Critical Perspectives on Colonialism - Writing the Empire from Below (Hardcover, New)

This book breaks new ground by combining work about marginalized figures from within Britain as well as counterparts in the colonies, ranging from published sources such as indigenous newspapers to ordinary and everyday writings including diaries, letters, petitions, ballads, suicide notes, and more. Showcasing remarkable historical research by leading historians working with an impressive array of original material from around the globe, the chapters in this collection bring to light largely hitherto unknown histories of subalternity. Critical Perspectives on Colonialism explores the extent to which writing can serve as a weapon of the powerless, focuses on the entangled, interactive and dynamic character of the relationships between the spoken and the written word, and illustrates the significance of fragments on our understandings and definitions of 'the archive' and how we write history from and about the margins. Each chapter engages with the methodological implications of working with everyday scribblings and asks what these alternate modernities and histories mean for the larger critique of the 'imperial archive' that has shaped much of the most interesting writing on empire in the past decade.