Building Better Britains? Settler Societies in the British World, 1783–1920 by Cecilia Morgan (review)

Cecilia Morgan has written a fast-paced, detailed, yet synthesizing text. She draws upon an impressive historiography on the British world made up of contributions written by historians in the past thirty years. She manages to bring together work by those writing from the former imperial centre, and especially by those writing from the settler societies, for analysis. The text is incredibly timely, as it amalgamates work often specifically about one place into a broader framework. There are no footnotes, and just sparse notes at the end of each chapter, but there is an extensive chapter-by-chapter bibliography at the end of the text. Useful maps and illustrations augment the content.

The inclusion of a question mark in the book's title indicates an intention to interrogate a past British world employing a framework that owes much to James Belich's term "Better Britons." Belich has written extensively, first about New Zealand as a neo-Britain and a site of "Pakeha peopling," and then about an "Anglo World" in comparative context. In Belich's footsteps, Morgan continues to test the concept of "building better Britains" with a focus that encompasses Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. She argues for the concentration on these parts of the British Empire not directly along race lines, but because they were places where colonization was "particularly persistent, pervasive, and long-lasting" and where there was a permanent effect upon Indigenous peoples (xxii).

Morgan is primarily concerned with the spread of British Empire settler colonies over a "long" nineteenth century, considering that the twentieth century warrants its own treatment. Her end point is the First World War. Morgan writes confidently throughout her coverage. She is the most passionate and authoritative about Canadian Indigenous peoples. Some events and debates familiar to Canadian historians, such as the Rebellions of 1837 and 1838 and the politics of the British North America Act, receive brief mention, where international readers would likely appreciate more detail. Overall, however, the book will appeal to a wide cross-section of readers.

In a book where synthesis is a major objective, South African race relations, Australia's convict past, and the strength of Maori agency in New Zealand stand out as unique. Morgan comments that Australian "Female Factories" preceded treatment of girls and women in Ireland (88). Female Factories were houses of correction for convict women who were awaiting assignment, awaiting childbirth or weaning children, or undergoing punishment. Women residing in these places were expected to work as cooks, seamstresses, and laundresses. Here, Morgan's "Canadian eyes" spot the differences, and she comments on the comparative colonial incarceration of women.

The themes of the book are captured in the division of the chapters: "Colonial Frontiers and Contact Zones: Indigenous Peoples and Settler Encounters"; "'Peopling', Settling, and Governing"; "Settler Economies: Local Contexts and Imperial Networks"; "Creating Civil Society"; and "Creating Settler Identities." The text manages to draw upon relevant economic, political, race relations, and cultural history in order to paint its colourful canvas. Potentially dry topics are recast, such as the suggestion of railways, steamships, and telegraphs as "not always benign or innocent of the relations of power that structured settler societies" (79).

The text is particularly ambitious when centring and engaging with a comparison and contrast of the lives and experiences of Indigenous peoples. Morgan explains that there were similarities between Indigenous peoples that included "attempted dispossession of their land, culture, language, and autonomy, and overall, their containment by the steady expansion of settler communities" (7). In tune with the latest scholarship, she argues that Indigenous peoples were "far from passive," instead responding to colonization with various strategies that included resistance, negotiation, and sometimes co-operation with colonial and imperial powers (7).

As well as recognizing the similarities in experiences, Morgan posits "variables and contingencies" in how Indigenous peoples and settlers interacted: geographic location, European motives, Indigenous demographics, economies, political...