Empire’s Other Histories – serie
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32 produkter
32 produkter
In the Service of Empire
Domestic Service and Mastery in Metropole and Colony
Inbunden, Engelska, 2022
1 326 kr
Skickas
Despite recent research, the 19th-century history of domestic service in empire and its wider implications is underexplored. This book sheds new light on servants and their masters in the British Empire, and in doing so offers new discourses on the colonial home, imperial society identities and colonial culture. Using a wide range of source material, from private papers to newspaper articles, official papers and court records, Dussart explores the strategic nature of the relationship, the connection between imperialism, domesticity and a master/servant paradigm that was deployed in different ways by varied actors often neglected in the historical record. Positioned outside the family but inside the private place of the home, ‘the domestic servant’ was often the foil against which 19th-century contemporaries worked out class, race and gender identities across metropole and colony, creating those places in the process. The role of domestic servants in empire thus lay not only in the labour they undertook, but also in the way the servant-master relationship constituted ground that helped other power relations to be imagined and contested.Dussart explores the domestic service relationship in 19th-century Britain and India, considering how ideas about servants and their masters and/or mistresses spanned imperial space, and shaped peoples and places within it.
Early Capitalism in Colonial Missions
Moravian Household Economies in the Global Eighteenth Century
Inbunden, Engelska, 2024
1 219 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Drawing on unpublished archival material, this volume compares Moravian economic practice in three different mission-settings, to demonstrate how Moravian practices evolved during the 18th century as part of a globalizing world and economy. Delivering in-depth analysis of the far-reaching and deep seated effects of missionary activity on indigenous communities and social relations, it explores how different economic contexts had an impact on the missionaries’ relations with Indigenous and slave-populations in empire.Petterson provides an insight how the missionaries worked, lived among various non-European peoples, and how they organised themselves and their surroundings at a time of changing identities and socio economic change. Analysing how missionary practice developed over this period, it also demonstrates how the Moravian leadership’s priorities and how this affected attitudes to non-European peoples on the ground. Standing outside of national and imperial boundaries, and ambivalent about the political notion of imperialism as well as colonisation itself, Moravian missionaries nonetheless functioned in parallel with colonial structures, and were part of a broadly culturally colonial mission. So, even on the outskirts of imperial organisation, they were often a crucial part of colonial practice and took part in normalising capitalist relations in many—but not all—settings, as this book demonstrates.
1 537 kr
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This book examines the role of Scottish Enlightenment ideas of belonging in the construction and circulation of white supremacist thought that sought to justify British imperial rule. During the 18th century, European imperial expansion radically increased population mobility through the forging of new trade routes, war, disease, enslavement and displacement. In this book, Onni Gust argues that this mass movement intersected with philosophical debates over what it meant to belong to a nation, civilization, and even humanity itself.Unhomely Empire maps the consolidation of a Scottish Enlightenment discourse of ‘home’ and ‘exile’ through three inter-related case studies and debates; slavery and abolition in the Caribbean, Scottish Highland emigration to North America, and raising white girls in colonial India. Playing out over poetry, political pamphlets, travel writing, philosophy, letters and diaries, these debates offer a unique insight into the movement of ideas across a British imperial literary network. Using this rich cultural material, Gust argues that whiteness was central to 19th-century liberal imperialism’s understanding of belonging, whilst emotional attachment and the perceived ability, or inability, to belong were key concepts in constructions of racial difference.
Extreme Violence and the ‘British Way’
Colonial Warfare in Perak, Sierra Leone and Sudan
Inbunden, Engelska, 2020
1 537 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Analysing three cases of British colonial violence that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century, this book argues that all three share commonalities, including the role of racial prejudices in justifying the perpetration of extreme colonial violence. Exploring the connections and comparisons between the Perak War (1875–76), the ‘Hut Tax’ Revolt in Sierra Leone (1898–99) and the Anglo-Egyptian War of Reconquest in the Sudan (1896–99), Gordon highlights the significance of decision-making processes, communication between London and the periphery and the influence of individual colonial administrators in outbreaks of violence.This study reveals the ways in which racial prejudices, the advocacy of a British ‘civilising mission’ and British racial ‘superiority’ informed colonial administrators’ decisions on the ground, as well as the rationalisation of extreme violence. Responding to a neglect of British colonial atrocities within the historiography of colonial violence, this work demonstrates the ways in which Britain was just as willing and able as other European Empires to resort to extreme measures in the face of indigenous resistance or threats to the British imperial project.
