Imperial Relations: Histories of family in the British Empire

Abstract

In early 1860, Mary Moody gave birth to a daughter, Susan, at the Royal Engineers camp in New Westminster, British Columbia, where her husband was stationed as detachment commander, chief commissioner of lands and works and lieutenant governor of the colony. Writing to her Newcastle family, she longed for the emotional and practical support that her sister Emily could have offered in person in the immediate post-partum period, concluding that “[o]ne really needs relations in a Colony.” While rooted in her own concerns and experiences in New Westminster, Moody’s sentiment resonates more widely: family connections were often critical to securing a new immigrant’s position in an unfamiliar context, and more generally to navigating colonial configurations of power, identity and everyday life for men, women and children across the British imperial world...