Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 [Paperback]

These three theatres of captive narratives shadow the outline of the emergence of the British Empire. Very many people from the Atlantic Isles were captured by various non-Europeans and hence were in a position of vulnerability. There was never and could not be a binary difference between the superior, colonising and aggressive imperialists on one hand and the inferior, battered and subjugated ‘other’ on the other. One practical problem limited England/Britain – its population, or lack of it. Until the Malthusian idea became popular, and even after it, the British Empire simply did not have enough manpower to maintain dominance without assistance or at least acquiescence of the (subjugated) non-Europeans. The possibility that Britons could become captives of non-Europeans, different in religion and race, remained all the time. While on occasions, stark ‘othering’ took place by dehumanising the opponents, they tended to be exceptions rather than the norm. Furthermore, since the British were not a homogenous group and many of the rank and file soldiers manning the frontiers of the Empire were of the poorer sorts at home, they were different from those who were leading them either militarily or politicians deciding their fates. They were captives of their own state.

Colley’s main sources are narratives written by or ghost-written for the British captives. Of course, it is asking too much but it would have been hugely interesting to know about the captives from the other side to compare their attitudes so that the British experiences can be placed within a broader context. There is always a grey zone as regards how much an historian can generalise from the particular. Colley is absolutely right to stress that the teleological picture of ever-ascendant British Empire needs correcting in view of her research, however there seems to be a slight void: how do you explain the nascent British Empire? It is legitimate to seek contemporary parallels (especially with the US in discussing empires) as Colley does, but on the whole they remain valiant attempts rather than something concrete. Or put it another way, it is thought-provoking but doubts linger. This reviewer has a few reservations about her prose, even though admittedly it is largely a matter of personal taste. In general, it is extremely readable but sometimes it becomes excessively so and even ‘chatty’. It may well be true that one thing, be it a fact or an argument, has be repeated at least three times for it to be registered by the brain, yet the recurrent themes pop up every so often and are unnecessarily repetitive. Furthermore, uses of italics, of hyphens for – emphasis/repetition – and the word ‘emphatically’ are slightly overdone. If anything it is a shame since Colley writes very lucidly and clearly thus requires no such literary and optical devices to get her message across.

Notwithstanding points mentioned above, this book is an incisive and insightful work and questions some of the widely and deeply-held ideas and concepts. Thus it should be a required reading for those interested in the British Empire and indeed deserves to find an even larger and broader readership.

Clearly organised and written with clarity and intensity, Colley opens her study with an example of glaring failure. How many remember Britain's occupation of Tangier on the west coast of Africa? The city was part of a queen's dowry in 1661, giving Britain a control point over the Mediterranean trade routes [Gibraltar came under British power in 1701]. With Spain, France and Italy, not to mention the Dutch, all expanding their sea-going commerce, Tangier was a key location. The British poured immense sums into Tangier to create a fortified city, but it was lost less than a generation later. Colley explains how relations with the "Barbary" states of North Africa drove British foreign policy for many years. Those relations included ongoing efforts to redeem captives taken by corsairs, swift vessels that even raided coastal areas of the British Isles.

Britain's next expansionist efforts were even less calculated - the settlement of North America. While religious and other dissident groups founded communities along the eastern shores of North America, Britain's policy toward them remained ambivalent. Unlike the mostly military Mediterranean and Indian ventures, Colley says, North America focussed on settlements. When captives were taken, they might thus be whole families, with a wide age range and including more women that would be the case elsewhere. Accounts of captivity, therefore, were different from Tangier. Men taken by the Barbary corsairs might adopt local dress, customs, language, even Islam. This blurred the image of Muslims as the Other - an identifiable enemy figure. In North America, as colonies expanded, the Native Americans became more demonised in tales of warfare and capture. Even so, she notes, the North American enterprise was "poly-ethnic", with many nationalities arriving and the use of favoured Native American tribes as allies.

Britain's Indian incursions, Colley points out, added new dimensions to imperial imagery. Severe defeats and sepoy [Indians acting for British rulers] uprisings forced reflection on colonial costs and eroded prestige. Captivity accounts expanded knowledge of the culture of the subcontinent, demonstrating how many aspects of Indian life might be adopted - even brought home to Britain. Yet, captive accounts are generally sparse or non-existent. The Mysore wars created a population of captive soldiers held in recessed dungeons, but not one account of their ordeal reached print in their lifetimes. By the era of Victorian Britain, tales of captive life were nearly "airbrushed from history".

Given the location of some of her areas of study force comparisons to modern situations. Afghanistan has been the subject of outsider invasion more than once. Each time, while declaring they intended "no war on the Afghan people", people died as the intruders sought to install unpopular leaders on them. Inevitably, the result was embarrassment for the invaders and incarceration of their troops and civilians. Thus, even at the end of the period of Colley's study, she notes that the British Empire was still being consolidated haltingly. Uniformity, never a well-defined condition of the enterprise, remained lacking. Defeats and losses through captivity brought criticism and demands for redemption of captives. It failed to halt the expansionist nature of British policy, however.

Colley's book opens a new phase in historiography. Her eloquent style keeps this book alive for the reader at all times. Those thinking history can only be "dry" when written by an academic are in for a pleasant shock in picking up this book. Well illustrated and containing a rich bibliography, students of empire will welcome this book on their shelves. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]