Prelims -- Rethinking the colonial state: configurations of power, violence, and agency -- Colonial governmentality in Puerto Rico and the Philippines: Sovereign force, governmental rationality, and disciplinary institutions under US rule -- Comparing the colonial state - governing "the social" and policing the population in late 18th century India and Denmark -- Governing the risks of slavery: state-practice, slave law, and the problem of public order in 18th century Danish West Indies -- Ordering resistance: the late colonial state in the Portuguese Empire (1940 - 1975) -- Violence as usual: everyday police work and the colonial state in German Southwest Africa -- Colonial war and the production of territorialized state space in North Africa -- Resistance and reforms: the role of subaltern agency in colonial state development -- Colonialism by deferral: Samoa under the tridominium, 1889 - 1899 -- About the editors -- Index.