The Colonisation of Time: Ritual, Routine and Resistance in the British Empire

Much has been written about time in western society. But how did ‘the rest’ of the world come to share the West’s dominant view of time? Who were the first emissaries of the culture of the clock? And, most importantly, by what means did they gain a following? The Colonisation of Time is a highly original and long overdue examination of the ways that western-European and specifically British concepts and rituals of time were imposed on other cultures as a fundamental component of colonisation during the nineteenth century. Based on a wealth of primary sources and a comparative analysis of two British settler-colonies - Victoria, Australia, and the Cape Colony, South Africa - it explores the intimate relationship between the colonisation of time and the conquest of land; time’s instrumentality in the exportation of Christianity, capitalism, and modernity; and, its role in forging European identities and civilities against an imaginary, ‘time-less’ and ‘irregular’ other. Both scholars and general readers will find it valuable for its attentiveness to the tensions across and within colonial societies over the reform of Indigenous temporalities; as well as to the range of responses that Indigenous societies adopted to resist, appropriate or assimilate the colonisers’ temporal culture. Adding new depth to our understanding of imperial power and the ways in which it was exercised and limited, The Colonisation of Time documents the remarkable story behind the rise to global dominance of western-time - from the clock to the seven-day week - revealing its status as one of the most enduring, pervasive and taken-for-granted legacies of colonialism in today’s world.