451 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book examines the role of Scottish Enlightenment ideas of belonging in the construction and circulation of white supremacist thought that sought to justify British imperial rule. During the 18th century, European imperial expansion radically increased population mobility through the forging of new trade routes, war, disease, enslavement and displacement. In this book, Onni Gust argues that this mass movement intersected with philosophical debates over what it meant to belong to a nation, civilization, and even humanity itself.Unhomely Empire maps the consolidation of a Scottish Enlightenment discourse of ‘home’ and ‘exile’ through three inter-related case studies and debates; slavery and abolition in the Caribbean, Scottish Highland emigration to North America, and raising white girls in colonial India. Playing out over poetry, political pamphlets, travel writing, philosophy, letters and diaries, these debates offer a unique insight into the movement of ideas across a British imperial literary network. Using this rich cultural material, Gust argues that whiteness was central to 19th-century liberal imperialism’s understanding of belonging, whilst emotional attachment and the perceived ability, or inability, to belong were key concepts in constructions of racial difference.
478 kr
Skickas
This collection follows the extraordinary careers of nine colonial subjects who won seats in high-level parliamentary institutions of the imperial powers that ruled over them. Revealing an unexplored dimension of the complex political organisation of modern empires, the essays show how early imperial constitutions allowed for the emergence of these unexpected members of parliament, asks how their presence was possible, and unveils the reactions across metropolitan circles, local communities and the voters who brought them to office. Unearthing the entanglements between political life in metropolitan and non-European societies, it illuminates the ambiguous zones, the margins for negotiation, and the emerging forms of leadership in colonial societies. From a Hispanicised Inca nobleman, to recently emancipated slaves and African colonial subjects, in linking these individuals and their political careers together, Unexpected Voices in Imperial Parliaments argues that the political organisation of modern empires incorporated the voices of the colonised and the non-European, in an ambiguous relationship that led to a widening of political participation and action throughout the imperial world. In doing so, this book offers a comprehensive but nuanced reassessment of the making and unmaking of modern empires.
423 kr
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This collection follows the extraordinary careers of nine colonial subjects who won seats in high-level parliamentary institutions of the imperial powers that ruled over them. Revealing an unexplored dimension of the complex political organisation of modern empires, the essays show how early imperial constitutions allowed for the emergence of these unexpected members of parliament, asks how their presence was possible, and unveils the reactions across metropolitan circles, local communities and the voters who brought them to office.Unearthing the entanglements between political life in metropolitan and non-European societies, it illuminates the ambiguous zones, the margins for negotiation, and the emerging forms of leadership in colonial societies. From a Hispanicised Inca nobleman, to recently emancipated slaves and African colonial subjects, in linking these individuals and their political careers together, Unexpected Voices in Imperial Parliaments argues that the political organisation of modern empires incorporated the voices of the colonised and the non-European, in an ambiguous relationship that led to a widening of political participation and action throughout the imperial world. In doing so, this book offers a comprehensive but nuanced reassessment of the making and unmaking of modern empires.
Extreme Violence and the ‘British Way’
Colonial Warfare in Perak, Sierra Leone and Sudan
Häftad, Engelska, 2022
452 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Analysing three cases of British colonial violence that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century, this book argues that all three share commonalities, including the role of racial prejudices in justifying the perpetration of extreme colonial violence. Exploring the connections and comparisons between the Perak War (1875–76), the ‘Hut Tax’ Revolt in Sierra Leone (1898–99) and the Anglo-Egyptian War of Reconquest in the Sudan (1896–99), Gordon highlights the significance of decision-making processes, communication between London and the periphery and the influence of individual colonial administrators in outbreaks of violence.This study reveals the ways in which racial prejudices, the advocacy of a British ‘civilising mission’ and British racial ‘superiority’ informed colonial administrators’ decisions on the ground, as well as the rationalisation of extreme violence. Responding to a neglect of British colonial atrocities within the historiography of colonial violence, this work demonstrates the ways in which Britain was just as willing and able as other European Empires to resort to extreme measures in the face of indigenous resistance or threats to the British imperial project.
