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Aniket De
PhD Candidate in History
at Harvard University
Racial
Segregation and
Colonial
Self-Government: South
Africa and British
India, 1900–35
12:15-2:00pm
Monday, October 17th,
2022
CGIS
South
Room 050 |
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Lunch
is provided if you register
before 5:00pm Thursday
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| Abstract: The
age of national
self-determination, which
conventionally establishes the
system of post-imperial
nation-states, begins with the
founding of the League of
Nations after the First World
War. The development of
self-government in British India
in 1919 — particularly the
principle of “dyarchy” or dual
government run jointly by
Indians and the British — is
thought to be a progressive, if
inadequate, measure in this era
of self-determination. But it
has not been noticed that the
same imperial officials who
formulated dyarchy had
previously segregated and
disenfranchised non-whites in
South Africa. This paper will
analyze how techniques of racial
segregation were incorporated
into structures of colonial
self-government in a moment of
imperial reconstruction after
the War. Examining the ideas and
careers of South African
administrators who later shaped
Indian dyarchy—members of the
“Round Table” group like Lionel
Curtis, Philip Kerr, and Howard
Pim — I aim to show that
self-government in India was not
a step towards freedom, but a
form of racialized rule designed
to keep “natives” out of power.
The making of this form of
self-government in the early
twentieth century framed a key
moment of crisis in the imperial
order, when the weakening of
imperial structures due to the
War led to increasingly strong
anticolonial movements across
Asia and Africa. Dyarchy,
devised as a strategy to counter
this crisis, characterized not
only the last phase of European
imperialism but also the
structure of the post-colonial
state. By tracing a hitherto
unexplored genealogy of Indian
self-government in relation to
segregation in South Africa, I
therefore hope to reexamine both
the origins of colonial
self-determination and its
subsequent legacies in
post-colonial states.
Methodologically, the project
attempts to bring together the
global histories of
self-determination and racial
segregation, which have tended
so far to run on parallel
tracks. |
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| Bio: Aniket
De is a PhD Candidate in History
at Harvard University. |
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The Harvard
STS Circle is run by the
Program on Science, Technology
and Society and co-sponsored
by the Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences, the Weatherhead
Center for International
Affairs, and the Harvard
University Center for the
Environment.
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