Mistress of Everything Queen Victoria in Indigenous Worlds [Hardcover]

Mistress of everything examines how indigenous people across Britain's settler colonies engaged with Queen Victoria in their lives and predicaments, incorporated her into their political repertoires, and implicated her as they sought redress for the effects of imperial expansion during her long reign. It draws together empirically rich studies from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Africa, to provide scope for comparative and transnational analysis.

The book includes chapters on a Maori visit to Queen Victoria in 1863, meetings between African leaders and the Queen's son Prince Alfred in 1860, gift-giving in the Queen's name on colonial frontiers in Canada and Australia, and Maori women's references to Queen Victoria in support of their own chiefly status and rights. The collection offers an innovative approach to interpreting and including indigenous perspectives within broader histories of British imperialism and settler colonialism.

Introduction: Indigenous histories, settler colonies and Queen Victoria - Maria Nugent and Sarah Carter

Part I - Monarch, metaphor, memory

1. 'We have seen the son of Heaven/We have seen the Son of Our Queen': African encounters with Prince Alfred on his royal tour, 1860 - Hilary Sapire

2. 'We rejoice to honour the Queen, for she is a good woman, who cares for the Maori race': Loyalty and protest in Maori politics in nineteenth-century New Zealand - Michael Belgrave

3. 'The faithful children of the Great Mother are starving': Queen Victoria in contact zone dialogues in western Canada - Sarah Carter

4. The politics of memory and the memory of politics: Australian Aboriginal interpretations of Queen Victoria, 1881-2011 - Maria Nugent

Part II - Royal relations

5. 'My vast Empire & all its many peoples': Queen Victoria's imperial family - Barbara Caine

6. Maori encounters with 'Wikitoria' in 1863 and Albert VictorPomare, her Maori godchild - Chanel Clarke