Colonial Voices presents readers with a representative cross-section of the attitudes of both colonizer and colonized. It provides an overview of the political, economic, and social forces as well as the unique personalities that contributed to the making of the colonial and post-colonial world.

Divided thematically into eight sections, the book underscores significant events, processes, and transitions that shaped the age of empire and its decline. The selections are largely composed of primary source documents, namely journals and diary entries, tracts and treatises, declarations and speeches, and memoirs or autobiographies. Secondary sources include classic works by scholars of cultural studies, economic history, and literary criticism.

Colonial Voices lends itself most effectively as a classroom tool through which students can read close analyses into the texts and engage in their own discursive interpretations on a multiplicity of levels. The book generates a wider interest in, and a better understanding of, colonial and post-colonial studies amongst undergraduates, and initiates debate within graduate seminars. It is an ideal reader on imperialism for lower and upper-level university courses.