Description: Colonising Disability explores the construction and treatment of disability across Britain and its empire from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Esme Cleall explores how disability increasingly became associated with 'difference' and argues that it did so through intersecting with other categories of otherness such as race. Philanthropic, legal, literary, religious, medical, educational, eugenistic and parliamentary texts are examined to unpick representations of disability that, overtime, became pervasive with significant ramifications for disabled people. Cleall also uses multiple examples to show how disabled people navigated a wide range of experiences from 'freak shows' in Britain, to missions in India, to immigration systems in Australia, including exploring how they mobilised to resist discrimination and constitute their own identities. By assessing the intersection between disability and race, Dr Cleall opens up questions about 'normalcy' and the making of the imperial self.
Brief description: Esme Cleall is a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, c. 1840-1900 (2012).
Review Quotes: 'An important book on the history of British colonialism and its connection to disability and dDafness. Well-written and researched, this work will make a significant contribution to the growing importance of global studies around disability. Two chapters on Deafness in the colonies and the metropole enlighten us the importance of the 'deaf mute' to the ideology of domination and control in the British empire.' Lennard Davis, University of Illinois Chicago