This volume offers a critical re-examination of colonial and anti-colonial resistance imageries and practices in imperial history. It offers a fresh critique of both pejorative and celebratory readings of ‘insurgent peoples’, and it seeks to revitalize the study of ‘resistance’ as an analytical field in the comparative history of Western colonialisms. It explores how to read and (de)code these issues in archival documents – and how to conjugate documental approaches with oral history, indigenous memories, and international histories of empire. The topics explored include runaway slaves and slave rebellions, mutiny and banditry, memories and practices of guerrilla and liberation, diplomatic negotiations and cross-border confrontations, theft, collaboration, and even the subversive effects of nature in colonial projects of labor exploitation.

Part of the ‘Transition in Northeastern India’ series, this volume critically explores how Northeast India, especially Manipuri society, responded to colonial rule. It studies the interplay between colonialism and resistance to provide an alternative understanding of colonialism on the one hand, and society and state formation on the other. Challenging dominant histories of the area, the essays provide significant insights into understanding colonialism and its multiple effects on economy, polity, culture, and faith system. It examines hitherto untouched areas in the study of Northeast, and discusses how social movements are augmented, constituted or sustained. This book will be of great interest to researchers and scholars of modern history, sociology and social anthropology, particularly those concerned with Northeast India.

In 1897, as a white oligarchy made plans to allow the United States to annex Hawai'i, native Hawaiians organized a massive petition drive to protest. Ninety-five percent of the native population signed the petition, causing the annexation treaty to fail in the U.S. Senate. This event was unknown to many contemporary Hawaiians until Noenoe K. Silva rediscovered the petition in the process of researching this book. With few exceptions, histories of Hawai'i have been based exclusively on English-language sources. They have not taken into account the thousands of pages of newspapers, books, and letters written in the mother tongue of native Hawaiians. By rigorously analyzing many of these documents, Silva fills a crucial gap in the historical record. In so doing, she refutes the long-held idea that native Hawaiians passively accepted the erosion of their culture and loss of their nation, showing that they actively resisted political, economic, linguistic, and cultural domination. Drawing on Hawaiian-language texts, primarily newspapers produced in the nineteenth century and early twentieth, Silva demonstrates that print media was central to social communication, political organizing, and the perpetuation of Hawaiian language and culture. A powerful critique of colonial historiography, Aloha Betrayed provides a much-needed history of native Hawaiian resistance to American imperialism.

An alternative and unorthodox view of the colonization of the Americas by Europeans is offered in this concise history. Eurocentric studies of the conquest of the Americas present colonization as a civilizing force for good, and the native populations as primitive or worse. Colonization is seen as a mutually beneficial process, in which ''civilization'' was brought to the natives who in return shared their land and cultures. The opposing historical camp views colonization as a form of genocide in which the native populations were passive victims overwhelmed by European military power. In this fresh examination, an activist and historian of native descent argues that the colonial powers met resistance from the indigenous inhabitants and that these confrontations shaped the forms and extent of colonialism. This account encompasses North and South America, the development of nation-states, and the resurgence of indigenous resistance in the post-World War II era.

There is a rich intellectual history to the development of anti-colonial thought and practice. In discussing the politics of knowledge production, this collection borrows from and builds upon this intellectual traditional to offer understandings of the macro-political processes and structures of education delivery (e. g., social organization of knowledge, culture, pedagogy and resistant politics).

This book looks at the third pillar of resistance to British colonialism – people’s resistance, the others being Mau Mau and radical trade union movement. It brings together several aspects of people’s resistance to colonialism and imperialism – before and after independence and includes resistance by nationalities, women, students, peasants and workers in what can only be described as people’s resistance. While Mau Mau and trade unions were essential in the liberation struggle, on their own they would have faced innumerable difficulties to achieve their goal. Peasants, nationalities, women, children and young people, students, independent churches, independent schools, all played a part in reinforcing the organized and ideology led resistance of Mau Mau and trade unions. Additional material is included to provide thought for reflections. The first two essays deal with the question of nationalities and with the contradictions between capitalism and socialism with the collapse of USSR. They point to the fact that that the struggle in Kenya influences, and is in turn influenced by, developments around the world. The next section is the presentation at the launch of Kenya’s War of Independence in Nairobi on February 21, 2018. The final section contains solidarity messages from Shiraz Durrani, Abdilatif Abdalla and Kang'ethe Mungai at the event to commemorate and celebrate the revolutionary work of Karimi Nduthu held on March 24, 2018 at the Professional Centre in Nairobi. The Kenya Resists Series covers different aspects of resistance by people of Kenya to colonialism and imperialism. It reproduces material from books, unpublished reports, research and oral or visual testimonies. The three aspects chosen for the first three publications in the Series – Mau Mau, Trade Unions and People’s Resistance – make up the three pillars of resistance of the people of Kenya.

Disturbing History focuses on Fiji’s people and their agency in responding to and engaging the multifarious forms of authority and power that were manifest in the colony from 1874 to 1914. By concentrating on the lives of ordinary Fijians, the book presents alternate ways of reconstructing the island’s past. Couched in the traditions of social, subaltern, and people’s histories, the study is an excavation of a large mass of material that tells the often moving stories of lives that have largely been overlooked by historians. These challenge conventional historical accounts that tend to celebrate the nation, represent Fiji’s colonial experience as ordered and peaceful, or British tutelage as benevolent. In its contribution to postcolonial theory, Disturbing History reveals resistance as a constant but partial and untidy mix of other constituents such as collaboration, consent, appropriation, and opportunism, which together form the colonial landscape. In turn, colonialism in Fiji is shown as a force shaped in struggle, fractured and often fragile, with a presence and application in the daily lives of people that was often chaotic, imperfect, and susceptible to subversion. The book divides the period of study into two broad categories: organized resistance and everyday forms of resistance. The first examines the Colo War (1876), the Tuka Movement (1878–1891), the Seaqaqa War (1894), the Movement for Federation with New Zealand (1901–1903), the Viti Kabani Movement (1913–1917), and the various organized labor protests. The second half of the book addresses resistance manifested in the villages and plantations, including tax and land boycotts, violence and retributive justice, avoidance protest, petitioning, and women’s resistance. In their entirety these forms reveal a complex web of relationships between powerful and subordinate groups and among subordinate groups themselves. The author concludes that resistance cannot be framed as a totality but as a multilayered and multidimensional reality. In the wake of Fiji’s present volatile climate, this book will aid readers in understanding the continuities and disjunctures in Fiji’s interethnic and intraethnic relations.