Colonising Disability
Impairment and Otherness Across Britain and Its Empire, c. 1800–1914

The first monograph on the construction and treatment of disability across Britain and its Empire from 1800 to 1914.

Esme Cleall (Author)

9781108987370, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 August 2024

312 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.454 kg

'By more fully integrating the history of disability into the history of the British Empire, Cleall has made a noteworthy contribution to both fields.' Vanessa Warne, Victorian Studies

Colonising Disability explores the construction and treatment of disability across Britain and its empire from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Esme Cleall explores how disability increasingly became associated with 'difference' and argues that it did so through intersecting with other categories of otherness such as race. Philanthropic, legal, literary, religious, medical, educational, eugenistic and parliamentary texts are examined to unpick representations of disability that, overtime, became pervasive with significant ramifications for disabled people. Cleall also uses multiple examples to show how disabled people navigated a wide range of experiences from 'freak shows' in Britain, to missions in India, to immigration systems in Australia, including exploring how they mobilised to resist discrimination and constitute their own identities. By assessing the intersection between disability and race, Dr Cleall opens up questions about 'normalcy' and the making of the imperial self.

1. Introduction: Thinking about disability, rethinking difference
2. Disability and Otherness in the British Empire: disablement as a discourse of difference
3. Saving the other at home and overseas: philanthropy, education and the state
4. 'A Fearfully and wonderfully made individual': exhibiting bodily anomaly
5. Signs of Humanity: Language and Civilisation
6. A Deaf Imaginary: disability, nationhood and belonging in the 'British World'
7. Immigration: racism, ableism and exclusion
8. The health of the nation: class, race, gender and disability in imperial Britain
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX], British & Irish history [HBJD1]