Ballantyne, Tony 1972-

PERSONAL:

Born May 9, 1972. Education: University of Otago, B.A. (with honors), 1993; University of Cambridge, Ph.D., 1999.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. E-mail—tony.ballantyne@stonebow.otago.ac.nz.

CAREER:

University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, department of history, lecturer. Previously taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

WRITINGS:

Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor) Science, Empire and the European Exploration of the Pacific, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2004.

(Editor, with Judith A. Bennett) Landscape/Community: Perspectives from New Zealand, University of Otago Press (Dunedin, New Zealand), 2005.

(Editor, with Antoinette Burton) Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2005.

(With Brian Moloughney) Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Pasts, Otago University Press (Dunedin, New Zealand), 2006.

Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2006.

(Editor) Textures of the Sikh Past: New Historical Perspectives, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

(Editor, with Antoinette Burton) Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2009.

Contributor to various journals, including the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History and the International Journal of Punjab Studies. Contributor to books, including Globalization in World History, edited by A.G. Hopkins, Norton (New York, NY), 2002; After the Imperial Turn: Critical Approaches to National Histories and Literatures, edited by Antoinette Burton, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2003; Sikhism and History, edited by Pashaura Singh and N.G. Barrier, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2004; Was Ireland a Colony?, edited by Terence McDonough, Irish Academic Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2005; Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History, edited by Antoinette Burton, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2006; and Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective, edited by Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake, Australian National University Press (Canberra, Australia), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer, educator, and historian Tony Ballantyne was born May 9, 1972. He attended the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, where he earned his undergraduate degree with honors in 1993. From there he continued his education at the University of Cambridge, earning his doctorate in 1999. He took a position teaching at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, then moved on, returning to the University of Otago as a member of the faculty, serving as a lecturer in the department of history. His primary areas of research and academic interest include the relationship between British history and the history of South Asia, with a particular focus on the nineteenth century and the formation of both intellectual and cultural links during that time period. His research includes investigations into what he refers to as a "web of empire," in which there are interconnections between not just Britain and South Asia, but between India, the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Ireland, as well. He is also interested in the history of New Zealand. Ballantyne is a contributor to a number of academic journals, including the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History and the International Journal of Punjab Studies. He is also the author or editor of a number of books on both New Zealand and South Asia.

Ballantyne addresses his ideas regarding the "web of empire" in his work Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire. He attempts to trace the paths of ideas across a number of nations, including India and New Zealand as well as Scotland and Ireland, approaching these concepts and their travels as if they were being traded as far more physical commodities. Unlike a wheel with spokes, Ballantyne's web description allows readers to understand that no one city or country serves as the origin point or the center of the dynamic, but instead each point in the web is important and contributes to the distribution as a whole. Carolyn Neel, writing in the Journal of World History, found the book to be "an excellent start for historians interested in tracing a world system of ideas." She added that "it is a strong work, disappointing only in its brevity. It would have been more satisfying if Ballantyne had pursued the topic over a wider field."

Along with Antoinette Burton, Ballantyne served as an editor for Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History. The essays included in the volume were chosen for their ability to be categorized as world history while giving readers a global outlook on more narrow or focused topics, because they had an appropriate link to the subject of empire in reference to colonization, and for their connection to the titular reference to bodies. The result is a diverse group of essays by a wide range of authors, each of which gives the reader a glimpse into a different aspect of colonial world history. One example is an essay that addresses the treatment of Taiwanese women by both Europeans and Chinese, in which they are regarded as overly sexualized and have been punished for that trait historically through a combination of acceptance of the strength of women and the insistence that the strength be sublimated in more "proper" behavior. Another essay discusses the appropriation of colonies that are typically referenced in the same terms as both females and possessions. Rochona Majumdar, writing for the Journal of World History, commented: "As is inevitable in a volume with such a large scope and breadth, the connections between the myriad themes thrown up in the numerous contributions remain somewhat unclear. But this is perhaps more of an impetus to future researchers in areas of transnational history than a fault with the volume per se."

Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Pasts, which Ballantyne wrote with Brian Moloughney, gathers a collection of essays that not only recount the history of New Zealand, but also address the ways in which history is traditionally conveyed and, in some cases, stretches those parameters. Both Ballantyne and Moloughney proposed that the work should attempt to achieve new ways to write about history. The book was assembled in honor of the retirement of Erik Olssen, a respected historian at the University of Otago, and the volume includes an interview with him in which he discusses how the ways in which history was approached at universities in the United States in the 1970s, particularly at Cornell and Duke, were incorporated in the New Zealand approach to historical scholarship. The essays themselves address such topics as the relationship between New Zealand and China and India; New Zealand as a sort of amalgamation of the various influences from the English-speaking world, including Australia, Britain, and the United States; and the history of the Maori people, and how it was altered by the steady influences of outside contact. Christopher Hilliard, in a review for the Australian Journal of Politics and History, commented of the editors that "they strike a good balance between the programmatic essay and the empirical study, giving substance and interpretative power to ideas that, in the hands of many of those working ‘after the imperial turn,’ might have remained shibboleths. Ballantyne and Moloughney reclaim the imperial or global dimensions of New Zealand history from the anglocentrism of most postnational versions of that history." Toon Van Meijl, reviewing for Pacific Affairs, concluded that "this book brings together interesting essays in which the history of New Zealand is approached and analyzed from a different viewpoint and in a different manner."

Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World is a history of Sikhism, one that focuses primarily on major issues rather than providing readers with a complete accounting. What it does not attempt to do is to unite various studies of aspects of Sikhism and colonialism as separate entities, and instead encourages a more cohesive study of how they intermesh with one another. Acknowledging that there is a shortage of information archived regarding the diaspora Sikh history, Ballantyne goes to extreme measures in order to access fresh and pertinent information, using both modern and unlikely sources such as the Internet, graveyards, and even nightclubs. Shompa Lahiri, writing for Victorian Studies, remarked that "Ballantyne shows diaspora to be as much a colonial as a postcolonial condition and as a result disrupts an enduring historical orthodoxy." Lahiri went on to conclude that the book's "real contribution lies in adding to and developing the comparatively limited historical scholarship on empire and mobility."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February 1, 2003, review of Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire, p. 162; December 1, 2005, Londa Schiebinger, review of Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History, p. 1488; October 1, 2006, review of Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Pasts, p. 1296.

Australian Journal of Politics and History, March 1, 2007, Christopher Hilliard, review of Disputed Histories, p. 157.

BJHS: The British Journal for the History of Science, December 1, 2006, Sujit Sivasundaram, review of Science, Empire and the European Exploration of the Pacific, p. 591.

Canadian Journal of History, winter, 2007, Brian Caton, review of Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World, p. 574.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, October 1, 2002, J.O. Gump, review of Orientalism and Race, p. 345; August 1, 2007, R.D. Long, review of Between Colonialism and Diaspora, p. 2156.

Early American Literature, summer, 2007, Janet Moore Lindman, review of Bodies in Contact, p. 621.

History: Review of New Books, June 22, 2005, Christopher J. Lee, review of Bodies in Contact, p. 163.

International History Review, March 1, 2008, Inderpal Grewal, review of Between Colonialism and Diaspora, p. 132.

International Journal of African Historical Studies, spring, 2006, Dorothy L. Hodgson, review of Bodies in Contact, p. 334; spring, 2006, Dorothy L. Hodgson, review of Bodies in Contact, p. 334.

Journal of British Studies, July 1, 2007, Jayeeta Sharma, review of Between Colonialism and Diaspora, p. 736.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, spring, 2004, Roger D. Long, review of Orientalism and Race, p. 638; January 1, 2008, Michael H. Fisher, review of Between Colonialism and Diaspora, p. 500.

Journal of Modern History, June 1, 2004, Catherine Hall, review of Orientalism and Race, p. 437.

Journal of World History, September 1, 2003, Carolyn Neel, review of Orientalism and Race, p. 418; September 1, 2006, Rochona Majumdar, review of Bodies in Contact, p. 345; December 1, 2007, Thomas R. Metcalf, review of Between Colonialism and Diaspora, p. 535.

New Zealand Journal of History, April 1, 2004, Joe Zizek, review of Orientalism and Race, p. 102; April 1, 2006, Terry Hearn, review of Landscape/Community: Perspectives from New Zealand, p. 125; October 1, 2007, Deborah Montogomerie, review of Disputed Histories, p. 205.

Pacific Affairs, March 22, 2007, Toon Van Meijl, review of Disputed Histories, p. 142.

Reference & Research Book News, November 1, 2005, review of Landscape/Community; February 1, 2007, review of Disputed Histories.

Sixteenth Century Journal, September 22, 2006, Audrey DeLong, review of Bodies in Contact, p. 831.

Victorian Studies, June 22, 2007, Shompa Lahiri, review of Between Colonialism and Diaspora, p. 708.

ONLINE

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (December 1, 2005), Carolyn Goffman, review of Bodies in Contact.

Oxford University Press Web site,http://www.oup.com/ (September 8, 2008), publisher listing for Textures of the Sikh Past: New Historical Perspectives.

University of Otago Web site,http://www.otago.ac.nz/ (September 8, 2008), faculty profile.