'Unsettled Subjects shows brilliantly just how differently Australian history is being written today. In place of the imperial and national histories of old, we have here a deft exploration of citizenship, belonging, and racial exclusion set in a very wide framework indeed. Students of Australian colonial history and specialist historians of race, colonialism, and empire alike will enjoy this book.' Ann Curthoys, Australian National University 'With skill and nuance, Amanda Nettelbeck unpicks 'citizenship' in Britain's post-emancipation empire. To secure and discipline a labour force, settler colonisers extended rhetorically expansive, but practically limited, rights to non-white immigrants. Yet those immigrants in turn demanded rights and justice by performing everyday, domestic and de facto citizenship.' Zoë Laidlaw, University of Melbourne 'In this impressively wide-ranging analysis, Nettelbeck shows how British settler societies were as critical to racial capitalism as colonial plantation societies. She demonstrates how settler authorities tried to balance British emigrants' racially exclusive sense of belonging with their demand for Indian and Chinese emigrants' labour, and how the categories of subjecthood and citizenship were continually revised in the process.' Alan Lester, University of Sussex 'Mobile Indian, Afghan and Chinese labourers are usually presented as bit players in Australia's colonial history. In this fine study, they are centre-stage revealing the evolving relationship between British subjecthood and both imagined and de facto colonial citizenship. Australian citizenship has a fascinating history.' Angela Woollacott, Australian National University
