Darren Reid

Darren Reid studies British imperial histories, with a particular focus on struggles over Indigenous rights in the nineteenth-century settler colonies. For the past several years he has studied the practice of settlers and Indigenous peoples in South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand becoming informants for the British Aborigines’ Protection Society, exploring how imperial humanitarianism was adapted to local political conflicts.

His current postdoctoral project, “Colonial saboteurs? Settler-led Indigenous rights organizations in the Anglo World, 1840- 1940,” studies the democratization of Indigenous rights activism via settler-led groups like the Friends of the Indians of British Columbia and the New South Wales Aborigines’ Protection Association. Using interdisciplinary methods drawn from history, political science, digital humanities, and sociology, he explores the role of settler-led Indigenous rights activism in the formation of civic cultures of settler colonies from 1850-2000. Darren is also passionate about digital humanities and the various applications of technology for research, teaching, and dissemination, from big data analysis to video games to augmented reality exhibitions.

Recent Publications

Reid, Darren. “‘Compound dispossession’ in southern Ontario: converging trajectories of colonial dispossession and inter-Indigenous conflict, 1886-1900.” Journal of Canadian Studies 57, no. 1 (2023): 81-113. https://doi.org/10.3138/jcs-2022-0022

Reid, Darren. “The Aborigines’ Protection Society as an anti-colonial network: rethinking the APS “from the bottom up” through letters written by Black South Africans, 1883-1887.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 22, no. 2 (2021). https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/801557

Reid, Darren. “Shadrach Boyce Mama and the ‘Kaffir Depot’: navigating imperial networks to agitate against the forced removal of Xhosa women and children from Cape Town, May-December 1879.” South African Historical Journal 72, no. 4 (2020): 561-578. https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2020.1827018

Reid, Darren. “Dispossession and Legal Mentalité in Nineteenth Century South Africa: Grotian and Lockean Theories of Property Acquisition in the Annexations of British Kaffraria and Natalia.” Settler Colonial Studies 11, no. 1 (2020): 69-85. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2020.1829423