Insurgent peoples in world history: new book on resistance and colonialism

Resistance and Colonialism: insurgent peoples in world history, the new book edited by Nuno Domingos, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and Ricardo Roque has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan. The volume explores new ways of thinking about resistance and colonialism during the period of modern European imperialism in the light of renewed interest in resistance studies. The chapters cover a range of case studies, from ‘hidden’ accounts using oral and written records, to local case studies and transnational perspectives

Book description:

This volume offers a critical re-examination of colonial and anti-colonial resistance imageries and practices in imperial history. It offers a fresh critique of both pejorative and celebratory readings of ‘insurgent peoples’, and it seeks to revitalize the study of ‘resistance’ as an analytical field in the comparative history of Western colonialisms. It explores how to read and (de)code these issues in archival documents – and how to conjugate documental approaches with oral history, indigenous memories, and international histories of empire. The topics explored include runaway slaves and slave rebellions, mutiny and banditry, memories and practices of guerrilla and liberation, diplomatic negotiations and cross-border confrontations, theft, collaboration, and even the subversive effects of nature in colonial projects of labor exploitation.

“This splendid collection leaps well ahead of cruder, binary understandings of resistance in the colonial context. By dint of its attention to oral, archival, and local sources it understands that resistance is always multifaceted, complex, and multi-purposed; that the metropolitan conceit that all the colonized can possibly think about is their colonizer, is wishful thinking. Do read this collection for its geographical breadth, its historical depth, and its sophistication.” (James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology, Yale University, USA)

Click here to see the TABLE OF CONTENTS and Reviews.