Three Eighteenth-Century Lives: Challenges in Biography and Imperial History

CECS Research Seminar

This paper discusses some of the challenges and some of the insights encountered during my recent research into three eighteenth-century lives. Now a book forthcoming called Faces of Empire, this research explored the unexpectedly interbraided lives of a Cherokee warrior called Ostenaco, a Pacific traveller called Mai and the British artist who painted them both, Joshua Reynolds. It raised issues surrounding the parameters and possibilities of biography as well as the politics of rethinking imperial history. I argue that comparative analyses can help address these problems, prompting fresh perspectives on Indigenous agency as well as on the nature of empire in the eighteenth century.

Kate Fullagar is a senior lecturer in Modern History at Macquarie University, Sydney. She is the author of The Savage Visit: New World Peoples and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain, 1710-1795 (Berkeley: UCP, 2012) and other publications on eighteenth-century imperial and comparative indigenous history. Just out is a new collection with Michael McDonnell on indigenous experiences in the age of revolution (Baltimore: JHUP, 2018). Faces of Empire: Three Eighteenth-Century Lives is forthcoming from Yale University Press, 2019.