While the study of indigenous intermediaries is today the focus of some of the most interesting research in the historiography of colonialism, its roots extend back to at least the 1970s. The contributions to this volume revisit Ronald E. Robinsons theory of collaboration in a range of historical contexts by melding it with theoretical perspectives derived from postcolonial studies and transnational history. In case studies ranging globally over the course of four centuries, these essays offer nuanced explorations of the varied, complex interactions between imperial and local actors, with particular attention to those shifting and ambivalent roles that transcend simple binaries of colonizer and colonized.

Benedikt Stuchtey is Full Professor at the University of Marburg, Germany, and teaches European and Global History.

List of Figures and Tables

Introduction: Cooperation and Empire. Local Realities of Global Processes
Tanja Bührer, Flavio Eichmann, Stig Förster and Benedikt Stuchtey

PART I: CASE STUDIES

Chapter 1.Caciques: Indigenous Rulers and the Colonial Regime in Yucatán in the Sixteenth Century
Ute Schüren

Chapter 2. Connecting Worlds: Women as Intermediaries in the Portuguese Overseas Empire, 15001600
Amélia Polónia and Rosa Capelão

Chapter 3. Cooperation and Cultural Adaption: British Diplomats at the Court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, c. 17791815
Tanja Bührer

Chapter 4. Local Cooperation in a Subversive Colony: Martinique 180209
Flavio Eichmann

Chapter 5. Uncle Toms andKupapas: Collaboration versus Alliance in a Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Context
Vincent OMalley

Chapter 6. Collaboration or Sabotage? The Settlers in German Southwest Africa between Colonial State and Indigenous Polities
Matthias Häußler

Chapter 7. Chieftaincy as a Political Resource in the German Colony of Cameroon, 18841916
Ulrike Schaper

Chapter 8. Cooperation at its Limits: Re-Reading the British Constitution in South Africa
Charles V. Reed

Chapter 9. Key Alliance? Native Guards and European Administrators in Sub-Saharan Africa from a Comparative Perspective (191859)
Alexander Keese

Chapter 10. The Cooperation between the British and Faisal I of Iraq (192132): Evolution of a Romance
Myriam Yakoubi

Chapter 11. Collaborating on Unequal Terms: Cross-Cultural Co-operation and Educational Work in Colonial Sudan, 193456
Iris Seri-Hersch

PART II: CONCLUDING ESSAYS

Chapter 12. Indigenous Agents of Colonial Rule in Africa and India: Defining the Colonial State through its Secondary Bureaucracy
Ralph A. Austen

Chapter 13. Indigenous Cooperation: Foundation of Colonial Empires or New Historical Myth?
Wolfgang Reinhard

Index