Imperial informants in a settler world: writing empire to the British Aborigines’ Protection Society from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, 1870-1890

This thesis explores the entangled relationship between settler colonialism and imperial humanitarianism in the late nineteenth-century British Empire through the practice of becoming informants for the Aborigines’ Protection Society. Using letters written by settlers, Indigenous peoples, and missionaries living in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa between 1870-1890, it argues that the connections forged between colonial subjects and the Society reveal continuities of imperial subjecthood within self-governing colonies as well as contingencies of settler colonialism on the limitations of imperial networks. Informants came from a wide variety of backgrounds and had different motivations. Colonists became informants to participate in British House of Commons debates and publish letters in the British press. Missionaries became informants to undermine pro-settler logics of mission society capitalism. Indigenous peoples became informants to challenge settler government disinformation campaigns. Yet running through all these different perspectives was a shared desire to claim political rights as imperial citizens, to subvert settler discourses that opposed imperial authority, and to challenge imperial disavowal of responsibility for Indigenous-settler relations. Consequently, these informants moved between a variety of imperial networks to resist the development of settler sovereignty and construct an alternative version of subjecthood that blended self-determination with imperial oversight, all through the discourses of British humanitarianism, honour, and justice. While some experienced more success in their epistolary endeavours than others, the Aborigines’ Protection Society was ultimately incapable of fulfilling informant visions of imperial subjecthood. This thesis therefore suggests that the entrenchment of settler sovereignty and nationalisms in the early twentieth century was not a direct continuation of mid nineteenth-century campaigns for self-government, but was contingent on the failure of imperial networks to provide workable alternatives in the late nineteenth century.

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