Amanda Nettelbeck is Professor of History at the University of Adelaide and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her many publications include Intimacies of Violence in the Settler Colony (2018), co-edited with Penelope Edmonds, and Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World (2017), co-edited with Philip Dwyer.

• 1. Protection and the ends of colonial governance; 2. Creating Aboriginal subjects of the Crown; 3. Distinctive designs: local arenas of protection; 4. Protector magistrates: mediating labour and law; 5. Intimate encounters with protection; 6. Recasting protection from rights to surveillance; Conclusion: protection and reform in the British Empire.

'This tremendously erudite book unveils the power of colonial protection policies. Protection, Nettelbeck insists, was a double-edged sword. A humanitarian project to mitigate the worst effects of colonization, it entailed the subjection of indigenous peoples to British law, the policing of their behaviour and the loss of their sovereignty. This important book should be read by everyone interested in imperialism.' Alan Lester, University of Sussex