Colonial Proximities

Colonial Proximities traces the dynamic encounters among Aboriginal peoples, mixed-race populations, Chinese migrants, and Europeans in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British Columbia and assesses the juridical racial truths and forms of governance these crossracial contacts produced.

Colonial Proximities traces the encounters between aboriginal peoples, mixed-race populations, Chinese migrants, and Europeans in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British Columbia.

Encounters among Aboriginal peoples, European colonists, Chinese migrants, and mixed-race populations generated a range of racial anxieties that underwrote colonialism in BC. By focusing on these points of contact, this book forges critical links between histories of migration and dispossession. The book highlights the legal and spatial strategies of rule mobilized by Indian agents, missionaries, and legal authorities who sought to restrict crossracial encounters. Mawani illustrates how interracial proximities in one colonial contact zone inspired the production of juridical racial truths and modes of governance that continue to linger in the racial politics of contemporary settler societies.