Communal Violence in the British Empire

Disturbing the Pax

Mark Doyle

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781350061545
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474268271
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Joint winner of the North American Conference on British Studies 2017 Stansky Book Prize for the best book on British Studies since 1800

Communal Violence in the British Empire focuses on how Britons interpreted, policed, and sometimes fostered violence between different ethnic and religious communities in the empire. It also asks what these outbreaks meant for the power and prestige of Britain among subject populations.

Alternating between chapters of engaging narrative and chapters of careful, cross-colonial analysis, Mark Doyle uses outbreaks of communal violence in Ireland, the West Indies, and South Asia to uncover the inner workings of British imperialism: it's guiding assumptions, its mechanisms of control, its impact, and its limitations. He explains how Britons used communal violence to justify the imperial project even as that project was creating the conditions for more violence. Above all, this book demonstrates how communal violence exposed the limits of British power and, in time, helped lay the groundwork for the empire's collapse.

This book shows how violence, and the British state's handling thereof, was a fundamental part of the imperial experience for colonizer and colonized alike. It offers a new perspective on the workings of empire that will be of interest to any student of imperial or world history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Angel Gabriel in the Tropics: British Guiana, 1856
• 2. Causes: How British Imperialism Conjured the Very Violence It Sought to Suppress
• 3. Trouble on the Queen’s Highways: Belfast, 1872
• 4. Interpretations: How Communal Riots Confirmed and Strengthened Britain’s Civilizing Mission
• 5. The Ruling Race Stumbles: Bombay, 1874
• 6. Policing: How Cultural Assumptions Guided the Policing of Communal Riots
• 7. The Cow Row: India, 1893–1894
• 8. Consequences: How Communal Riots Weakened the British Empire
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index