A confluence of societal changes, particularly hardening racial attitudes following the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865, resulted in widescale disillusionment with imperial humanitarian projects in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. As this article demonstrates, however, the membership and income of the Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) increased at precisely the moments when this disillusionment was at its sharpest. This article combines quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the nature of the Society's mid-century membership base, demonstrating that, rather than a monolithic decline, a humanitarian polarization took place in response to imperial crises that led some (largely Tories) to disillusionment and others (largely Whigs) to entrenchment. Furthermore, by attending to discursive trends within speeches at APS annual meetings as well as in private correspondence between members and the secretary of the Society, I explore how APS members explained the connection between their own lives and the treatment of distant Indigenous peoples in the colonies. Finding that British Indigenous rights activism was only seldomly expressed in terms of Indigenous peoples themselves, I show that support for the APS was most commonly related to concerns for friends and family living in the colonies, along with disquiet about the impact of colonial injustices on international competition. This enabled Indigenous rights activists to continue their efforts in the face of disillusionment with the capabilities of racialized “others.”

中文翻译：

---

英国人道主义、原住民权利和帝国危机：评估原住民保护协会的会员基础，1840-73 年

社会变革的综合作用，特别是 1857 年印度兵变和 1865 年莫兰特湾叛乱之后种族态度的强硬，导致 19 世纪中叶对帝国人道主义项目的普遍失望。然而，正如本文所表明的那样，原住民保护协会（APS）的会员数量和收入恰恰在这种幻灭感最严重的时刻增加了。本文结合定量和定性方法来评估该协会本世纪中叶会员基础的性质，表明人道主义两极分化不是整体衰退，而是针对帝国危机而发生的，这些危机导致一些人（主要是保守党）幻灭，另一些人则幻灭（主要是辉格党）巩固地位。此外，通过关注 APS 年会演讲以及会员与协会秘书之间的私人信件中的话语趋势，我探讨了 APS 会员如何解释他们自己的生活与殖民地中遥远的土著人民的待遇之间的联系。我发现英国原住民权利活动很少以原住民本身的形式表达，因此我表明，对 APS 的支持最常见的是对生活在殖民地的朋友和家人的担忧，以及对殖民不公正对国际社会影响的担忧。竞赛。这使得原住民权利活动人士能够在面对种族化“其他人”的能力的幻灭时继续努力。