The latest in the International Themes and Issues series published jointly by the Canadian Historical Association and the University of Toronto Press, Cecilia Morgan's Building Better Britains? Settler Societies in the British World, 1783–1920 fits squarely into the contemporary historiographical enthusiasm for studies about the settler British Empire that hinge upon elaborations of migration, identity, ethnicity, and gender. In this respect, the book works exceedingly well, falling specifically into a category of British imperial study that has been popularized in recent years by, among others, the Oxford-based historian James Belich. His monumental examination of immigration and settlement patterns within the British Empire (and the United States), Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo World, 1783–1939 (2009), has lent an invigorating hand to the field akin to what Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher did for an earlier generation of scholars beginning in 1950s and ’60s for the study of European imperialism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa.
Such present-day reinvigoration has led to a number of other key studies that probe, broadly speaking, “settler experience” across and within the far-flung reaches of the former British Empire. Morgan's study is one of these, and she aims to “explore” (xxi) the shaping impact of Britain on its chief overseas settler colonies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa during the long nineteenth century. (Even though it usually occupies a different category than that of the “Old Dominions,” the inclusion here of Ireland would have been useful.) Employing the term “explore” modally in the service of writing rigorous history, however, is always problematic, it seems to me, because it is not prescriptive and therefore works to obscure the writer's thesis. As best as can be discerned, therefore, Morgan's basic thesis seems to be that during—and on either side of—the nineteenth century the British Empire was a big, amorphous, multifaceted, constitutionally uneven, and ethnically diverse world-historical force whose impact on those parts of it designated specifically as settler colonies was variegated. Such an impact was also, she suggests, invariably negative, especially as it pertained to Indigenous peoples. The roots of such a critical view go back, of course, a long way, at least to J. H. Hobson's radical journalism at the turn of the twentieth century, especially to his Imperialism: A Study (1902), which set the stage for the growth of the ferocious anti-imperial critiques of the twentieth century.
Over the course of five brisk chapters, Morgan engages much historiography on the topic, although the omission of David Cannadine's Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (2002) is glaring, as is the failure to engage properly (although it is listed in the bibliography) with Carl Berger's long-standing and highly influential work on the topic of (English-) Canadian imperial identity, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867–1914 (2013). That said, Morgan has used the work of a number of other trailblazers who, in the 1970s and ’80s, began to probe the empire's history in nontraditional ways—names such as Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido prominent among them—and in this way goes some distance in covering the philosophical spectrum evident in British imperial historiography as it pertains to her topic.
The singular strength of the book, however, is Morgan's clear ability as a synthesizer, for she draws together an immense amount of historiography on the topic, distilling it into a coherent and digestible whole. She skillfully weaves together the various examples of what it meant to be “British” (though inexplicably ignoring Linda Colley's illuminating work on this question, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 [1992]) that cut across the widespread geographical locations and other indices of Britain's settler colonies. Whether it was the early commercial encounters between traders and the Indigenous peoples of Canada's west coast, or those of Christian missionaries and the Zulu and Xhosa of South Africa, Morgan explains what was both structural and nuanced about these relationships and their aftermath.
This book is emblematic of the British imperial field as it stands today, most especially as the subject is researched and taught in colleges and universities. In this respect, Morgan has made a valuable contribution to the cyclical revivification of imperial history generally. Her style makes for compelling reading, and the volume shows evidence of perspicacious editing and appealing production values. In short, this is a recommended text, especially for students and general readers looking for a synthetic introduction to the rich area of how the British Empire peopled itself during the long nineteenth century.
