Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age
Published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018: Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age, 1760-1840, edited by Kate Fullagar and Michael A. McDonnell
Available now. Order here.
Preview now. Read the complete introduction to the collection here.
Reviews:
“Indigenous peoples across the British Empire shaped the Settler Revolution, and by the 1830s they bore the brunt of what Lisa Ford has called “settler sovereignty” around the globe. The commonalities in their struggles and convergences in their strategies stand out in greater relief thanks to the kaleidoscopic array of essays Fullagar and McDonnell have collected. In light of Facing Empires, the history of the revolutionary age will never look quite the same again.”
— David Armitage, Harvard University, Journal of British Studies, vol. 58, no. 2 (2019): 418-419
“Facing Empire is a stimulating and wide-ranging introduction to global indigenous histories. The essays are high quality, and the editors effectively draw out similarities in how the histories, rivalries, expectations, and interests of indigenous peoples defined the terms of encounters.”
“While Indigenous scholars and knowledge keepers continue to record and remember these histories from their own perspectives, and their communities continue to live in the devastating aftermath of these events, settler and imperial history has too often remained mired in a unidirectional idea of empire that ignores the people on the other side of the council fire, the trading post, and the meeting table. By centring that experience, Fullagar, McDonnell, and their coauthors offer a priceless corrective to received histories in settler and imperial societies.”
— Nikki Hessell, Journal of New Zealand Studies, no. NS29 (2019): 125-127
“How did Indigenous peoples respond to an empire as it encroached on their territories? This is hardly a new question for historians. But the editors of this collection hope to spur a comparative conversation about the subject by bringing together contributors who specialise in encounters on different frontiers of the British empire in ‘a revolutionary age’, running from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. Thirteen chapters examine Indigenous responses to empire in Australia, Bengal, New Zealand, North America, the Persian Gulf, South Africa, the Scottish Highlands, the South Pacific, and West Africa. While widely varied in argument and approach, these chapters offer a stimulating introduction to the rich scholarship on this topic.”
“Fullagar and McDonnell have thoughtfully curated these texts to offer fresh insight into familiar encounters, and each of the book’s three sections provides a new way of seeing empire through the contrasts and intersections of disparate peoples across vast distances. Facing Empire’s great achievement is this vastness, the seriousness with which Fullagar and McDonnell take the global approach to the Age of Revolutions.”
— Erin Kramer, Trinity University, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 53, no. 1 (2019): 139-140
“In this valuable and provocative collection, the editors consider who is indigenous, and why they matter. Their volume contributes to an ongoing conversation about cross-cultural interactions around the globe in the Age of Revolutions.“
— Katie Lantz, University of Virginia, Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 40, no. 2 (2020): 334-336
“Following interventions made by encounter and critical imperial histories, this exciting collection challenges us to write transnational and comparative world history from Indigenous points of view. As the “facing empire” of the title suggests, the focus of this book is on Indigenous subjects and perspectives but also the practice of historical research and writing. Editors Fullagar and McDonnell — two leading advocates of the comparative Indigenous history approach — bring together substantial scholarship across Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceanic worlds revealing the myriad agencies and mobilities of Indigenous people engaged in complex interactions with the British empire of 1760-1840. When viewed collectively, they argue compellingly, these studies help to recontextualize the Age of Revolutions itself.“
“The combined case studies in the volume provide wide-reaching coverage and underscore the trans-colonial connections of indigenous peoples and the British Empire. The book features an interesting collection of essays from leading to early career scholars. It is an essential read for those scholars interested in the history of the British Empire, indigenous peoples and colonization, and the "Age of Revolution."“
“By rethinking the intertwined experiences of the Eora, Anishinaabeg, Maori, Polynesians, Xhosas, Fante, and Macleods, Facing Empire challenges a chameleon-like British empire and shows that there was no single face of imperialism nor straight line of Indigeneity. In comparing, contrasting, and interlinking the rich contributions of Indigenous peoples across the globe, the editors have brilliantly offered readers new historiographical grounds for original thinking about the age of industrialization, Indigenous agency, and global revolutionary conquest.”
Advance Praise:
“By placing American Indians, Māori, Polynesians, Asians, Xhosas, and other indigenous peoples in the same frame, this stunning volume charts a new vision for indigenous history, the Age of Revolutions, the history of the British Empire, and the history of colonialism. It is hard to think of another collection that has done so much to boost the emerging field of global indigenous history.”
“Scholarship on the ‘age of revolution’ has long had a heart of darkness: indigenous peoples have usually been excluded in the histories of this great moment of transformation. Glowing torches in hand, Kate Fullagar, Michael A. McDonnell, and their talented colleagues brilliantly illuminate a revolutionary epoch with a new global ‘history from below.’”
