Inquiring into Empire
-
Select format
-
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Publication date:
- March 2025
- February 2025
- ISBN:
- 9781009470599
- 9781009470629
- Dimensions:
- (229 x 152 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 0.64kg, 344 Pages
- Dimensions:
- Weight & Pages:
- Subjects:
- British History after 1450, History, Global History
You may already have access via personal or institutional login- Subjects:
- British History after 1450, History, Global History
Show more authors 
You may already have access via personal or institutional login
Book description
This is the first history to grapple with the vast project of British imperial investigation in the years between the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the Great Reform Act. Beginning in 1819, commissions of inquiry were sent to examine law, governance, and economy from New South Wales and the Caribbean to Malta and West Africa. They left behind a matchless record of colonial life in the form of papers, reports and more than 200 volumes of testimonies and correspondence. Inquiring into Empire taps this under-used archive to develop a new understanding of imperial reform. The authors argue that, far from being a first step in the march towards liberalism, the commissions represented a deeply pragmatic, messy but concerted effort to chart a middle way between reaction and revolution which was constantly buffeted by the politics of colonial encounter.
Reviews
‘The British empire post–1815 was a vast human phenomenon, built largely on forced labour. This book tackles its complexity and diversity, its tyranny and hesitant idealism head on and the result is a ground-breaking synthesis – highly ambitious, seriously detailed, patient, painstaking and deeply humane.'
Alan Atkinson - University of Sydney
‘Brilliantly argued, evidentially rich and geographically sweeping, this work reveals how British inquiries into empire shaped both imperial and domestic realms in the ‘Age of Reform'. It conjures a compelling human narrative from the archives of the state, one as attentive to the enslaved and dispossessed as to imperial overlords.'
Zoë Laidlaw - University of Melbourne
Contents
Contents
References
Metrics
Altmetric attention score
Full text views
Full text views helpTotal number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...
* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.
Usage data cannot currently be displayed.
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.
Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.