Introduction: Thinking about disability, rethinking difference

The Introduction makes an argument for the importance of disability as an analytical category and sets out an agenda for doing this work. The basis of this argument lies both in the historiographical demand for this kind of analysis, and the historical, political and theoretical importance of including disability as a key concept in discussions of the nineteenth-century British empire. The relationship between disability and race is an element to this and historical examples are used to demonstrate this argument. The introduction also defines key terms that are used throughout such as ‘disability’, ‘disablism’, ‘ableism’ and sketches out the scope and structure of the book.