Understanding the British Empire
Understanding the British Empire
Understanding the British Empire draws on a lifetime's research and reflection on the history of the British Empire by one of the senior figures in the field. Essays cover six key themes: the geopolitical and economic dynamics of empire, religion and ethics, imperial bureaucracy, the contribution of political leaders, the significance of sexuality, and the shaping of imperial historiography. A major new introductory chapter draws together the wider framework of Dr Hyam's studies and several new chapters focus on lesser known figures. Other chapters are revised versions of earlier papers, reflecting some of the debates and controversies raised by the author's work, including the issue of sexual exploitation, the European intrusion into Africa, including the African response to missionaries, trusteeship, and Winston Churchill's imperial attitudes. Combining traditional archival research with newer forms of cultural exploration, this is an unusually wide-ranging approach to key aspects of empire.
- Contains a variety of approaches, traditional and post-colonial, enabling the reader to get a balanced view of how the empire is written about and assessed
- Wide-ranging coverage of key themes essential to understanding the complexities of the British Empire
- Will appeal to scholars and students of British and imperial history
Reviews & endorsements
"Here is a history of verve, valour and vignettes with broad and exciting perspectives that make it wonderfully unfashionable and provocatively readable with the constant eminence of its scholarship and style… This work has power and prestige and will influence our study of empire regardless of discipline or field. We can only hope that this is not the last work of Hyam to help us, as he has for over the past 50 years, in understanding the British Empire." -Reviews in History
"The swansong Hyam offers us in this volume puts the varied and valuable work of this skilled historian on generous display." -Dane Kennedy, Victorian Studies
"...this volume provides a valuable primer to the history of imperial policy, the empire’s institutional history, and the worldview of the empire’s most committed servants. It also serves to highlight some of the more contentious themes in British imperial historiography today." -Aaron Windel, Journal of World History
Product details
June 2010Hardback
9780521115223
576 pages
235 × 152 × 4 mm
1.02kg
24 b/w illus. 7 maps
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction: perspectives, policies, and people
- Part I. Dynamics: Geopolitics and Economics:
- 1. The primacy of geopolitics: the dynamics of British imperial policy, 1763–1963
- 2. The partition of Africa: geopolitical and internal perspectives
- 3. The empire in a comparative global context, 1815–1914
- 4. The myth of 'gentlemanly capitalism'
- Part II. Ethics and Religion:
- 5. Peter Peckard, 'universal benevolence', and the abolition of the slave trade
- 6. The view from below: the African response to missionaries
- Part III. Bureaucracy and Policy-making:
- 7. Bureaucracy and trusteeship in the colonial empire
- 8. Africa and the Labour government, 1945–51
- 9. John Bennett and the end of empire
- Part IV. Great Men:
- 10. Winston Churchill's first years in ministerial office, 1905–11
- 11. Churchill and the colonial empire
- 12. Smuts in context: Britain and South Africa
- Part V. Sexuality:
- 13. Empire and sexual opportunity
- 14. Penis envy and 'penile othering' in the colonies and America
- 15. Concubinage and the Colonial Service: Silberrad and the Crewe Circular (1909)
- 16. Greek love in British India: Captain Searight's manuscript
- Part VI. Imperial Historians:
- 17. Imperial and Commonwealth history at Cambridge, 1881–1981: founding fathers and pioneer research students
- 18. The Oxford and Cambridge imperial history professoriate, 1919–81: Robinson and Gallagher and their predecessors
- Published writings of Ronald Hyam on imperial history.
