Between Paternal Power and Prerogative: The Reformatory Origins of Protection in the British Empire (1788–1888)

In the nineteenth century, protective departments for the ‘treatment’ of groups of colonised subjects – portrayed as vulnerable and disorderly yet reformable – were installed across the British Empire. Building on recent scholarly investigations of the interpenetration of the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ registers of Protectorates, this research penetrates their innermost loci – refuges and schools for endangered and dangerous youths – and adopts them as a lens to observe protective rule in general. To do so, it embarks on a retrospective journey by juxtaposing some of the activities of the Singapore Protectorate of Chinese, opened in 1877, with those of both the Aboriginal Protectorates, established across colonial Australia from the late 1830s, and the first London reformatory, opened in 1788. By interpreting the London reformatory as an early example of a domestic protective station, the article postulates that some key functions of the colonial Protectorates were first attempted within the context of the rehabilitation of British young offenders. By interrogating the history of ‘internal’ protection as contributing to both the history of sovereignty and the history of familial relations, this analysis considers ‘reclamation’ and ‘paternal power’ as integral notions to the legal and conceptual foundations of British imperial protective rule.