Jesse Robertson

Jesse Robertson, Fathoming Empire: Marine Knowledge and Colonial Navigation in an Indigenous Seascape, 1825 to 1906. University of Victoria, 2025.

Jesse Robertson’s Fathoming Empire: Marine Knowledge and Colonial Navigation in an Indigenous Seascape, 1825 to 1906 reorients the historiography of settler colonialism in the Pacific Northwest by portraying it as a maritime phenomenon. Building on Helen Rozwadowski’s Fathoming the Ocean, Robertson develops the concept of fathoming, which denotes both the measurement of depth by sounding line and the cognitive act of comprehension, and argues that the measurement of the ocean through exchange with Indigenous mariners enabled subsequent land seizure. Tracing this process from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s first reconnaissance of the coast in 1825 to the Valencia disaster of 1906, the dissertation draws on archives across Canada, the United States, and Australia to bring charts, sailing guides, lighthouses, and lifesaving stations into view. This work recovers and names the Indigenous pilots, guides, and lifesavers whose contributions were minimized by colonial forces. What results is an important analysis that will reshape maritime and cartographic history in northern North America.

HONOURABLE MENTION:

Matthew Robertshaw, A Longing for Saint-Domingue/A Longing for Haiti: Haiti and the Rise and Fall of French Africa. York University, 2025.

Matthew Robertshaw’s A Longing for Saint-Domingue/A Longing for Haiti: Haiti and the Rise and Fall of French Africa challenges the longstanding tendency to treat the first and second French colonial empires as discrete events. Robertshaw indicates that the Haitian Revolution shaped the arc of French expansion into Africa from 1830 to 1962, with Saint-Domingue serving as both motivation and cautionary tale. Nostalgia for the lost colony spurred renewed ambition while the rise of Haiti shaped colonial medicine, labour policy, education, and citizenship. Drawing on sources ranging from French monographs and parliamentary debates to the records of the League of Nations and United Nations to Haitian-published newspapers and memoirs in three languages, “A Longing for Saint-Domingue/A Longing for Haiti” shows Haitians as important writers, diplomats, and expatriates within international anti-colonial discourse. This highly original and engaging work will re-cast French colonial history, Haitian studies, and the history of Black internationalism for some time to come.