Empires of Violence

Philip Dwyer is Emeritus Professor of History at University of Newcastle, Australia, and former Director of the Centre for the History of Violence.Barbara Alice Mann is Emeritus Professor of Humanities in the Jesup Scott Honors College at the University of Toledo, USA.Nigel Penn is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.Lyndall Ryan was Emeritus Professor of History at University of Newcastle, Australia.

• Introduction1. A Revolutionary Age in a Global Context2. Ways of Being, Ways of Seeing 3. Local and Indigenous Ways of Warfare4. The Logic of Violence and Massacre on the Imperial Frontier5. Massacre, the State, and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars6. The Colony of New South Wales7. 'Determining to Exterminate Them' in 'Terror in Desolation': Massacre in North America8. 'Striking Terror into the Enemy': The Ethnic Cleansing of the Zuurveld Epilogue: Reflections on Massacre and Colonial Violence in a Revolutionary Age NotesBibliographyIndex

An important book- well written and engaging to read. But also particularly timely joining a growing corpus of studies which are now reassessing the history of the great European empires which coincides with the dramatic shift of economic and political power from the West to South and South-East Asia. The four authors bring their local expertise together and are able to meld their studies of South Africa, Australia, America and the Napoleonic Empire together in an innovative and challenging way. They also juxtapose the extreme violence underpinning empire between 1780 and 1820 with what has also been seen as the height of the European enlightenment.