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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.
Published | 02 Oct 2025 |
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Format | Ebook (PDF) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 272 |
ISBN | 9781350538665 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
In the seminal online Colonial Frontier Massacres mapping project Lyndall Ryan and colleagues showed Australians the stark reality of the genocidal wars that founded their nation. In Empires of Violence, Ryan and co-authors show us we were part of a much broader system of colonial occupation of Indigenous lands that was underpinned by extreme violence as the singular, unrelenting method of subjugating resistance. Importantly, it interrogates the origins of the massacre as a tactic of warfare in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and how this translated to, and legitimised, state-sanctioned tactics of shock, awe and terror in the colonies. Empires of Violence is an important part of a new era of comparative colonial scholarship unravelling the blood stained 'crimson thread of kinship' and the Australian nation.
Stephen Gapps
"An important book-well written and engaging to read. But also particularly timely joining a growing corpus of studies which are now reassessing the history of the great European empires which coincides with the dramatic shift of economic and political power from the West to South and South-East Asia. The four authors bring their local expertise together and are able to meld their studies of South Africa, Australia, America and the Napoleonic Empire together in an innovative and challenging way. They also juxtapose the extreme violence underpinning empire between 1780 and 1820 with what has also been seen as the height of the European enlightenment.
Henry Reynolds
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