Ralph Bauer presents a comparative investigation of colonial prose narratives in Spanish and British America from 1542 to 1800. He discusses narratives of shipwreck, captivity, and travel, as well as imperial and natural histories of the New World in the context of transformative early modern scientific ideologies. Bauer positions the narrative models promoted by the 'New Sciences' during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the context of the geopolitical question of how knowledge can be centrally controlled in outwardly expanding empires.

"Until 300 years ago, the Chinese considered Taiwan a “land beyond the seas,” a “ball of mud” inhabited by “naked and tattooed savages.” The incorporation of this island into the Qing empire in the seventeenth century and its evolution into a province by the late nineteenth century involved not only a reconsideration of imperial geography but also a reconceptualization of the Chinese domain. The annexation of Taiwan was only one incident in the much larger phenomenon of Qing expansionism into frontier areas that resulted in a doubling of the area controlled from Beijing and the creation of a multi-ethnic polity. The author argues that travelers’ accounts and pictures of frontiers such as Taiwan led to a change in the imagined geography of the empire. In representing distant lands and ethnically diverse peoples of the frontiers to audiences in China proper, these works transformed places once considered non-Chinese into familiar parts of the empire and thereby helped to naturalize Qing expansionism. By viewing Taiwan–China relations as a product of the history of Qing expansionism, the author contributes to our understanding of current political events in the region."

Postcolonialism and geography are intimately linked through the spatiality of colonial discourse as well as the material effects of colonialism and decolonization.Geographical ideas about space, place, landscape, and location have helped to articulate different experiences of colonialism both in the past and present and the "here" and "there". At the same time, while spatial images such as mobility, margins and exile abound in postcolonial writings, more material geographies have often been overlooked.Postcolonial Geographies presents the first sustained geographical analysis of postcolonialism. Exploring and developing the connections between postcolonialism and geography, the essays in this book--ranging across Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and North America--investigate the geographies of postcolonialism and chart the contours of a postcolonial geography. Contributors:Morag Bell, Claire Dwyer, Haydie Gooder, Jane M. Jacobs, M. Satish Kumar, Alan Lester, Mark McGuinness, Karen M. Morin, Richard Phillips, Marcus Power, Jenny Robinson, James D. Sidaway, John Wylie

Colonial Geography charts changes in conceptions of the relationship between people and landscapes in mainland Tanzania during the German colonial period. In German minds, colonial development would depend on the relationship between East Africans and the landscape. Colonial Geography argues that the most important element in German imperialism was not its violence but its attempts to apply racial thinking to the mastery and control of space. Utilizing approaches drawn from critical geography, the book argues that the development of a representational space of empire had serious consequences for German colonialism and the population of East Africa. Colonial Geography shows how spatial thinking shaped ideas about race and empire in the period of New Imperialism.

Illustrated with case studies of British colonialism in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Ireland and New Zealand in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book uncovers the complex and unstable spaces of meaning which were central to the experience of emigrants, settlers, expatriates and indigenous peoples at different time/place moments under British rule.

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala examines the impact of Spanish conquest and colonial rule on the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, a frontier region of Guatemala adjoining the country’s northwestern border with Mexico. While Spaniards penetrated and left an enduring mark on the region, the vibrant Maya culture they encountered was not obliterated and, though subjected to considerable duress from the sixteenth century on, endures to this day. This fourth edition of George Lovell’s classic work incorporates new data and recent research findings and emphasizes native resistance and strategic adaptation to Spanish intrusion. Drawing on four decades of archival foraging, Lovell focuses attention on issues of land, labour, settlement, and population to unveil colonial experiences that continue to affect how Guatemala operates as a troubled modern nation. Acclaimed by scholars across the humanities and social sciences, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala remains a seminal account of the impact of Spanish colonialism in the Americas and a landmark contribution to Mesoamerican studies.