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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Air power and colonial control

        by David Omissi

        Air policing was used in many colonial possessions, but its most effective incidence occurred in the crescent of territory from north-eastern Africa, through South-West Arabia, to North West Frontier of India. This book talks about air policing and its role in offering a cheaper means of 'pacification' in the inter-war years. It illuminates the potentialities and limitations of the new aerial technology, and makes important contributions to the history of colonial resistance and its suppression. Air policing was employed in the campaign against Mohammed bin Abdulla Hassan and his Dervish following in Somaliland in early 1920. The book discusses the relationships between air control and the survival of Royal Air Force in Iraq and between air power and indirect imperialism in the Hashemite kingdoms. It discusses Hugh Trenchard's plans to substitute air for naval or coastal forces, and assesses the extent to which barriers of climate and geography continued to limit the exercise of air power. Indigenous responses include being terrified at the mere sight of aircraft to the successful adaptation to air power, which was hardly foreseen by either the opponents or the supporters of air policing. The book examines the ethical debates which were a continuous undercurrent to the stream of argument about repressive air power methods from a political and operational perspective. It compares air policing as practised by other European powers by highlighting the Rif war in Morocco, the Druze revolt in Syria, and Italy's war of reconquest in Libya.

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        Teaching, Language & Reference
        April 2025

        Anti-colonial research praxis

        Methods for knowledge justice

        by Caroline Lenette

        How can anti-colonial research methodologies be transformative and achieve knowledge justice? This book brings together an eclectic group of leading scholars from around the world to share methodological knowledge grounded in First Nations and majority-world expertise and wisdom. The authors challenge western-centric and colonial approaches to knowledge production and redefine the possibilities of what we can achieve through social research. First Nations and majority-world perspectives are contextual and unique. They share a common aim of disrupting established beliefs on research methodologies and the unquestioned norms that dictate whose knowledge the academy values. The ten chapters in this edited collection describe how the authors draw on Indigenous knowledge systems, feminist frameworks, and creative methodologies as anti-colonial research praxis. The examples span several disciplines such as development studies, geography, education, sexual and reproductive health, humanitarian studies, and social work. Authors use a reflexive approach to discuss specific factors that shape how they engage in research ethically, to lead readers through a reflection on their own practices and values. The book reimagines social research using an anti-colonial lens and concludes with a collaboratively developed and co-written set of provocations for anti-colonial research praxis that situate this important work in the context of ongoing colonial violence and institutional constraints. This book is an essential guide for researchers and scholars within and beyond the academy on how anti-colonial research praxis can produce meaningful outcomes, especially in violent and troubled times. Cover art courtesy of Tawny Chatmon

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Rethinking settler colonialism

        History and memory in Australia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand and South Africa

        by Annie Coombes

        Rethinking settler colonialism focuses on the long history of contact between indigenous peoples and the white colonial communities who settled in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. It interrogates how histories of colonial settlement have been mythologised, narrated and embodied in public culture in the twentieth century (through monuments, exhibitions and images) and charts some of the vociferous challenges to such histories that have emerged over recent years. Despite a shared familiarity with cultural and political institutions, practices and policies amongst the white settler communities, the distinctiveness which marked these constituencies as variously, 'Australian', 'South African', 'Canadian' or 'New Zealander', was fundamentally contingent upon their relationship to and with the various indigenous communities they encountered. In each of these countries these communities were displaced, marginalised and sometimes subjected to attempted genocide through the colonial process. Recently these groups have renewed their claims for greater political representation and autonomy. The essays and artwork in this book insist that an understanding of the political and cultural institutions and practices which shaped settler-colonial societies in the past can provide important insights into how this legacy of unequal rights can be contested in the present. It will be of interest to those studying the effects of colonial powers on indigenous populations, and the legacies of imperial rule in postcolonial societies.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2010

        Law, history, colonialism

        The reach of empire

        by Diane Kirkby, Andrew Thompson, Catharine Coleborne, John Mackenzie

        Drawing on the latest contemporary research from an internationally acclaimed group of scholars, Law, history, colonialism brings together the disciplines of law, history and post-colonial studies in a singular exploration of imperialism. In fresh, innovative essays from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, this collection offers exciting new perspectives on the length and breadth of empire. As issues of native title, truth and reconciliation commissions, and access to land and natural resources are contested in courtrooms and legislation of former colonies, the disciplines of law and history afford new ways of seeing, hearing and creating knowledge. Issues explored include the judicial construction of racial categories, the gendered definitions of nation-states, the historical construction of citizenship, sovereignty and land rights, the limits to legality and the charting of empire, constructions of madness among colonised peoples, reforming property rights of married women, questions of legal and historical evidence, and the rule of law. This collection will be an indispensable reference work to scholars, students and teachers. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2011

