A comprehensive volume that interrogates European imperialism from the perspective of indigenous experiences.

The contributors to Facing Empire reimagine the Age of Revolution from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Rather than treating indigenous peoples as distant and passive players in the political struggles of the time, this book argues that they helped create and exploit the volatility that marked an era while playing a central role in the profound acceleration in encounters and contacts between peoples around the world.

Focusing in particular on indigenous peoples' experiences of the British Empire, this volume takes a unique comparative approach in thinking about how indigenous peoples shaped, influenced, redirected, ignored, and sometimes even forced the course of modern imperialism. The essays demonstrate how indigenous-shaped local exchanges, cultural relations, and warfare provoked discussion and policymaking in London as much as it did in Charleston, Cape Town, or Sydney.

Facing Empire charts a fresh way forward for historians of empire, indigenous studies, and the Age of Revolution and shows why scholars can no longer continue to exclude indigenous peoples from histories of the modern world. These past conflicts over land and water, labor and resources, and hearts and minds have left a living legacy of contested relations that continue to resonate in contemporary politics and societies today. Covering the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australia, and West and South Africa, as well as North America, this book looks at the often misrepresented and underrepresented complexity of the indigenous experience on a global scale.

Contributors: Tony Ballantyne, Justin Brooks, Colin G. Calloway, Kate Fullagar, Bill Gammage, Robert Kenny, Shino Konishi, Elspeth Martini, Michael A. McDonnell, Jennifer Newell, Joshua L. Reid, Daniel K. Richter, Rebecca Shumway, Sujit Sivasundaram, Nicole Ulrich

A comprehensive volume that interrogates European imperialism from the perspective of indigenous experiences.

About the Author

Kate Fullagar is a senior lecturer in modern history at Macquarie University. She is the author of The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain, 1710-1795. Michael A. McDonnell is a professor of history at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America.

Reviews
In comparing, contrasting, and interlinking the rich contributions of Indigenous peoples across the globe, the editors have brilliantly offered readers new historiographical grounds for original thinking about the age of industrialization, Indigenous agency, and global revolutionary conquest . . . Facing Empire is a brilliantly written transnational work and a landmark impact on critical Indigenous and ethnic studies, postcolonial theory, settler colonialism, borderlands history, decolonization studies, history of the British Empire, and the Age of Revolution.
-Baligh Ben Taleb, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Western Historical Quarterly
Indigenous peoples of the globe have rarely taken center stage in accounts of this transformative time. Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age breaks ground as the first collective volume to emphasize their agency in this era . . . The commonalities in their struggles and convergences in their strategies stand out in greater relief thanks to the kaleidoscopic array of essays Fullagar and McDonnell have collected. In light of Facing Empire, the history of the revolutionary age will never look quite the same again.
-David Armitage, Harvard University, Journal of British Studies
How did Indigenous peoples respond to an empire as it encroached on their territories? . . . The editors of this collection hope to spur a comparative conversation about the subject by bringing together contributors who specialise in encounters on different frontiers of the British empire in 'a revolutionary age', running from the mideighteenth to the early nineteenth century. Thirteen chapters examine Indigenous responses to empire in Australia, Bengal, New Zealand, North America, the Persian Gulf, South Africa, the Scottish Highlands, the South Pacific, and West Africa. While widely varied in argument and approach, these chapters offer a stimulating introduction to the rich scholarship on this topic.
-Dane Kennedy, George Washington University, Australian Historical Studies
Unlike many comparative histories of empire that adopt a European lens, this volume treats indigenous peoples as its main subjects . . . Facing Empire is a stimulating and wide-ranging introduction to global indigenous histories. The essays are high quality, and the editors effectively draw out similarities in how the histories, rivalries, expectations, and interests of indigenous peoples defined the terms of encounters.
-Jon Chandler, University College London, Journal of American History



Book Information
ISBN 9781421426563
Author Kate Fullagar
Format Paperback
Page Count 376
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 522g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 23mm