The highly energetic Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, a philanthropist with a passionate interest in imperial issues as well as an important medical researcher who gave his name to Hodgkin's lymphoma, dominated the Aborigines Protection Society from the society's foundation in 1837 to his death in 1866. A well-connected Quaker and a member of numerous scientific and humanitarian societies, Hodgkin was a consummate networker across multiple fields. His rich personal papers, held at the Wellcome Collection in London, thus provide an invaluable window not only on debates about Indigenous peoples and the ills of colonialism in the early to mid-nineteenth century British Empire, but also on the interlocked worlds of London philanthropic societies and scientific associations. Zoë Laidlaw, a leading historian of the early-nineteenth-century British Empire, has spent years working through this complex archive. Protecting the Empire's Humanity: Thomas Hodgkin and British Colonial Activism 1830–1870 is the compelling result.

At the heart of Protecting the Empire's Humanity is a penetrating history of Hodgkin's work on colonial issues, particularly settler colonialism. The official papers of the Aborigines Protection Society (APS), held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, are patchy for much of the period covered by this book, 1830 to 1870, since much of the archive has not survived. Hodgkin's private papers, however, include dense records of his colonial activism, notably letters from a far-flung network of correspondents across the British empire. Laidlaw most centrally uses Hodgkin's papers to write a new history of the APS. At the same time, the book is neither a biography of Hodgkin nor a straightforward institutional history, although it has elements of both. Instead, it weaves together a complex story about the networks and campaigns in which Hodgkin was involved, using this discussion to illuminate the failure of imperial “humanitarians” to ensure the protection of the rights of Indigenous peoples.

The study is divided into two parts and operates on several levels. In the first half, “Mapping Humanitarianism,” Laidlaw reconstructs the London world of interconnected activists. She analyzes the close interactions, both personally and through a range of societies, between men (almost entirely) interested in topics such as medicine, colonial governance, philanthropy, and the nascent disciplines of anthropology and ethnology. The concept of “humanitarianism” ties together these networks, although Laidlaw is at pains to point out that the term was not used at the time. The book also examines important political debates on particular topics that preoccupied Hodgkin, such as whether the African colony of Liberia should be supported and how absolute free trade should be in the aftermath of abolition, even when products produced by enslaved laborers outcompeted those produced by free labor in the post-emancipation West Indies. The fact that Hodgkin took positions that were unpopular with many of his colleagues, notably in his strong support for Liberia, demonstrates the complexity of the post-abolition world. In the second part, Laidlaw turns more specifically to the campaigns of the APS against the background of a changing colonial world marked by the advent of settler power and, eventually, self-government. Laidlaw looks at the efforts of the APS under Hodgkin's direction to persuade both colonial governments and settlers to temper abuses against Indigenous peoples, with attention to several specific campaigns. Through this work, the book makes a major contribution to the history of human rights, to adopt a term that was developed only later, albeit largely through showing problems with APS campaigns, however well-meaning. Tying together these different discussions, Laidlaw shows how Hodgkin, and his colleagues and associates, believed in a universal conception of civilization to which they thought all people were capable of adhering—and by extension ought to adhere. Laidlaw argues that this universalism in practice had a problematic impact on Hodgkin's relationships with Indigenous peoples.

Laidlaw shows throughout, often in devastating detail, that the APS was frequently ineffective. Not only that, Laidlaw also convincingly argues that the APS often provided a fig leaf for colonialism itself. Much of the interest of the book thus lies in the author's reflections on the paradoxes of helping others from positions of distance and privilege, on the one hand, and on the other hand the sheer difficulty of slowing the imperial machine. Putting the APS into the context of metropolitan associational networks illuminates their worldview and baseline assumptions. Laidlaw argues that in their quest for a workable and indeed moral settler colonialism the APS was seduced by the false promises of systematic colonialism in the Australias and in New Zealand. They were similarly not only misled but eager to be misled by the slippery Sir George Grey, whom Hodgkin continued to trust long after he ought to have, in Laidlaw's opinion. They wanted colonialism to work and believed too readily that it could. Laidlaw frequently underscores moments at which Hodgkin counselled colonized people to be meek and expect colonial justice in response. A particularly telling example is Hodgkin's patronizing advice to the Tswana to demonstrate loyalty and civilization in the teeth of conquest. At the same time, Laidlaw's critique is powerful precisely because she also attempts to be fair to Hodgkin's own vision and to understand him through his own writing. She acknowledges his idealism. As Laidlaw revealingly writes in the conclusion, she “spent several years sitting alongside him, immersed in his correspondence, while often sitting just a few minutes walk from where he worked” (325). She confesses to ambivalent emotions. This is, in sum, no kneejerk critique but one that is all the more powerful for Laidlaw's immersion in Hodgkin's papers and her partial sympathy, however tempered.

The focus on Hodgkin's archives creates an interesting sense of the politics of place. As Laidlaw wryly observes, “Like the Aborigines’ Protection Society, this book is metrocentric with pretensions to an imperial (and at times even global) remit” (2). The study focuses on the world seen from the perspective of Britain, but with particular attention paid to transnational correspondence and global networks. The book gives the reader insight into the ways in which putative universalism was influenced by the local—an issue of course with considerable relevance to present-day transnational humanitarianism. In some ways, then, this is a global history but with significant constraints; perhaps it is best described as a global history of misperception. Laidlaw also underscores the personal importance to her of finishing the book in Australia (after writing the first half in London), a place in which the tragedies of settler colonialism are very evident.

Drawing from Hodgkin's papers is for the most part very illuminating. The limitations of the metropolitan perspective do, nonetheless, lead to some further questions. As Laidlaw recognizes, Indigenous interlocutors enter the story largely from the perspective of the interaction of particular individuals with the APS. This means that some key Indigenous individuals are visible, especially people such as Alexander Isbister or John Sunday, who came to Britain to make political claims and ultimately contributed significantly to the APS. As Laidlaw acknowledges, however, their own home networks and contexts are harder to discern; we see what Hodgkin saw, rather than the view from the particular communities from which individuals came. To do otherwise would, however, have demanded very extensive research in a multiplicity of different places and languages. My point is more that there are further histories to be written than a single book could or should have attempted to cover. On similar lines, we see Hodgkin try to mobilize imperial networks past the point at which the nascent colonial nations of Canada, South Africa, Australia, or New Zealand were willing to accept imperial intervention. The history of changing colonial perspectives necessarily gets short shrift. Instead, we usefully see these shifts through the eyes of so-called metropolitan activists. The singular focus also sheds light on how and why Indigenous groups across the settler empire would continue to try to appeal to the imperial Crown, over the heads of settlers.

Protecting the Empire's Humanity is well-written and admirably clear. Laidlaw shows great erudition, and the book is even-handed but all the more devastating for that. She sheds genuinely new light on the world of British colonial activists. This is, overall, a wonderful study of flawed humanity that makes a major contribution to the history of British colonialism and should indeed be a benchmark in the field for a long time.