The editors have brought together eleven authors for an analysis of colonial and post-colonial nursing that spans nearly a century, and touches on Europe, Australia, the Caribbean and Africa -- .

The history of nursing presents a unique perspective from which to interrogate colonialism and post-colonialism. Nurses were often a key conduit between coloniser and colonised, and many powers used nurses as a means of insinuating their own cultures into the lives of indigenous people. However, despite the valuable insights such an approach reveals, colonial history has never before been approached from this particular direction. Colonial caring brings together essays from an international group of historians who examine the relationship between colonialism, nursing and nurses. Gender, class and race permeate the book, as the complex relationships between nurses, their medical colleagues, governments and the populations they nursed are examined in detail, using case studies which draw on exciting new sources. Many of the chapters are based on first-hand accounts of nurses, producing a view of the colonial process from the ground, or use multiple sources to piece together a story which was never recorded in its entirety in official records. The book offers insight into the colonial process as conducted by British, Dutch, American and Italian governments; and how nursing not only affected colonial societies but was itself changed by its experiences. Colonial caring will be an essential read for colonial historians, as well as historians of gender, ethnicity and nursing.