Before citizenship: liberalism's colonial subjects

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the way colonial states established limited forms of access to civic and political life for their subjects. The issue of how colonial subjects were constructed as political and civil subjects is not well understood and one aim of this paper is to propose a new and hopefully more productive way of understanding the relationship between colonial subjects and their colonizers. This might be understood as a new lens through which colonial debates around native participation may be read and understood, or a new ear to some of the nuances of colonial language and concern. At the same time as saying this it must be recognized that the colonial state, and those subject to it, were not homogeneous. Marked differences existed between the early and late periods of colonial rule in British India, just as also between British colonialism in India and Africa, or British colonial rule in India and that practiced by, say, the French in Algeria. The case study for this research has been British rule in India in the second part of the nineteenth century. This should be borne in mind when considering conclusions drawn here and the extent to which they might reasonably be generalized to other colonial contexts. The paper is divided into three sections. Section I provides a brief sketch of nineteenth century British liberal political thought in respect of colonialism and the projection of British rule offshore. Its aim is not to provide a comprehensive review of this topic but rather to indicate some of the broader views and assumptions that animated colonial administration from the latter part of the nineteenth century forward (for a more comprehensive review, see Moore, 1966; Sullivan, 1983). Key amongst these was the idea that liberty rights and political participation were the preserve of societies that had reached a mature level of civilization; for those that had not, despotic government was not only preferable but indeed desirable. Postcolonial the