Civilising Subjects Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867

" Civilising Subjects provides a compelling account of the ways in which the various imperial projects of the nineteenth century shaped domestic political, evangelical, and cultural agendas. This detailed study of Victorian empire and English national culture is sure to become the definitive study of the decade and beyond." Kathleen Wilson, author of The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785

" Civilising Subjects does for colonial history what E.P. Thompson s The Making of the English Working Class did for social history. It triumphantly achieves what many have hoped to do: show how empire impacted on metropolis while the home culture shaped colonial development. This is a work of great scholarship, but also of passion and imagination." Roy Porter, author of The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment

This is a brilliant piece of detective work, uncovering half-forgotten debates and hidden connections linking England and Jamaica in the first half of the Victorian era...The argument that all collective identities are formed through drawing up boundaries between "us" and inferior "others" has become a cliche...Hall is the first historian to give a really convincing account of how that happened. Her story also illuminates how West Indians, and their descendents in Britian, came to occupy such an ambivalent "inside-outsider" place in that picture. Civilising Subjects is not just important for historians of Britain and empire. Anyone concerned with issues of race, citizenship and identity in Britiain today can learn a great deal from it. The Independent

"This book has the fine detail and rich colours of a Vermeer painting." Denis Judd, Historian, BBC History Magazine

"...a landmark text, bringing national and imperial history into conjunction and providing a significant contribution to the new cultural history. Civilising Subjects desrves to be widely read." Michael Pickering, Journal of Contemporary European Studies

"Civilising Subjects is a tour de force and promises to deepen our understanding of how Empire rebounded back on Britain."
Social History

" What a book! What a breeze of fresh air in British colonial history! Let there be no doubt about it: this book is cultural history at its best and most advanced."
Journal for the Study of British Cultures