Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of NonCitizens

Abstract

bibliography for the work, or even of English’s works, would have better illustrated that point and would better serve a reader looking to get acquainted with his impressive oeuvre. Its absence—although no doubt the press’s decision—is a serious flaw. By not limiting itself to the traditional biographies of prime ministers and instead including the lives of lovers, lumberjacks, and Indigenous leaders, People, Politics, and Purpose represents an expansive approach to political biography and political history more generally. At a time when some historians are jettisoning the practice of biography due to the challenges of writing the lives of marginalized subjects, political biographers’ inclusion of the lives of those on the periphery of formal political power is a surprising but welcome development that bodes well for both the field and the discipline. A decade ago, English worried that fewer historians were willing to write political biographies. But this volume demonstrates that the field that he so carefully tended is still flourishing and that his former students and colleagues are purposefully peopling political history in creative new ways.