Humanities & Social Sciences

The imperial Commonwealth

Australia and the project of empire, 1867-1914

by Wm. Matthew Kennedy

Description

From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, Australian settler colonists mobilised their unique settler experiences to develop their own vision of what 'empire' was and could be. Reinterpreting their histories and attempting to divine their futures with a much heavier concentration on racialized visions of humanity, white Australian settlers came to believe that their whiteness as well as their Britishness qualified them for an equal voice in the running of Britain's imperial project. Through asserting their case, many soon claimed that, as newly minted citizens of a progressive and exemplary Australian Commonwealth, white settlers such as themselves were actually better suited to the modern task of empire. Such a settler political cosmology with empire at its center ultimately led Australians to claim an empire of their own in the Pacific Islands, complete with its own, unique imperial governmentality.

More Information

Rights Information

Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo [DRC], Congo, Republic of the, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, French Guiana, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Hongkong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, China, Macedonia [FYROM], Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Reunion, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Cyprus, Palestine, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Liechtenstein, Azerbaijan, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan

Reviews

Challenging conventional historiographies that claim empire served only to hamper Australia's national development, The imperial Commonwealth demonstrates that many Australians came to view Britain's empire not simply as a Greater British world state presided over by London, but as a global, ultramarine republic in which Australian settlers were co-equals. Australian settlers developed their own distinct categories for evaluating, criticizing, and claiming empire based on settler logics that often placed race above gender, class, or nationality. Drawing on Australia's many settler periodicals and official records, the book argues that this vision shaped Australian colonial understandings of the means and ends of their own settler colonialism. It came to define their relationship with Britain and motivated them to forge new transimperial connections with other settler and subject colonies in the Pacific, Africa, and South Asia through technology, humanitarianism, and military endeavour. By formulating, challenging, refining, and ultimately translating their ideal of empire into colonial culture, politics, and law, Australian settler colonists transformed the Commonwealth into an empire in its own right. The imperial Commonwealth draws together for the first time several underutilized archives and emerging literatures to produce a new imperial history of Australia. It places Australian settler colonialism in a broader imperial context while differentiating Australia's categories for understanding the imperial world from London's.

Author Biography

Wm. Matthew Kennedy was recently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow and is now a Research Associate at the University of Sussex

Trusted Partner
Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press is a leading UK publisher known for excellent research in the humanities and social sciences.

View all titles

Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date July 2023
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526162755 / 152616275X
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPrint PDF
  • Pages280
  • ReadershipGeneral/trade
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions234 X 156 mm
  • Biblio NotesDerived from Proprietary 5418
  • SeriesStudies in Imperialism
  • Reference Code13951

Subscribe to our

newsletter