This comparative, global study of violence on the colonial frontier from  1780 to 1820 looks at four regions of the world: the expansion of  Britain into the Australian and African continents, the westward and  southern expansion of the United States, and the expansion of France in  Europe during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It seeks to  re-think the past oppression and exploitation of colonized peoples by  placing the violence committed against them in a comparative  perspective.

Violence and massacre were a tool at the disposal  of the colonizer, and often used to subjugate unruly populations. In  this book four experts specializing in four different regions of the  world come together to interrogate the violence committed against  indigenous peoples of these countries, and to ask whether this was a new  form of violence, or the same that Europeans had always used against  conquered peoples? Examining the changing nature of warfare and killing  that occurred on colonial frontiers from both a European and indigenous  perspective, Empires of Violence shows how race, othering and  fear were maintained and buoyed by violence, in spite of prevailing  discourses on humanitarianism, civilization and progress.