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"With selections ranging from company charters, missionary tracts, satirical cartoons, legislative records, to literary accounts, these anthologies present a fascinating glimpse of the many sides of imperialism."—Heidi Hanrahan, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920
"[A] wonderful anthology. . . . [A]n anthology to be enthusiastically welcomed by those who teach empire, and it offers both classics and new works for close readings and analysis. . . ."—Carol Summers, Itinerario
"This valuable collection of documents from and about the British Empire will prove useful to students and scholars."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"[T]his is easily the richest single collection of primary source materials on British imperialism available in print. . . . The first two volumes of Archives of Empire supply us with a rich selection of source material on British imperialism in India and Africa, and when reinforced by the final two volumes, the completed project will provide an unrivaled resource to students of empire. And by its very existence this "reader" will stand as a monument to the remarkable efflorescence of interest in imperial and colonial studies in recent years."
—Dane Kennedy, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
"This thoughtful and interesting collection of primary materials offers much to students and teachers alike. . . . This is a first-rate work that deserves widespread adoption."—Jeremy Black, African History
"Archives of Empire promises to be a rich resource for scholars of British imperialism, of the impact of European colonialism, and of the role of empire in British political and popular culture. . . . [T]he first two volumes in the series offer a stimulating introduction to contemporary scholarship in imperial history and post-colonial theory."—Martin Thomas, History
“It is hard not to get excited over the wealth o f material provided by The East India Company to the Suez Canal (vol. 1) and The Scramble for Africa (vol. 2), which will prove invaluable for both pedagogical and scholarly use.”—Jeanne Dubino, Nineteenth Century Studies
"With selections ranging from company charters, missionary tracts, satirical cartoons, legislative records, to literary accounts, these anthologies present a fascinating glimpse of the many sides of imperialism."—Heidi Hanrahan, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920
"[A] wonderful anthology. . . . [A]n anthology to be enthusiastically welcomed by those who teach empire, and it offers both classics and new works for close readings and analysis. . . ."—Carol Summers, Itinerario
"This valuable collection of documents from and about the British Empire will prove useful to students and scholars."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"[T]his is easily the richest single collection of primary source materials on British imperialism available in print. . . . The first two volumes of Archives of Empire supply us with a rich selection of source material on British imperialism in India and Africa, and when reinforced by the final two volumes, the completed project will provide an unrivaled resource to students of empire. And by its very existence this "reader" will stand as a monument to the remarkable efflorescence of interest in imperial and colonial studies in recent years."
—Dane Kennedy, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
"This thoughtful and interesting collection of primary materials offers much to students and teachers alike. . . . This is a first-rate work that deserves widespread adoption."—Jeremy Black, African History
"Archives of Empire promises to be a rich resource for scholars of British imperialism, of the impact of European colonialism, and of the role of empire in British political and popular culture. . . . [T]he first two volumes in the series offer a stimulating introduction to contemporary scholarship in imperial history and post-colonial theory."—Martin Thomas, History
“It is hard not to get excited over the wealth o f material provided by The East India Company to the Suez Canal (vol. 1) and The Scramble for Africa (vol. 2), which will prove invaluable for both pedagogical and scholarly use.”—Jeanne Dubino, Nineteenth Century Studies
“Archives of Empire is a substantial and valuable project containing a generous sampling of key primary texts for understanding both the crucial events in and the debates around British imperialism in the nineteenth century.”—David Lloyd, coeditor of The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital
“Archives of Empire offers a valuable and original intervention in contemporary studies of imperialism, providing a rich array of source material pertaining to the imperial project and the wide-ranging grounds for its critique.”—Anne McClintock, author of Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest
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A rich collection of primary materials, the multivolume Archives of Empire provides a documentary history of nineteenth-century British imperialism from the Indian subcontinent to the Suez Canal to southernmost Africa. Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter have carefully selected a diverse range of texts that track the debates over imperialism in the ranks of the military, the corridors of political power, the lobbies of missionary organizations, the halls of royal geographic and ethnographic societies, the boardrooms of trading companies, the editorial offices of major newspapers, and far-flung parts of the empire itself. Focusing on a particular region and historical period, each volume in Archives of Empire is organized into sections preceded by brief introductions. Documents including mercantile company charters, parliamentary records, explorers’ accounts, and political cartoons are complemented by timelines, maps, and bibligraphies. Unique resources for teachers and students, these volumes reveal the complexities of nineteenth-century colonialism and emphasize its enduring relevance to the “global markets” of the twenty-first century.
While focusing on the expansion of the British Empire, The Scramble for Africa illuminates the intense nineteenth-century contest among European nations over Africa’s land, people, and resources. Highlighting the 1885 Berlin Conference in which Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and Italy partitioned Africa among themselves, this collection follows British conflicts with other nations over different regions as well as its eventual challenge to Leopold of Belgium’s rule of the Congo. The reports, speeches, treatises, proclamations, letters, and cartoons assembled here include works by Henry M. Stanley, David Livingstone, Joseph Conrad, G. W. F. Hegel, Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, and Arthur Conan Doyle. A number of pieces highlight the proliferation of companies chartered to pursue Africa’s gold, diamonds, and oil—particularly Cecil J. Rhodes’s British South Africa Company and Frederick Lugard’s Royal Niger Company. Other documents describe debacles on the continent—such as the defeat of General Gordon in Khartoum and the Anglo-Boer War—and the criticism of imperial maneuvers by proto-human rights activists including George Washington Williams, Mark Twain, Olive Schreiner, and E.D. Morel.