Daniel O'Quinn. Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Pp. 412. $60.00. Daniel O'Quinn has written an ambitious and important first book, one that addresses current debates not only on Romantic theater's function within British culture, but also on the politics of British imperial expansion in the final decades of the eighteenth century. His title and subtitle refer respectively to his primary subjects (governance and its representation) and chosen historical arenas (London theater and the representation of colonial expansion). While drawing from Foucault for its key terms and methodology, Staging Governance also engages the wide range of recent discourses surrounding the history of British colonial activity in Asia and the resulting sexual and racial ideologies that emerged from it. Its most impressive achievement, I believe, is bringing these three major strands of cultural studies to bear on three largely forgotten decades of London theater.
