Inquiring into Empire

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-009-47062-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 252 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 650 g

This 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ford, Lisa

McKenzie, Kirsten

Parkinson, Naomi

Roberts, David Andrew

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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.

Über Autor(innen)

Ford, Lisa
Lisa Ford is a Professor of Legal History at the University of New South Wales and the prize-winning author of three monographs, most recently The King's Peace (2021).

Parkinson, Naomi
Naomi Parkinson is a historian of the nineteenth-century British Empire at the University of New South Wales, specialising in colonial law, governance and its reform from 1820–1860.

Roberts, David Andrew
David Andrew Roberts is a Professor of History at the University of New England (NSW) and editor (since 2003) of the Journal of Australian Colonial History.

McKenzie, Kirsten
Kirsten McKenzie is a Professor of History at the University of Sydney and Director of the Vere Gordon Childe Centre. Her most recent monograph is Imperial Underworld (2016).