Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa

This is the dramatic story of the colonial encounter and the construction of empire in Southern Africa in the nineteenth century. What did the British make of the Xhosa and how did they make sense of their politics and culture? How did the British establish and then explain their dominion, especially when it ran counter to the cultural values they believed themselves to represent? In this book, Richard Price answers these questions by looking at the ways in which individual missionaries, officials and politicians interacted with the Xhosa. He describes how those encounters changed and shaped the culture of imperial rule in Southern Africa. He charts how an imperial regime developed both in the minds of the colonizers and in the everyday practice of power and how the British imperial presence was entangled in and shaped by the encounter with the Xhosa from the very moment of their first meeting.

Author: Richard Price
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 10/16/2008
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.67lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780521889681

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2009

About the Author
Price, Richard: - Richard Price is Professor and Chair at the Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park. His previous publications include Labour in British Society 1780-1980 (1986) and British Society 1680-1880: Dynamism, Containment and Change (1999).