This comparative, global study of violence on the colonial frontier from 1780 to 1820 looks at four regions of the world: the expansion of Britain into the Australian and African continents, the westward and southern expansion of the United States, and the expansion of France in Europe during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It seeks to re-think the past oppression and exploitation of colonized peoples by placing the violence committed against them in a comparative perspective.

Violence and massacre were a tool at the disposal of the colonizer, and often used to subjugate unruly populations. In this book four experts specializing in four different regions of the world come together to interrogate the violence committed against indigenous peoples of these countries, and to ask whether this was a new form of violence, or the same that Europeans had always used against conquered peoples? Examining the changing nature of warfare and killing that occurred on colonial frontiers from both a European and indigenous perspective, Empires of Violence shows how race, othering and fear were maintained and buoyed by violence, in spite of prevailing discourses on humanitarianism, civilization and progress.