Combining insights from imperial studies and transnational book history, this provocative collection opens new vistas on both fields through ten accessible essays, each devoted to a single book. Contributors revisit well-known works associated with the British empire, including Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Thomas Macaulay's History of England, Charles Pearson's National Life and Character, and Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. They explore anticolonial texts in which authors such as C. L. R. James and Mohandas K. Gandhi chipped away at the foundations of imperial authority, and they introduce books that may be less familiar to students of empire. Taken together, the essays reveal the dynamics of what the editors call an "imperial commons," a lively, empire-wide print culture. They show that neither empire nor book were stable, self-evident constructs. Each helped to legitimize the other.
Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Elleke Boehmer, Catherine Hall, Isabel Hofmeyr, Aaron Kamugisha, Marilyn Lake, Charlotte Macdonald, Derek Peterson, Mrinalini Sinha, Tridip Suhrud, André du Toit
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction. The Spine of Empire? : Books and the Making of an Imperial Commons - Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr
- 1. Remaking the Empire from Newgate: Wakefield’s A Letter from Sydney - Tony Ballantyne
- 2. Jane Eyre at Home and Abroad - Charlotte Macdonald
- 3. Macaulay’s History of England: A Book That Shaped Nation and Empire - Catherine Hall
- 4. “The Day Will Come”: Charles H. Pearson’s National Life and Character: A Forecast - Marilyn Lake
- 5. Victims of “British Justice”? A Century of Wrong as Anti-imperial Tract, Core Narrative of the Afrikaner “Nation,” and Victim-Based Solidarity-Building Discourse - André du Toit
- 6. The Text in the World, the World through the Text: Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys - Elleke Boehmer
- 7. Hind Swaraj: Translating Sovereignty - Tridip Suhrud
- 8. Totaram Sanadhya’s Fiji Mein Mere Ekkis Varsh: A History of Empire and Nation in a Minor Key - Mrinalini Sinha
- 9. C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins and the Making of the Modern Atlantic World - Aaron Kamugisha
- 10. Ethnography and Cultural Innovationin Mau Mau Detention Camps: Gakaara wa Wanjau’s Mĩhĩrĩga ya Agĩkũyũ - Derek R. Peterson
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
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