423 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Despite recent research, the 19th-century history of domestic service in empire and its wider implications is underexplored. This book sheds new light on servants and their masters in the British Empire, and in doing so offers new discourses on the colonial home, imperial society identities and colonial culture. Using a wide range of source material, from private papers to newspaper articles, official papers and court records, Dussart explores the strategic nature of the relationship, the connection between imperialism, domesticity and a master/servant paradigm that was deployed in different ways by varied actors often neglected in the historical record. Positioned outside the family but inside the private place of the home, ‘the domestic servant’ was often the foil against which 19th-century contemporaries worked out class, race and gender identities across metropole and colony, creating those places in the process. The role of domestic servants in empire thus lay not only in the labour they undertook, but also in the way the servant-master relationship constituted ground that helped other power relations to be imagined and contested.Dussart explores the domestic service relationship in 19th-century Britain and India, considering how ideas about servants and their masters and/or mistresses spanned imperial space, and shaped peoples and places within it.
1 256 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Winner of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society Annual Prize in Legal History 2025 (Best Monograph)Investigating the history of vagrants in colonial Australia and New Zealand, this book provides insights into the histories and identities of marginalised peoples in the British Pacific Empire. Showing how their experiences were produced, shaped and transformed through laws and institutions, it reveals how the most vulnerable people in colonial society were regulated, marginalised and criminalised in the imperial world. Studying the language of vagrancy prosecution, narratives of mobility and welfare, vagrant families, gender and mobility and the political, social and cultural interpretations of vagrancy, this book sets out a conceptual framework of mobility as a field of inquiry for legal and historical studies. Defining ‘mobility’ as population movement and the occupation of new social and physical space, it offers an entry point to the related histories of penal colonies and new ‘settler’ societies. It provides insights into shared histories of vagrancy across New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand, and explores how different jurisdictions regulated mobility within the temporal and geographical space of the British Pacific Empire.
409 kr
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Winner of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society Annual Prize in Legal History 2025 (Best Monograph)Investigating the history of vagrants in colonial Australia and New Zealand, this book provides insights into the histories and identities of marginalised peoples in the British Pacific Empire. Showing how their experiences were produced, shaped and transformed through laws and institutions, it reveals how the most vulnerable people in colonial society were regulated, marginalised and criminalised in the imperial world. Studying the language of vagrancy prosecution, narratives of mobility and welfare, vagrant families, gender and mobility and the political, social and cultural interpretations of vagrancy, this book sets out a conceptual framework of mobility as a field of inquiry for legal and historical studies. Defining ‘mobility’ as population movement and the occupation of new social and physical space, it offers an entry point to the related histories of penal colonies and new ‘settler’ societies. It provides insights into shared histories of vagrancy across New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand, and explores how different jurisdictions regulated mobility within the temporal and geographical space of the British Pacific Empire.
Making and Remaking of Australasia
Mobility, Texts and ‘Southern Circulations’
Inbunden, Engelska, 2022
1 256 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book explores the emergence of ‘Australasia’ as a way of thinking about the culture and geography of this region. Although it is frequently understood to apply only to Australia and New Zealand, the concept has a longer and more complicated history.‘Australasia’ emerged in the mid-18th century in both French and British writing as European empires extended their reach into Asia and the Pacific, and initially held strong links to the Asian continent. The book shows that interpretations and understandings of ‘Australasia’ shifted away from Asia in light of British imperial interests in the 19th century, and the concept was adapted by varying political agendas and cultural visions in order to reach into the Pacific or towards Antarctica.The Making and Remaking of Australasia offers a number of rich case studies which highlight how the idea itself was adapted and moulded by people and texts both in the southern hemisphere and the imperial metropole where a range of competing actors articulated divergent visions of this part of the British Empire. An important contribution to the cultural history of the British Empire, Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, this collection shows how ‘Australasia’ has had multiple, often contrasting, meanings.
423 kr
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This book explores the emergence of ‘Australasia’ as a way of thinking about the culture and geography of this region. Although it is frequently understood to apply only to Australia and New Zealand, the concept has a longer and more complicated history.‘Australasia’ emerged in the mid-18th century in both French and British writing as European empires extended their reach into Asia and the Pacific, and initially held strong links to the Asian continent. The book shows that interpretations and understandings of ‘Australasia’ shifted away from Asia in light of British imperial interests in the 19th century, and the concept was adapted by varying political agendas and cultural visions in order to reach into the Pacific or towards Antarctica.The Making and Remaking of Australasia offers a number of rich case studies which highlight how the idea itself was adapted and moulded by people and texts both in the southern hemisphere and the imperial metropole where a range of competing actors articulated divergent visions of this part of the British Empire. An important contribution to the cultural history of the British Empire, Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, this collection shows how ‘Australasia’ has had multiple, often contrasting, meanings.
