The Moving Location of Empire
Indirect Rule, International Law, and theBantu Educational Kinema Experiment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5837305 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Luis Eslava (0000-0001-7312-8986, Chicago Kent College of Law, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 539-567 |
| Publication date | 2018-06-18 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Leiden Journal of International Law (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0922-1565 • E-ISSN: 1478-9698 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0922156518000328 |
| OpenAlex | W2463345918 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 28 |
Between 1935 and 1937, the International Missionary Council conducted the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment . The objective was to produce silent educational films and screen them to 'native' people via mobile cinemas in the British territories in East and Central Africa. Embracing the principle of 'indirect rule', and its role in training colonial subjects in economic self-sufficiency and political self-rule, as then advocated by leading colonial figures and the League of Nations, the films strived to capture 'the native point of view' through an 'ethnographic sensitivity' towards local cultures, concerns and needs. Hoping to educate the natives from 'within', they used local actors, familiar locations and pedagogical instructions that were believed to meet the target audience's cognitive capacity. Though in many respects unsuccessful, the experiment cemented the use of cinema in the late colonial project and, more importantly, embodied the clear move at the time towards a more dynamic and disaggregated, yet perhaps never fully post-imperial, international order. I argue in this article that the Bantu Experiment is thus a telling instance through which to examine both the mobility and multiplicity of late imperial locations and the system of modern international administration that emerged during the interwar period. I suggest that this mobility and multiplicity continue to characterize the workings of today's international order, indicating the key role that 'indirect rule', as a silent principle of international law, still plays in its functioning today
Art history · Bantu languages · Colonialism · Empire · Ethnography · Indirect rule · Linguistics · Movie theater · Political science · Politics · Rule of law · Sociology · Tourism · African history and culture studies · Anthropology · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law · Philosophy
The International Educational Cinematograph Institute, Reactionary Modernism, and The Formation of Film Studies
From the Inside
Development, Modernization, and the Social Sciences in the Era of Decolonization
Mumbo-jumbo, Magic and Modernity
The imperialism of decolonization
Instructional Cinema in Colonial Africa
The Politics of Indigenous Collaboration
Bronislaw Malinowski, “Indirect Rule,” and the Colonial Politics of Functionalist Anthropology, ca. 1925–1940
The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment and the Struggle for Hegemony in British East and Central Africa, 1935–1937
The ‘Native Clerk’ in Colonial West Africa
Education and Race Relations1
Socialist Senses
The Imperialism of Free Trade
Indirect Rule-French and British Style
Indirect Rule and Education in East Africa
Everyday metaphors of power
| Citations per year | 0.71 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2024 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |