Monday 25 May @ 11:30 – 13:00 GMT
Launching an occasional book club series, we will convene online to discuss a new work published this spring by Kate Fullagar. This will be an open discussion about the work, with an introduction and suggested avenues of inquiry put forward by a few participants. Depending on numbers, we may use the first half of the time to talk about the work, and the second half to reflect on any themes/overlaps with our own research and archives/methodologies/themes/questions. We will be joined at the midpoint by Kate herself.
Abstract: A portrait of empire through the biographies of a Native American, a Pacific Islander, and the British artist who painted them both Three interconnected eighteenth-century lives offer a fresh account of the British Empire and its intrusion into Indigenous societies. This engaging history brings together the stories of Joshua Reynolds and two Indigenous men, the Cherokee Ostenaco and the Raiatean Mai. Fullagar uncovers the life of Ostenaco, tracing his emergence as a warrior, his engagement with colonists through war and peace, and his eventual rejection of imperial politics during the American Revolution. She delves into the story of Mai, his confrontation with conquest and displacement, his voyage to London on Cook’s imperial expedition, and his return home with a burning ambition to right past wrongs. Woven throughout is a new history of Reynolds, growing up in Devon near a key port in England, becoming a portraitist of empire, rising to the top of Britain’s art world and yet remaining ambivalent about his nation’s expansionist trajectory.
Author: Kate Fullagar is a historian of the eighteenth-century world, particularly the British Empire and the many Indigenous societies it encountered. Her interest in comparative indigenous history focuses on the eastern Pacific (Polynesia), the American southeast (esp. Cherokees), and the Eora of today’s Australia. She is the author of The Savage Visit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), which traces the dramatic rise and surprising fall of popular British fascination for indigenous visitors through the eighteenth century. Pursuing similar themes, she is also the editor of The Atlantic World in the Antipodes: Effects and Transformations since the Eighteenth Century (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012).
To participate, please contact David Stirrup (dfs@kent.ac.uk)