Invoking Empire

Invoking Empire analyses local perceptions and impacts of imperial governance in Britain's settler colonies to explore the entanglement of imperialism and settler colonialism in the late nineteenth century. The book brings together nine case studies from settler and Indigenous communities across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to demonstrate the multiplicity of ways colonial subjects leveraged imperial authority in their everyday lives. Asking how and why colonial inhabitants attempted to co-opt imperial authority in diverse contexts ranging from an 1868 smallpox outbreak in British Columbia to the Bechuanaland Wars of 1882-85, Invoking Empire provides valuable microhistorical and comparative insights into the lived experiences of imperial political subjecthood during the transition to self-government in the settler colonies. Moreover, by critically assessing the failures of imperial citizenship to achieve tangible results, the book offers crucial insights into the complicity of British governments and publics in settler colonialism. Adopting an integrative approach that brings Indigenous and settler experiences together, Invoking Empire contributes a novel approach to imperial citizenship that captures the diverse cultural and political connotations of imperial connectivity. Additionally, the book's approach to settler colonialism as deeply entangled in imperial continuities contributes to ongoing efforts to reconceptualize national settler histories through a transnational lens. Through its deliberate attention to the complexity and indeterminacy of the late nineteenth century, Invoking Empire provides an essential window into to the messiness, the hopefulness, and the often times paradoxical nature of imperial subjecthood during a period of massive and consequential political changes.