Reviewed by Alison Games | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.4

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Reviewed by Alison Games | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.4 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Alison Games, Georgetown University

A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840. Edited by Kathleen Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 385 pages. $75.00 (cloth), $34.99 (paper).
The title of Kathleen Wilson's edited collection likely invites a single initial question from readers: what is "a new imperial history?" This volume is part of a major revitalization in the study of Britain and its former imperial holdings. The old-style imperial history emphasized the agency of the metropolitan center, the institutions and their employees responsible for administration and governance, and the ways in which initiatives derived from the metropole dictated the fate of colonies. The first two volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire, which cover the same spatial and chronological ground as many of the essays here, broadcast this reconceptualized vision of imperial expansion, one emphasizing the accidental nature of Britain's emerging global power and one sharpened by an awareness, as the nineteenth- and early- twentieth-century triumphal historians rarely were, of the harmful effects of imperialism on people and environments around the globe. For all its geographic and chronological sweep, however, the five-volume Oxford History received considerable and immediate criticism for its startling lacunae, necessitating the publication of books in the companion series on overlooked subjects such as gender and the black experience.¹	1
Wilson's collection joins these efforts not only to flesh out the barebones narrative furnished in the Oxford History but also to illustrate alternative routes to a new understanding of Britain and its imperial past. Wilson demonstrates what a new imperial history—one in which gender, race, and ethnicity are fully integrated—might look like, and it is impossible, after reading these essays, to imagine that future imperial histories could neglect these core subjects. This new imperial history is also emphatically a new British history that seeks to explain changes in Britain and Britons alike by understanding the ways in which imperial power, imperial people, and the changed circumstances of engagement around the world together defined and redefined Britain itself. It deliberately inverts the trajectory of the old imperial history, in which the British were capable of imposing their will on subjected people and places, by casting light on how empire defined Britain.	2
This new scholarship is also shaped by an interest in cultural studies. Wilson announces in her introduction that the imperial history contained in this collection "has at its heart the importance of difference—in historical settings and forms of consciousness as well as in historiographic and cultural practice—that supports and extends the pluralities of historical interpretation" (3). Three themes join this emphasis on difference and modernity: how the empire affected British identities, how transoceanic connections disrupted national boundaries and the categories of public and private, and how representation played a role "in enabling, mystifying, or contesting British imperial power" (19).	3
Wilson has divided the collection into four sections. "Empire at Home: Difference, Representation, Experience" contains essays by Margaret Hunt, Gillian Russell, Felicity Nussbaum, and Michael H. Fisher. "Promised Lands: Imperial Aspirations and Practice" includes essays by Philip J. Stern, Sudipta Sen, Eitan Bar-Yosef, and Hans Turley. Walter Johnson, Kevin Whelan, Nicholas Rogers, and Colin Kidd contributed to "Time, Identity, and Atlantic Interculture." Finally, "Englishness, Gender, and the Arts of Discovery" includes essays by Kate Teltscher, Durba Ghosh, Harriet Guest, and Wilson herself. The book includes an extensive and helpful bibliography. The contributors specialize in history, literature, and cultural studies. A central point of the collection, however, is the importance of interdisciplinary research, and several of the essays demonstrate the insights gained when scholars cross conventional disciplinary boundaries.	. . .

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