Search Results

This chapter describes everyday life for the working class of England, then tells the story of the difficult first years of the settlement of Savannah and surrounding forts. The high rates of illness and mortality, combined with swampy land, led to low productivity and to disillusionment with the Trustees. Irish convict servants were blamed and punished severely. Gradually the workers realized they must fend for themselves and began both hunting for food and demanding better wages. This led to a group of Scottish gentlemen protesting the current conditions to the Trustees.

Some of Mahatma Gandhi’s own colleagues and followers complained that he had a tendency to mix religion with politics. The confusion stemmed in large part from the fact that Gandhi’s concept of religion was radically different from the traditional notion of organized religion: dogmas, rituals, superstition, and bigotry. Gandhi’s religion was simply an ethical framework for the conduct of daily life. Tilak, India’s most influential nationalist leader at the time, told Gandhi in 1918 that politics is not for sadhus (holy men). Gandhi considered Gokhale, the Moderate leader, as his ‘political mentor’. Gokale first talked of ‘spiritualising politics’, of evoking abnegation and self-denial for secular causes, which inspired him to establish the Servants of India Society. The idea of ‘spiritualising politics’ also appealed to Gandhi, who applied it to satyagraha, his method of resolving conflicts. Moreover, he used fasting, which played an important role in the religious life of the Hindus for centuries, as a tool for social action.

This chapter focuses on Sastri’s formative years, narrating his journey from a small village in South India, Valangainman, to entering the Indian Legislative Council in Delhi. Born and raised in poverty, Sastri’s early life struggles played a considerable role in his intellectual development. An extremely gifted student, his poverty prevented him from going for higher studies. He made his early career in teaching, rising to become the headmaster of the Hindu High School in Madras quite early in his age. He soon distinguished himself in the intellectual circles of Madras, emerging as a key voice on issues of education. But in 1905, he left a promising career to join Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s ‘Servants of India Society’ – an organization dedicated to political and social work -- and quickly rose to become Gokhale’s most trusted lieutenant. Sastri’s liberalism was shaped in Gokhale’s mould, and in 1915, he succeeded Gokhale as the Society’s president.

Through these characters and the broad range of The Advocate’s intended audience, Bechdel is able to reflect on subjects of relevance to the gay community at large—like AIDS and associated activism—that often don’t make it into the strips of the fairly idyllic world of DTWOF. By analyzing Servants to the Cause, the chapter not only unravels its narrative structure and grassroots contexts, but also examines the production of the strip itself through drafts of the comic and letters that Bechdel exchanged with her editor at The Advocate. In this analysis and in research across the essay, the chapter draws upon grant-funded archival research of Alison Bechdel’s papers held in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, Firebrand Book Records held in the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University, and periodicals collections at the Lesbian Herstory Archives and the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. To connect Bechdel to the larger world of queer comics culture, the chapter considers the significance of The Advocate’s support of the field of queer comics, juxtaposed against large feminist publications like Ms., which often spurned women’s comics. This positive attitude creates a set of conditions through which not only Bechdel but other queer cartoonists flourish, particularly in the 90s, allowing them to make a living outside of the more conservative comics publishing world through self-syndication in queer periodicals.

This chapter argues that Shakespeare’s response to the moral foundation of authority is not located in the speeches of his political leaders, because authority is not synonymous with power. Authority must be earned, whereas power is usually bestowed. Therefore, we must look to the relationships between characters of different social rank, especially between servants and their masters. In Shakespeare’s plays these relationships often take the form of freely chosen employment as opposed to feudal oaths of fealty. This is because paid employment became the new norm as early capitalism flourished in the 1500s, and the last remnants of the old feudal order were swept away. Focusing on the relationship between Adam and Orlando in As You Like It, the contrast between Kent and Oswald in King Lear, and the relationship between Flavius the steward and Timon in Timon of Athens, it contends that in Shakespeare’s plays virtuous authority entails reciprocal good service. Good service is found not in mere obedience, but in a sense of duty, which might on occasion directly contradict the wishes of the master. If authority is mistaken for oppressive power, and if liberty is mistaken for subversion, tyranny follows.

Recent growths on the conventions of accountability are explored in this chapter. With regards to the Queen and Ministerial advice, the Queen's actions are no longer exclusively under the influence or advice of the United Kingdom Ministers. It may come from a Premier of a specific state, just like in the case of Australia and the Australia Act in 1986, or from her own capacity as Head of the Commonwealth as in the case of the Christmas Day broadcast. The Ministers correlation with the Civil Servants and the State, Select Committees, and in the process of prosecution in relation to accountability are analysed through the several cases cited by the author. Issues that emerged on individual Ministerial responsibility and collective responsibility are also examined.

This chapter examines the hierarchies within families of the upper classes and middle classes, the appellations used for different members of households, different types of servants and slaves and their various duties. It focuses on daily routine and how a typical day is spent, by people of different means and of both the members of the household and those who serve them, looking in particular at meals (mealtimes, what is eaten, how it is eaten, etc.), the drinking of coffee, and the smoking of tobacco. It also touches on gender roles and segregation.

By 1904, it was clear to Gokhale that the Indian National Congress was losing its influence in India, and its branch in England, the British Committee, was on the verge of insolvency and collapse. Many of the Congress leaders were well-meaning and patriotic, and some of them were able and eloquent, but they tended to treat politics as an occasional diversion from their personal and professional preoccupations. This chapter focuses on Gokhale’s plans to set-up the ‘Servants of India Society’ in early 1905. The Society was aimed at training young men for public life. The preamble to the constitution of the Servants of India Society, drafted by Gokhale, was a confession of his political faith.

