In January of 1788 the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales and a thousand British men and women encountered the people who will be their new neighbours; the beach nomads of Australia. "These people mixed with ours," wrote a British observer soon after the landfall, "and all hands danced together." What followed would determine relations between the peoples for the next two hundred years. Drawing skilfully on first-hand accounts and historical records, Inga Clendinnen reconstructs the complex dance of curiosity, attraction and mistrust performed by the protagonists of either side. She brings this key chapter in British colonial history brilliantly alive. Then we discover why the dancing stopped . . .

In this book, the prominent theorist Partha Chatterjee looks at the creative and powerful results of the nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa that are posited not on identity but on difference with the nationalism propagated by the West. Arguing that scholars have been mistaken in equating political nationalism with nationalism as such, he shows how anticolonialist nationalists produced their own domain of sovereignty within colonial society well before beginning their political battle with the imperial power. These nationalists divided their culture into material and spiritual domains, and staked an early claim to the spiritual sphere, represented by religion, caste, women and the family, and peasants. Chatterjee shows how middle-class elites first imagined the nation into being in this spiritual dimension and then readied it for political contest, all the while "normalizing" the aspirations of the various marginal groups that typify the spiritual sphere.

While Chatterjee's specific examples are drawn from Indian sources, with a copious use of Bengali language materials, the book is a contribution to the general theoretical discussion on nationalism and the modern state. Examining the paradoxes involved with creating first a uniquely non-Western nation in the spiritual sphere and then a universalist nation-state in the material sphere, the author finds that the search for a postcolonial modernity is necessarily linked with past struggles against modernity.

!Viva Mexico! !Viva la Independencia! Celebrations of September 16 examines the Independence holiday, exploring how this most important public festival in the civic calendar has given Mexicans a rich tradition of national celebration that is part creation myth, part official pomp, and part popular merrymaking. The editors examine how Independence Day festivities have provided a medium for informal education, sketching on the canvas of the public sphere national values, glorifying specific historical events and individuals, and celebrating government plans and achievements. Since 1823, this festival has served as an essential contribution to the conversion of Mexicans to common ideals, as people across the country express their national identity with the cry, '!Viva Mexico! !Viva la Independencia!'

In this superb volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series, Colin Calloway reveals how the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had a profound effect on American history, setting in motion a cascade of unexpected consequences, as Indians and Europeans, settlers and frontiersmen, all struggled to adapt to new boundaries, new alignments, and new relationships.
Britain now possessed a vast American empire stretching from Canada to the Florida Keys, yet the crushing costs of maintaining it would push its colonies toward rebellion. White settlers, free to pour into the West, clashed as never before with Indian tribes struggling to defend their way of life. In the Northwest, Pontiac's War brought racial conflict to its bitterest level so far. Whole ethnic groups migrated, sometimes across the continent: it was 1763 that saw many exiled settlers from Acadia in French Canada move again to Louisiana, where they would become Cajuns. Calloway unfurls this panoramic canvas with vibrant narrative skill, peopling his tale with memorable characters such as William Johnson, the Irish baronet who moved between Indian campfires and British barracks; Pontiac, the charismatic Ottawa chieftain; and James Murray, Britains first governor in Quebec, who fought to protect the religious rights of his French Catholic subjects.
Most Americans know the significance of the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the Treaty of Paris. Yet 1763 was a year that shaped our history just as decisively as 1776 or 1862. This captivating book shows why.
Winner of the Society of Colonial Wars Book Award for 2006

While Richard Wright's account of the 1955 Bandung Conference has been key to shaping Afro-Asian historical narratives, Indonesian accounts of Wright and his conference attendance have been largely overlooked. Indonesian Notebook contains myriad documents by Indonesian writers, intellectuals, and reporters, as well as a newly recovered lecture by Wright, previously published only in Indonesian. Brian Russell Roberts and Keith Foulcher introduce and contextualize these documents with extensive background information and analysis, showcasing the heterogeneity of postcolonial modernity and underscoring the need to consider non-English language perspectives in transnational cultural exchanges. This collection of primary sources and scholarly histories is a crucial companion volume to Wright'sThe Color Curtain.

