Volume 38, Issue 4, October 2012, Pages 401–411
Reporting oppression: mapping racial prejudice in Anti-Caste and Fraternity, 1888–1895
- Under a Creative Commons license
Open Access
Abstract
This paper presents a close reading of the reports of racial oppression that appeared in issues of two periodicals, Anti-Caste and its successor Fraternity,
between 1888 and 1895. Edited in Street, Somerset, these periodicals
created an extensive political geographical imagination by mapping
international cases of racial prejudice. Although critical of the
British empire, neither Anti-Caste nor Fraternity
demanded the destruction of the British empire. In a tactic similar to
that used by early Pan-Africanists, the papers’ narratives desired an
end to the expansion of the British empire and an increase in the
respect for and conditions of those who were ruled ‘under the British
Flag’. However, Anti-Caste’s focus upon racial inequality
across the United States as well as the British empire enabled it to
create a distinctive critique of racial prejudice across the
English-speaking world. Its criticism of the imperial project combined
with support for human brotherhood allowed the paper to develop a
framework for debates on racial prejudice that drew together criticisms
of labour laws in India, the removal of people from their lands in
Southern Africa, the racial segregation of public transport in the
United States and the restriction of Chinese labour in Australia.
Highlights
► Anti-Caste and Fraternity created new political geographies of ‘anti-racism‘ in Victorian Britain. ► The print cultures of Anti-Caste and Fraternity connected readers in Britain to an international community of activists. ► Issues raised by Anti-Caste and Fraternity remain familiar to and continue to be discussed by political audiences.
Keywords
- Race;
- Racial prejudice;
- Imperialism;
- Empire;
- Nineteenth century;
- Publishing
It is pitiful to see how by this system of caste the careers of many of our fellow creatures are straitened, their cultivation and growth in civilisation checked, their most honourable aspirations thwarted, their liberties in a thousand ways abridged.Anti-Caste, 1888 1It is as though the British Empire is not large enough; our conduct in Africa is one perpetual series of war and bloodshed. First West, then East and now South Africans fall prey to our insatiable greed.Fraternity, 1893 2
Anti-Caste
was a small magazine first published in England in March 1888 by the
English activist Catherine Impey. Appearing monthly, the periodical
explored and debated geographies of racial prejudice in order to
articulate an early form of the politics of anti-racism. With increasing
support for Anti-Caste’s campaign work, stimulated by public tours of England and Scotland by the African-American journalist Ida B. Wells in 1893, Anti-Caste changed its name and scope, becoming Fraternity. Both papers focused on the cruelties and violence of racial prejudice, what Anti-Caste’s
editor described as ‘colour caste’, across the British Empire and in
the United States. Debates on the ‘right relations’ between people
divided by ideologies of race were not begun by Anti-Caste.
Long preceding its publication, the abolition movement had debated ideas
of ‘brotherhood’ from its inception in the eighteenth century. Anti-Caste
sought to promote a new narrative on issues of equality. The magazine
acknowledged its inheritance from the anti-slavery movement and intended
to include notices and brief summaries of the proceedings of the
Anti-Slavery Society. However, as Midgley has emphasised, the
anti-slavery movement was not an anti-imperial movement. 3 In any case, Anti-Caste’s
primary concern was not with slavery nor ‘legalised oppression’, but
with ‘social oppression’, a form of prejudice that could ‘sanction
cruelties and disabilities’ beyond the reach of legal redress and was
able to re-establish and maintain ‘legislative encroachments on the
primary rights of citizenship.’ 4