1 256 kr
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Centering on cases of sexual violence, this open access book illuminates the contested introduction of British and French colonial criminal justice in the Pacific Islands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on Fiji, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu/New Hebrides. It foregrounds the experiences of Indigenous Islanders and indentured laborers in the colonial court system, a space in which marginalized voices entered the historical record.Rape and sexual assault trials reveal how hierarchies of race, gender and status all shaped the practice of colonial law in the courtroom and the gendered experiences of colonialism. Trials provided a space where men and women narrated their own story and at times challenged the operation of colonial law. Through these cases, Gender, Violence and Criminal Justice in the Colonial Pacific highlights the extent to which colonial bureaucracies engaged with and affected private lives, as well as the varied ways in which individuals and communities responded to such intrusions and themselves reshaped legal practices and institutions in the Pacific.With bureaucratic institutions unable to deal with the complex realities of colonial lives, Stevens reveals how the courtroom often became a theatrical space in which authority was performed, deliberately obscuring the more complex and violent practices that were central to both colonialism and colonial law-making. Exploring the intersections of legal pluralism and local pragmatism across British and French colonialization in the Pacific, this book shows how island communities and early colonial administrators adopted diverse and flexible approaches towards criminal justice, pursuing alternative forms of justice ranging from unofficial courts to punitive violence in order to deal with cases of sexual assault.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of Waikato, New Zealand.
423 kr
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Centering on cases of sexual violence, this open access book illuminates the contested introduction of British and French colonial criminal justice in the Pacific Islands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on Fiji, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu/New Hebrides. It foregrounds the experiences of Indigenous Islanders and indentured laborers in the colonial court system, a space in which marginalized voices entered the historical record.Rape and sexual assault trials reveal how hierarchies of race, gender and status all shaped the practice of colonial law in the courtroom and the gendered experiences of colonialism. Trials provided a space where men and women narrated their own story and at times challenged the operation of colonial law. Through these cases, Gender, Violence and Criminal Justice in the Colonial Pacific highlights the extent to which colonial bureaucracies engaged with and affected private lives, as well as the varied ways in which individuals and communities responded to such intrusions and themselves reshaped legal practices and institutions in the Pacific.With bureaucratic institutions unable to deal with the complex realities of colonial lives, Stevens reveals how the courtroom often became a theatrical space in which authority was performed, deliberately obscuring the more complex and violent practices that were central to both colonialism and colonial law-making. Exploring the intersections of legal pluralism and local pragmatism across British and French colonialization in the Pacific, this book shows how island communities and early colonial administrators adopted diverse and flexible approaches towards criminal justice, pursuing alternative forms of justice ranging from unofficial courts to punitive violence in order to deal with cases of sexual assault.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Arctic Circles and Imperial Knowledge
The Franklin Family, Indigenous Intermediaries, and the Politics of Truth
Inbunden, Engelska, 2024
1 259 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Longlisted for the Dick and Joan Green Award for Tasmanian History 2026In 1845 an expedition led by Sir John Franklin vanished in the Canadian Arctic. The enduring obsession with the Franklin mystery, and in particular Inuit information about its fate, is partly due to the ways in which information was circulated in these imperial spaces. This book examines how the Franklins and other explorer families engaged in science, exploration and the exchange of information in the early to mid-19th century. It follows the Franklins from the Arctic to Van Diemen’s Land, charting how they worked with intermediaries, imperial humanitarians and scientists, and shows how they used these experiences to claim a moral right to information.Arctic Circles and Imperial Knowledge shows how the indigenous peoples, translators, fur traders, whalers, convicts and sailors who explorer families relied upon for information were both indispensable and inconvenient to the Franklins. It reveals a deep entanglement of polar expedition with British imperialism, and shows how geographical knowledge intertwined with convict policy, humanitarianism, genocide and authority. In these imperial spaces families such as the Franklins negotiated their tenuous authority over knowledge to engage with the politics of truth and question the credibility and trustworthiness of those they sought to silence.
