This collection follows the extraordinary careers of nine colonial subjects who won seats in high-level parliamentary institutions of the imperial powers that ruled over them. Revealing an unexplored dimension of the complex political organisation of modern empires, the essays show how early imperial constitutions allowed for the emergence of these unexpected members of parliament, asks how their presence was possible, and unveils the reactions across metropolitan circles, local communities and the voters who brought them to office.
Unearthing the entanglements between political life in metropolitan and non-European societies, it illuminates the ambiguous zones, the margins for negotiation, and the emerging forms of leadership in colonial societies. From a Hispanicised Inca nobleman, to recently emancipated slaves and African colonial subjects, in linking these individuals and their political careers together,
Unexpected Voices in Imperial Parliaments argues that the political organisation of modern empires incorporated the voices of the colonised and the non-European, in an ambiguous relationship that led to a widening of political participation and action throughout the imperial world. In doing so, this book offers a comprehensive but nuanced reassessment of the making and unmaking of modern empires.
Fradera, Josep M.: - Josep M. Fradera is Professor of Modern History at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain, and Senior Fellow of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). He has published extensively on the nineteenth-century Spanish empire and most recently published The Imperial Nation: Citizens and subjects in the empires of Great Britain, France, Spain and the United States (2018).
Haskins, Victoria: - Victoria K Haskins is Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Director of the Purai Global Indigenous History Centre, she works on histories of gender and colonialism, domestic service, and women's cross-cultural relationships. She is the author of One Bright Spot (2005), Matrons and Maids: Regulating Indian Domestic Service in Tucson, 1914-1934 (2012), Living with the Locals: Early Europeans' Experience of Indigenous Life (with John Maynard, 2016), and Colonialism and Male Domestic Service across the Asia Pacific (with Julia Martinez, Claire Lowrie and Frances Steel, 2019).
Manktelow, Emily J.: - Emily Manktelow is Senior Lecturer of Imperial and Global History at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. She is the author of Missionary Families: Race, Gender and Generation on the Spiritual Frontier and co-editor of Subverting Empire: Deviance and Disorder i the British Colonial World (2015).
Portillo, José María: - José María Portillo is Professor of Modern History at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. He has taught at Georgetown University and University of Chicago, both USA, and El Colegio de México, Mexico. He has published extensively on political culture in the Hispanic world.
Segura-Garcia, Teresa: - Teresa Segura-Garcia is a postdoctoral researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. A historian of Modern South Asia, she holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, with a dissertation on the global links of the Indian princely state of Baroda. She has previously been a postdoctoral fellow the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and a visiting fellow at Brown University.
