Empire, Kinship and Violence

Family Histories, Indigenous Rights and the Making of Settler Colonialism, 1770-1842

Elbourne, Elizabeth

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Empire, Kinship and Violence traces the history of three linked imperial families in Britain and across contested colonial borderlands from 1770 to 1842. Elizabeth Elbourne tracks the Haudenosaunee Brants of northeastern North America from the American Revolution to exile in Canada; the Bannisters, a British family of colonial administrators, whistleblowers and entrepreneurs who operated across Australia, Canada and southern Africa; and the Buxtons, a family of British abolitionists who publicized information about what might now be termed genocide towards Indigenous peoples while also pioneering humanitarian colonialism. By recounting the conflicts that these interlinked families were involved in she tells a larger story about the development of British and American settler colonialism and the betrayal of Indigenous peoples. Through an analysis of the changing politics of kinship and violence, Elizabeth Elbourne sheds new light on transnational debates about issues such as Indigenous sovereignty claims, British subjecthood, violence, land rights and cultural assimilation.
.- Appeals to a broad range of scholars of British imperial history, settler colonial studies, Indigenous studies, the history of the American Revolution, and histories of Canada,
Australia and southern Africa
.- Uses human stories to illuminate the broader history of the formation of settler colonial states, including the changing politics of violence and kinship
.- Explores the early history of struggles over Indigenous rights