Arctic Circles and Imperial Knowledge
The Franklin Family, Indigenous Intermediaries, and the Politics of Truth
Häftad, Engelska, 2025
409 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Longlisted for the Dick and Joan Green Award for Tasmanian History 2026In 1845 an expedition led by Sir John Franklin vanished in the Canadian Arctic. The enduring obsession with the Franklin mystery, and in particular Inuit information about its fate, is partly due to the ways in which information was circulated in these imperial spaces. This book examines how the Franklins and other explorer families engaged in science, exploration and the exchange of information in the early to mid-19th century. It follows the Franklins from the Arctic to Van Diemen’s Land, charting how they worked with intermediaries, imperial humanitarians and scientists, and shows how they used these experiences to claim a moral right to information.Arctic Circles and Imperial Knowledge shows how the indigenous peoples, translators, fur traders, whalers, convicts and sailors who explorer families relied upon for information were both indispensable and inconvenient to the Franklins. It reveals a deep entanglement of polar expedition with British imperialism, and shows how geographical knowledge intertwined with convict policy, humanitarianism, genocide and authority. In these imperial spaces families such as the Franklins negotiated their tenuous authority over knowledge to engage with the politics of truth and question the credibility and trustworthiness of those they sought to silence.
Imperial Gallows
Murder, Violence and the Death Penalty in British Colonial Africa, c.1915-60
Inbunden, Engelska, 2023
1 259 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Not just a method of crime control or individual punishment in Britain’s African territories, the death penalty was an integral aspect of colonial networks of power and violence. Imperial Gallows analyses capital trials from Kenya, Nyasaland and the Gold Coast to explore the social tensions that fueled murder among colonised populations, and how colonial legal cultures and landscapes of political authority shaped sentencing and mercy. It demonstrates how ideas of race, ethnicity, gender and ‘civilization’ could both spare and condemn Africans convicted of murder in colonial courts, and also how Africans could either appropriate or resist such colonial legal discourses in their trials and petitions.In this book, Stacey Hynd follows the whole process of capital punishment from the identification of a murder victim to trial and conviction, through the process of mercy and sentencing onto death row and execution. The scandals that erupted over the death penalty, from botched executions and moral panics over ritual murder, to the hanging of anti-colonial rebels for ‘terrorist’ and emergency offences, provide significant insights into the shifting moral and political economies of colonial violence. This monograph contextualises the death penalty within the wider penal systems and coercive networks of British colonial Africa to highlight the shifting targets of the imperial gallows against rebels, robbers or domestic murderers. Imperial Gallows demonstrates that while hangings were key elements of colonial iconography in British Africa, symbolically loaded events that demonstrated imperial power and authority, they also reveal the limits of that power.
Imperial Gallows
Murder, Violence and the Death Penalty in British Colonial Africa, c.1915-60
Häftad, Engelska, 2025
410 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Not just a method of crime control or individual punishment in Britain’s African territories, the death penalty was an integral aspect of colonial networks of power and violence. Imperial Gallows analyses capital trials from Kenya, Nyasaland and the Gold Coast to explore the social tensions that fueled murder among colonised populations, and how colonial legal cultures and landscapes of political authority shaped sentencing and mercy. It demonstrates how ideas of race, ethnicity, gender and ‘civilization’ could both spare and condemn Africans convicted of murder in colonial courts, and also how Africans could either appropriate or resist such colonial legal discourses in their trials and petitions.In this book, Stacey Hynd follows the whole process of capital punishment from the identification of a murder victim to trial and conviction, through the process of mercy and sentencing onto death row and execution. The scandals that erupted over the death penalty, from botched executions and moral panics over ritual murder, to the hanging of anti-colonial rebels for ‘terrorist’ and emergency offences, provide significant insights into the shifting moral and political economies of colonial violence. This monograph contextualises the death penalty within the wider penal systems and coercive networks of British colonial Africa to highlight the shifting targets of the imperial gallows against rebels, robbers or domestic murderers. Imperial Gallows demonstrates that while hangings were key elements of colonial iconography in British Africa, symbolically loaded events that demonstrated imperial power and authority, they also reveal the limits of that power.