        A short history of colonialism

        by Wolfgang Reinhard

        This well-written and comprehensive book by an outstanding expert provides students of history and the general reader with reliable up-to-date information on an essential part of the history of mankind: the global impact of European colonial expansion from the late Middle Ages to the present. It deals with the discoveries, with Portuguese, Dutch and English trade systems in Asia, with the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British Colonies in America, the American plantation economy and the trade in African slaves, with settler colonies in the southern hemisphere, with US-, Russian and Chinese continental imperialism, with western colonial rule in Asia and Africa and the several waves of decolonisation between 1775 and 1989. Twenty-four maps illustrate the narrative. A useful teaching text, it combines traditional and more recent perspectives to produce a final balance sheet of Western colonialism and its global heritage. A carefully selected bibliography encourages further reading. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2018

        Learning femininity in colonial India, 1820–1932

        by Tim Allender, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        Learning femininity in colonial India explores the colonial mentalities that shaped and were shaped by women living in colonial India between 1820 and 1932. Using a broad framework the book examines the many life experiences of these women and how their position changed, both personally and professionally, over this long period of study. Drawing on a rich documentary record from archives in the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North America, Ireland and Australia this book builds a clear picture of the colonial-configured changes that influenced women interacting with the colonial state. This book will appeal to students and academics working on the history of empire and imperialism, gender studies, postcolonial studies and the history of education.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2024

        The political ecology of colonial capitalism

        Race, nature, and accumulation

        by Bikrum Gill

        This book situates the post financial crisis phenomenon of the "global land grab" within the longue duree of the capitalist world system. It does so by advancing a theoretical and historical framework, called the political ecology of colonial capitalism, that clarifies the key role played by the co-production of race and nature in provisioning the "ecological surplus" that has historically secured the emergence and reproduction of capitalist development. The key premise of this book is that the global land grab constitutes another such attempted moment of re-securing the cheap food premise through racialized frontier appropriation. The argument advanced here is that, within the neoliberal crisis conjuncture, the hegemonic resolution of capital's escalating social-ecological contradictions necessitates, through the practice of "global primitive accumulation," the racialized construction of frontiers of unused nature in emergent zones of appropriation.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Law, history, colonialism

        The reach of empire

        by Diane Kirkby, Andrew Thompson, Catharine Coleborne, John M. MacKenzie

        Drawing on the latest contemporary research from an internationally acclaimed group of scholars, Law, history, colonialism bring together the disciplines of law, history and postcoloinial studies in a singular exploration of imperialism. In fresh, innovative essays from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, this collection offers exciting new perspectives on the length and breadth of empire. As issues of native title, truth and reconciliation commission, and access to land and natural resources are contested in courtrooms and legislation of former colonies, the disciplines of law and history afford new ways of seeing, hearing and creating knowledge. Issues explored include the judicial construction of racial categories, the gendered definitions of nation-states, the historical construction of citizenship, sovereignty and land rights, the limits to legality and the charting of empire, constructions of madness among colonised peoples, reforming property rights of married women, questions of legal and historical evidence, and the rule of law. This collection will be an indispensable reference work to scholars, students and teachers.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Crowns and colonies

        European monarchies and overseas empires

        by Robert Aldrich, Cindy McCreery

        Queen Victoria, who also bore the title of Empress of India, had a real and abiding interest in the British Empire, but other European monarchs also ruled over possessions 'beyond the seas'. This collection of original essays explores the connections between monarchy and colonialism, from the old regime empires down to the Commonwealth of today. With case studies drawn from Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, the chapters analyse constitutional questions about the role of the crown in overseas empires, the pomp and pageantry of the monarchy as it transferred to the colonies, and the fate of indigenous sovereigns under European colonial control. Crowns and colonies, with chapters on North America, Asia, Africa and Australasia, provides new perspectives on colonial history, the governance of empire, and the transnational history of monarchies in modern Europe.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2025

