Real and imagined encounters among Aboriginal peoples, European colonists, Chinese migrants, and mixed-race populations produced racial anxieties that underwrote crossracial contacts in the salmon canneries, the illicit liquor trade, and the (white) slavery scare in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British Columbia. Colonial Proximities explores the legal and spatial strategies of rule deployed by Indian agents, missionaries, and legal authorities who aspired to restrict crossracial encounters. By connecting genealogies of aboriginal-European contact with those of Chinese migration, this book reveals that territorial dispossession and Chinese exclusion were never distinct projects but two conjunctive processes in the making of the settler regime.

Drawing on archival documents and historical records, Colonial Proximities historicizes current discussions of multiculturalism and pluralism in modern settler societies by revealing how crossracial interactions in one colonial contact zone inspired juridical racial truths and forms of governance that continue to linger in contemporary racial politics. It is essential reading for students and practitioners of history, anthropology, sociology, colonial/ postcolonial studies, and critical race and legal studies.

Colonial Proximities traces the dynamic encounters among Aboriginal peoples, mixed-race populations, Chinese migrants, and Europeans in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British Columbia and assesses the juridical racial truths and forms of governance these crossracial contacts produced.

About the Author
Renisa Mawani is an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Reviews
"This book offers fascinating new perspectives on the roots of Canadian racism. Moving beyond traditional narratives of Aboriginal-European contact and Chinese-European relations, Renisa Mawani probes the unsettled landscape of cross-racial encounters between "indians" and "Chinese" in BC history. She deftly captures the frenzied anxieties that whites harboured over ungovernable mixed-race activities, and brilliantly dissects the renewed state racisms that were born of such encounters. - Constance Backhouse, University of Ottawa"



Book Information
ISBN 9780774816342
Author Renisa Mawani
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint University of British Columbia Press
Publisher University of British Columbia Press
Weight(grams) 480g