Policing, Race, and the Formation of Nineteenth-Century Colonial Natal with Jacob Ivey

Join NACBS to celebrate the publication of Jacob Ivey’s recent book Policing, Race, and the Formation of Nineteenth-Century British Colonial Natal: Badges and Knobkerries. Michael Silvestri will join Jacob in discussion.

March 26 at 12pm EST/ 11am CST/ 10am MST / 9am PST / 5pm GMT

“This book traces the creation, implementation, and evolution of the police institutions within British colonial Natal during ‘the formative period’ of the colony between 1845 and 1899. It examines how white and Black members of Natal’s colonial community formed their own systems of policing, creating structures of control that combined ideas from across multiple continents that illustrated the way imperial rule was not directed exclusively from the imperial metropole, but instead part of a complex mixing of indigenous and colonial ideals in the forging of colonial Natal. This influence had enormous ramifications for the police institutions in South Africa well into the twentieth century. Using numerous case studies involving the organization, actions, and influence of the police in Natal, this work provides examples of Black power and authority, prison escapes, violence by and against the constabulary, and recruitment and logistics within the colonial police. In the end, it places the history of KwaZulu-Natal centrally into the emergence of British imperial rule in South Africa in the nineteenth century.”

link.springer.com

Jacob Ivey is an Associate Professor of History at Florida Memorial University, South Florida’s only HBCU. He received his PhD from West Virginia University. He teaches African, African American, and World History and writes on the British empire in Southern Africa, as well as issues of race in South Africa and the Black Diaspora across the globe. His first book, Policing, Race, and the Formation of Nineteenth-Century British Colonial Natal, is published with Palgrave Macmillan’s “Britain and the World” Series. His current project examines the anti-apartheid movements in Florida and their connections to the global anti-apartheid movements of the late 20th century, titled "From Sun City to the Sunshine State: Florida and the Anti-Apartheid Movement", from University Press of Florida. 

Michael Silvestri is Professor of History at Clemson University. He is the author of two books, Ireland and India: Nationalism, Empire and Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Policing “Bengali Terrorism” in India and the World: Imperial Intelligence and Revolutionary Nationalism, 1905-1939 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He is a co-author of the textbook Britain Since 1688: A Nation in the World (Routledge, 2014). His research has been funded by grants from the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled “A Country that has Served the World Well with Police”: The Irish Policeman in the British Empire and Beyond for publication in New York University Press’ Glucksman Irish Diaspora series.