"Local government in colonial America was the seedbed of American constitutionalism." So begins the introductory essay to this landmark collection of eighty documents created by the American colonists--and not English officials--that are the genesis of American fundamental law and constitutionalism. Most of these documents, commencing with the Agreement of the Settlers at Exeter in New Hampshire, July 5, 1639, and concluding with Joseph Galloway's Plan of Union, 1774--"the immediate precursor to the Articles of Confederation"--have never before been accessible to the general reader or available in a single volume. As Professor Lutz points out, the documents are chosen to make possible "a careful examination of the American] people's attempt at self-interpretation." All of the principal colonial documents are included, as are all documents attempting to unite the colonies, beginning with the New England Confederation of 1643. Bicameralism, popular sovereignty, the separation of powers, checks and balances, limited government, and religious freedom--in sum, the hallmarks of American constitutionalism--were first presented to the world in these writings.Donald S. Lutz is Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston.

The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire offers the most comprehensive treatment of the causes, course, and consequences of the ends of empire in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors convey the global reach of decolonization, with chapters analysing the empires of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China and Japan. The Handbook combines broad, regional treatments of decolonization with chapter contributions constructed around particular themes or social issues. It considers how the history of decolonization is being rethought as a result of the rise of the 'new' imperial history, and its emphasis on race, gender, and culture, as well as the more recent growth of interest in histories of globalization, transnational history, and histories of migration and diaspora, humanitarianism and development, and human rights. The Handbook, in other words, seeks to identify the processes and commonalities of experience that make decolonization a unique historical phenomenon with a lasting resonance. In light of decades of historical and social scientific scholarship on modernization, dependency, neo-colonialism, 'failed state' architectures and post-colonial conflict, the obvious question that begs itself is 'when did empires actually end?' In seeking to unravel this most basic dilemma the Handbook explores the relationship between the study of decolonization and the study of globalization. It connects histories of the late-colonial and post-colonial worlds, and considers the legacies of empire in European and formerly colonised societies.

Winner of the John Gilmary Shea Prize A groundbreaking history of how Africans in the French Empire embraced both African independence and their Catholic faith during the upheaval of decolonization, leading to a fundamental reorientation of the Catholic Church. African Catholic examines how French imperialists and the Africans they ruled imagined the religious future of French sub-Saharan Africa in the years just before and after decolonization. The story encompasses the political transition to independence, Catholic contributions to black intellectual currents, and efforts to alter the church hierarchy to create an authentically "African" church. Elizabeth Foster recreates a Franco-African world forged by conquest, colonization, missions, and conversions-one that still exists today. We meet missionaries in Africa and their superiors in France, African Catholic students abroad destined to become leaders in their home countries, African Catholic intellectuals and young clergymen, along with French and African lay activists. All of these men and women were preoccupied with the future of France's colonies, the place of Catholicism in a postcolonial Africa, and the struggle over their personal loyalties to the Vatican, France, and the new African states. Having served as the nuncio to France and the Vatican's liaison to UNESCO in the 1950s, Pope John XXIII understood as few others did the central questions that arose in the postwar Franco-African Catholic world. Was the church truly universal? Was Catholicism a conservative pillar of order or a force to liberate subjugated and exploited peoples? Could the church change with the times? He was thinking of Africa on the eve of Vatican II, declaring in a radio address shortly before the council opened, "Vis-a-vis the underdeveloped countries, the church presents itself as it is and as it wants to be: the church of all."

During the course of the seventeenth century, Europeans and Native Americans came together on the western edge of England's North American empire for a variety of purposes, from trading goods and information to making alliances and war. This blurred and constantly shifting frontier region, known as the backcountry, existed just beyond England's imperial reach on the North American mainland. It became an area of opportunity, intrigue, and conflict for the diverse peoples who lived there.

In "At the Edge of Empire," Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall describe the nature of the complex interactions among these interests, examining colorful and sometimes gripping instances of familiarity and uneasiness, acceptance and animosity, and cooperation and conflict, from individual encounters to such vast undertakings as the Seven Years' War. Over time, the European settlers who established farms and trading posts in the backcountry displaced the region's Native inhabitants. Warfare and disease each took a horrifying toll across Indian country, making it easier for immigrants to establish themselves on lands once peopled only by Native Americans. Eventually, these pioneers established economically, culturally, and politically self-sufficient communities that increasingly resented London's claims of sovereignty. As Hinderaker and Mancall show, these resentments helped to shape the ideals that guided the colonists during the American Revolution.

