Preface: Connections, Comparisons and CommonalitiesNote on Language and UsageIntroduction: Relocating Colonial HistoriesReframing Colonialism1 Race and the Webs of EmpireConnections2 Writing Out Asia3 Teaching Maori About Asia4 India in New Zealand5 Te Anu's StoryEmpire6 Sealers, Whalers and the Entanglements of Empire7 Christianity, Colonialism and Cross-Cultural Communication8 War, Knowledge and the Crisis of EmpireWriting9 Archives, Empires and Histories of Colonialism10 Mr. Peal's Archive11 Paper, Pen and Print12 Writing and the Culture of ColonisationPlace13 Thinking Local14 On Place, Space and MobilityConclusion: Writing the Colonial PastEditorial NoteEndnotesIndex

Attentive to the arguments of post-colonial theory, demonstrating a strong historiographic sensibility, and firmly grounded in New Zealand and other archives, this timely book offers a thoughtful challenge to the primacy of national history. Stressing the lumpiness of the past, Ballantyne sees places as knot-like conjunctures produced by the convergence of imperial networks with local webs of interdependence mediated by institutions operating at various scales. These diverse essays offer insight and pleasure to anyone interested in the colonial past.