This open access Pivot book is a comparative study of six early colonial public libraries in nineteenth-century Australia, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on networked conceptualisations of empire, transnational frameworks, and ‘new imperial history’ paradigms that privilege imbricated colonial and metropolitan ‘intercultures’, it looks at the neglected role of public libraries in shaping a programme of Anglophone civic education, scientific knowledge creation, and modernisation in the British southern hemisphere. The book’s six chapters analyse institutional models and precedents, reading publics and types, book holdings and catalogues, and regional scientific networks in order to demonstrate the significance of these libraries for the construction of colonial identity, citizenship, and national self-government as well as charting their influence in shaping perceptions of social class, gender, and race. Using primary source material from the recently completed ‘Book Catalogues of the Colonial Southern Hemisphere’ digital archive, the book argues that public libraries played a formative role in colonial public discourse, contributing to broader debates on imperial citizenship and nation-statehood across different geographic, cultural, and linguistic borders.

“Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Southern Hemisphere is an important contribution to the study of library history, an often over looked aspect of the history of the book [or histoire de livre]. The four co-authors provide a scholarly and readable comparative study of the role major public libraries played in the nineteenth century in community building and the public sphere in British colonies south of the equator.” (John Arnold, Affiliate, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Australia, and co-editor of A History of the Book in Australia 1891-1945, A National Culture in a Colonised Market  (2001))

 

Draws on transnational and new imperial history paradigms Addresses the histories of race, science, and settler colonialism in relation to institutional histories of public libraries Studies major colonial libraries across different national, geographic, and linguistic borders

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