Abigail Greenall

Empire of Emotions: British Imperial Experiences of Happiness, c.1570-1800.

Abi’s project is the first global study of how colonialism shaped understandings of happiness across the early modern British World.

The project aims to rebalance current interpretations of happiness that focus exclusively on its inception in the European Enlightenment by contextualising bodily and emotional wellbeing in historically specific, colonial, and often entangled environments.

It examines manuscripts, prints, and artefacts from communities in Canada, North America, the Caribbean, and India to uncover how Indigenous and displaced peoples negotiated cultures of happiness in the period between 1570–1800.

By recovering the significance of emotional practices that were designed to make people look and feel happy in the contexts of slavery, colonial violence, and forced migration, the project shows how investments into happiness were tools of empowerment and practices of negotiation and resistance amongst subaltern protagonists.