For over two decades, Manchester Studies in Imperialism has been a trailblazer in the realm of imperial history. Positioned firmly at the forefront, this series has illuminated the annals of history and transformed our understanding of empire.
Pioneering perspectives
The Studies in Imperialism series has embarked on a transformative journey, reshaping not only British history but also the vast landscape of imperial histories. It has boldly expanded boundaries, delving into uncharted territories, and shining a light on subjects that were once overlooked. More importantly, it has masterfully unveiled the intricate and inseparable relationships between these domains.
A treasury of knowledge
Within the pages of Manchester Studies in Imperialism lies a treasure trove of scholarly exploration. It unveils the rich tapestry of cultural encounters between colonisers and the colonised, shedding light on the intricate web of power that flows through the production and organisation of colonial knowledge. It unravels the complex construction of identity, both at the heart and on the peripheries of empire.
2025 Manchester Studies in Imperialism
This chapter focuses on the expansion of the British Empire and early political developments in the British settler colonies in the region of Australasia from the late 1830s to around 1870. The first colonies on the Australian continent and the islands of New Zealand in the decades from the late 1830s to 1870 were notable for their swift movement politically from initial Crown colonies to virtual local self-government. The British Government first made arrangements for representative government based on a property franchise for all of these colonies, and then conceded responsible government to the settler colonists. Further, by 1860, the legislatures of the eastern and southeastern Australian colonies had instituted full manhood suffrage. The Indigenous peoples of the Australasian colonies, Aborigines and Maori, were included in this process to self-government and democracy. The means by which colonists could acquire land and their subsequent usage of it would strongly influence Maori and Aborigines' entitlement to political citizenship and the likelihood of their exercising it.
This chapter focuses on the political outcomes of the intensified appropriation of Indigenous lands by British settler colonists in Australasia from the 1870s to 1910. From the 1870s to the first decade of the twentieth century, settler governments in the Australasian colonies built on their foundation years in their treatment of Indigenous political rights in their political systems. The seven colonies in the Australasian region contemplated federating into one nation state despite sharp divisions among them. Settlers wanting manhood suffrage for themselves in Australasian colonies, including New Zealand, Queensland and Western Australia, tried to keep Maori and Indigenous people in a marginalized situation. In the Electoral Bill, which was passed in 1879, politicians were enfranchised. White property-holders could have plural votes in any number of electorates, but Maori landowners were restricted to one settler electorate. In the Australasian colonies in the early 1890s, a debate on women's political rights intersected with the debates on Indigenous rights, and votes for women successfully passed through three Australasian colonial legislatures in the 1890s: New Zealand in 1893, South Australia in 1894; and Western Australia in 1899.
Sir Garnet Wolseley utilized his powers as both high commissioner in southeastern Africa and governor of Natal and the Transvaal to attack Chelmsford as GOC, South Africa. He sought to impose a settlement upon both Zululand and the neighboring Transvaal. He resolved that Zululand should be ruled by thirteen minor chiefs. He then moved into the Transvaal to restore British prestige by overthrowing Sekhukhune, whom the Boers had failed to defeat in 1876. He assembled a formidable composite force, comprising the 2/21st and the 94th with two companies of the 80th, four guns, and a party of Royal Engineers with explosives to attack Sekhukhune. The sappers were ‘employed from dawn till dark’, cutting pathways, preparing drifts for ox-driven wagons, and organizing the construction of forts. The British forces in the Transvaal were reduced when Wolseley departed, and were cut again under Sir George Pomeroy Colley, Asante veteran, who replaced Wolseley, until he had only 1,800 men, with no cavalry and only four guns. The soldiers were also widely dispersed in six isolated posts.
This chapter examines the changes in Anglo-Canadian identity through the 1930s, and also documents the effects of the Second World War in re-defining and shifting this identity towards centering Canada. During the Second World War, when Canada came to Britain's aid, stringent organisation led to a massive contribution to the war effort by large numbers of IODE women. The IODE used its maternal position to reinforce allegiance to Britain, but its perception was ever more Canada-centered. With women's increasing status in society, the IODE's war work was ever confident and impressive. The Second World War accentuated the contradictions between feminism and patriotism. During the war, women had shown that, in the absence of many of Canada's men, they were capable of keeping the country going, whether in the home or in gendered male occupations. The IODE's metaphorical conception of home as nation and Empire became, during the Second World War, more assertive, more confident, more proven and more Canadian in its focus.
