Power that Hurts: Harriet Gore Browne and the Perplexities of Living Inside Empire

Abstract

Facing the crisis of a colony at war, Harriet Gore Browne experienced a crisis of mind as the wife of a governor heavily criticized for acting unjustly and illegally in provoking a racial conflict. Analysing the intimacies of power, the article depicts the doubts, pain and haunting pressure of violence on those proximate to as well as subject to imperial authority. Harriet Gore Browne’s intense scrutiny of her own and her husband’s actions expose an interior questioning of the legitimate use of force against indigenous resistance. The pain running through Harriet Gore Browne’s journals, tormenting her days and nights, speaks to the centrality of race, emotion and the intimate in colonial rule.