In colonial Latin America, social identity did not correlate neatly with fixed categories of race and ethnicity. As Imperial Subjects demonstrates, from the early years of Spanish and Portuguese rule, understandings of race and ethnicity were fluid. In this collection, historians offer nuanced interpretations of identity as they investigate how Iberian settlers, African slaves, Native Americans, and their multi-ethnic progeny understood who they were as individuals, as members of various communities, and as imperial subjects. The contributors’ explorations of the relationship between colonial ideologies of difference and the identities historical actors presented span the entire colonial period and beyond: from early contact to the legacy of colonial identities in the new republics of the nineteenth century. The volume includes essays on the major colonial centers of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, as well as the Caribbean basin and the imperial borderlands. Whether analyzing cases in which the Inquisition found that the individuals before it were “legally” Indians and thus exempt from prosecution, or considering late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century petitions for declarations of whiteness that entitled the mixed-race recipients to the legal and social benefits enjoyed by whites, the book’s contributors approach the question of identity by examining interactions between imperial subjects and colonial institutions. Colonial mandates, rulings, and legislation worked in conjunction with the exercise and negotiation of power between individual officials and an array of social actors engaged in countless brief interactions. Identities emerged out of the interplay between internalized understandings of self and group association and externalized social norms and categories. Contributors. Karen D. Caplan, R. Douglas Cope, Mariana L. R. Dantas, María Elena Díaz, Andrew B. Fisher, Jane Mangan, Jeremy Ravi Mumford, Matthew D. O’Hara, Cynthia Radding, Sergio Serulnikov, Irene Silverblatt, David Tavárez, Ann Twinam

"Explores how diplomatic interpreters, converts, and commercial brokers mediated and helped define political, linguistic, and religious boundaries between the Venetian and Ottoman empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."--Author's Web site.

Why was Rudyard Kipling so drawn in his fiction to the figure of the foreign-born Briton--what Kipling called the "native-born"? The answer lies in McBratney's "Imperial Subjects, Imperial Space, the first full-length study of a figure central to Kipling's major imperial fiction: the "native-born." In these narratives Kipling sees the native-born fulfilling two important roles: model imperial servant and ideal imperial citizen. The special abilities that allow the native-born to play these roles derive from his identity as neither exclusively British nor simply "native." This study also provides the most thorough analysis of that figure's hybrid, "casteless" selfhood in relation to shifting attitudes toward racial identity during Britain's "New Imperialism." In its endeavor to place the liminal subject within a particular moment in British discourses about race and nation, this book illuminates both the complexities of subject construction in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods and the struggles today over identity formation in the postcolonial world.

This highly original work posits that the changes in the nature of citizenship caused by neoliberal globalization must be understood as the result of an ongoing imperial project. Although they may seem admirable, policies such as humanitarian and citizenship rights are really an imperial venture led by global institutions and corporations in order to export capitalist market forces worldwide. This entails a form of neoliberal citizenship in which social security is replaced by market insecurity and rising inequality. In this light, the citizen becomes an "imperial subject" whose needs and desires have been colonized by the global market. However, emerging social forces in Latin America and elsewhere have begun to challenge this imperialist logic, fostering a resistance that may bring forth a new global vision of citizenship. This unique analysis draws together neoliberal citizenship, new imperialism, and the creation of 'financial subjects' into an innovative theoretical exploration. By expanding the debate on global citizenship, Imperial Subjects will engage readers in political and social sciences interested in contemporary political thought, citizenship, and globalization.

Lincicome offers a new perspective on Japanese educational debates and policy reforms that have taken place under the guise of internationalization since the mid-1980s. By contextualizing these developments within a historical framework spanning the entire twentieth century, he challenges the argument put forward by education officials, conservative politicians, and their supporters in the academy and the business world that history offers no guide for addressing the educational challenges that face contemporary Japan. Combining diachronic and synchronic approaches, Lincicome analyzes repeated attempts throughout the twentieth century to Ointernationalize educationO (/kyoiku no kokusaika/) in Japan. This comparison reveals important similarities that transcend educational policy to encompass Japanese conceptions of individual, national, and international identity; relations between the individual, the nation, the state, and the international community; and the type of education best suited to negotiating multiple identities among the next generation of Japanese subject-citizens.

In Imperial Gateway, Seiji Shirane explores the political, social, and economic significance of colonial Taiwan in the southern expansion of Japan's empire from 1895 to the end of World War II. Challenging understandings of empire that focus on bilateral relations between metropole and colonial periphery, Shirane uncovers a half century of dynamic relations between Japan, Taiwan, China, and Western regional powers. Japanese officials in Taiwan did not simply take orders from Tokyo; rather, they often pursued their own expansionist ambitions in South China and Southeast Asia. When outright conquest was not possible, they promoted alternative strategies, including naturalizing resident Chinese as overseas Taiwanese subjects, extending colonial police networks, and deploying tens of thousands of Taiwanese to war. The Taiwanese—merchants, gangsters, policemen, interpreters, nurses, and soldiers—seized new opportunities for socioeconomic advancement that did not always align with Japan's imperial interests. Drawing on multilingual archives in six countries, Imperial Gateway shows how Japanese officials and Taiwanese subjects transformed Taiwan into a regional gateway for expansion in an ever-shifting international order. Thanks to generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Open Book Program and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

An interdisciplinary study of visual representations of British colonial power in the eighteenth century.