Colonising Disability: race, impairment and otherness in the British Empire, c. 1800-1914

虽然不可能计算出19世纪和20世纪初残疾人占总人口比例的确切数字，但过去英国的残疾人比今天多得多。导致耳聋和/或失明的疾病(如猩红热、腮腺炎、水痘、流感、麻疹、脑膜炎和风疹)很多，工业和农业事故的发生率很高，导致身体残疾。此外，今天可能被认为是中度或可纠正的听力或视力损失，具有深远的影响，因为感官增强技术的质量很差，而且往往昂贵得令人望而却步。正如文学评论家所证明的那样，英国文化中充斥着残疾人。然而，残疾一直被绝大多数历史学家忽视。我的第一个研究问题是通过询问残疾在大英帝国是如何代表、治疗和经历的来解决这个问题的。我的第二个研究问题更广泛：残疾(出现在那个时期的文献、机构和法律讨论中)是如何更普遍地构建了对身体的理解？残疾不仅影响那些被贴上残疾标签的人，而且还构成了一个广泛形成的更广泛的社会体系的一部分(残疾理论家最近讨论了这一体系，称其为“能力主义”)。残疾是一种思考身体差异的方式，这也是看待其他身体差异的方式，比如种族差异。有充分的理由表明，思考对待残疾的态度以及对待种族的态度将特别有用。“种族”和“残疾”都是看待身体上的“他者”的方式。在十九世纪，伪科学种族主义试图通过测量和编纂身体多样性来定义和分类人。“苦难”的殖民形象被用来为他们的殖民辩护。优生学在种族和残疾中都看到了“损害”和退化。科学家们争论唐氏综合症(“蒙古主义”)是一种种族还是一种缺陷。我对耳聋的初步研究表明，这些话语与那些“仁爱”话语相互作用，后者在将殖民时期的“他人”和残疾人构建为“(健康)白人的负担”时，创造了长期的依赖关系。现在我想检验这一假设，并更广泛地调查残疾是否也是如此。为了使我的研究在AHRC奖学金期间可行，我从时间和地理方面限制了我的研究范围。1800-1914年的时间框架是种族和残疾状况都发生了巨大变化的时期。这也是英国在海外大规模扩张的时期，帝国塑造了英国生活的方方面面。这项研究没有提到第一次世界大战，第一次世界大战产生了大量新的残疾男性，改变了人们对残疾的理解。在问这一时期对残疾的理解的重大重构是由帝国、帝国关系还是其他权力结构塑造时，我需要考虑广泛的地理范围。另一方面，过于广泛的研究将是不可行的。考虑到这一点，我的研究仅限于白人大英帝国、澳大利亚、新西兰、加拿大、爱尔兰和英国本身，这些地方有着众多的联系，并相信自己拥有共同的文化。因此，我将探讨在这些地方形成的种族和残疾的具体联系。总而言之，这项研究将解决的主要问题包括以下几个：-在19世纪和20世纪初，残疾和种族是如何相交的？-更广泛的殖民背景是如何影响残疾人的生活的？-残疾人和被殖民的其他人在某些身体被视为比其他人更正常的方式中扮演了什么角色？

Whilst it is impossible to calculate the exact numbers of disabled people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, taken as a proportion of the overall population, there were many more disabled people in Britain in the past than there are today. Illnesses causing deafness and/or blindness (such as scarlet fever; mumps; chicken pox; influenza; measles; meningitis; and rubella) were prolific and there were high rates of industrial and agricultural accidents which were physically disabling. Furthermore, what today might be considered a moderate or 'correctable' hearing or sight loss, had profound implications as sensory-enhancing technology was of poor quality and often prohibitively expensive. As literary critics have demonstrated, disabled people populate British culture. Yet disability has been ignored by the vast majority of historians. My first research question addresses this by asking how was disability represented, treated and experienced in the British Empire? My second research question is wider: how did disability (so present in the period's literature, institutions, and legal discussions) frame understandings of the body more generally? Disability does not only affect those who are labelled disabled but forms part of a wider social system (that disability theorists have recently discussed as 'ableism') that is widely formative. Disability was a way of thinking about bodily difference, which fed into ways of viewing other bodily differences such as the differences of race. There are good reasons to suggest that thinking about attitudes towards disability alongside the attitudes towards race will be particularly useful. 'Race' and 'disability' are both ways of thinking about perceived bodily 'otherness'. In the nineteenth century, pseudo-scientific racism sought to define and categorize people by measuring and codifying bodily diversity. Images of 'suffering' colonial others were used to justify their colonialisation. Eugenics saw 'impairment' and degeneracy in both race and disability. Scientists argued over whether Down's Syndrome ('Mongolianism') was a race or an impairment. My pilot study on deafness has suggested that these discourses interacted with those of 'benevolence' which, in constructing colonial 'others' and disabled people as a '(healthy) white man's burden', created long-standing relationships of dependence. I now want to test this hypothesis and investigate whether the same is true of disability more generally.In order to make my study feasible in the period of the AHRC fellowship I have limited the scope of my study in terms of period and geography. The timeframe, 1800-1914, was a period where the configuration of both race and disability changed dramatically. It was also a period which saw massive British expansion overseas, and Empire shaped every aspect of British life. The study stops short of the First World War which, in generating large numbers of newly disabled men, changed the way in which disability was understood. In asking whether the major reconfiguration of the understanding of disability in this period was shaped by empire, imperial relationships or other power-structures, I need to take a wide geographical scope. On the other hand, too broad a study would be unfeasible. With this in mind my study is confined to the 'white' British Empire, to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and to Britain itself as places which shared numerous connections and believed themselves to hold a common culture. I will thus explore the specific conjunctions of race and disability that were formulated in such places.In summary, major questions that this research will address include the following:- How did disability and race intersect in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?- How were the lives of disabled people informed by the wider colonial context?- What part did disabled people and colonised others play in the way some bodies were seen as more 'normal' than others?