Inquiring into Empire
Inquiring into Empire
Kirsten McKenzie, University of Sydney
Naomi Parkinson, University of New South Wales, Sydney
David Andrew Roberts, University of New England, Australia
$120.00
USDThis is the first history to grapple with the vast project of British imperial investigation in the years between the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the Great Reform Act. Beginning in 1819, commissions of inquiry were sent to examine law, governance, and economy from New South Wales and the Caribbean to Malta and West Africa. They left behind a matchless record of colonial life in the form of papers, reports and more than 200 volumes of testimonies and correspondence. Inquiring into Empire taps this under-used archive to develop a new understanding of imperial reform. The authors argue that, far from being a first step in the march towards liberalism, the commissions represented a deeply pragmatic, messy but concerted effort to chart a middle way between reaction and revolution which was constantly buffeted by the politics of colonial encounter.
- Synthesizes the vast and neglected archive of commissioners' papers, reports and correspondence.
- Draws out the variety and intimacy of engagement between commissioners and colonial publics in an array of colonies, focusing on the voices of unfree labourers and free people of colour.
- Develops a new understanding of British reform in the period between the close of the Napoleonic wars and the opening of the 'Age of Reform'.
Reviews & endorsements
‘The British empire post–1815 was a vast human phenomenon, built largely on forced labour. This book tackles its complexity and diversity, its tyranny and hesitant idealism head on and the result is a ground-breaking synthesis – highly ambitious, seriously detailed, patient, painstaking and deeply humane.' Alan Atkinson, University of Sydney
‘Brilliantly argued, evidentially rich and geographically sweeping, this work reveals how British inquiries into empire shaped both imperial and domestic realms in the ‘Age of Reform'. It conjures a compelling human narrative from the archives of the state, one as attentive to the enslaved and dispossessed as to imperial overlords.' Zoë Laidlaw, University of Melbourne
Product details
February 2025Hardback
9781009470629
344 pages
235 × 159 × 25 mm
0.64kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The State of things
- 3. Reordering New South Wales
- 4. Remaking Caribbean courts
- 5. Defending the crown
- 6. Liberated Africans
- 7. Bonded labour
- 8. Slave traders
- 9. Reforming Ceylon
- 10. Reporting and reforming
- A note on sources
- Bibliography
- Index.
