Race, Education and the British Empire
Engaging Difference in African and Asian Colonial Schooling (1860–1947)
This research project has been awarded a Tier 1 grant from the Singapore Ministry of Education's Academic Research Fund. It will run from November 2026 to October 2029.
The construction of race and racial difference was integral to legitimizing and sustaining imperial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries (Memmi 1957; Fanon 1961; Burbank and Cooper 2011). Yet while historians have examined the ways that racial categories were used to structure empire, they have rarely asked how people under colonial rule experienced colonial ideas about race.
This absence is particularly glaring for historians of education, since schooling was one of the key institutions by which racial hierarchies were instituted and maintained.
By focusing on different sites in the British empire, this project asks how diverse people in Africa and Asia encountered race in colonial schooling between 1860 and 1947.
The construction of race and racial difference was integral to legitimizing and sustaining imperial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries (Memmi 1957; Fanon 1961; Burbank and Cooper 2011). Yet while historians have examined the ways that racial categories were used to structure empire, they have rarely asked how people under colonial rule experienced colonial ideas about race.
This absence is particularly glaring for historians of education, since schooling was one of the key institutions by which racial hierarchies were instituted and maintained.
By focusing on different sites in the British empire, this project asks how diverse people in Africa and Asia encountered race in colonial schooling between 1860 and 1947.
Race, Education and the British Empire aims to return the voices of students and teachers living under colonial rule to historical analyses of race and empire. Rather than assuming the categories of colonizer/colonized, this project creates space for more nuanced narratives that understand race as a shifting, relational set of ideas.
Because, as much as colonial schools were part of the arsenal of imperial weaponry, they were also, due to the everyday proximity between teachers and students, places where ideas about race were often confused, contested and reinterpreted. They are therefore particularly productive contexts in which to examine the ideologies and experiences of race that defined colonial subjecthood.
Because, as much as colonial schools were part of the arsenal of imperial weaponry, they were also, due to the everyday proximity between teachers and students, places where ideas about race were often confused, contested and reinterpreted. They are therefore particularly productive contexts in which to examine the ideologies and experiences of race that defined colonial subjecthood.