Mistress of Everything

Mistress of everything is about ways in which Indigenous people across Britain's settler colonies engaged Queen Victoria - as person or symbol - in their lives and predicaments. It explores how she was incorporated into their political repertoires and narrative traditions, and implicated as they sought redress for the consequences of imperial expansion that occurred during her long reign. The collection analyses Indigenous people's representations of and to Queen Victoria as part of larger histories of political and creative responses to British imperial incursion into their lives and territories. It reveals new perspectives on Queen Victoria by demonstrating the complex range of associations that magnetised around her for those at the receiving end of British settler-colonialism. Various authors illustrate how an image of Queen Victoria could be employed - subverted or nuanced - to challenge the settler order and to resist the destructive and dispossessive traits of empire. The volume includes chapters on Canada, Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa and covers a diverse range of 'sites' and forums, including royal tours and audiences, diplomatic rituals, oral narratives and oratory, gift-giving practices, commemorative events and political performances and discourses. By using innovative methods of historical and cultural analysis, new insight is provided into the contested and layered meanings of sovereignty, loyalty, citizenship, authority, difference, politics and rights. Mistress of everything will appeal to students of the history of the British Empire and its colonies, especially those with an interest in understanding Indigenous people's engagements with and challenges to imperial and colonial power.