How did those responsible for creating Britain’s nineteenth century settler empire render colonization compatible with humanitarianism? Avoiding both cynical and celebratory answers, this book takes seriously the humane disposition of colonial officials, examining the relationship between humanitarian governance and Empire. The story of ‘humane’ colonial governance connects projects of emancipation, amelioration, conciliation, protection and development in sites ranging from British Honduras through Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales, New Zealand and Canada, to India. It is seen in the lives of governors like George Arthur and George Grey, whose careers saw the violent and destructive colonization of Indigenous peoples at the hands of British emigrants. That story challenges the exclusion of officials’ humanitarian sensibilities from colonial history and inserts the settler colonies within the history of Western humanitarianism.