Month: September 2015

Ruling the Waves – Episode 1 – ‘An Expanding Empire’

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British_Empire_1897

Stefan Piotrowski
Against the Current Productions

There seems to be a tendency for some public figures and media commentators to make sweeping assertions about how ‘the Empire’ did this or that to ‘the British’, as if both could somehow be easily defined and the relationship neatly described.

A central theme of these films – perhaps the central theme – is that the relationship between domestic society and Empire was always a complex one, and that this complexity was the result of the diverse nature of Britain’s overseas territory on the one hand, and the diversity of British society on the other.

This first chapter tries to make some sense of the former, that ‘patchwork quilt’ of colonies, protectorates, dominions and so on, that made up the British Empire. The different types of territory, the tremendous variety in the way in which the different parts of it were governed, all made – and still make – the Empire very difficult to understand as some kind of conceptual whole. Continue reading “Ruling the Waves – Episode 1 – ‘An Expanding Empire’” →

Call for Applications for Global Humanitarianism Research Academy – Deadline 31 December 2015

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Drs Fabian Klose, Johannes Paulmann, and Andrew Thompson are pleased to announce that the Call for Applications for the second Global Humanitarianism Research Academy (GHRA) 2016 is now open, with a deadline of 31 December 2015.

GHRA

Call for Applications:

Global Humanitarianism | Research Academy

International Research Academy on the History of Global Humanitarianism

Academy Leaders:                    

Fabian Klose (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz)

Johannes Paulmann (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz)

Andrew Thompson (University of Exeter)

in co-operation with the International Committee of the Red Cross (Geneva) and with support by the German Historical Institute London

Venues:                     University of Exeter, UK & Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva

Dates:                                          10-22 July 2016

Deadline:                                   31 December 2015

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The international Global Humanitarianism | Research Academy (GHRA) offers research training to advanced PhD candidates and early postdocs. It combines academic sessions at the Imperial and Global History Centre at the University of Exeter and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz with archival sessions at the Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. The Research Academy addresses early career researchers who are working in the related fields of humanitarianism, international humanitarian law, peace and conflict studies as well as human rights covering the period from the 18th to the 20th century. It supports scholarship on the ideas and practices of humanitarianism in the context of international, imperial and global history thus advancing our understanding of global governance in humanitarian crises of the present. Continue reading “Call for Applications for Global Humanitarianism Research Academy – Deadline 31 December 2015” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

Published on by CIGH Exeter2 Comments

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Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From global struggles for racial justice to remembering the Iran-Iraq War, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

Imagining Markets: Conceptions of Empire/Commonwealth, Europe and China in Britain’s economic future since the 1870s

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Senate House

2nd workshop, London, September 2015- report

Senate House has featured in many guises from being the supposed model for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 to Bertie Wooster’s New York apartment block in the TV adaptation of Jeeves and Wooster. This month it played host to the second of three academic workshops connected to the AHRC Imagining Markets network led by David Thackeray, Andrew Thompson and Richard Toye from the University of Exeter. You can read more about the project at www.imaginingmarkets.com.

We began by discussing how the idea of economic imagination can shape our understandings of political economy, and how this cultural idea has various facets (imaginings of economic utopias/ dystopias; entrepreneurship; the imagining of status and aspiration). Papers focused on how a variety of actors shaped ideas of the economic future and interconnected through networks at the level of government and the ‘official mind’; business groups; cultural organisations; advertisers; and civil society. Continue reading “Imagining Markets: Conceptions of Empire/Commonwealth, Europe and China in Britain’s economic future since the 1870s” →

Sydney’s Global Slavery Scandal of 1857

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Sugarcane harvesters, Reunion Island c.1885
Sugarcane harvesters, Reunion Island