Early Capitalism in Colonial Missions
Moravian Household Economies in the Global Eighteenth Century
Häftad, Engelska, 2025
398 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Drawing on unpublished archival material, this volume compares Moravian economic practice in three different mission-settings, to demonstrate how Moravian practices evolved during the 18th century as part of a globalizing world and economy. Delivering in-depth analysis of the far-reaching and deep seated effects of missionary activity on indigenous communities and social relations, it explores how different economic contexts had an impact on the missionaries’ relations with Indigenous and slave-populations in empire.Petterson provides an insight how the missionaries worked, lived among various non-European peoples, and how they organised themselves and their surroundings at a time of changing identities and socio economic change. Analysing how missionary practice developed over this period, it also demonstrates how the Moravian leadership’s priorities and how this affected attitudes to non-European peoples on the ground. Standing outside of national and imperial boundaries, and ambivalent about the political notion of imperialism as well as colonisation itself, Moravian missionaries nonetheless functioned in parallel with colonial structures, and were part of a broadly culturally colonial mission. So, even on the outskirts of imperial organisation, they were often a crucial part of colonial practice and took part in normalising capitalist relations in many—but not all—settings, as this book demonstrates.
1 259 kr
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Across Colonial Lines takes a multi-perspective approach to the study of empire and commodities, and encourages readers to look at commodity histories in alternative spatial and temporal contexts. It offers a comparative understanding of commodities in the Venetian, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British Empires. Highlighting the interwoven character of multiple commodity networks, this book situates commodities like gold, coffee, tea and indigo, to name a few, within pre-existing networks of labour, consumption and knowledge production. It explores the nexus between the local and the global, and highlights the role played by individual producers, petty traders, sailors and even consumers in creating regional circulations within a global political economy. In this volume, commodity networks are not just sites of production and trade, but also of political control, social organisation and consumption choices. They provide the impetus for globalisation from as early as the thirteenth century. Each chapter takes an individual commodity to illustrate the history of commodity transmission within imperial contexts. From early modern Venetian commerce to the trade networks of the Eurasian world; from the trading ambitions of British sailors to Portuguese global imperial ambitions; from the cross-imperial knowledge networks of indigo to the assertion of indigenous agency in Angola; and from the commodification of labour to the experience of tourism in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean World, Across Colonial Lines uses commodity networks as a lens to study empire building across varied yet connected geographies and chronologies.
423 kr
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Across Colonial Lines takes a multi-perspective approach to the study of empire and commodities, and encourages readers to look at commodity histories in alternative spatial and temporal contexts. It offers a comparative understanding of commodities in the Venetian, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British Empires. Highlighting the interwoven character of multiple commodity networks, this book situates commodities like gold, coffee, tea and indigo, to name a few, within pre-existing networks of labour, consumption and knowledge production. It explores the nexus between the local and the global, and highlights the role played by individual producers, petty traders, sailors and even consumers in creating regional circulations within a global political economy. In this volume, commodity networks are not just sites of production and trade, but also of political control, social organisation and consumption choices. They provide the impetus for globalisation from as early as the thirteenth century. Each chapter takes an individual commodity to illustrate the history of commodity transmission within imperial contexts. From early modern Venetian commerce to the trade networks of the Eurasian world; from the trading ambitions of British sailors to Portuguese global imperial ambitions; from the cross-imperial knowledge networks of indigo to the assertion of indigenous agency in Angola; and from the commodification of labour to the experience of tourism in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean World, Across Colonial Lines uses commodity networks as a lens to study empire building across varied yet connected geographies and chronologies.
Children and Freedom in the Cape Colony
Age, Labour and Apprenticeship in the Post-Emancipation British Empire
Inbunden, Engelska, 2026
1 186 kr
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Between 1830 and 1850 what it meant to be a child changed in fundamental ways across Britain’s expanding empire. This open access book presents a child-focused history of the period surrounding slave emancipation in the Cape colony and the British Empire. The status of children and childhood were central to discussions of the meaning of freedom in the Cape colony between 1820 and 1850. It proposes that Cape history can be reappraised by adding the category of ‘age’ to discussions of race, gender, class and colonialism. In debates regarding the shift from enslaved or coerced indigenous labour towards nominally free labour, a particular preoccupation was what this would mean for children in general, and for child labourers in particular. There was significant concern regarding who counted as a child, and the measure by which childhood could be differentiated from adulthood. This was raised primarily through debates about child labour and education, including reflections on chronological age. In this period, chronological age became a crucial marker of colonial subjecthood, and a way in which the colony’s population was managed. Drawing on diverse case studies from across the Cape colony and the British Empire, including archival material regarding apprenticeship for Khoe and formerly enslaved children, emigration and infant education, this book highlights the changing nature of childhood in the period 1820 to 1850. The book illustrates shows how children shaped, and were shaped by, both this colonial context and the changing nature of childhood across the British Empire.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.
