<p>History is often written backwards. We look for order and meaning in the past to make sense of some present-day problem or issue. But this method of looking at history varnishes over the contingency and agency, indeed the very haphazardness of the actual past. Richard Price has provided a valuable window into this history in his discussion of Indigenous-state relations in Australia and New Zealand in the 19th century.</p> <p>Price has written a fascinating account of the humanitarian moment in the British Empire when Christian moralism and policy making across the British empire converged over the issue of the treatment of Indigenous peoples in the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and South African colonies. He focuses on the mentalities and policies that inform this project in a manner that gives an intellectual and ethical heft to historic law and policies that are often simply described and justified as directed at restraining settler violence in the literature. </p>