Rethinking settler colonialism

History and memory in Australia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand and South Africa

Annie Coombes

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780719071690
  9780719071683
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526121547
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Rethinking settler colonialism focuses on the long history of contact between indigenous peoples and the white colonial communities who settled in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. It interrogates how histories of colonial settlement have been mythologised, narrated and embodied in public culture in the twentieth century (through monuments, exhibitions and images) and charts some of the vociferous challenges to such histories that have emerged over recent years.

Despite a shared familiarity with cultural and political institutions, practices and policies amongst the white settler communities, the distinctiveness which marked these constituencies as variously, 'Australian', 'South African', 'Canadian' or 'New Zealander', was fundamentally contingent upon their relationship to and with the various indigenous communities they encountered. In each of these countries these communities were displaced, marginalised and sometimes subjected to attempted genocide through the colonial process. Recently these groups have renewed their claims for greater political representation and autonomy. The essays and artwork in this book insist that an understanding of the political and cultural institutions and practices which shaped settler-colonial societies in the past can provide important insights into how this legacy of unequal rights can be contested in the present.

It will be of interest to those studying the effects of colonial powers on indigenous populations, and the legacies of imperial rule in postcolonial societies.

Table of contents

• Front matter
• Contents
• List of figures
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• General editor's foreword
• Introduction: Memory and history in settler colonialism
• Artists' pages: Facing history
• Part I Colonial culture: institutions and practices
• Part II The ordering of culture: new nations for old
• Part III Engagement and resistance
• Part IV New subjectivities and the politics of reconciliation
• Select bibliography
• Index