Introduction: empire and liberty Jack P. Greene; 1. The languages of liberty in British North America, 1607–1776 Elizabeth Mancke; 2. Liberty and slavery: the transfer of British liberty to the West Indies, 1627–1865 Jack P. Greene; 3. 'Era of liberty': the politics of civil and political rights in eighteenth-century Ireland James Kelly; 4. Liberty and modernity: the American revolution and the making of Parliament's imperial history Eliga Gould; 5. Federalism, democracy, and liberty in the new American nation Peter S. Onuf; 6. Liberty in Canada, 'multiple subjects, multiple freedoms' Philip Girard; 7. Contested despotism; problems of liberty in British India Robert Travers; 8. '… a bastard of tyranny under the guise of liberty': liberty and representative government in Australia, 1788–1901 Richard Waterhouse; 9. How much did institutions matter?: cloning Britain in New Zealand James Belich; 10. The expansion of British liberty overseas: the South African case Christopher Saunders.
Exclusionary Empire examines the transfer of English traditions of liberty and the rule of law overseas from 1600 to 1900.
Jack Greene is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University. He has also taught at Michigan State University, Western Reserve University, the University of Michigan, and the University of California at Irvine. A specialist in the history of Colonial British and Revolutionary American history, he has published and edited many books, chapters in books, articles, and reviews. Perhaps his best-known books are The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (1963), Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1789 (1986), Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (1988), and The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity from 1492 to 1800 (1993).
'Britain's empire was the first since antiquity expressly dedicated
to the encouragement of liberty. Exclusionary Empire
comprehensively maps the contrasting, varied, and often paradoxical
results of Britons' efforts to export and foster their freedoms
around the world. This impressive array of authoritative essays
provides a new history of the British Empire seen through its
liberal institutions and a novel account of liberty's complex
imperial itineraries.' David Armitage, Harvard University
'The spread of English liberal traditions overseas has long been a
central theme in British Imperial history but this is the first
book to examine the subject in detail from a comparative
perspective. The specialist authors of the various case studies are
sensitive to the fact that the extension of liberal traditions to
overseas Britons frequently meant the denial of liberty to
subordinated peoples throughout the Empire. The result is a volume
of wide-ranging, stimulating and nuanced essays that should be
required reading for students and scholars interested in the spread
of British constitutional ideas across the globe.' Phillip Buckner,
University of London
'When the English moved overseas, they expected to take with them
their proudest possession - their passionate devotion to liberty.
This collection of ten bold, brilliant and often breathtakingly
insightful essays on English liberty overseas ranges from colonial
North America and the West Indies, to India, and to the white
dominion colonies of South Africa and the Antipodes. They help us
understand why white settlers were so attached to freedom for
themselves and so opposed to freedom for others. Exclusionary
Empire, edited by Jack P. Greene, the world's leading historian of
politics and identity in the British Empire, is a landmark work in
imperial history. In its cosmopolitan and expansive vision of
imperial history, it shows us all how exciting, and how relevant,
imperial history, done in a non-parochial way, can be. It deserves
an extremely wide readership.' Trevor Burnard, University of
Warwick
'This extraordinary volume strides across the globe to track the
shifting meanings of 'liberty' over four centuries of colonization.
Its incisive case studies of North America, the West Indies,
Ireland, Canada, India, Australia, and New Zealand show how the
extension of British liberty was far from a simple or benign
bequest to the world. Exported abroad, political liberalism
triggered revolutionary ruptures and rationalized new modes of
subjugation. Taken together, these essays imagine a British world
defined by the unexpected legal, political, and ideological
consequences of colonial settlement.' S. Max Edelson, University of
Virginia
'The essays in this excellent book show how British communities
overseas formulated claims to the liberty to which the British at
home were deemed to be entitled and how they extracted recognition
of their rights from metropolitan authority by means varying from
armed rebellion to persuasion. 'Free' British societies were
created throughout the world, free that is, for people of British
origin. The extent to which liberty might be extended to
non-British people, especially to conquered indigenous populations,
was quite another matter. The obverse of British freedom often
turned out to be the subjection of others. This complex theme is
explored in a series of powerful studies which deal with a wide
variety of colonial societies over a long period of time.' P. J.
Marshall, Professor Emeritus, King's College, London
'Exclusion and empire have always been uneasy yet inseparable
companions, and the transference overseas of 'English liberties' a
persistent leit-motif in the history of British colonial expansion.
Shared identity in this world was explicitly exclusive. Against a
background of revived interest in white settlement and the 'British
world', this valuable collection draws attention to the
repressiveness of transferred liberties – self-government, property
rights, and the rule of law – as claimed and monopolised by white
settlers. Drawing on older traditions of commonwealth history, it
also highlights the importance of viewing comparatively the
illiberal trajectories of different colonial territories.' Andrew
Porter, King's College, London
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