Civilising Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination, 1830-1867

Jacket Description/Flap: How did the English get to be English? In "Civilising Subjects," Catherine Hall argues that the idea of empire was at the heart of mid-nineteenth-century British self-imagining, with peoples such as the "Aborigines" in Australia and the "negroes" in Jamaica serving as markers of difference separating "civilised" English from "savage" others. Hall uses the stories of two groups of Englishmen and -women to explore British self-constructions both in the colonies and at home. In Jamaica, a group of Baptist missionaries hoped to make African-Jamaicans into people like themselves, only to be disappointed when the project proved neither simple nor congenial to the black men and women for whom they hoped to fashion new selves. And in Birmingham, abolitionist enthusiasm dominated the city in the 1830s, but by the 1860s, a harsher racial vocabulary reflected a new perception of the nonwhite subjects of empire as different kinds of men from the "manly citizens" of Birmingham. This absorbing and detailed study of the "racing" of Englishness will be invaluable for students and scholars of imperial and cultural history. Biographical Note: Catherine Hall is a professor of history at University College, London. She is the editor of "Cultures of Empire: A Reader" and coauthor of "Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850" and "Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867."Marc Notes: Bibl. ref. & index; Co-publ. in UK by Polity; Avail. in cloth @ $79.00. Table of Contents: List of maps and illustrationsAcknowledgementsAbbreviationsCast of CharactersIntroductionPrologue: The Making of an Imperial ManAustraliaNew ZealandSt Vincent and AntiguaJamaica"Part I - Colony and Metropole "Mapping Jamaica: The Pre-emancipation World in the Metropolitan Mind1. The Missionary Dream 1820-1842The Baptist Missionary Society and the missionary projectMissionaries and plantersThe war of representationThe constitution of the new black subjectThe free villages2. Fault-lines in the Family of Man 1842-1845Native agency and the Africa missionThe Baptist familyBrother Knibb3. 'A Jamaica of the Mind' 1820-1854Phillippo's Jamaica'A place of gloomy darkness'4. Missionary Men and Morant Bay 1859-1866Anthony Trollope and Mr. Secretary UnderhillThe trials of lifeMorant Bay and after"Part II - Metropolis, Colony and Empire "Mapping the Midland Metropolis5. The 'Friends of the Negro': Baptists and Abolitionists 1825-1842The Baptists in Birmingham and the missionary publicKnowing 'the heathen'Birmingham's 'Friends of the Negro'The utopian years6. The Limits of Friendship: Abolitionism in Decline 1842-1859'A population intellectually at zero'Carlyle's occasionGeorge Dawson and the politics of race and nationalismTroubles for the missionary public7. Town, Nation and Empire 1859-1867New timesMorant BayBirmingham menEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndex

Contributor Bio:  Hall, Catherine Catherine Hall is a professor of history at University College, London. She is the editor of "Cultures of Empire: A Reader" and coauthor of "Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850" and "Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867,"