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Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Southern Hemisphere

This open access Pivot book is a comparative study of six early colonial public libraries in nineteenth-century Australia, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on networked conceptualisations of empire, transnational frameworks, and ‘new imperial history’ paradigms that privilege imbricated colonial and metropolitan ‘intercultures’, it looks at the neglected role of public libraries in shaping a programme of Anglophone civic education, scientific knowledge creation, and modernisation in the British southern hemisphere. The book’s six chapters analyse institutional models and precedents, reading publics and types, book holdings and catalogues, and regional scientific networks in order to demonstrate the significance of these libraries for the construction of colonial identity, citizenship, and national self-government as well as charting their influence in shaping perceptions of social class, gender, and race. Using primary source material from the recently completed ‘Book Catalogues of the Colonial Southern Hemisphere’ digital archive, the book argues that public libraries played a formative role in colonial public discourse, contributing to broader debates on imperial citizenship and nation-statehood across different geographic, cultural, and linguistic borders.

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Detail Information
Series Title
New Directions in Book History
Call Number
XVII, 159
Publisher
Palgrave Pivot Cham : Palgrave Pivot Cham.,
Collation
-
Language
English
ISBN/ISSN
978-3-030-20426-6
Classification
NONE
Content Type
text
Media Type
computer
Carrier Type
online resource
Edition
1
Subject(s)
World literature
History of the Book,
Specific Detail Info
-
Statement of Responsibility
Other Information
Cataloger
-
Source
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-20426-6
Validator
Suwardi
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20426-6
Journal Volume
-
Journal Issue
-
Subtitle
-
Parallel Title
-
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