1st Edition
Dimensions of Settler Colonialism in a Transnational Perspective Experiences, Actors, Spaces
As a field of research, settler colonial studies has developed dynamically in recent years. This volume contributes a set of much-needed empirical analyses of the microhistory and practices of settler colonialism. Incorporating six case studies from across the Anglo-world, including the United States, Australia, and South Africa, this book examines the roles different actors played in this process, their individual experiences, and the social and physical (re-)organization of settler colonial space. They reconstruct the complexities of settler responses to Indigenous resistance, guided by fear or religious convictions; and explore the settlers’ potential to manoeuvre on higher political levels, legitimizing frontier violence as a patriotic duty to the common good. In addition, they examine the production and circulation of knowledge about land, and discuss the ways in which socio-ecological systems were manipulated by stock farmers whose success depended upon an effective integration into a world-wide economic system. Overall, the volume presents a unique combination of microhistorical analysis and environmental history. This book was originally published as a special issue of Settler Colonial Studies.
Introduction – Experiences, actors, spaces: dimensions of settler colonialism in transnational perspective 1. Good land–bad land: ecological knowledge and the settling of the old Northwest, 1755–1805 2. ‘The intrusion therefore of cattle is by itself sufficient to produce the extirpation of the native race’: social ecological systems and ecocide in conflicts between Hunter–Gatherers and commercial stock farmers in Australia 3. Invariably genocide? When hunter-gatherers and commercial stock farmers clash 4. Poor, white, and useful: settlers in their petitions to US Congress, 1817–1841 5. ‘I am frightened out of my life’: Black War, white fear 6. Arms & amelioration: negotiating Quaker peace testimony and settler violence in 1830s Van Diemen’s Land
Biography
Eva Bischoff teaches International History at Trier University, Germany. Her research interests include colonial and imperial history, postcolonial theory, and gender/queer studies. She recently concluded a book project investigating the history of a group of Quaker families and their roles in the process of settler imperialism in early nineteenth-century Australia.
