the Indian national movement were tried and convicted for sedition by British authorities, significant among whom were Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. During his trial, Gandhi famously remarked that section 124A was “prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen”. A number of members in the Assembly too had been subjected to imprisonment under the law. And yet, how did the same law of sedition gain legitimacy in the Constituent Assembly? This paper focuses on restrictions to free speech enacted by the Assembly to make sense of this puzzle. It argues that there were two strands of thinking in the assembly which sought to retain the colonial law of sedition even after independence: one, a liberal-utilitarian line of thinking, which stressed on the need for the nascent state to curb free speech in order to ensure stability and material comfort for its citizens; two, a traditionalist justification of limits to free speech which focused on the importance of maintaining order. This strand of thinking argued that duties are more important than rights. Both the liberal-utilitarian and traditionalist understandings in the assembly allied and came together under the dominant idea of nationalism prevalent in the period.

Pragya Kaul (University of Michigan)

“The Holocaust from the Indian Ocean”

New histories of Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe in the formerly colonized lands of European imperial states have opened room for discussion on the global reaches of the Holocaust. However, these histories have remained siloed within their national frameworks, obscuring the entanglements of the Jewish refugee question with the broader structures of interwar European imperial retrenchment and expansion. This paper instead reveals the entanglements of the Holocaust with the politics, geographies, and histories of Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire. It emphasizes the horizontal networks of imperial power that shaped Britain’s response to the Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s. Using records from the National Archives of Britain, India, and Kenya, I examine British efforts to resettle German and Austrian refugee Jews in the “white highlands” of Kenya. I argue that within these networks, both British India and Indians emerge as major players determining Jewish refugee resettlement.

Vidura Jang Bahadur (Northwestern University)

“Images, imaginaries and belonging: Transnational citizenship amongst the desi Chinese community”

This paper will explore how the memory of the internment of desi Chinese families between 1962 and 1967 by the Indian state, continues to inform the lives of members of the community in India and in the Indian diaspora in the United States and Canada. I analyze how memory, including the images that are “planted” in their bodies as a result of their lived experiences, inform how they imagine themselves and their place(s) in the communities they build across borders. I argue that images and image-making practices are critical to constructing an individual’s sense of place (Massey, 2008) and practices of citizenship. My two-decade long engagement with the desi Chinese community– as photographer and scholar–complicates the easy distinctions between citizen and non-citizen made by the Indian state during the border conflict between India and China in 1962. By examining documents in state archives and narratives of former internees, I make visible the complex “belongings” of the desi Chinese in India, United States and Canada. Citizenship in my project is understood not just as a legal status, but as an everyday practice through which individuals imagine and negotiate their place(s) in transnational contexts.

Roundtable: Professor Manuel Barcia Paz (University of Leeds), Professor Erica Charters (University of Oxford), and Professor Richard Drayton (KCL)

Kevin Noles (Independent Scholar)

“A question of loyalty: Indian Prisoners-of-War and Australian war-crimes trials of Japanese military personnel after World War Two”

Following World War Two, Australian authorities conducted almost a hundred war-crimes trials of Japanese personnel where the victims had been Indian Prisoners-of-War. These prisoners were members of the British Indian Army who had been captured primarily at the surrender of Singapore in February 1942, and who had subsequently been transported to the Southwest Pacific area during the war to act as labourers for Japanese forces. Reviewing the trial records reveals a depressing litany of neglect, abuse, and general cruelty, up to and including execution. A typical defence argument put forward on behalf of Japanese accused in these trials, was that the Indian prisoners had renounced their previous allegiance to the British Indian Army and had agreed to serve with Japanese forces, thereby losing their status as prisoners. Such claims were invariably rejected during the Australian trials. This study reassesses these Japanese claims by utilising British military intelligence information on the conduct of Indian prisoners in captivity, thereby applying this material to the study of the trials for the first time. It focusses on the evidence of the most prominent Indian witness from the Australian trials: Jemadar Chint Singh. One of the few Indian survivors of the appalling conditions that developed in northern New Guinea during the war, Chint Singh subsequently contributed evidence to several trials, including one related to the killing of a Captain Nirpal Chand by several Japanese officers in 1944. It will be argued that the new perspective on the Australian war-crimes trials provided by the British intelligence assessments, suggests that some of the guilty verdicts reached on Japanese defendants were problematic. This outcome resulted from the active suppression of knowledge regarding the behaviour of Indian troops in captivity by British colonial authorities.

Hendrik Willem Nelis (University of Oxford)

“A Precursor to Post-War Special Forces Counter-Gangs? A Comparison of Orde Wingate’s Special Night Squads and British Post-War Special Forces Counter-Gang Conduct in Colonial Irregular Warfare and Counterinsurgency”

This paper focuses on British counter-gangs and special forces units, particularly considering the Special Night Squads (SNS) of Orde Wingate in the interwar Mandate of Palestine during the Arab Revolt (1936-1939). The SNS were a combined Anglo-Jewish irregular unit used to ambush and pursue Arab guerrillas during the Revolt. This paper examines the extent to which the SNS can be considered a precursor, as is sometimes asserted, to later British counter-gang and special forces units in Kenya and Cyprus in the 1950s and Borneo and Oman in the 1960s and 1970s respectively. Counter-gangs are irregular counterinsurgent units incorporating local auxiliaries and former rebels used to pursue guerrillas through irregular means. A closer examination reveals the connection and similarities between the SNS and its supposed post-war successors to be overstated. Through comparing Wingate’s SNS to these later units from the perspectives of their varying tactical and organisational approaches, use of intelligence, cultural and linguistic knowledge, and varying attitudes to the doctrines of ‘minimum force’ and winning hearts and minds, one can understand the extent to which Wingate’s SNS can be seen as a forerunner for later special forces counter-gangs. On closer examination, despite certain tactical and organisational similarities between the SNS and its post-war counterparts, it becomes increasingly evident that Wingate’s Special Night Squads cannot be seen as a forerunner or a blueprint to post-war British special forces counter-gangs. This seems to debunk the notion of a unique, consistent, unchanging British model of counterinsurgency and, in turn, undermine the notion of static strategic cultures or ways of war. These conclusions also have implications for how we view British imperialism and its methods of colonial control.