This chapter reconstructs the more fragmentary but important things C. L. R. James did say about Britain, Britishness and their relations to Caribbean histories and identities. The nature of James' writings means that discussion of their influence in Britain must explore not only a ‘bilateral’ British-Caribbean relationship, but a triangular one. He insisted that the Britishness was part of a rich, complex, internationally open and distinctively modern cultural mix. His views on the character of racism in Britain were distinctive. In addition, his views of British colonialism were built around a stark contrast between imperial Britain and what he thought of as the truer, better values of Britishness ‘at home’. In his most influential works, James set out to assail and demolish views of Britain's history which he regarded as myths.
This chapter provides the information on the Ninth Cape Frontier War (1877–78) and campaign against Sekhukhune and focuses on Anglo-Zulu War. The campaigns of 1877–78 were a series of largely desultory engagements, often involving small bodies of imperial troops and/or mounted police and their auxiliaries. The abortive campaign against Sekhukhune, undertaken over peculiarly difficult terrain by an under-strength force, had less impact upon British military thinking than did the bush fighting in the Transkei. For the Anglo-Zulu War, Lieutenant-General Baron Chelmsford duly assembled his army of 17,929 officers and men, including over 1,000 mounted colonial volunteers and some 9,000 natives, and also managed the variety of different forms of transport. Chelmsford launched an attack on Chief Sihayo's mountainous kraal above the Batshe River within a day of crossing into Zululand. Chelmsford also employed the reinforcements to relieve Eshowe and entered Zululand moving slowly across the terrain and forming wagon laagers with external entrenchments.
This chapter focuses on the political outcomes of the intensified appropriation of Indigenous lands by British settler colonists in Canada from the 1870s to 1910. The Canadian colonies entered into confederation without a uniform national franchise, choosing instead to allow anyone who had the vote at the provincial level to participate in national elections. In post-confederation Canada, the need to bring together disparate colonies, the financing and construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the establishing of systems of governance in the old Hudson's Bay territories were the issues that preoccupied the government in Ottawa. Its exercise of responsibility for Indigenous people was closely related to those issues as well, negotiating a series of treaties which, under the immediate premise of giving access for the railway, laid the basis for the immigration that would populate what were to become the prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 1883, Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Macdonald introduced a Bill to establish a uniform federal franchise, proposing the enfranchisement of single women and widows with property, and the inclusion of Indigenous people, whether or not they had embraced enfranchisement under the provisions of the Gradual Civilisation Act, in the legislation's definition of ‘persons’.
This chapter focuses on the early political developments in the British settler colonies in the region of North America, which later became Canada, from the late 1830s to around 1870. By 1840, there were four colonies in mainland British North America, clustered in the south-eastern corner of the vast Canadian land mass, the rest of which remained under the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company. Representative government had been introduced during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, beginning with the maritime colonies of Nova Scotia (1758), Prince Edward Island (1773) and New Brunswick (1785), and extending to Upper and Lower Canada, the constituent parts of the new province of Canada, in 1791. Discussions of the status of Indigenous peoples in the British North American colonies reflect competing and at times conflicting understandings among the four major stakeholders: the Colonial Office, with its locally based governors and Indian agents; the missionaries; the settlers; and the Indigenous peoples themselves.
Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) grew out of a small informal meeting held in a basement flat in Mecklenberg Square, London. Six years later, when CAM as an organisation ended, it had made a major impact on the emergence of a Caribbean cultural identity, particularly in Britain, where it also had changed attitudes within the host community. In Britain, CAM played a significant role in the emergence of a new Caribbean strand in black British culture. The Islands in Between was a slim volume, but it was the first book of criticism on West Indian writing in English, and appeared at the moment when radical Caribbean critics were looking for a crusty piece of colonial writing to get their teeth into. CAM's influence was felt in the visual arts. It also touched the lives of a whole generation of young talent.
This chapter explores the complete cyclopaedia that represents the plurality of metropolitan life, conceptualized by Pierce Egan. In the early years of the nineteenth century artists and writers broke with classical modes of representation of plurality and presented a fundamental shift in the status of the observing subject. Obvious manifestations were the changes in imagery promoted by new systems of representation, but more fundamental was the massive reorganization of knowledge that impacted on human capacities to produce, desire and perceive. A new observer operating in a range of social and artistic practices, and scientific and philosophical domains of knowledge attempted to appropriate the dislocating experiences of urban environments. This ambulatory observer shaped by a convergence of new urban spaces, technologies and new economic and symbolic functions of images and products abandoned the dominant, fixed and seemingly stable perceptions of the previous century, and sought a truth abstracted from any founding site or referent.