« Settler colonial microaggressions: Adrienne Keene, Desi Small-Rodriguez, Laurel R. Davis-Delano, ‘Native voices on Native appropriation’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2023
The pluriversal sovereignty of post-settler colonialism? Ajay Parasram, ‘Pluriversal sovereignty and the state of IR’, Review of International Studies, 49, 3, 2023, pp. 356-367 »

Settlers at the end of the world: Rohan Howitt, ‘The company-microstate: The Auckland Islands and corporate colonialism in global history, 1849-52’, Journal of Global History, 2023

08Jul23

Abstract: The Auckland Islands, a subantarctic archipelago 465 kilometres south of New Zealand, were the setting for one of the stranger episodes in the global history of colonial expansion. From 1849–52, these remote, inhospitable islands were governed and settled by a chartered company. The project was driven by lofty ambitions to simultaneously create a flourishing settler colony and unlock vast new whaling grounds in the Southern Ocean; the reality was a commercial disaster plagued by bitter internal disputes and a speedy abandonment. Drawing on the methods of global microhistory, I argue that the colonization of the Auckland Islands was a pivotal moment in the integration of the Southern Ocean world into global processes of governance, mobility, and trade. This anomalous case contributes to recent scholarship on ‘company-states’ and the central role of such hybrid polities in processes of cross-regional interaction and globalization.


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