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

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?

Who will benefit from this research?

The research will be of interest to a broad section of the wider public interested in history, and audiences concerned with issues of race, disability and colonialism, including those directly affected by those issues today.

It is also potentially of interest to policy makers working on issues of disability whom I would contact through History and Policy (http://www.historyandpolicy.org/) and through links with social scientists and institutional resources such as the School of Health and Related Research (ScHAAR) at Sheffield, Medical Humanities Sheffield and the new iHuman Research Centre.

How will they benefit from this research?

The impact will be cultural. The wider public, and in particular those living in Sheffield, will be able to participate in and learn from structured and informed discussion of a set of historical problems with a bearing on contemporary issues.

From the project's outset, I shall communicate my research and open up discussions with interested members of the wider public through digital activities. Digital activities are not only of ever-increasing importance to society at large but have proved particularly important within disabled communities where access and mobility issues mean the internet is an ideal vehicle for communication.

- A dedicated blog (cross-posted with the Department of History's own well-established blog) will also serve to promote the project within the research community. The blog will allow for interaction with the public as I will open up issues for discussion.
- Contributions to highly respected online websites including: English Heritage's 'Disability in Time and Place' http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/discover/people-and-places/disability-history/; Disability Museum : http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/index.html Nineteenth Century Disability: Cultures and Contexts (a digital reader) http://www.nineteenthcenturydisability.org/. will allow me to access international audiences. All these websites have considerable readerships and have already expressed interest in publishing my work.

I will communicate my research to a history 'general interest' audience. This can be reached through publications such as History Today and BBC History Magazine, to which I shall submit articles exploring the lives of disabled people in nineteenth-century Britain.

I will convene a research network on Disability and Imperialism bringing together disability activists, healthcare professionals and scholars from a range of disciplines including literary studies, postcolonial studies, disability studies and sociology. We shall have three initial conversations about the social/medical models of disability; disability and migration; and disability and race. We will then explore possibilities for future work, collaboration and co-production.

I will do public engagement work with Disability Sheffield, a group with whom I'm already working on a project based around 'storying' the life histories of adults with learning disabilities. I will apply for Festival of the Mind funding at the University of Sheffield to develop this work into a public performance, the exact nature of which will depend on the project findings.

Finally I will organise two kinds of event:-
- A series of evening talks hosted by the University of Sheffield Medical Humanities Centre on the History of the Body. This series of talks will be interdisciplinary in nature, involving colleagues from different departments in the university (including sociology, psychology, medicine, and literary studies) and will include at least one non-academic speaker.
- An academic conference will include a public-facing evening 'keynote lecture' open to members of the public.

I am applying for additional funding for British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters and will ensure that the events are fully accessible.