Protecting the Empire's Humanity
Thomas Hodgkin and British Colonial Activism 1830–1870

Protecting the Empire's Humanity lays bare the contradictions of mid-nineteenth-century imperial Britain and the fatal flaws in imperial 'humanitarianism'.

Zoë Laidlaw (Author)

9781107196322, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 September 2021

330 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.689 kg

'Between the 1820s and the 1860s the multitalented Quaker medic and philanthropist Thomas Hodgkin was a focal point for influential discussions of racial difference, free labour, free trade, the nature of civilisation, duty and science, and the relationship between humanitarianism and colonialism in the Caribbean, the British settler colonies, the USA and India. This magisterial account of Hodgkin, his interlocutors and the organisations to which he contributed, founded on decades of scrupulous research, will change the way we think about mid-Victorian Britain and its Empire.' Alan Lester, University of Sussex

Rooted in the extraordinary archive of Quaker physician and humanitarian activist, Dr Thomas Hodgkin, this book explores the efforts of the Aborigines' Protection Society to expose Britain's hypocrisy and imperial crimes in the mid-nineteenth century. Hodgkin's correspondents stretched from Liberia to Lesotho, New Zealand to Texas, Jamaica to Ontario, and Bombay to South Australia; they included scientists, philanthropists, missionaries, systematic colonizers, politicians and indigenous peoples themselves. Debating the best way to protect and advance indigenous rights in an era of burgeoning settler colonialism, they looked back to the lessons and limitations of anti-slavery, lamented the imperial government's disavowal of responsibility for settler colonies, and laid out elaborate (and patronizing) plans for indigenous 'civilization'. Protecting the Empire's Humanity reminds us of the complexity, contradictions and capacious nature of British colonialism and metropolitan 'humanitarianism', illuminating the broad canvas of empire through a distinctive set of British and Indigenous campaigners.

1. Introduction
Part I. Mapping Humanitarianism: 2. Indigenous protection at the humanitarian apogee
3. Metropolitan contexts: Thomas Hodgkin, science and medicine
4. Anti-Slavery, colonization and emigration: 'civilizing' West Africa
5. Free trade versus free labour: British India and the West Indies
Part II. Humanitarianism and Settler Colonialism: 6. Making colonization civilizing: the Aborigines' Protection Society
7. Dealing with the devil: systematic colonization in Australasia
8. Conscripts of civilization: North American networks
9. Betrayal in the borderlands: Lesotho and New Zealand
10. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]