Social Unrest, State Control, and the Birth of Educational Bureaucracy in the British Empire

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 3:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Racialization, State Power, and Resilience: Comparative Perspectives on National Education Systems

Abstract

This paper traces educational bureaucracy as a mechanism of imperial state control in response to social unrest across the British Empire. Bridging archival analysis with political theory, it examines how the imperial state legitimated authority by formalizing educational structures to surveil and regulate subject populations. Drawing on frameworks of legitimation, state formation, and antiblackness, the paper argues that bureaucratized schooling emerged not merely as a civic good but as a pacification strategy amidst rising resistance. By linking education to law, order, and governance, the paper offers a theoretical intervention into how colonial states used bureaucratic education to maintain rule under the guise of development.

Author

• Faith D. Northern, New York University