Dwelling on the Margins of Empire
Colonized and Indigenous Peoples’ Imaginaries of Home
Inbunden, Engelska, 2026
1 189 kr
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Embracing the concept of marginality as a method for recovering histories of home, this book explores communities that have been seen to exist outside of western models of nineteenth- and twentieth-century domesticity, particularly as they were transplanted in – and transformed by – settler, Indigenous, and imperial geographies across the globe. In focusing their attention on Indigenous perspectives on home in the face of – and despite – colonial dislocations, both cultural and territorial, several contributors expose home’s function as a site of cultural vitality and political resistance, as well as colonial violence, across a range of geographical contexts. In addition to highlighting previously marginalised, non-western perspectives on home, this collection explores the operation of domestic politics within nominally undomesticated spaces, as well as within seemingly “unhomely” historical experiences – such as political activism, intergenerational trauma, and geographical exploration. In so doing, it invites critical re-evaluations of home as a category of analysis within imperial, settler colonial, and Indigenous histories on a variety of fronts. Chapters are organised around three key themes, previously positioned in opposition to normative understandings of home, that contributors have reimagined as intrinsic to material and imagined geographies of home: travel and mobility; politics and public life; and colonial violence.
Troubling the Island Story
The Impact and Legacy of Catherine Hall’s Historical Work in and beyond Britain
Inbunden, Engelska, 2026
1 440 kr
Kommande
This edited collection engages with the work of the eminent historian Catherine Hall and her influence on the development of recent British Historiography. Over her career Hall has had a pivotal impact on a number of historiographical and disciplinary fields including British History, Colonial, Imperial and Postcolonial Studies, Gender History, Geography, Education, and Museum Studies. In analysing and responding to her work this volume makes a critical intervention into these inter-disciplinary fields.Providing a distinctive intellectual history of Hall's work and its impact, as well as an accessible route into a range of historiographical and interdisciplinary areas, the essays in this volume bring together leading scholars in the field of critical colonial studies to tackle unanswered questions raised by Hall's work and expand on them. Exploring themes such as masculinity, history writing, historical geography and histories of the home as well as tracing Hall's intellectual trajectory and its relationship to shifting historiographical debates, Troubling the Island Story offers a clear and accessible insight into the changing shape of British historiography over the last forty years.
1 186 kr
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Human species supremacy is one of the most persistent fictions at work in the field of modern British imperial history today. This open access collection challenges that assumption, and investigates what histories of empire look like if reimagined as the effect of biocultural, chemical and cultural processes, rather than the result of effects by humans that have been visited upon cultural landscapes, fauna and biomes.In understanding the boundaries between human and nonhuman worlds as porous and open to mutual transformation, and foregrounding interspecies interactions, Biocultural Empire seeks to understand the conditions of imperial power, experience and knowledge as a remix of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. Bringing empire’s ‘biocultural histories’ to the fore, it asks imperial historians to reckon with an interpretative framework which refuses the sovereignty and boundedness of the imperial subject by seeing it as inseparable from its social and ecological formations. Through this biocultural framework this collection highlights how relentlessly the human species bias of western liberal thought persists at the heart of imperial projects and their histories, and offers a new anti-colonial method that represents a significant intervention in the field of British imperial history.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of Illinois, USA and University of British Columbia, Canada.
496 kr
Kommande
Human species supremacy is one of the most persistent fictions at work in the field of modern British imperial history today. This open access collection challenges that assumption, and investigates what histories of empire look like if reimagined as the effect of biocultural, chemical and cultural processes, rather than the result of effects by humans that have been visited upon cultural landscapes, fauna and biomes.In understanding the boundaries between human and nonhuman worlds as porous and open to mutual transformation, and foregrounding interspecies interactions, Biocultural Empire seeks to understand the conditions of imperial power, experience and knowledge as a remix of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. Bringing empire’s ‘biocultural histories’ to the fore, it asks imperial historians to reckon with an interpretative framework which refuses the sovereignty and boundedness of the imperial subject by seeing it as inseparable from its social and ecological formations. Through this biocultural framework this collection highlights how relentlessly the human species bias of western liberal thought persists at the heart of imperial projects and their histories, and offers a new anti-colonial method that represents a significant intervention in the field of British imperial history.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of Illinois, USA and University of British Columbia, Canada.
