Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity by Mahmood Mamdani


Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity
Title : Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0674050525
ISBN-10 : 9780674050525
Language : English
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 168
Publication : First published October 30, 2012

Define and Rule focuses on the turn in late nineteenth-century colonial statecraft when Britain abandoned the attempt to eradicate difference between conqueror and conquered and introduced a new idea of governance, as the definition and management of difference. Mahmood Mamdani explores how lines were drawn between settler and native as distinct political identities, and between natives according to tribe. Out of that colonial experience issued a modern language of pluralism and difference.

A mid-nineteenth-century crisis of empire attracted the attention of British intellectuals and led to a reconception of the colonial mission, and to reforms in India, British Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. The new politics, inspired by Sir Henry Maine, established that natives were bound by geography and custom, rather than history and law, and made this the basis of administrative practice.

Maine’s theories were later translated into “native administration” in the African colonies. Mamdani takes the case of Sudan to demonstrate how colonial law established tribal identity as the basis for determining access to land and political power, and follows this law’s legacy to contemporary Darfur. He considers the intellectual and political dimensions of African movements toward decolonization by focusing on two key figures: the Nigerian historian Yusuf Bala Usman, who argued for an alternative to colonial historiography, and Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who realized that colonialism’s political logic was legal and administrative, not military, and could be dismantled through nonviolent reforms.

Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity Reviews

  • Sander Philipse

    Mamdani presents a theory of late-stage colonialism (second half of 19th c. onward), and especially British and Dutch imperialism, as creating a tribally and racially segregated administration and societies throughout the colonized countries. He convincingly shows that the entire colonial apparatus, as a response to rebellions (especially in India) tried to pacify the population by locking them into rigid, static, European interpretations of what their supposed traditional rule was. In the process, the imperialists effectively segregated the population into unchanging categories, cementing formerly fluid and diverse identities and making vague understandings of ethnicity, tribe and race into administrative and thereby social reality.

    A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the origins of modern-day ethnic conflict in many former colonies, and a must-read for anyone who wants to understand modern-day and historical European approaches toward race, tribe and administration.

  • Muhammad Osama Yousaf

    I would rank it among the best short works I have ever read because of how masterfully the author distinguishes between the imperialist state's military might and its philosophy about customs and laws. The legal system they embrace and the way they employ to divide people along legal lines are significantly more important military power they possess. Insofar as Pakistan is concerned, we are not fully free of the division or defining narrative that the British used; in order to be free of this, we must also rethink the entire process and eliminate the imperialist attitude of the ruling class.

  • Rallie

    This book manages to accomplish something rather difficult - strong theoretical claims alongside good historical evidence to back them up. It's brevity makes for a good intervention into the space between postcolonial studies and decolonization.

  • Mills College Library

    325.3 M263 2012