The first book in a new Johns Hopkins series, Regional Perspectives on Early America, "At the Edge of Empire" explores one of British America's most intriguing regions, both widening and deepening our understanding of North America's colonial experience.

A classic work in postcolonial studies, "Masks of Conquest" describes the introduction of English studies in India under British rule and its function as an effective form of political control abetting voluntary cultural assimilation. Gauri Viswanathan demonstrates how the literary text functioned as a mirror of the ideal Englishman and became a mask of exploitation that camouflaged the material activities of the colonizing British government. In her new preface, she argues that the curricular study of English can no longer be understood innocently or inattentively to the deeper contexts of imperialism, transnationalism, and globalization in which the discipline first articulated its mission. "Masks of Conquest" illuminates the transcontinental movements and derivations of English studies, revealing the discipline's origins are as diffuse as its future shape.

No work is a stronger, more exacting, heartbreaking record of the Spanish atrocities in the genocidal enterprise of colonization in the Americas. This account provides an eyewitness’s history of the process in the territory of Columbus.

In contrast to most accounts of Puritan-Indian relations, New England Frontier argues that the first two generations of Puritan settlers were neither generally hostile toward their Indian neighbors nor indifferent to their territorial rights. Rather, American Puritans-especially their political and religious leaders-sought peaceful and equitable relations as the first step in molding the Indians into neo-Englishmen. With a new introduction, this third edition affords the reader a clear, balanced overview of a complex and sensitive area of American history. "Vaughan has exhaustively examined the records and written a book of indispensable value to any student of colonial New England."-New York Times Book Review Alden T. Vaughan, Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University is the author or editor of numerous books, including The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1730, New England's Prospect, and Puritans among the Indians.

Africa since 1940 is the flagship textbook in Cambridge University Press' New Approaches to African History series. Now revised to include the history and scholarship of Africa since the turn of the millennium, this important book continues to help students understand the process out of which Africa's position in the world has emerged. A history of decolonisation and independence, it allows readers to see just what political independence did and did not signify, and how men and women, peasants and workers, religious and local leaders sought to refashion the way they lived, worked and interacted with each other. Covering the transformation of Africa from a continent marked by colonisation to one of independent states, Frederick Cooper follows the 'development question' across time, seeing how first colonial regimes and then African elites sought to transform African society in their own ways. He shows how people in cities and villages tried to make their way in an unequal world, through times of hope, despair, renewed possibilities, and continued uncertainties. Looking beyond the debate over what or who may be to blame, Cooper explores alternatives for the future.

Focuses on the creation of, and struggle over, urban order in four cities in Eastern and Southern Africa, Nairobi, Lusaka, Zanzibar, and Lilongwe, and the workings of power in the planning processes for each city. Garth Andrew Myers' work makes a significant contribution to a long tradition of research on colonial cities and a multidisciplinary body of literature on urban legacies of colonialism. He examines both colonial rule and postcolonial inheritance in these cities, tracing the legacies of colonialism in different and divergent postcolonial settings--a revolutionary left-wing socialist state (Zanzibar) and a reactionary right-wing dictatorship (Malawi). In addition to the examination of urban plans and the African urban majority's responses to them, the book traces the experience of the urban planning process through three different "verandahs of power, " or levels of class depiction: the colonial power, the colonized middle, and the urban majority. Interspersed with personal stories, this book illuminates our understanding of the workings of power in African cities by addressing human experiences of that power.

