Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

Abstract:

This paper traces the investigative tours of British Quakers in the Southern oceans "travelling under concern" in the 1830s, who sought to witness the treatment of those violently mobilised and dislocated in empire's service. The paper argues that these tours, as both religious journeys and cross-cultural enquiries, highlight the contingent and enmeshed ways that travel, mobility and the violence of empire and could give rise to new networks and social relations and constituted a form of imperial counter travel or counter networking. Crucially, the paper explores the interconnectedness of elite and subaltern networks, revealing the entanglements of humanitarian travel with Indigenous "shadow networks," which left their traces in modes of imperial governance, as well as circuits of textuality, language and collecting.