Colonising Disability

Colonising Disability explores the construction and treatment of disability across Britain and its empire from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of sources Esme Cleall explores how disability increasingly became associated with ''difference'' and argues that it did so through intersecting with other categories of otherness such as race. Philanthropic legal literary religious medical educational eugenistic and parliamentary texts are examined to unpick representations of disability that overtime became pervasive with significant ramifications for disabled people. Cleall also uses multiple examples to show how disabled people navigated a wide range of experiences from ''freak shows'' in Britain to missions in India to immigration systems in Australia including exploring how they mobilised to resist discrimination and constitute their own identities. By assessing the intersection between disability and race Dr Cleall opens up questions about ''normalcy'' and the making of the imperial self.