An ABC of Queen Victoria's Empire Or a Primer of Conquest, Dissent and Disruption

by Burton, Antoinette; Aslami, Zarena (CON); Mar, Tracey Banivanua (CON); Ballantyne, Tony (CON); Brereton, Bridget (CON)

• ISBN13: 9781474230155
• ISBN10: 1474230156
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-01-12
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

An ABC of Queen Victoria's Empire offers a provocative rewriting of Mrs. Ernest Ames' ABCs for Baby Patriots (1899). Whimsically illustrated for the nursery or primary school child, Ames' book demonstrates how deeply imperialism reached into popular culture during Victoria's reign.

This book presents a rather darker view of Victoria's empire, beginning with the wars in Afghanistan and ending with Zam-Zammeh, the large-bore cannon that Kipling's hero sat astride at the opening of his 1901 novel, Kim. It signposts some of the key events, concepts, places and people that shaped the turbulent ground of empire across the long 19th century, providing a serious counterweight to the notion of imperial conquest as child's play.

With each letter accompanied by a crisp yet historically nuanced account of its subject, this unique account is the perfect primer for students taking courses on global, imperial and British history.

Author Biography

Antoinette Burton is Professor of History at the University of Illinois, USA. She has written widely on modern Britain and empire. Her most recent publications include A Primer for Teaching World History (2012) and Brown Over Black: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation (2012).

Table of Contents

Afghan Wars
Bold Fenian Men
Convict women
Dagga
Eyre, Jane
Famine
Gandhi, Mohandas K.
Hosay
Indenture
Jihad
Kingitanga
Lascar
Morant Bay
Native Claim-making
Opium
Proclamation of the Irish Republic
Queensland sugar
Red River Resistance
Syphilis
Tatya Tope
Urabi
Vande Mataram
Winston Churchill
Xhosaland
Yakub Khan
Zam-Zammah