Colonial lives across the British Empire : Imperial careering in the long nineteenth century / edited by David Lambert and Alan Lester.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Lambert, David.

Lester, Alan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Imperialism--History--19th century.

Imperialism.

History.

Imperialism--History--20th century.

Colonies.

Great Britain--Colonies--History--19th century.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--Colonies--History--20th century.

Great Britain--Colonies--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xv, 376 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction: Imperial spaces, imperial subjects / David Lambert, Alan Lester 1

1 Gregor MacGregor: clansman, conquistador and coloniser on the fringes of the British empire / Matthew Brown 32

2 A blister on the imperial antipodes: Lancelot Edward Threlkeld in Polynesia and Australia / Anna Johnston 58

3 Missionary politics and the captive audience: William Shrewsbury in the Caribbean and the Cape colony / Alan Lester, David Lambert 88

4 Richard Bourke: Irish liberalism tempered by empire / Zoe Laidlaw 113

5 George Grey in Ireland: narrative and network / Leigh Dale 145

6 Wonderful adventures of Mrs Seacole in many lands (1857): colonial identity and the geographical imagination / Anita Rupprecht 176

7 Inter-colonial migration and the refashioning of indentured labour: Arthur Gordon in Trinidad, Mauritius and Fiji (1866-1880) / Laurence Brown 204

8 Sir John Pope Hennessy and colonial government: humanitarianism and the translation of slavery in the imperial network / Philip Howell, David Lambert 228

9 Sunshine and sorrows: Canada, Ireland and Lady Aberdeen / Val McLeish 257

10 Mary Curzon: 'American Queen of India' / Nicola J. Thomas 285

11 Making Scotland in South Africa: Charles Murray, the Transvaal's Aberdeenshire poet / Jonathan Hyslop 309

12 Epilogue: Imperial careering at home; Harriet Martineau on Empire / Catherine Hall 335.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 360-365) and index.

ISBN:

0521847702

OCLC:

70764843