Reimagining Empire in India
George Thompson, Anti-Slavery Activism, and the Global Networks of British Colonial Reform, 1831-1858
Inbunden, Engelska, 2025
1 186 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book explores debates about East India Company colonialism that took place on the lecture circuits of Britain, in the meeting houses of Calcutta, and at the Mughal court in Delhi in the late 1830s and 1840s. In the decades that followed the Emancipation Act (1833) British abolitionists and colonial philanthropists turned their attention to conditions across the empire, sometimes collaborating with colonised groups to challenge the impositions and iniquities of British colonial rule and sometimes prescribing their own vision of how an imperial relationship should look.This book uses the travels, experiences, and activism of anti-slavery lecturer and East India reformer George Thompson as a starting point for a wider exploration and reassessment of the ways in which Company rule in India was challenged in the decades before the Indian Uprising of 1857. An important organiser in the campaign for East India reform as the main spokesperson for the Aborigines Protection Society and a champion of the causes of Indian rulers such as Pratap Singh and Bahadur Shah Zafar, Thompson was also a flawed character. As a paid agent, he was remunerated for his activism and accusations of pecuniary self-interest were never far away. His story therefore offers important insights into the limitations of early anti-colonial sentiment, and the problems of cosmopolitan collaboration in colonial contexts. By exploring early Victorian debates about India’s commercial potential, role in the imperial labour market, and place within an increasingly interconnected post-emancipation empire, the book seeks to contextualise evolving ideas regarding Britain’s humanitarian responsibilities towards her ‘fellow subjects in the East’, and how these connected with, and were superseded by, nascent forms of Indian anti-colonialism, political protest, and civic activism.
Reimagining Empire in India
George Thompson, Anti-Slavery Activism, and the Global Networks of British Colonial Reform, 1831-1858
Häftad, Engelska, 2026
496 kr
Kommande
This book explores debates about East India Company colonialism that took place on the lecture circuits of Britain, in the meeting houses of Calcutta, and at the Mughal court in Delhi in the late 1830s and 1840s. In the decades that followed the Emancipation Act (1833) British abolitionists and colonial philanthropists turned their attention to conditions across the empire, sometimes collaborating with colonised groups to challenge the impositions and iniquities of British colonial rule and sometimes prescribing their own vision of how an imperial relationship should look.This book uses the travels, experiences, and activism of anti-slavery lecturer and East India reformer George Thompson as a starting point for a wider exploration and reassessment of the ways in which Company rule in India was challenged in the decades before the Indian Uprising of 1857. An important organiser in the campaign for East India reform as the main spokesperson for the Aborigines Protection Society and a champion of the causes of Indian rulers such as Pratap Singh and Bahadur Shah Zafar, Thompson was also a flawed character. As a paid agent, he was remunerated for his activism and accusations of pecuniary self-interest were never far away. His story therefore offers important insights into the limitations of early anti-colonial sentiment, and the problems of cosmopolitan collaboration in colonial contexts. By exploring early Victorian debates about India’s commercial potential, role in the imperial labour market, and place within an increasingly interconnected post-emancipation empire, the book seeks to contextualise evolving ideas regarding Britain’s humanitarian responsibilities towards her ‘fellow subjects in the East’, and how these connected with, and were superseded by, nascent forms of Indian anti-colonialism, political protest, and civic activism.
Imperial Feminists and the Irish Question
Collaboration, Resistance and the Limits of Solidarity, 1900-1921
Inbunden, Engelska, 2026
1 440 kr
Kommande
In the early 20th century, women across the British Isles united to fight for the right to vote, for fair pay and good working conditions, and for an end to war, but what did this unity look like across the colonial border between Ireland and England? This book offers a fresh perspective on the history of empire and feminism by exploring the changing nature of political solidarity between English and Irish feminists, socialists, and pacifists during the first two decades of the twentieth century.Demonstrating how Ireland offered English women a space in which to act upon their patriotic duty as ‘mothers’ of empire in order to alleviate the degraded status of their ‘colonial sisters’, Geraghty shows how this imperial feminism was an integral part of English women’s demand for political freedoms. Their political ideologies, shaped during a time of heightened imperial loyalties, did not disappear with the gaining of partial franchise in 1918, but remained a pervasive part of their politics and impacted the ways in which they engaged with the Irish struggle for independence and Irish women’s political emancipation. Imperial Feminists exposes the difficulties of building and maintaining grassroots feminist and socialist solidarities at a time of heightened imperial loyalties and changing internationalist politics.