Unit name | Introduction to the History of the British Empire: Rise, Fall and Legacies |
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Unit code | HIST13014 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | C/4 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Professor. Potter |
Open unit status | Open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of History (Historical Studies) |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This outline unit is a broad survey of the history of Britain’s modern empire. The British Empire was, of course, for an extended period the biggest and most powerful of the modern world’s imperial systems. It had an enormous impact on much of the Americas, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Moreover, historians have become increasingly curious about how crucial its influence was on the peoples of Britain itself and about its relationship to the nature of ‘Englishness’ and ‘Britishness’. The significance of empire also remains a major and highly contentious part of current political debate, whether people are arguing about its legacies in former British colonies, about national identities, ethnicity and multi-culture in contemporary Britain. The unit provides an overview of these debates, as well as an introduction to some of the key conceptual and historiographical issues relevant to modern history more broadly.
Aims:
2 x 1hr lectures weekly over 10 weeks plus 1 x 1hr seminar weekly over 10 weeks.
Sarah Stockwell (ed) The British Empire - Themes and Perspectives (2008)
Bill Nasson, Britannia’s empire: a short history of the British empire (2006)
John Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire (2006)
Niall Ferguson, Empire: how Britain made the modern world (2003)
Bernard Porter, The lion’s share: a short history of British imperialism, 1850-1995 (1996)
The Oxford History of the British Empire (5 Vols, 1998-9)