Crises of Empire: Colonial Economies, Labour, and Post-War Protest, 1945-1966.

以马来亚、黄金海岸和英属圭亚那为案例研究，本项目将调查1945年至1966年期间影响大英帝国的工业动荡的原因和后果。该项目将解决两个广泛的研究目标。首先，它研究了工业动荡的原因，调查经济条件，社会组织和劳工抗议之间的关系。其次，它分析了什么因素制约了“帝国的反应”的罢工，重点是如何大都市的想法有关凯恩斯主义的经济管理和社会福利影响殖民地的劳工政策。该项目的第一部分调查了战后工业动荡的原因。该研究将重点关注战时紧缩政策的遗留问题，调查低工资和劳动力需求增加是如何导致战后抗议活动爆发的。该研究还将调查动荡与殖民地经济的特殊结构之间的关系，研究为什么关键战略行业的工人经常在抗议活动中发挥突出作用。该研究将指出，关键部门的工人，如黄金海岸的运输工人、马来亚的种植园工人和英属圭亚那的铝土矿工人，在战后时期获得了相当大的工业力量。随着对初级商品需求的增加，具有战略经济重要性的地点，如采矿、铁路和港口城市，成为潜在的瓶颈，罢工行动可能导致整个经济停顿。研究的第二部分将探讨在罢工之后，殖民地政府如何受到战后英国国内政策的影响，将经济发展和社会福利视为解决劳工抗议的办法。人们希望，更好的基础设施和更好的社会服务不仅能产生更有效率的劳动力，而且能减少战斗力。这些以发展和福利为导向的政策的局限性很快暴露出来。工会要求殖民地人民像欧洲人一样生活和工作，坚持要求殖民地政府像欧洲人一样支付工资。正如本研究报告将要指出的那样，战后殖民统治的理由-发展和福利-正是以这种方式破坏了他们本应巩固的计划。这项研究将对研究殖民历史的社会和经济方面的历史学家和社会科学家有意义。这项研究将挑战战后工业动荡仅仅是帝国衰落或民族主义斗争的产物的假设。在记录了作为战后工业动荡催化剂的经济和社会不平等之后，这项研究将认为，劳工运动起源于特定的动员模式，这种模式将新兴的企业身份与现有的阶级、种族、民族和性别联系形式相结合。学术产出将包括一本专著、一次国际会议、同行评议的期刊文章以及建立一个殖民地研究网络。这项研究也将对决策者和民间社会组织具有重要意义。这项研究将使发展研究所脆弱性和减贫小组和工会大会等组织掌握背景知识，以便就发展中国家的劳工权利和工会能力作出循证决策。研究结果将通过殖民地研究网络的网站，研讨会和讲习班，以及一个公共展览传达给非学术用户：“帝国的危机：工会和非殖民化”。展览将于2016年1月至3月在埃克塞特大学举行，随后将转移到伦敦的英国职工大会。

Using Malaya, the Gold Coast, and British Guiana as case studies, this project will investigate the causes and consequences of the industrial unrest that affected the British Empire in the period 1945 to 1966. This project will address two broad research objectives. Firstly, it examines the causes of the industrial unrest, investigating the relationship between economic conditions, social organisation, and labour protest. Secondly, it analyses what factors conditioned the 'Imperial response' to the strikes, focusing on how metropolitan ideas relating to Keynesian economic management and social welfare influenced colonial labour policy. The first part of the project investigates the causes of the post-war industrial unrest. The study will focus on the war-time legacy of austerity, investigating how low wages and increased labour demands contributed to the outbreak of the post-war protests. The study will also investigate the relationship between the unrest and the particular structure of the colonial economies, examining why workers in key strategic industries often played prominent role in the protests. The study will contend that key sector workers, such as transport employees in the Gold Coast, plantation labourers in Malaya, and bauxite workers in British Guiana, gained considerable industrial power in the post-war period. As the demand for primary commodities increased, sites of strategic economic importance, such as the mining, railway, and port cities, emerged as potential bottlenecks, where strike action could bring an entire economy to a halt. The second part of the study will investigate how in the wake of the strikes, colonial administrations, influenced by domestic policies in post-war Britain, came to regard economic development and social welfare as solutions to the labour protests. It was hoped that better infrastructure and improved social services would produce not only a more efficient workforce but a less combative one. The limitations of these development and welfare-orientated policies were quickly exposed. Having demanded that colonial subjects live and work like Europeans, the trade unions insisted that the colonial governments pay them like Europeans. It was in this way, as this study will document, that the post-war justifications for colonial rule - development and welfare - served to undermine the very project they were supposed to consolidate. The study will be of relevance to those historians and social scientists working on the social and economic aspects of colonial history. The study will challenge the assumption that the post-war industrial unrest was simply a product of imperial decline or nationalist struggle. Having documented the economic and social inequities that served as the catalyst for the post-war industrial unrest, the study will contend that the labour movements had their origins in specific patterns of mobilisation that combined emerging forms of corporate identity with existing forms of affiliation relating to class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Academic outputs will include a monograph, an international conference, peer-reviewed journal articles, and the creation of a Colonial Studies Network. The study will also be of significance to policy makers and civil society organisations. This study will equip organisations, such as the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction Team at the Institute of Development Studies and the Trades Union Congress, with the contextual knowledge to make evidence-based policy decisions regarding labour rights and the capacity of trade unions in developing countries. Research results will be communicated to non-academic users through the Colonial Studies Network's website, seminars and workshops, and a public exhibition: 'Crises of Empire: Trade Unions and Decolonisation'. The exhibition will be held at the University of Exeter from January to March 2016 and will then be transferred to the TUC in London.