Empire, kinship and violence : family histories, indigenous rights and the making of settler colonialism, 1770-1842 / Elizabeth Elbourne.

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

©2023.

xiii, 431 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Empire, Kinship and Violence traces the history of three linked imperial families in Britain and across contested colonial borderlands from 1770 to 1842. Elizabeth Elbourne tracks the Haudenosaunee Brants of northeastern North America from the American Revolution to exile in Canada; the Bannisters, a British family of colonial administrators, whistle-blowers and entrepreneurs who operated across Australia, Canada and southern Africa; and the Buxtons, a family of British abolitionists who publicized information about what might now be termed genocide towards Indigenous people while also pioneering humanitarian colonialism. By recounting the conflicts that these interlinked families were involved in, she tells a larger story about the development of British and American settler colonialism and the betrayal of Indigenous peoples. Through an analysis of the changing politics of kinship and violence, Elizabeth Elbourne sheds new light on transnational debates about issues such as Indigenous sovereignty claims, British subjecthood, violence, land rights and cultural assimilation.

ebook version :

English

March 07, 2023

Critical perspectives on empire.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-411) and index.