Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867How did the English get to be English? In Civilising Subjects, Catherine Hall argues that the idea of empire was at the heart of mid-nineteenth-century British self-imagining, with peoples such as the "Aborigines" in Australia and the "negroes" in Jamaica serving as markers of difference separating "civilised" English from "savage" others. Hall uses the stories of two groups of Englishmen and -women to explore British self-constructions both in the colonies and at home. In Jamaica, a group of Baptist missionaries hoped to make African-Jamaicans into people like themselves, only to be disappointed when the project proved neither simple nor congenial to the black men and women for whom they hoped to fashion new selves. And in Birmingham, abolitionist enthusiasm dominated the city in the 1830s, but by the 1860s, a harsher racial vocabulary reflected a new perception of the nonwhite subjects of empire as different kinds of men from the "manly citizens" of Birmingham. This absorbing study of the "racing" of Englishness will be invaluable for imperial and cultural historians. |
Contents
V | 25 |
VI | 29 |
VII | 59 |
The Preemancipation World in the Metropolitan Mind | 69 |
VIII | 71 |
The Baptist Missionary Society and the missionary project | 86 |
IX | 88 |
X | 109 |
Mapping the Midland Metropolis | 267 |
XXII | 269 |
XXIII | 292 |
XXIV | 303 |
XXV | 311 |
XXVI | 327 |
XXVII | 340 |
XXIX | 349 |
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abolitionist Aboriginal African amongst argued associated Australia Baptist missionaries became Birm Birmingham Britain British Burchell Caribbean Carlyle celebrated century chapel Chartism Christian church civilisation Colonial Office coloured committee congregations culture Dale debate Edward Edward John Eyre emancipation empire England English enslaved established European Eyre Eyre's Falmouth free villages freedom friends gender George Dawson governor Hall heathen Henderson History House Ibid imperial India island Jamaica Jamaica Committee John Angell James Joseph Sturge Kingston labour land Letters London meeting minister mission Morant Bay Morgan nation negro organisation Oughton pastor peasantry Phillippo planters political population R. W. Dale race racial reform reported Samuel Oughton settlers sionary slave slavery social South Australia Spanish Town sugar Thomas Thomas Burchell tion Trollope Underhill University Press Victorian West Indian West Indies William Knibb women wrote Zealand
Popular passages
Page 14 - The settler makes history; his life is an epoch, an Odyssey. He is the absolute beginning: "This land was created by us"; he is the unceasing cause: "If we leave, all is lost, and the country will go back to the Middle Ages.