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Colonial Lives Across the British Empire
Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century

Editors:
David Lambert, Royal Holloway, University of London
Alan Lester, University of Sussex

David Lambert, Alan Lester, Matthew Brown, Anna Johnston, Zoë Laidlaw, Leigh Dale, Anita Rupprecht, Laurence Brown, Philip Howell, Val McLeish, Nicola J. Thomas, Jonathan Hyslop, Catherine Hall

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Date Published: December 2006
availability: Available
format: Hardback
isbn: 9780521847704

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This volume uses a series of portraits of 'imperial lives' in order to rethink the history of the British Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It tells the stories of men and women who dwelt for extended periods in one colonial space before moving on to dwell in others, developing 'imperial careers'. These men and women consist of four colonial governors, two governors' wives, two missionaries, a nurse/entrepreneur, a poet/civil servant and a mercenary. Leading scholars of colonialism guide the reader through the ways that these individuals made the British Empire, and the ways that the empire made them. Their life histories constituted meaningful connections across the empire that facilitated the continual reformulation of imperial discourses, practices and cultures. Together, their stories help us to re-imagine the geographies of the British Empire and to destabilize the categories of metropole and colony.
- Features an introduction that provides the first comprehensive treatment of the connections between imperial biography and geography
- Written by a team of leading imperial historians
- Will appeal to scholars in imperial history, colonialism, postcolonial studies, British history and historical geography
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Reviews & endorsements
"Taken together, the essays in this volume ratify the editors' claim that 'tracing trans-imperial networks can also inform a research agenda that goes beyond comparison and looks for actual historical connections and disconnections between different sites of empire' (30). Among the many vocations available for the future history of British imperialism, this is surely one of the most exciting and compelling."
- Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Antoinette Burton
"deserves a considered response from those more generally concerned with empire. The volume as a whole will be read with pleasure and profit by many who...will be stimulated to think through their own conceptions of imperial geography." -Elizabeth Baigent, H-HistGeog
"The editors are eloquent on the strengths of the approach of transnational biography as a way of understanding empire, and, overall, the collection is a worthy demonstration of these possibilities" -Kirsten McKenzie, American Historial Review
Taken as a whole the collection offers a series of intriguing paths that begin to trace out what might be a new historical geography of the circuits of empire. Working that up into a map will require many more lives to be followed." -Miles Ogborn, Cultural Geographies
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Product details
- Date Published: December 2006
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521847704
- length: 396 pages
- dimensions: 235 x 159 x 29 mm
- weight: 0.77kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Introduction: Imperial spaces, imperial subjects David Lambert and Alan Lester
1. Gregor MacGregor: clansman, conquistador and colonizer on the fringes of the British Empire Matthew Brown
2. A blister on the imperial Antipodes: Lancelot Edward Threlkeld in Polynesia and Australia Anna Johnston
3. Missionary politics and the captive audience: William Shrewsbury in the Caribbean and the Cape Colony Alan Lester and David Lambert
4. Richard Bourke: Irish liberalism tempered by empire Zoë Laidlaw
5. George Grey in Ireland: narrative and network Leigh Dale
6. 'Wonderful adventures of Mrs. Seacole in many lands' (1857): colonial identity and the geographical imagination Anita Rupprecht
7. Inter-colonial migration and the refashioning of indentured labour: Arthur Gordon in Trinidad, Mauritius and Fiji Laurence Brown
8. Sir John Pope Hennessy and colonial government: humanitarianism and the translation of slavery in the imperial network Philip Howell and David Lambert
9. Sunshine and sorrows: Canada, Ireland and Lady Aberdeen Val McLeish
10. Mary Curzon: 'American Queen of India' Nicola J. Thomas
11. Making Scotland in South Africa: Charles Murray, the Transvaal's Aberdeenshire poet Jonathan Hyslop
Epilogue: Imperial careering at home: Harriet Martineau on empire Catherine Hall
Bibliography.
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Editors
David Lambert, Royal Holloway, University of London
Alan Lester, University of Sussex
Contributors
David Lambert, Alan Lester, Matthew Brown, Anna Johnston, Zoë Laidlaw, Leigh Dale, Anita Rupprecht, Laurence Brown, Philip Howell, Val McLeish, Nicola J. Thomas, Jonathan Hyslop, Catherine Hall