This chapter focuses on Gokhale’s commitment to the Servants of India Society. The Society was aimed at harnessing the youth to patriotic service. During his long absences from India in connection with Minto–Morley reforms and the Public Services Commission, he wrote long letters giving his disciples all the news and much good advice. The Society had started with four members in 1905; the number rose to eight in 1907, to ten in 1908, and then to twenty-seven in 1915. Branches of the Society were opened in Madras in 1910, in Nagpur and Bombay in 1911, and in Allahabad in 1913. It is remarkable that Gokhale’s draft on post-war reforms, created in February 1915, already anticipated the tenor of the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms, which the British government was to concede four years later, after its hands had been practically forced by the cumulative pressure of political and economic discontent created by the First World War and its aftermath.

This chapter examines the events of Dundee's maidservants' agitation in 1872. On the evening of 19 April 1872, a meeting of local maidservants was held in Mathers' Hotel, Dundee, which concluded with the formation of the Dundee and District Domestic Servants' Association (DDDSA). The Dundee maids sought to improve the conditions of their employment and prevent the supercilious treatment meted out by many of their employers. Despite the aspects of service that sought to keep them humble and isolated, the maids felt they deserved the respect of their mistresses and of other groups of workers. The agitators were demanding to be treated like other employees, who benefited from various protective rights. The agitation also shows that the legendary brio of Dundee's women was not solely confined to the city's textile workers.

In this chapter, Kathryn Ledbetter considers some of the ‘invisible’ figures that were at the heart of domestic magazines. If, as Beetham notes, domestic magazines often elided the presence of the servant in the middle-class home, Ledbetter’s essay addresses this lacuna head on. Although a topic ripe for satire by the likes of Punch, ‘women’s periodicals and household manuals rarely made light of the responsibilities involved in proper service’ (33). Part of being a successful middle-class woman, these publications maintained, was the effective regulation of servants, who without such monitoring might succumb to immorality and poor working habits. Indeed, Ledbetter notes that a ‘common response in women’s periodicals was that bad mistresses made bad servants’ (34). Yet what did servants make of such discussions of their lives in these magazines or in the servants’ magazines that more directly targeted them?

The ‘Black History’ of Northern Scotland – the presence in the Highlands and the North-east of enslaved black people and free black servants. This includes an account of Black people in Scottish portraits, the life of Welcome, an enslaved man brought to Elgin, and Scotland’s last slave-born servant, Petronella who was born in slavery in Suriname.

Opportunity was the publication of the Federation of Women Civil Servants (later the National Association of Women Civil Servants), an organisation which campaigned for equal pay, equal opportunity and an end to the marriage bar in the British civil service. Opportunity tried to negotiate two purposes: to place the organisation at the centre of interwar feminism and debates on women in public life, and to be a space of community and education for its membership. In the 1930s, Opportunity was increasingly at odds with a significant segment of membership which saw less of a need for the publication in its current format, and the chapter discusses the ways in which editors and writers negotiated these discussions. Eventually, it was the evacuation of women civil servants to various locations around the country during the Second World War, rising wartime costs, and shortages of resources, which ended the publication of Opportunity.

The Second Cripps Mission goes out and attempts to bridge the widening gap between Hindus, Muslims, and the princely states but returns without agreements. Lord Wavell is replaced by Earl Mountbatten who is charged with the task of effecting a rapid handover. British officials start to leave and there is a feeling among the Politicals that they are abandoning their friends. The Mountbattens establish a close relationship with Nehru and Gandhi and Mr Jinnah becomes alienated. Boundaries are drawn between India and a new nation, Pakistan. Gandhi has a last fast. He is assassinated shortly afterwards, and deeply mourned. The invasion of Hyderabad, ‘Operation Polo’, is described. Sir William continues to contribute articles to the press. He dies in 1953, the failure to hand over to a united India casting a shadow over his later years. The mistakes and achievements of the feringhees are acknowledged, as the Civil Servants and Politicals did their best to keep the peace and administer justice in the country they learned to love.

Loyal and effective deputies, servants, and retainers were necessary for the new men to carry out their many tasks. Their personal servants not only managed their private affairs but also assisted them in governmental duties. Many of their posts, especially those in local government, had to be exercised by deputy. Henry encouraged them to build up licensed retinues of military and political followers, and a list of Sir Thomas Lovell’s enables its membership to be reconstructed in detail, showing how his power spread deep into society in many parts of England. Those of Empson and Dudley can be analysed more sketchily using evidence produced at their trials.

This final chapter returns to the balancing act in assessing the difference an individual in charge of a global governance body can make and where his or her limitations are depending on the institutional context and constraints. It argues that values matter and that choices are not pre-determined by origin, despite the impact of social influences in a person’s upbringing. It acknowledges that, despite being from different parts of the world, leading international civil servants share some (middle) class-based commonalities and thereby (re)produce a certain understanding, but refutes the suggestion that this translates into support of white supremacy and Western dominance. It ends with some of the assessments offered as a tribute to Dag Hammarskjöld and the role he played in the decolonization of Africa despite having been faced with institutional limitations.