Paul Gillen and Devleena Ghosh. Colonialism and Modernity. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007 [Book reviews]

I share historian Ann Curthoy's assessment that Colonialism and Modernity will make an excellent intellectual resource, especially on matters postcolonial (back cover). It is a comprehensive and informative work whose focus and perspective are primarily in the areas of postcolonial history and scholarship. But as a comparative work on colonialism and modernity, it has certain shortcomings. This work investigates and critiques colonialism much more successfully than it does modernity. The authors needed to define modernity and other key terms in the text more precisely, and provide more indepth analysis as to the inter-relationships between them. Further, something more was required (although I don't quite know what) regarding the authors' political allegiance to a postcolonial perspective on the events and processes they write about, and how that allegiance shapes their interpretations.