Provides a window into the fantasies and realities of colonial life by presenting separate sets of letters by two late nineteenth-century British colonists addressed mostly to the colonists' mothers. This book includes commentary that explores colonial degeneration in the South Pacific.

In "Bad Colonists" Nicholas Thomas and Richard Eves provide a window into the fantasies and realities of colonial life by presenting separate sets of letters by two late nineteenth-century British colonists of the South Pacific: Vernon Lee Walker and Louis Becke. Thomas and Eves frame the letters - addressed mostly to the colonists' mothers - with commentary that explores colonial degeneration in the South Pacific. Using critical anthropology and theories of history, they examine the process whereby men and women eroded in the midst of the hot, violent, uncivil colonial milieu. Both collections vividly evoke the day-to-day experiences of ordinary late nineteenth-century colonists and open up new questions concerning the making and writing of selves on the colonial periphery. exposing insecurities in an epoch normally regarded as one of imperial triumph, Bad Colonists will appeal to students and scholars of anthropology, colonial history, cultural studies, and Pacific history and culture.

CONTENTS
List of illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Letter writing and colonial selfhood
"An awfully bad hand at letter writing": Vernon Lee Walker and colonial history
The letters of Vernon Lee Walker, 1878-1887
Self-fashioning and savagery: Louis Becke's Pacific letters
The letters of Louis Becke, 1880-1882
The apotheosis of savagery: Louis Becke's Pacific tales
Epilogue: figures in history
Notes
Bibliography
Index