Geographies of colonial philanthropy

Abstract

Through an examination of the material and imaginative geographies of colonial philanthropy in parts of the British Empire from the late eighteenth century to the midnineteenth century, this paper advocates a more nuanced conception of the heterogeneity of colonial discourse. At the same time, it elaborates a networked conceptualization of empire. Particular attention is paid to the moralities of closeness, distance and connection, the spatial politics of knowledge, and the spatial and temporal translation of the trope of ‘slavery’ within philanthropic discourse. The paper raises colonial philanthropy as an object of inquiry that has relevance for contemporary globalized humanitarianism as well as for cross-cultural tension within former imperial sites.