Ben Rymer (University of Oxford)

“Military hospitals in New Granada, 1810-24”

In the eighteenth century, European states took an increasing interest in the health of their soldiers in a way that prefigured later expansion of state involvement in medicine. In the Spanish Empire, the growth of colonial garrisons over the course of the century led to the establishment of state-run military hospitals, especially in the Caribbean.  This paper seeks to analyse the culmination of the development of military medicine in in Spanish Empire by investigating military hospitals in the Viceroyalty of New Granada during the wars of independence, drawing on archival sources in Spain and Colombia. These wars saw an unprecedented military presence in the viceroyalty, leading to a renewed effort to create and perpetuate military hospitals. The effort was supported by the hospital orders, who hoped to rid themselves of the burden of caring for sick soldiers, and by administrators and doctors who saw a chance to reinvigorate military medicine, and more broadly improve medical provision in the viceroyalty. However, the expense of military medicine brought the royalist army into conflict with the civilian population, and contributed to its diminishing popularity. Ultimately, Spain’s loss of Nueva Granada after the battle of Boyacá (1819) undid all its investments, although the new Republic of Colombia was able to appropriate some of the new medical infrastructure. This paper will shed light on the history of medicine in South America, as well as state building, and the rising militarisation of Spanish American politics and society.

Hohee Cho (University of Oxford)

“A Multispecies History of Coconuts in the Lever's Pacific Plantations”

In the estates of Lever’s Pacific Plantations Limited (LPPL) in the Solomon Islands, there were foreign bees, beetles, goats, cows, parasites, flies, moths, birds, and iguanas. There were also exotic grass, bracken, clovers, and alien humans. All of them were there for coconuts. This talk is a multispecies history of the coconut plantations owned by LPPL. LPPL owned the biggest coconut plantations in the Solomon Islands in the first half of the twentieth century. Growing coconut palms in the Pacific, however, posed a great challenge: a continuous battle with pests. To solve the problem, LPPL estates adopted biological control measures, which were popular in the period. This means that while intended for monoculture, coconut plantations introduced diverse life forms not native to the land for pest control. By analysing the series of biological controls adopted by LPPL, this paper will map an ecological system of coconut plantations run by LPPL.

Adrian Pole (University of Chester)

“Making Antifascist War: The International Brigades and their Transnational Encounters with the Enemy in Civil-War Spain, 1936-1939 ”

Adrian Pole is a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Chester. His research revolutionises our understanding of the International Brigades by placing the transnational fighting unit’s varied encounters with the people, places, politics and culture of civil-war Spain at the centre of its analysis, rather than treating them as secondary to the ‘main business’ of waging antifascist war. His article on the International Brigades and Spanish Children won honourary mention for the Contemporary European History Prize in 2022.

Lena Christophe (University of Vienna)

”Political and Transnational Solidarity and the International War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam ”

Lena Christophe is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna and part of the research group GLORE – “Global Resettlement Regimes: Ambivalent Lessons Learned from the Postwar (1945-1951).” In her dissertation project, she works on the resettlement of displaced persons to and from the Philippines in the immediate years after World War II. Before her PhD, Lena studied International Development (BA) and History (MA) at the University of Vienna and at Monash University, Melbourne. She received the Vienna Global History scholarship for her Masters thesis on “Anti-Imperialist Solidarity in the International War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam.”In 2024 she will be a research fellow of the German Historical Institute, Washington D.C.

Liza Hong (Australian National University)

“Transpacific Solidarities – Pantherised Maoism and the Black Panther Party of Australia”

Liza Hongis is a research officer at the Australian National University’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Her research focuses on the transnational and intellectual history of the Australian Black Panther Party and global Maoism across Pasifika. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Politics and Economics of East Asia from Ruhr-University Bochum and a Master’s degree in Asian and Pacific Studies from the Australian National University.

Maha Al-Haddad (University of Cambridge)

“Racialised experiences, practices of coloniality, and joint struggles: Black-Palestinian Transnational Solidarity Networks”

Maha Al-Haddad is a PhD candidate at the Centre of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, where she has also earned her MPhil degree. Her research examines Black- American and Palestinian solidarity networks as they develop and strengthen within the contemporary day, focusing on the commonalities and joint struggles that emerge from shared experiences of racialised violence and which underpin renewed solidarity efforts. Her research also examines the role digital activism has on solidarity networks and the way digital spatialities affect the formation and manifestation of these solidarities.

Joshua Lourence (University of Hawaiʻi)
“Love and Rage:  Reproduction and Politics in Portrayals of  Portuguese Settlers in the Hawaiian-Language press, 1874-1917”
Joshua Lourence is a pre-ABD PhD student at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa. His thesis project will explore written and material expressions of identity by the Portuguese community in Hawaiʻi in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Lucas Spyropoulos (University of London, Birkbeck)
“Greek Immigration and Settlement in Southern Africa from 1870 to 1915”
Luke Spyropoulos is a PhD candidate at Birkbeck, University of London, supported by the Consortium for Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE). He has worked in historical research in southern Africa since 2010, including stints at the Wits History Workshop and at the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA) and the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation. His work has focussed on histories of international migration in colonial and post-colonial Africa and studies of racialisation and racism.