ABSTRACT
This collection brings much-needed focus to the vibrancy and vitality of minority and marginal writing about empire, and to their implications as expressions of embodied contact between imperial power and those negotiating its consequences from "below." The chapters explore how less powerful and less privileged actors in metropolitan and colonial societies within the British Empire have made use of the written word and of the power of speech, public performance, and street politics. 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. 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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |58 pages
Writing Back to Colonial and Imperial Authority
part |38 pages
Speech Acts
chapter |19 pages
Patriotic Complaints
part |55 pages
Mobilities
chapter |18 pages
Zulu Sailors in the Steamship Era
chapter |16 pages
‘Write me. Write me.'
part |40 pages
Fragmented Archives
chapter |18 pages
The Power of Words in Nineteenth-Century Prisons
part |18 pages
The View from Above