Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Mistress of everything examines how indigenous people across Britain's settler colonies engaged with Queen Victoria in their lives and predicaments, incorporated her into their political repertoires, and implicated her as they sought redress for the effects of imperial expansion during her long reign. It draws together empirically rich studies from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Africa, to provide scope for comparative and transnational analysis.
The book includes chapters on a Maori visit to Queen Victoria in 1863, meetings between African leaders and the Queen's son Prince Alfred in 1860, gift-giving in the Queen's name on colonial frontiers in Canada and Australia, and Maori women's references to Queen Victoria in support of their own chiefly status and rights. The collection offers an innovative approach to interpreting and including indigenous perspectives within broader histories of British imperialism and settler colonialism.
Synopsis
Mistress of everything traces various ways in which Indigenous people across Britain's settler colonies engaged Queen Victoria - as person or symbol - in their lives and predicaments. It explores how she was incorporated into their political repertoires and narrative traditions, and implicated as they sought redress for the consequences of imperial expansion that occurred during her long reign. The collection analyses Indigenous people's representations of and to Queen Victoria as part of larger histories of political and creative responses to British imperial incursion into their lives and territories. It reveals new perspectives on Queen Victoria by demonstrating the complex range of associations that magnetised around her for those at the receiving end of British settler-colonialism. Various authors illustrate how an image of Queen Victoria could be employed - subverted or nuanced - to challenge the settler order and to resist the destructive and dispossessive traits of empire. The volume includes chapters on Canada, Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa and covers a diverse range of 'sites' and forums, including royal tours and audiences, diplomatic rituals, oral narratives and oratory, gift-giving practices, commemorative events and political performances and discourses. By using innovative methods of historical and cultural analysis, new insight is provided into the contested and layered meanings of sovereignty, loyalty, citizenship, authority, difference, politics and rights. Mistress of everything will appeal to students of the history of the British Empire and its colonies, especially those with an interest in understanding Indigenous people's engagements with and challenges to imperial and colonial power.