© 2017 Irina Spector-Marks CIRCUITS OF IMPERIAL CITIZENSHIP: INDIAN PRINT CULTURE AND THE POLITICS OF RACE, 1890-1914 BY IRINA SPECTOR-MARKS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Antoinette Burton, Chair Associate Professor Teresa Barnes Associate Professor James Brennan Professor Isabel Hofmeyr, University of Witswatersand Associate Professor Dana Rabin Abstract At the turn of the twentieth century, Indian immigrants throughout the British empire faced a rise in discriminatory legislation. They responded by asserting that as imperial citizens, Indians should be treated equally with white British subjects. Although imperial citizenship had no fixed legal meaning, Indian activists invoked imperial citizenship as a legal status and as an identity that carried racial and civilizational overtones. Through a close reading of iterations of imperial citizenship across a wide range of print culture sources, I show how imperial citizenship, although ostensibly race-blind, was an implicitly racialized discourse. Based on research from archives in Ottawa, Vancouver, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, and London, I map how the discourse of imperial citizenship circulated across the empire in a transnational print sphere of periodicals, pamphlets, and petitions. By focusing on the work of activists in Canada and South Africa, I explore the ways in which local political and racial contexts precluded the potential for material forms of transnational collaboration. My dissertation nuances the “transnational turn” in the humanities by emphasizing the role of local factors in shaping larger global politics. By analyzing both the discourse of imperial citizenship and the material production and dissemination of that discourse, this dissertation argues that diasporic Indians navigated the global color line by aspiring to whiteness in the name of an imperial citizenship that was founded on racial discrimination while purporting to stand for equality and justice. By bringing together scholarship on citizenship, empire, immigration, and whiteness, my research reveals the complex and contradictory development of anti-racist politics in the early twentieth century. ii For dad And I’m the only son of a gun who’s left to tell the tale iii Acknowledgements It is a truism amongst academics that all dissertation is autobiography. As a white woman from the United States, I was often asked why I was studying Indian immigrants in the British empire. While I had many reasons for choosing this topic, the personal stakes of the project were driven home to me as I sat on my bed in Durban on June 26, 2013. I had stayed home from the archives in order to have internet access as I waited on tenterhooks for the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. With DOMA overturned, I booked a flight to St. Paul where my partner was staying with her family. We were married on August 10 and filed for her green card on August 12, just weeks before her student visa was due to expire. I then returned to the archives in Pretoria to finish out my research year investigating immigrant activists and the ways they had combated discrimination. This research has been a labor of love, for the topic and the political and intellectual problems it poses, but also for all those individuals, known and unknown, who have struggled to choose a home for themselves in the face of governmental prejudice. It has not been a labor I have completed alone, however. In these pages, I wish to thank those who have supported my work. I am particularly lucky to have many individuals in my life who have done both intellectual and emotional labor to help me through this process. The History Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign provided an intellectual home throughout my years in the PhD program. Antoinette Burton has known with unerring accuracy when to challenge and when to nurture. Her impact on my intellectual coming-of-age has been immense and invaluable. I am incredibly grateful to have her as a mentor and a friend. Dana Rabin shared her knowledge of British history alongside advice as to how to survive as an East Coast Jew in Urbana, Illinois. I treasure her insights, hugs, and humor. iv Terri Barnes has supported and critiqued this project since its earliest incarnation in my first-year paper. She also valiantly agreed to mentor my global history prelim and was a key interlocutor as I conceptualized the role of Africa in global history. Jim Brennan introduced me to the history of the Indian Ocean littoral and is always ready with a book recommendation (or three!). From the first time we met, Isabel Hofmeyr has graciously given her time and thought to this project, opening her home in Johannesburg to me and carrying on a trans-Atlantic conversation about the vagaries of early twentieth century periodicals. My first-year cohort gave me a set of life-long comrades who supported me through and beyond our graduate program, including Zach Sell, Scott Harrison, Milos Jovanovic, and Emily Pope-Obeda. T. J. Tallie gave me wonderful guidance, not only as my first-year mentor at Illinois, but also in providing a myriad of introductions for me in South Africa. Rachel Heeter Smith filled long car rides to Baltimore and almost equally long skype sessions from London with her enthusiasm for history and the wider world. Institutional support from the University of Illinois and other institutions made this project possible. The Graduate College Illinois Distinguished Fellowship launched me in graduate school and subsequent fellowships from the history department allowed me to travel to South Africa, Canada, and Britain to complete extensive archival research. The Doris G. Quinn Foundation Fellowship gave me time to complete the writing of the dissertation. Teaching undergraduates at the University of Illinois in Global History, Western Civilization, and British History courses helped me articulate important points at key moments during the ideation of the project. There really is nothing like teaching to clarify one’s thoughts and I am grateful to the professors, fellow TAs, and students with whom I worked, especially Antoinette Burton, v Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Elizabeth Quick and Zsuzsa Madgo. The staff in the history department at Illinois, especialy Shannon Croft, walked me through every step of the process. Research overseas can be an exhausting and alienating experience and I am grateful to everyone who helped to make temporary homes in Ottawa, Vancouver, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, and London. Mr. Chetty at the Gandhi Luthuli Documentation Centre generously allowed me to take material over to the Killie Campbell Africana Library when the lightbulb on his microfilm reader broke on my first day there. Likewise, Senzo Mkhize at Killie Campbell allowed to me to hog his microfilm machine for weeks on end while I worked through Colonial Indian News and African Chronicle. Goolam Vahed helped me to acquire an affiliation with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, shared with me his digital copies of Indian Opinion (a real life-saver), and introduced me to UKZN’s history department colloquia. Kilpana Hiralal, Julie Parle, and others at UKZN discussed my research and gave me pointers and encouragement. Renisa Mawani gave me an opportunity to come back to British Columbia by inviting me to the Charting Imperial Itineraries conference, where the organizers and contributors had an amazing weekend of conversations and collaboration that led to the edited collection Charting Imperial Itineraries, edited by Renisa, Satwinder Bains, Davina Bhandar, and Rita Kaur Damoon. Others gave me a literal home while I was travelling. Cailin Hedderwick kept me sane (or, barring that, at least shared insanity with me) and became a lifelong friend during the few short months we had together in Durban. Her mother, Fiona Hedderwick, let me stay at her house during my two weeks in Pietermaritzburg—above and beyond the call of duty! Tim Ames and Barbara Wright took in and put up their long-lost niece during her time in Vancouver. vi I have an amazing family, of both the biological and the chosen variety. The extended Landman-Baylin-Spector clan has watched my intellectual career with loving encouragement and always made a place at the table for me when I could pull my head out of a book. Mary, Leon, Sophie, and Rhea didn’t make it to grad school with me but they imbued me from a young age with a sense of pride in my scholastic achievements. Amanda Spector has stuck by me through thick and thin, in spite of my perennial refusal to answer the phone. Herman Bennett and Jennifer Morgan nurtured my love of history from an age when it was expressed through dolls and tea parties rather then historiographical debates. Derek Attig has been my confidant and my hero throughout the later years of grad school. He’s been immensely patient with all my questions as I navigated the ins and outs of the dissertation process. More importantly, he’s shown me how to find the life that makes me happy, rather than the one that I thought ought to make me happy. Ashley Hetrick and I knew we were kindred spirits approximately ten minutes after the first time we talked. Derek and Ashley also fed (literally and figuratively) me and Eszter when we couldn’t feed ourselves. Christine Ruggere and I have been to hell and back together. From bibliographic queries to A Child’s Christmas in Wales, she’s been there for me when I needed her most. I learned this trade at my father’s knee, tagging along to lectures, conferences, and research trips.