Settler Anxiety at the Outposts of Empire

During the 1850s and 1860s, there was considerable anxiety among British settlers over the potential for Indigenous rebellion and violence. Yet, publicly admitting to this fear would have gone counter to Victorian notions of racial superiority. In this fascinating book, Kenton Storey challenges the idea that a series of colonial crises in the mid-nineteenth century led to a decline in the popularity of humanitarianism across the British Empire. Instead, he demonstrates how colonial newspapers in New Zealand and on Vancouver Island appropriated humanitarian language as a means of justifying the expansion of settlers' access to land, promoting racial segregation and allaying fears of potential Indigenous resistance.