Chosen Peoples: The Bible, Race and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Chosen peoplesdemonstrates how biblical themes, ideas and metaphors shaped racial, national and imperial identities in the long nineteenth century.

Even as radical new ideas challenged the historicity of the Bible, biblical notions of lineage, descent and inheritance continued to inform understandings of race, nation and empire. European settler movements portrayed 'new' territories across the seas as lands of Canaan, but if many colonised and conquered peoples resisted the imposition of biblical narratives, they also appropriated biblical tropes to their own ends. These innovative case-studies throw new light on familiar areas such as slavery, colonialism and the missionary project, while forging exciting cross-comparisons between race, identity and the politics of biblical translation and interpretation in South Africa, Egypt, Australia, America and Ireland.

Reviews

'The flag follows the cross and in this case reaffirms it. The received understanding is that the Age of Enlightenment put to rest the dominance of religion in modern Western cultures. This collection proves Christianity and its political avatar nationalism truly underscored the age of empires. The impact was as profound on indigenous nationalisms, with subordinated societies discovering their distinct identities in the wake of first contact with colonizing Christians. Among the many case studies is Khoisan national renewal in the Cape Colony: Jared McDonald examines Christian liberation as a means to racial equality (albeit short-lived) in British South Africa. The Bible as 19th-century political testament echoed the late medieval struggle between an imperial, all-powerful church and the desire for national congregations to access the word of God in their national languages. Centralization was at odds with dissemination, a conflict the Russian czarist confessional state experienced rather keenly. Atkins (history, Queens' College, Cambridge, UK), Das (modern extra-European history, Univ. of East Anglia, UK), and Murray (19th-century literature, King's College London, UK) clearly establish that the Bible was alive and well in the long 19th century.'
--J. L. Meriwether, Roger Williams University
Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.
Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.

Author Bio

Gareth Atkins is Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Queens' College, Cambridge

Shinjini Das is a Lecturer in Modern Extra-European History at the University of East Anglia

Brian Murray is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Kings College London