Dwelling on the Margins of Empire

Colonized and Indigenous Peoples’ Imaginaries of Home

Dwelling on the Margins of Empire cover

Dwelling on the Margins of Empire

Colonized and Indigenous Peoples’ Imaginaries of Home

Description

Embracing the concept of marginality as a method for recovering histories of home, this book explores communities that have been seen to exist outside of western models of nineteenth- and twentieth-century domesticity, particularly as they were transplanted in – and transformed by – settler, Indigenous, and imperial geographies across the globe.

In focusing their attention on Indigenous perspectives on home in the face of – and despite – colonial dislocations, both cultural and territorial, several contributors expose home's function as a site of cultural vitality and political resistance, as well as colonial violence, across a range of geographical contexts. In addition to highlighting previously marginalised, non-western perspectives on home, this collection explores the operation of domestic politics within nominally undomesticated spaces, as well as within seemingly “unhomely” historical experiences – such as political activism, intergenerational trauma, and geographical exploration. In so doing, it invites critical re-evaluations of home as a category of analysis within imperial, settler colonial, and Indigenous histories on a variety of fronts. Chapters are organised around three key themes, previously positioned in opposition to normative understandings of home, that contributors have reimagined as intrinsic to material and imagined geographies of home: travel and mobility; politics and public life; and colonial violence.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Finding Home at the Margins of Colonial Encounter, Lisa Binkley, (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Part I: (Re)Moving Home
2. Fur Trade Forts and Military Camps: The Askin Daughters Creating Home in the British Empire, Cecilia Morgan (University of Toronto, Canada)
3. Along the Water's Edge: Mobilizing Home and Unhome in the Pays d'en Haut, Lisa Binkley (Dalhousie University, Canada)
4. Denying Home: Canadian Exceptionalism and Indigenous Relocation, Judith Meyrick (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Part II: (Re)Making Home
5. 'As Good as Any Place at Home': Eating American in Colonial Manila, 1898-1913, Alana Toulin (Rivers University, Canada)
6. Lady Mendl and the 'Maharanee' Go to the Ball: Global Fantasies of Empire in the Domestic Interior, Sara Shields-Rivard (Queen's University, Canada)
7. A Room of One's Own: The Dwelling Spaces of Mary Pratt, Anne Koval, (Mount Allison University, Canada)
8. Healing at Home in Colonial Nova Scotia: The Medicinal Remedies of Sarah Creighton Wilkins, 1811-1833, Holly Dickinson (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Part III: (Re)Claiming Home
9. Rain is the Ancestors' Tears of Joy: 'Home' Through the Lens of Aboriginal Exemption , Judi Wickes and Katherine Ellinghaus (The Aboriginal Experiment, Australia and La Trobe University, Australia)
10. Remaking the Town in Colonial Southeastern Nigeria: Town Unions in the Changing Social Landscapes of Early 20th Century Igboland, Chioma Abuba (Dalhousie University, Canada)
11. Rangatiratanga: Reimagining the Notion of Home for Maori Single Mothers, Shelley Hoani (Te Wananga o Aotearoa, New Zealand)
12. Working the Land: Resistance, Reclamation, and Regenerative Farming, SJ Jones (Dalhousie University, Canada)
13. Letters From Home: A Mi'kmaw Scholar on Indigenous Identity Verification in Academia, Margaret Robinson (Dalhousie University, Canada)

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 11 Dec 2025
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 336
ISBN 9781350386068
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 10 bw illus
Series Empire’s Other Histories
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Lisa Binkley

Lisa Binkley is Assistant Professor in Material Cu…

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