Violence and intimacy were critically intertwined at all stages of the settler colonial encounter, and yet we know surprisingly little of how they were connected in the shaping of colonial economies.  Extending a reading of ‘economies’ as labour relations into new arenas, this innovative collection of essays examines new understandings of the nexus between violence and intimacy in settler colonial economies of the British Pacific Rim. The sites it explores include cross-cultural exchange in sealing and maritime communities, labour relations on the frontier, inside the pastoral station and in the colonial home, and the material and emotional economies of exploration.  Following the curious mobility of texts, objects, and frameworks of knowledge, this volume teases out the diversity of ways in which violence and intimacy were expressed in the economies of everyday encounters on the ground. In doing so, it broadens the horizon of debate about the nature of colonial economiesand the intercultural encounters that were enmeshed within them. 

1 Precarious Intimacies: Cross-Cultural Violence and Proximity in Settler Colonial Economies of the Pacific Rim, Penelope Edmonds and Amanda Nettelbeck.- Part I: Moral Economies and Labour Relations in the Pastoral Sector.- 2 The Australian Agricultural Company, the Van Diemen’s Land Company: Labour Relations with Aboriginal Landowners, 1824–1835, Lyndall Ryan.- 3 Ambiguity and Necessity: Settlers and Aborigines in Intimate Tension in Mid-nineteenth-century Australia, Angela Woollacott.- 4 Intimate Violence in the Pastoral Economy: Aboriginal Women’s Labour and Protective Governance, Amanda Nettelbeck.- 5 The ‘Proper Settler’ and the ‘Native Mind’: Flogging Scandals in the Northern Territory, 1919 and 1932, Ben Silverstein.- Part II: Emotional Economies and Cultural Hybridities.- 6 Eliza Batman’s House: Unhomely Frontiers and Intimate Overstraiters in Van Diemen’s Land and Port Phillip, Penelope Edmonds and Michelle Berry.- 7 Women’s Work and Cross-cultural Relationships on Two Female Frontiers: Eliza Fraser and Barbara Thompson in Colonial Queensland, 1836–1849, Victoria K. Haskins.- 8 ‘Murder will out’: Intimacy, Violence and the Snow Family in Early Colonial New Zealand, Kristyn Harman.- 9 ‘Tangled up’: Intimacy, Emotion and Dispossession in Colonial New Zealand, Angela Wanhalla and Lachy Paterson.- Part III: Economies of Colonial Knowledge.- 10 Arctic Circles: Circuits of Sociability, Intimacy and Imperial Knowledge in Britain and North America, 1818–1828, Annaliese Jacobs.- 11 Mrs Milson’s Wordlist: Eliza Hamilton Dunlop and the Intimacy of Linguistic Work, Anna Johnston.- 12 ‘A frivolous prosecution’: Allegations of Physical and Sexual Abuse of Domestic Servants and the Defence of Colonial Patriarchy in Darwin and Singapore, 1880s–1930s, Claire Lowrie.