Wm. Matthew Kennedy

We, living in the age of high technology, may be tempted to think that the problem of artificial intelligences--non-human minds made to mimic those of their creators--is a new one. The story is much more interesting than this, however. Robotic minds have been with us almost since the articulation of the notion that, perhaps, mind and body were separate. And we find such minds in the most surprising of places--in religious texts, in ancient drama, in beloved holiday ballets, and yes, of course, in the genre known today as science fiction. What questions did we ask about those minds then? What answers may be useful today, when some who claim to know the robotic mind best warn us that it is the human mind that teeters on the edge of history?

The Imperial Commonwealth excavates Australian settler colonies’ connections with the British imperial world by examining the significant but downplayed linkages between them and South Asia, the Pacific, and colonial Southern Africa. Focusing on settler political cosmologies instead of London’s categories, the book ultimately reveals how Australian colonial public intellectuals came to view “empire” as a specific practice of global governance, not simply a type of polity. The consequences of that vision were many. Firstly, they led many Australians to believe that their settler colonial society was inherently more modern, forward-looking, and thus more capable of practicing good “empire” in quickening times. Second, they also led Australians of all kinds to assert themselves in the re-conceptualization of Britain’s imperial system—“empire” was the duty of all those descended of the so-called “British race,” and Australian settlers, as the “race’s most progressive branch,” felt increasingly better qualified to do so. They even claimed to have surpassed Britons themselves in this regard, and held up what they increasingly felt to be Britain’s antiquated governance of India as proof. And third, it led Australian officials to create their own ”scientific” theory of colonial governance for the modern age, implemented in the new Commonwealth’s “imperial possessions” at the beginning of the twentieth century: Papua and the Northern Territory.

"From Barataria" investigates the rise of specific practices of ‘scientific’ colonial governance, how they were informed by hitherto unexplored economic-positivist legal theory gaining currency in British, Australian, and French colonies, and consequently how, because of this new legal theoretical context, the League of Nations mandate system proved especially receptive to transfers from ‘scientifically’ governed colonies. Analysing the significant influence ‘scientific’ colonial governmentalities had upon the administration of Australian, British, French, and Belgian Class B and C mandates, and indeed the body of authorities the League of Nations cited to guide its work, my work ultimately charts the underexamined effect that ‘scientific’ colonial governance came to have on several key discourses of international order. I use a novel methodology in new imperial scholarship, working with an untapped transcolonial archive of government adjudication of private disputes between Indigenous people and will be the first dedicated study of the practice of economic-positivism in European colonial governance in general.

Several hundred people from Finland emigrated to southern Africa in the late nineteenth century, yet few as fully enfranchised subjects or burghers (citizens). In the age in which they moved, questions around the nation as well as empire were hardly "settled" at the turn of the twentieth century. For settlers on the make, the future shape of empire was never certain, but this uncertainty and promise was part of its appeal for European migrants. The South African War of 1899-1902 between the Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, and the British Empire exacerbated

Over 2,000 foreign volunteers fought in the South African War of 1899-1902. They supported the 60,000-strong Boer force against a British army numbering 500,000 men. Some foreigners were integrated into the commando forces of the two Boer republics, the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. But most fought in separate foreign corps or performed non-combat roles. Their presence signals that, instead of a distant colonial skirmish, the South African War should be understood as a modern war with an international history. This article examines the different pathways volunteers took to join the conflict. It examines the battlefield experiences of foreign volunteers during the first phase of conventional warfare and the second guerrilla phase after mid-1900. It explores how nascent international humanitarian convention and internal military doctrines influenced these experiences. Ultimately, it reveals how conflicting conceptualizations of the war, as both a national struggle and a colonial campaign, presented serious dilemmas to foreign participants that eventually drove many from the fight. Despite these effects, European military observers came to view South Africa's battlefields as the archetypal modern warzone, one in which, despite the increasing 'nationalization' of warfare, the foreign volunteer was 'the recognized adjunct of modern armies.' ARTICLE HISTORY

From 1946 to 1951, the British Commonwealth was gripped by a series of legal, political, and cultural controversies surrounding its very existence.  New forms of sovereignty, the expansion of official membership to include South Asian Dominions, and the standing of the Commonwealth as an economic, strategic, and political bloc in post-war international politics animated concerns of lawyers, politicians, and publics across the Commonwealth.  But, as this article demonstrates, the problems of sovereignty were matched by anxieties about liberty.  What follows, then, is an attempt to reintroduce this concept to the established account of decolonization in the Commonwealth countries.  Examining the Commonwealth debate about sovereignty while also attending to concerns for liberty reveals the brief but earnest attempt to re-constitute that relationship not on a failing common sovereignty—reliance on the Crown and the King—but on a bold vision of common liberty—the right of all Commonwealth citizens to immigrate and reside in any Commonwealth country.  It therefore draws into conversation law, politics, and culture in the Commonwealth in the immediate post-war era.

During the course of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, over 9,000 captured Boers were sent abroad to India as prisoners of war.  Using hitherto unexamined sources, this article explores how, during their internment and repatriation, British officials and administrators across the Empire collaborated in a concerted attempt to transform the imperial enemy into colonial collaborator.  This involved a necessarily intercolonial effort to implement a program of ‘re-education’ capable of cultivating ‘white’ British virtues in preparing Boer POWs for their future rights and duties in reconstructing Southern Africa upon their repatriation.  In so doing, the government of India and other colonial officials across the Empire thus recapitulated their ideal of Britain’s imperial project in the Boer POW camps.  Highlighting the intercoloniality of this process, India’s Viceroy Lord George Curzon played as prominent a role as did the War Office, or South Africa’s soon-to-be Pro-Consul, Lord Alfred Milner.  The microcosmic imperialism of Boer internment thus reveals a great deal about the nature and structure of power within the British Empire, and emphasizes the value of an intercolonial or transcolonial perspective in examining the complex, global consequences of the Anglo-Boer War.