        Conquest and resistance in West Africa

        The Jeandet Affair and the illusion of colonial justice

        by Ruth Ginio

        This book is an enthralling account of a legal scandal, which erupted in colonial Senegal in 1890 and reached the French metropolitan press and the parliament. The murder of a colonial administrator, Abel Jeandet, by one of his soldiers led to the brutal and illegal executions without trial of the killer and two local dignitaries. The volume follows the fascinating story of Ndiereby Ba, the widow of one of the dignitaries, who with the help of powerful métis men in the capital Saint Louis sued the French administrators who had supervised the executions for the murder of her husband. Through this captivating tale the book articulates the French expansion into West Africa, the resistance to colonial rule both violent and non-violent, and the lack of interest on the part of French politicians in the brutal conquest of a territory they know nothing about.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2022

        The violence of colonial photography

        by Daniel Foliard

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        The Arts
        November 2023

        Colouring the Caribbean

        Race and the art of Agostino Brunias

        by Mia L. Bagneris

        Colouring the Caribbean offers the first comprehensive study of Agostino Brunias's intriguing pictures of colonial West Indians of colour - so called 'Red' and 'Black' Caribs, dark-skinned Africans and Afro-Creoles, and people of mixed race - made for colonial officials and plantocratic elites during the late-eighteenth century. Although Brunias's paintings have often been understood as straightforward documents of visual ethnography that functioned as field guides for reading race, this book investigates how the images both reflected and refracted ideas about race commonly held by eighteenth-century Britons, helping to construct racial categories while simultaneously exposing their constructedness and underscoring their contradictions. The book offers provocative new insights about Brunias's work gleaned from a broad survey of his paintings, many of which are reproduced here for the first time.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        The French empire between the wars

        Imperialism, politics and society

        by Martin Thomas

        By considering the distinctiveness of the inter-war years as a discrete period of colonial change, this book addresses several larger issues, such as tracing the origins of decolonization in the rise of colonial nationalism, and a re-assessment of the impact of inter-war colonial rebellions in Africa, Syria and Indochina. The book also connects French theories of colonial governance to the lived experience of colonial rule in a period scarred by war and economic dislocation.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Imperialism and the natural world

        by John M. MacKenzie

        Imperial power, both formal and informal, and research in the natural sciences were closely dependent in the nineteenth century. This book examines a portion of the mass-produced juvenile literature, focusing on the cluster of ideas connected with Britain's role in the maintenance of order and the spread of civilization. It discusses the political economy of Western ecological systems, and the consequences of their extension to the colonial periphery, particularly in forms of forest conservation. Progress and consumerism were major constituents of the consensus that helped stabilise the late Victorian society, but consumerism only works if it can deliver the goods. From 1842 onwards, almost all major episodes of coordinated popular resistance to colonial rule in India were preceded by phases of vigorous resistance to colonial forest control. By the late 1840s, a limited number of professional positions were available for geologists in British imperial service, but imperial geology had a longer pedigree. Modern imperialism or 'municipal imperialism' offers a broader framework for understanding the origins, long duration and persistent support for overseas expansion which transcended the rise and fall of cabinets or international realignments in the 1800s. Although medical scientists began to discern and control the microbiological causes of tropical ills after the mid-nineteenth century, the claims for climatic causation did not undergo a corresponding decline. Arthur Pearson's Pearson's Magazine was patriotic, militaristic and devoted to royalty. The book explores how science emerged as an important feature of the development policies of the Colonial Office (CO) of the colonial empire.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Migrant races

        Empire,Identity and K.S. Ranjitsinhji

        by Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie, Satadru Sen

        This book is a study of mobility, image and identity in colonial India and imperial Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a model for studies of migrant figures like K.S. Ranjitsinhji who emerged during the imperial period. Ranjitsinhji is an important figure in the history of modern India and the British empire because he was recognized as a great athlete and described as such. The book focuses on four aspects of Ranjitsinhji's life as a colonial subject: race, money, loyalty and gender. It touches upon Ranjitsinhji's career as a cricketer in the race section. The issue of money gave Indian critics of Ranjitsinhji's regime the language they needed to condemn his personal and administrative priorities, and to portray him as self-indulgent. Ranjitsinhji lived his life as a player of multiple gender roles: sometimes serially, and on occasion simultaneously. His status as a "prince" - while not entirely fake - was fragile enough to be unreliable, and he worked hard to reinforce it even as he constructed his Englishness. Any Indian attempt to transcend race, culture, climate and political place by imitating an English institution and its product must be an unnatural act of insurgency. The disdain for colonial politics that was manifest in the "small rebellions" at the end of the world war converged with the colonized/Indian identity that was evident at the League of Nations. Between the war and his death, it is clear, Ranjitsinhji moved to maximize his autonomy in Nawanagar.

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