“A new, compelling, and important examination of the British Empire from the perspectives of the colonized during the transitional period of 1760 to 1840. Demonstrating that themes of indigeneity might well stretch beyond the conventional reaches of the burgeoning field of indigenous studies, Facing Empire will help set the agenda for future research. ”
“I am tremendously impressed by this collection. Not only have the editors assembled a very fine array of scholars at varying career stages, all of whom have produced first-class studies attuned to the objectives of the volume, but they have also carefully and helpfully drawn together the major themes articulated across the chapters.”
“This wonderful collection of essays profoundly alters the way in which historians view indigenous history, the British Empire, and the Age of Revolution. The authors focus on indigenous perspectives and experiences across an extraordinarily diverse range of contexts, showing how they shaped ideologies and practices of imperial expansion and created new transnational patterns of resistance, exchange, and communication.”
“Facing Empire is a major scholarly accomplishment. Michael A. McDonnell and Kate Fullager have woven together a diverse range of essays in a volume that is striking for its clarity and persuasiveness. Taken as a whole, Facing Empire advances our understanding of transnational and comparative indigenous histories in original and important ways.”
“This landmark collection explores the many faces of empire as they were turned towards Indigenous people: this stellar cast of scholars offers fresh insights and perspectives that provide an exciting challenge to the ‘new imperial history.’”
“A rich and valuable collection of essays demonstrating that comparing Indigenous entanglements with empire during the Age of Revolution has the potential to transform our understanding of Indigenous people, the empires they dealt with, and the revolutionary age that they shared. This volume will attract a wide and appreciative readership.”
“This wonderfully rich and diverse collection, featuring contributions from world-leading scholars, traces a myriad of connections, comparisons, and echoes between far-flung Indigenous experiences during the ‘imperial meridian’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These essays place Indigenous people at the heart of the Age of Revolution, forcing us to ask new questions about empire, ‘progress,’ and the creation of the modern world.”
About the Book:
With contributions from: Tony Ballantyne (Otago), Justin Brooks (Yale University), Colin Calloway (Dartmouth), Kate Fullagar (Macquarie), Bill Gammage (ANU), Robert Kenny (Deakin), Michael A. McDonnell (Sydney), Elspeth Martini (Pittsburgh), Jennifer Newell (AMNH), Joshua L. Reid (Massachusetts), Rebecca Shumway (Charleston), Sujit Sivasundaram (Cambridge), Nicole Ulrich (Rhodes). Plus a Foreword by Daniel Richter (Pennsylvania) and an Afterword by Shino Konishi (University of Western Australia).
The late eighteenth century is often depicted as a Revolutionary Age because of the intense political struggles that took place in Europe, Asia and the Americas. But another revolutionary dimension of this era was the profound acceleration in encounters and contacts between new peoples around the globe. As historian C.A. Bayly has noted, European imperial expansion was one of the main drivers of this phenomenon, but so too were indigenous peoples, especially in thickening and complicating relations between different societies.
While many scholars have looked at this era of expanding imperialism and noted its links with globalisation, they have usually done so from European perspectives. Even as an increasing number of historians recognise the crucial roles indigenous people played in this process, few have tried to think comparatively about indigenous experiences within and across expanding imperial borders over the course of this revolutionary era. The result is that too often when thinking comparatively or transnationally, indigenous peoples become distant and passive players in a largely European-driven game. Granted, one reason for the scholarly neglect has been a reluctance to perpetuate the European framing that such work must entail: to place indigenous peoples from vastly different spaces into historical relation is to give some special privilege to the European empires that encountered them separately. Yet this reluctance has also come at a cost: it has missed an opportunity to understand how indigenous people in this period shared some common means of accommodating, repelling, complicating and even ignoring the European encounter. In doing so, they shaped and influenced the modern world in significant ways.
This volume takes up the opportunity. In order to sharpen the focus, it looks at indigenous experiences of the British empire particularly. Between about 1760 and 1840, Britain faced a series of political upheavals and massively increased its imperial claims. Yet what role did indigenous peoples play in these movements? How did they help shape the end of the first British empire and the start of the second? What lessons did indigenous peoples learn about Europeans and what new connections did they make between themselves, newcomers, and other indigenous peoples? What role did they play in shaping history on the imperial waterfront, and in influencing decisions in Europe? We aim to view indigenous peoples as vital and dynamic actors across this increasingly global stage and think about what this new world might have looked like to them. We aim, in other words, not merely to write histories that include indigenous perspectives but to present the imperial past with indigenous peoples as the main subjects.
To read the complete introduction to Facing Empire, click here.
For a short essay about the book, see the Age of Revolutions blogsite.
For a taste of Kate Fullagar's new research from which her contribution draws, click here.
For a taste of Michael A. McDonnell's work from which his contribution draws, click here.
For an interview with the editors on the New Books in Native American Studies podcast, click here.