Borderlands: The British Empire and the Negotiation of Englishness, 1864-1914 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Laura Bender Herron Graduate Program in History The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Professor Alan D. Beyerchen, Co-Advisor Professor Robin E. Judd. Co-Advisor Professor Jane Hathaway Copyright by Laura Bender Herron 2014 Abstract In the late nineteenth century, Britain reigned supreme among the European powers, with an imperial reach into almost every corner of the globe. Britons living in the metropole imagined their empire as at once very distant and very close to home. It was, of course, distant physically but also in the sense that the people who lived in places such as Africa and India were viewed by Britons as very different from themselves. However, the idea of empire was also very immediate for Britons because it was intimately linked with how they saw themselves as part of an exceptional national community, defined by particularly English values such as liberty, charity, honor, and duty. In an era rife with social and geopolitical insecurities, when some feared that Britain’s military and economic power might be waning, the Empire was symbolic of national greatness. This was not simply due to its size. Most Britons believed that the extension of English culture throughout the Empire improved upon the lives of the people who inhabited it. The distant reaches of the British Empire, as imagined in Britain, were national frontiers—the limits of the extension of Englishness. This work proposes that those frontiers were experienced on the ground as complex borderlands in which the idea of Englishness was often fluid. It substantiates its claim of tension between the vision of empire projected from the metropole and its actual experience on the ground by presenting three cases in which the supposedly stable ii concept of Englishness was negotiated—those of Emin Pasha, Gottlieb Leitner, and Rudolf Slatin. Each of these men was involved, in some manner, with the British governance of Sudan or India between 1864 and 1914 but none was British by birth. Their experiences shed light on the limits and inconsistencies of the “frontier perspective” projected from the metropole. They also illustrate the powerful realities this perspective created. The objective of this work is not to disprove the veracity of either the “frontier perspective” or the “borderlands perspective,” but to examine the relationship between the two from the standpoints of individuals concomitantly identified as “English” and “Other.” iii Dedication For Mom and Dad iv Acknowledgments This dissertation is the result of an academic journey that has lasted many years and I have been unbelievably fortunate to have been accompanied and guided on it by wonderful mentors and friends. My greatest debts are to my co-advisors, Alan Beyerchen and Robin Judd. I feel incredibly lucky to have had the benefit of their generous encouragement and wise counsel. They have both shown me, by example, the meaning of excellence in teaching and scholarship and it has been my honor to study with them. Professor Judd’s rigorous evaluations and patient readings of multiple drafts made this a far stronger dissertation than it would have been otherwise. I can only hope that, over the years that I have known him, Professor Beyerchen’s intellectual curiosity and spirit of imaginative inquiry have been contagious. I am incredibly grateful to Professor Jane Hathaway for having agreed to serve on both my examination and dissertation committees. Her tutelage in Ottoman history proved an invaluable asset in deciphering the complexities of modern Sudan. I would also like to thank Professor Alice Conklin for pushing me to move beyond facile generalizations in the study of European imperialism and James Bach for smoothing over the multiple bureaucratic snags that can easily trip up a graduate student. The financial support for my research travel and writing was generously awarded by The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences, the Mershon Center for v International Security Studies, the Bradley Foundation, the Melton Center for Jewish Studies, and the Department of History. Outside of Ohio State, I must thank the staffs of the libraries and archives in which I worked. Of particularly great assistance were Rachel Rowe of Cambridge University Library and Jane Hogan of the Sudan Archive at Durham University. Finally, I must thank my family. My parents have always believed that I could do anything and they never hesitated to encourage me. It is only though their sacrifices, faith, and love that I have arrived at this point. My brother and sisters have built up my confidence with their supportive words time after time and my children, Lauren, Peter, and Billy are a constant source of joy and comfort, for which I am grateful every day. vi Vita 1985................................................................St. Vincent-St. Mary High School 2005................................................................B.A. History, Kent State University 2007................................................................M.A. History, Kent State University Fields of Study Major Field: History vii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Vita …………………...…………………………………………………..……….....….vii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Frontiers ............................................................................................................ 6 Chapter 3: Borderlands…………………………………………………….…….………42 Chapter 4: Emin Pasha: The Disillusioned ………………………………………..…….65 Chapter 5: Gottlieb Leitner: The Subversive …………………………………………..111 Chapter 6: Rudolf Slatin: The Proponent ………………………………………………152 Chapter 7: Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….201 References: ……………………………………………………………………………..208 viii List of Figures Figure 1. 1888 Statue of General Gordon, London ......................................................... 23 Figure 2. Arminius Vambéry in disguise ......................................................................... 60 Figure 3. R. Felkin’s sketch of Emin Pasha ..................................................................... 74 Figure 4. Photograph of Emin Pasha ............................................................................... 74 Figure 5. The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan .............................................................................. 83 Figure 6. Map of British India, 1860 ............................................................................. 121 Figure 7. Lahore Government College .......................................................................... 129 Figure 8. R. Slatin in Cairo, 1895 .................................................................................. 154 Figure 9. Portrait of R. Slatin by H. Angeli ................................................................... 179 Figure 10. Slatin and Wingate in Khartoum, 1898 ......................................................... 188 ix Chapter 1: Introduction For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are. –C. S. Lewis,1 In the late nineteenth century, Britain reigned supreme among the European powers, with an imperial reach into almost every corner of the globe.2 Britons living in the metropole imagined the empire as at once very distant and very close to home. It was, of course, distant physically but also in the sense that the people who lived in places such as Africa and India were viewed by Britons as very different from themselves. However, the idea of empire was also very immediate for Britons because it was intimately linked with how they saw themselves as part of an exceptional national community, defined by particularly English values such as liberty, charity, honor, and duty. In an era rife with social and geopolitical insecurities, when some feared that Britain’s military and economic power might be waning, the Empire was symbolic of national greatness. This was not simply due to its size. Most Britons believed that the extension of English culture throughout the Empire improved upon the lives of the people who inhabited it. The 1 C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew [1955] (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 136. 2 Yet, as David Armitage has rightly asserted, until the last several decades there has been significant resistance to integrating British national history with imperial histories. See Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 1 distant reaches of the British Empire, as imagined in Britain, were national frontiers—the limits of the extension of Englishness. This work proposes that those frontiers were experienced on the ground as complex borderlands in which the idea of Englishness was