This book assesses British colonialism in South Asia in a transnational light, and with a focus on ‘subaltern’ groups and actors. Challenging the assumed stability of colonial rule, it analyses the ways in which the racial, class and moral order instituted by British colonial states was resisted and subverted.

It is well known that Taiwan and South Korea, both former Japanese colonies, achieved rapid growth and industrialization after 1960. The performance of former European and American colonies (Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines) has been less impressive. Some scholars have attributed the difference to better infrastructure and greater access to education in Japan’s colonies. Anne Booth examines and critiques such arguments in this ambitious comparative study of economic development in East and Southeast Asia from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1960s. Booth takes an in-depth look at the nature and consequences of colonial policies for a wide range of factors, including the growth of export-oriented agriculture and the development of manufacturing industry. She evaluates the impact of colonial policies on the growth and diversification of the market economy and on the welfare of indigenous populations. Indicators such as educational enrollments, infant mortality rates, and crude death rates are used to compare living standards across East and Southeast Asia in the 1930s. Her analysis of the impact that Japan’s Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and later invasion and conquest had on the region and the living standards of its people leads to a discussion of the painful and protracted transition to independence following Japan’s defeat. Throughout Booth emphasizes the great variety of economic and social policies pursued by the various colonial governments and the diversity of outcomes. Lucidly and accessibly written, Colonial Legacies offers a balanced and elegantly nuanced exploration of a complex historical reality. It will be a lasting contribution to scholarship on the modern economic history of East and Southeast Asia and of special interest to those concerned with the dynamics of development and the history of colonial regimes.

This book assesses British colonialism in South Asia in a transnational light, with the Indian Ocean region as its ambit, and with a focus on 'subaltern' groups and actors. It breaks new ground by combining new strands of research on colonial history. Thinking about colonialism in dynamic terms, the book focuses on the movement of people of the lower orders that imperial ventures generated. Challenging the assumed stability of colonial rule, the social spaces featured are those that threatened the racial, class and moral order instituted by British colonial states. By elaborating on the colonial state's strategies to control perceived 'disorder' and the modes of resistance and subversion that subaltern subjects used to challenge state control, a picture of British Empire as an ultimately precarious, shifting and unruly formation is presented, which is quite distinct from its self-projected image as an orderly entity. Thoroughly researched and innovative in its approach, this book will be a valuable resource for scholars of Asian, British imperial/colonial, transnational and international history.

How colonial governments in Asia and Africa financed their activities and why fiscal systems varied across colonies reveals the nature and long-term effects of colonial rule.

A striking new interpretation of colonial policing and political violence in three empires between the two world wars.

Colonial Justice in British India describes and examines the lesser-known history of white violence in colonial India. By foregrounding crimes committed by a mostly forgotten cast of European characters - planters, paupers, soldiers and sailors - Elizabeth Kolsky argues that violence was not an exceptional but an ordinary part of British rule in the subcontinent. Despite the pledge of equality, colonial legislation and the practices of white judges, juries and police placed most Europeans above the law, literally allowing them to get away with murder. The failure to control these unruly whites revealed how the weight of race and the imperatives of command imbalanced the scales of colonial justice. In a powerful account of this period, Kolsky reveals a new perspective on the British Empire in India, highlighting the disquieting violence that invariably accompanied imperial forms of power.

Across their empire, the British spoke ceaselessly of deviants of undesirables, ne'er do wells, petit-tyrants and rogues. With obvious literary appeal, these soon became stock figures. This is the first study to take deviance seriously, bringing together histories that reveal the complexity of a phenomenon that remains only dimly understood.