The book has its origins in a PhD thesis completed at the University of Melbourne in 1998. Evans mutes her theoretical and methodological discussions to produce a solid, accessible and readable text, referencing an extensive but not obtrusive use of archival records, primary and secondary historical materials, and grounding her analysis in post-colonial cultural theory. She devotes two chapters each to Eyre’s activities in Australia and New Zealand before turning to his final assignments in St Vincent and Jamaica in the last three. This gives the book a wide reach and enables a discussion of the different colonial conditions under which British sovereignty and the rule of law became established alongside shifting relations of cooperation, collaboration and conflict between settler, indigenous and enslaved populations, occurring between and within sites. Evans argues that Eyre never deviated from his perceived duty to uphold British sovereignty, but he approached that ‘duty’ differently depending on the circumstances and claims to land and labour that adhered in the specific locations. He could profess humanitarian principles in the antipodes, in the absence of outright rebellion and resistance; but his limited capacities, underwritten by vast ideological repertoires and the political mechanics of imperial rule, called forth in him an uncompromising authoritarianism in the former slave colonies of the Caribbean, where imperial success depended upon the subjection of bodies rather than the usurpation of lands.

Although Evans frames her analysis on the heterology of colonial rule, she also provides ample evidence of Eyre’s extraordinary ineptitude and poor judgment, particularly after he left Australia. In New Zealand, Eyre notoriously fell out with Governor Grey in a matter of months, resulting in his complete marginalisation within networks of power and privilege. In Jamaica, within the first few months of taking office as acting lieutenant-governor in 1862, he dismissed a coloured assemblyman who complained of wrongs and oppressions, and then charged liberal-minded planters, who objected to abject slave conditions, with libel – both rash acts that resulted in protests from locals to the Colonial Office. Chastised in England for his arrogant disregard for the advice of his superiors, and attacked in the local press for his ‘heartless mockery of people’s suffering’, he barely survived a motion of ‘no confidence’ in the Assembly. Nonetheless, his administration received the continued support of the Colonial Office, which confirmed his appointment as governor in 1864. Soon thereafter, when fomenting social unrest grew into peasant rebellion at Morant Bay, he imposed martial law, putting down the rebellion with violent and brutal repression, resulting in 439 deaths, more than 600 floggings, and the loss of more than 1000 homes. A royal commission, despite ‘the uncomfortable contradiction his actions presented to notions of British justice’, vindicated his actions.

Evans notes Eyre’s many failings as a leader. Yet in the end, she, perhaps too easily and with limited regard for the complex clash and intersection of forces that could have played out differently, ‘understands his “position”’ in the light of his insecurities and the fears of outnumbered colonists in extraordinary times. Although her conclusions do not fully realise the book’s theoretical potential, the study advances Eyre scholarship by providing a fresh and reader-friendly account of the interplay between metropole and colony, the material and affective conditions of rule, the local play of actors and political interests, and the operations of ‘race’, resistance and repression that marked Eyre’s colonial governance in four distinct locales.