Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The racialization of belonging in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments 2. Dugald Stewart and the colour of progress 3. The role of ‘home’ in Edgeworth and Graham’s critiques of slavery 4. Belonging and exile in the debate over Scottish Highland emigration 5. Colonial knowledge and the making of white masculinity in Bombay 6. ‘A hothouse of weeds’: reproducing white womanhood in colonial India Conclusion

Promotional Information

A volume examining the role of ‘home’ and ‘exile’ in constructing difference in the British Empire during the ‘long’ 18th century.

About the Author

Onni Gust is Assistant Professor of History at University of Nottingham, UK. A cultural historian of the British Empire in the ‘long’ 18th century (c. 1730–1830), their work addresses questions of belonging and identity in the eighteenth-century British empire, with a particular interest in the development of ideas of race and gender. They have taught History and Gender Studies at University College London and the London School of Economics, both UK, as well as Amherst College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts, USA.

Reviews

An engaging and elevated analysis ... Prefaced by a well-balanced introduction and concluded with thoughtful contemporary implications of the research, Unhomely Empire is an approachable study for those familiar and those unfamiliar with the topic.
*Social History*

Thought-provoking.
*Journal of British Studies*

What Gust offers is a powerful account where whiteness intersects with other identities to create a distinctly ‘British’ identity.
*Roehampton RoundTable*

Onni Gust’s Unhomely Empire is an exceptionally nuanced and delightfully troubling study of the ideas of belonging and estrangement at the heart of the British imperial experience threading through Scottish Highlands and India of the Company Raj. It brings together intimate questions of domicile, sexuality, and racial difference as key facets of imperial selfhood observed through overlapping lenses of history and biography in ways that have not been attempted before.
*Sudipta Sen, Professor of History, University of California, Davis, USA*

Situated at the intersection of histories of Britain and the British Empire, and studies of the self and racial formation, Unhomely Empire: whiteness and belonging, c.1760- 1830 is a deep dive into the Scottish Enlightenment and its lived implications. By demonstrating how European imperial expansion, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and racial thinking informed Scottish Enlightenment ideas of belonging, the book makes important contributions to cultural history and the history of imperial networks.
*Professor Dana Robin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA*