Comparative Studies in Society and History 53, 1 (2011), pp. 219–226.

The field of settler colonial studies is attracting broad scholarly attention. Although it is comparative and transnational by definition, few scholars working in the field have made sustained inquiries into the historical particular- ity of the phenomenon across different sites. Arguing that settler statehood emerged in modern form when “perfect settler sovereignty” established the ter- ritorial authority of those states, Lisa Ford’s monograph makes a valuable con- tribution to the field by opening up new ways of thinking about the connected histories of Anglophone settler societies and their “uniquely destructive” impact on indigenous people (p. 2). Methodologically inventive, richly sup- ported by a wealth of archival research (to which the reader is directed in the generous footnotes), and written in unusually clear and precise prose, Settler Sovereignty will be of broad interest to scholars with an interest in colonialism and theories of imperialism, the relationship between law and sovereignty, and historical accounts of modernity.