This volume offers a critical re-examination of colonial and anti-colonial resistance imageries and practices in imperial history. It offers a fresh critique of both pejorative and celebratory readings of ‘insurgent peoples’, and it seeks to revitalize the study of ‘resistance’ as an analytical field in the comparative history of Western colonialisms. It explores how to read and (de)code these issues in archival documents – and how to conjugate documental approaches with oral history, indigenous memories, and international histories of empire. The topics explored include runaway slaves and slave rebellions, mutiny and banditry, memories and practices of guerrilla and liberation, diplomatic negotiations and cross-border confrontations, theft, collaboration, and even the subversive effects of nature in colonial projects of labor exploitation.

Chapter 1 Rethinking Resistance and colonialism, Nuno Domingos, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, Ricardo Roque.- Part I – Hidden Accounts.- Chapter 2 Demystifying “Millenarianism”: Oral Historical Evidence of Pukhtun Resistance and Colonial Warfare in the North-West Frontier of British India, Sameetah Agha.- Chapter 3 Fighters for Independence and rural society in colonial Algeria, Raphaëlle Branche.- Chapter 4 Gender struggle in Guinea-Bissau: Women’s participation on and off the liberation record, Inês Galvão and Catarina Laranjeiro.- Chapter 5 Resisting the Conceptualization of Theft as Resistance and Informing as Collaboration: Capitalization Strategies on Angola’s Colonial-Era Diamond Mines, 1917-1975, Todd Cleveland.- Part II – Local Encounters.- Chapter 6 ‘The Barbarians War: colonization and indigenous resistance in Brazil (1650-1720), Pedro Puntoni.- Chapter 7 ‘A most inconvenient warfare’: The impact of rebel-dacoits on rural resistance and colonial security after the Indian“Mutiny” of 1857, Jacob Smith.- Chapter 8 Amphibious Flight and Transboundary Water Politics: Runaway Slaves in the Lower Orinoco River Basin in the Eighteenth Century, Matthew Nielsen.- Chapter 9 Disrupted ecologies and Conflicting Repertories of Colonial Rule in Early 20th century São Tomé, Marta Macedo.- Chapter 10 Beyond Resistance and Collaboration: The “Bargains” of Cooperation in the Spanish Sahara, 1950s-1970s, Andreas Stucki.- Part III – Transnational Processes.- Chapter 11 Colonial Resistance and Anglo-German relations: The case of Jakob Marengo, Mads Bomholt Nielsen.- Chapter 12 Of Internal and External Imperialisms: International Law and Confucianist Visions of Empire as Latent Resistance in the Late Qing, Alexander Kais.- Chapter 13 – International dimensions of resistance: Portuguese colonial labour policies and its critics abroad (1951-1963), José Pedro Monteiro.