Fiona Paisley

Kirsty Reid

This collection brings much-needed focus to the vibrancy and vitality of minority and marginal writing about empire, and to their implications as expressions of embodied contact between imperial power and those negotiating its consequences from "below." The chapters explore how less powerful and less privileged actors in metropolitan and colonial societies within the British Empire have made use of the written word and of the power of speech, public performance, and street politics. This book breaks new ground by combining work about marginalized figures from within Britain as well as counterparts in the colonies, ranging from published sources such as indigenous newspapers to ordinary and everyday writings including diaries, letters, petitions, ballads, suicide notes, and more. Each chapter engages with the methodological implications of working with everyday scribblings and asks what these alternate modernities and histories mean for the larger critique of the "imperial archive" that has shaped much of the most interesting writing on empire in the past decade.

Writing the Empire from Below

Critical Perspectives on Colonialism

Sources and Methods in Histories of Colonialism provides an in-depth study of the relationships between archives, knowledge and power. Exploring a diverse range of examples and surveying the now substantial scholarly literatures on the functions and scope of the ‘imperial archive’, it facilitates a deeper understanding of the challenges of working with a range of specific source genres within imperial and colonial archives. Covering the late eighteenth century to the present day and drawing on material from a range of modern empires including those established by Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States, chapters discuss themes such as the emergence of photography as an archival tool, the use of oral history in histories of colonialism and the ways in which the state informs the archive and vice versa. This book considers the ways in which newer ways of thinking about the past have challenged more traditional views of ‘the archive’, provoking questions about what archives are and where their conceptual, geographical and chronological boundaries lie. Examining a wide selection of source material including government papers, censuses, petitions and case files and providing both an overarching introduction to the subject and close analysis of specific case studies, this book will be essential reading for students of imperial and colonial history.

Kirsty Reid

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