Even to experts, Colombia is one of the most confusing countries in the Americas. Its democratic tradition is among the richest and most long-standing in the hemisphere, with only eleven years of military rule during its 200 some years of independence. Except for the United States and Canada, Colombia has had the highest growth rate in the Americas over the last 75 years. It is widely seen as having some of the continent's best universities and deep intellectual traditions along with a dazzling array of fine and industrial arts and now globally-popular tropical music. But despite these admirable achievements, Colombia has also experienced what its Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez once called "a biblical holocaust" of human savagery. Along with the scourge of politically-motivated assassinations (averaging 30 per day in the 1990s) have been drug-related massacres, widespread disappearances, rapes and kidnappings, and even the signature defilement of murder victims. The relentless dynamics of the illegal drug industry raises a puzzling question: how did Colombia capture and control that enormously-lucrative industry and then leverage its status as America's No. 1 drug supplier into a $7 billion military partnership with the world's superpower? The answer to that question is something everyone needs to know. To unravel the enigma, Richard D. Mahoney links historical legacies with key periods in the post-World War II era and then sets forth overarching cultural features-land violence, the Church, race, the Spanish language, and magical culture-that run through Colombia's history, distinguish its national experience, and fuel its unquenchable creativity.

In the rich and varied life stories in Under the Black Umbrella, elderly Koreans recall incidents that illustrate the complexities of Korea during the colonial period. Hildi Kang here reinvigorates a period of Korean history long shrouded in the silence of those who endured under the "black umbrella" of Japanese colonial rule. Existing descriptions of the colonial period tend to focus on extremes: imperial repression and national resistance, Japanese subjugation and Korean suffering, Korean backwardness and Japanese progress. "Most people," Kang says, "have read or heard only the horror stories which, although true, tell only a small segment of colonial life."

The varied accounts in Under the Black Umbrella reveal a truth that is both more ambiguous and more human the small-scale, mundane realities of life in colonial Korea. Accessible and attractive narratives, linked by brief historical overviews, provide a large and fully textured view of Korea under Japanese rule. Looking past racial hatred and repression, Kang reveals small acts of resistance carried out by Koreans, as well as gestures of fairness by Japanese colonizers. Impressive for the history it recovers and preserves, Under the Black Umbrella is a candid, human account of a complicated time in a contested place."

The First World War threw the imperial order into crisis. New states emerged from the great European land empires, while Germany's African and Pacific colonies, and the Ottoman provinces in the Middle East fell into allied hands. Britain, France, Belgium, Japan, and the British dominions wanted to keep the new states, but Woodrow Wilson and the millions converted to the ideal of self-determination thought otherwise. At the Paris Peace conference of 1919, the allies agreed reluctantly to govern their new conquests according to international and humanitarian norms and under 'mandate' from the League of Nations. As The Guardians shows, this decision had enormous consequences. The allies sought to use the League to safeguard imperial authority, but that authority was undermined by the mechanisms for international oversight they had themselves created. Colonial nationalists and humanitarians exploited new rights of petition or opportunities for publicity to expose abuses or scandals; Germans resentful of the loss of their colonies and Italians eager to found a new empire arrived in Geneva to demand a repartition of the spoils. As imperial politicians wearied of continual scandals and crises - revolts in South West Africa, Syria, Samoa, and Palestine; famine in Rwanda; labour abuses in New Guinea; extortionate oil contracts in Iraq - they began to question whether independent states might be easier to deal with than territories subject to international scrutiny. Drawing on research in four continents and dozens of archives, and bringing to life a global network of nationalists, humanitarians, international bureaucrats, and imperial statesmen, The Guardians offers an entirely new interpretation of the importance of international organizations in the emergence of the modern world order.

In Allegories of the Anthropocene Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey traces how indigenous and postcolonial peoples in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands grapple with the enormity of colonialism and anthropogenic climate change through art, poetry, and literature. In these works, authors and artists use allegory as a means to understand the multiscalar complexities of the Anthropocene and to critique the violence of capitalism, militarism, and the postcolonial state. DeLoughrey examines the work of a wide range of artists and writers-including poets Kamau Brathwaite and Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Dominican installation artist Tony Capellan, and authors Keri Hulme and Erna Brodber-whose work addresses Caribbean plantations, irradiated Pacific atolls, global flows of waste, and allegorical representations of the ocean and the island. In examining how island writers and artists address the experience of finding themselves at the forefront of the existential threat posed by climate change, DeLoughrey demonstrates how the Anthropocene and empire are mutually constitutive and establishes the vital importance of allegorical art and literature in understanding our global environmental crisis.

