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The Shame of Not Belonging: Navigating Failure in the Colonial Petition, South Africa 1910–1961

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2018

Will Jackson
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Abstract

This essay examines letters of petition sent by failed white settlers in South Africa to the British Governor General. These letters comprise a particular discursive genre that combine aspects of both private and public. The key to their success was controlled emotion: petitioners had to present their distress in such a way as to excite the exercise of compassion. Allowing subversive or stray emotions to enter a letter was bound to undermine a petitioner’s appeal. Reading this epistolary corpus critically allows us to understand the discursive strategies by which colonials claimed a sentimental attachment to Britain, the empire and, indeed, the Governor General himself.

Keywords

Colonial failurepetitionsubaltern biographyemotionpoor whites
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 42 , Special Issue 1: The Private Lives of Empire: Emotion, Intimacy, and Colonial Rule , April 2018 , pp. 85 - 101
Copyright
© 2018 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

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Footnotes

*

Will Jackson is an Associate Professor in Imperial History at the University of Leeds.

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