Explores the uncalculated and incalculable elements in historical re-enactment - unexpected emotions, unplanned developments - and locates them in countries where settlers were trying to establish national identities derived from metropolitan cultures inevitably affected by the land itself and the people who had been there before them.

Introduction; J.Lamb PART I: EUROPE Settlers, Workers and Soldiers: The Landscape of Total Mobilization; G.Teyssot Settlers on the Edge, or Sedentary Nomads: Andrei Platonov and Steppe History; D.Landry Creole Europe: The Reflection of a Reflection; C.Pinney PART II: AMERICA Alexander Hamilton and the New Republic's Creole Complex; S.Goudie 'The Shrug of Horror': Creole Performance at King's Bench; J.Epstein Taxonomies of Terror; C.Dayan PART III: AFRICA Voortrekkers of the Cold War: Enacting the South African Past and Present in Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples ; M.Popescu History Below the Water Line: The Making of Apartheid's Last Festival; L.Witz Failing with Livingstone: A Voyage of Re-enactment on Lake Nyassa; I.McCalman PART IV: AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND Alcheringa: Invisible Aborigines on TV; C.Healy Colonialism and Re-enactment History: Imagining Belonging in Outback House; C.Elder 'Blacking Up' for the 'Explorers' of 1951; S.Gapps 'The finest race of savages the world has seen' How Empire Turned out Differently in Australia and New Zealand; M.Williams Making History Forwards: The Second Settlement of Aotearoa, New Zealand; S.Turner Re-Enactment and the Natural History of Settlement; A.Calder Bibliography