Mokhtefi (nee Klein), a Jewish American from Long Island, has had an exhilarating life. In the 1960s, she served as a press adviser to the National Liberation Front in postwar Algiers, before going to work with Eldridge Cleaver, who was wanted in the US for his role in a deadly shoot-out with Oakland police. Half a century later, as an eighty-nine-year-old painter living on the Upper West Side, Mokhtefi still seasons her prose with the argot of revolution.

Between 1986 and 1994, East Africa's postcolonial, political settlement was profoundly challenged as four revolutionary 'liberation' movements seized power in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda. After years of armed struggle against vicious dictatorships, these movements transformed from rebels to rulers, promising to deliver 'fundamental change'. This study exposes, examines and underlines the acute challenges each has faced in doing so. Drawing on over 130 interviews with the region's post-liberation elite, undertaken over the course of a decade, Jonathan Fisher takes a fresh and empirically-grounded approach to explaining the fast-moving politics of the region over the last three decades, focusing on the role and influence of its guerrilla governments. East Africa after Liberation sheds critical light on the competing pressures post-liberation governments contend with as they balance reformist aspirations with accommodation of counter-vailing interests, historical trajectories and their own violent organisational cultures.

The Easter Rising of 1916 not only destroyed much of the centre of Dublin - it changed the course of Irish history. But why did it happen? What was the role of ordinary people in this extraordinary event? What motivated them and what were their aims? These basic questions continue to divide historians of modern Ireland. The Rising is the story of Easter 1916 from the perspective of those who made it, focusing on the experiences of rank and file revolutionaries. Fearghal McGarry makes use of a unique source that has only recently seen the light of day - a collection of over 1,700 eye-witness statements detailing the political activities of members of Sinn Fein and militant groups such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood. This collection represents one of the richest and most comprehensive oral history archives devoted to any modern revolution, providing new insights on almost every aspect of this seminal period. The Rising shows how people from ordinary backgrounds became politicized and involved in the struggle for Irish independence. McGarry illuminates their motives, concerns, and aspirations, highlighting the importance of the Great War as a catalyst for the uprising. He concludes by exploring the Rising's revolutionary aftermath, which in time saw the creation of the independent state we see today. Published to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising, this edition includes a new preface which reflects on the continuing importance of the Easter Rising as a symbol of Irish nationhood and which looks at the centenary commemorations in both Ireland and the UK within the wider context of the 'Decade of Centenaries.'

Bernard Cohn's interest in the construction of Empire as an intellectual and cultural phenomenon has set the agenda for the academic study of modern Indian culture for over two decades. His earlier publications have shown how dramatic British innovations in India, including revenue and legal systems, led to fundamental structural changes in Indian social relations. This collection of his writings in the last fifteen years discusses areas in which the colonial impact has generally been overlooked. The essays form a multifaceted exploration of the ways in which the British discovery, collection, and codification of information about Indian society contributed to colonial cultural hegemony and political control.

Cohn argues that the British Orientalists' study of Indian languages was important to the colonial project of control and command. He also asserts that an arena of colonial power that seemed most benign and most susceptible to indigenous influences--mostly law--in fact became responsible for the institutional reactivation of peculiarly British notions about how to regulate a colonial society made up of "others." He shows how the very Orientalist imagination that led to brilliant antiquarian collections, archaeological finds, and photographic forays were in fact forms of constructing an India that could be better packaged, inferiorized, and ruled. A final essay on cloth suggests how clothes have been part of the history of both colonialism and anticolonialism.

Since the publication of The Wretched of the Earth in 1961, Fanon's work has been deeply significant for generations of intellectuals and activists from the 60s to the present day. Alienation and Freedom collects together unpublished works comprising around half of his entire output - which were previously inaccessible or thought to be lost. This book introduces audiences to a new Fanon, a more personal Fanon and one whose literary and psychiatric works, in particular, take centre stage. These writings provide new depth and complexity to our understanding of Fanon's entire oeuvre revealing more of his powerful thinking about identity, race and activism which remain remarkably prescient. Shedding new light on the work of a major 20th-century philosopher, this disruptive and moving work will shape how we look at the world.