Karin Speedy
Macquarie University, Sydney
Follow on Twitter @KarinESpeedy

In 1857, 51 Gilbertese (I-Kiribati) and 14 Solomon Islanders were spirited away from their homes. They were transported on the Sydney-based barque Sutton, and then sold as indentured sugar labourers on the French-owned island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. When the scandal hit the shores of Sydney, the incident  shifted from a global diplomatic dispute between the British and French empires to a local story, revealing the complexity of the colonial space where culpability was tied to local politics, class, and notions of nationality.[1] Continue reading “Sydney’s Global Slavery Scandal of 1857” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

Published on by CIGH Exeter
Japanese Americans play baseball at a WWII internment camp. Ansel Adams, "Baseball," 1943. Courtesy of Photographic Travelling Exhibitions.
Japanese Americans play baseball at a WWII internment camp. Ansel Adams, “Baseball,” 1943. Courtesy of Photographic Travelling Exhibitions.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From the last outposts of the British Empire to the declassification of a trove of top-secret CIA documents, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.

Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

Tonight (12pm EST, 5pm GMT) Watch Live Streaming ICRC Debate on the History of Humanitarianism with Director Thompson

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ICRC (1)

Cross-posted from the International Committee of the Red Cross, where the debate will be streamed live

This livestreamed public event, to be held on 16 September from 18:00 to 19:30, will gather internationally recognized historians, academics and senior humanitarian practitioners to discuss the doctrine of humanitarian principles in critical historical perspective. It will be the public segment of a two-day historical symposium jointly organized by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, theUniversity of Exeter and the ICRC. The event is inscribed in the Research and debate cycle on principles guiding humanitarian action.

The year 2015 represents a major anniversary for the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement: 50 years ago, its “Fundamental Principles” have been proclaimed at its XXth International Conference  in Vienna. The aim of this conference is to reflect on how these principles have influenced – and been influenced by − the broader humanitarian sector. What can be learnt about the Principles from the rich history of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the wider humanitarian sector, that may in turn provide insights into current realities and act as a guide for the future?

The panelists will discuss the relevance, influence and challenges of the humanitarian principles in three different historical periods: (1) From the Birth of Humanitarianism to the World Wars (c. 1860-1945), (2) Decolonisation and the Cold War (1945-1989) and (3) The Era of “Liberal Interventionism” (1990’s-today). Continue reading “Tonight (12pm EST, 5pm GMT) Watch Live Streaming ICRC Debate on the History of Humanitarianism with Director Thompson” →

Digital Research Tips for Dissertations in Imperial & Global History

Published on by CIGH Exeter1 Comment
Image from Journal of a Residence in the Burmhan Empire, and more particularly at the Court of Amarapoorah [Edited by H. C. M. Cox.], p. 328. Courtesy of the British Library.
Image from Journal of a Residence in the Burmhan Empire, and more particularly at the Court of Amarapoorah [Edited by H. C. M. Cox.], p. 328. Courtesy of the British Library on flickr.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

It is that time of year again. The semester begins; students scramble to find digital archives for research papers; supervisors seek to steer them in the right direction. In contrast to a decade ago, online archival options are now overwhelming. To help wade through the sea of digital archives, over the past couple of years we have offered some suggestions for digital research in imperial and global history, included below. Any other new digital archives that those researching topics in imperial and global history might find useful?
Continue reading “Digital Research Tips for Dissertations in Imperial & Global History” →

A Parisian Ho Chi Minh Trail: Writing Global History Through Interwar Paris

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Antiimperial Metropolis cover

Michael Goebel
Freie Universität Berlin
Follow on Twitter @mgoebel29

Anxieties over the possible political fallouts of African and Asian migration to Europe have a much longer history than the current refugee crisis might have you suspect. Colonial migration to interwar Paris, as I argue in Anti-Imperial Metropolis, turned into an important engine for the spread of nationalism across the French Empire. Studying the everyday lives of these migrants, in turn, might also offer a way out of the impasse that global historians currently face.

Let me begin with an anecdote that encapsulates my argument: In autumn 1919, while statesmen gathered in Paris’s upscale banlieues to redraw the political world map, local police hired a discharged Vietnamese adjutant as an undercover agent. His task was “to exercise a discrete surveillance” over a compatriot of his who had distributed leaflets entitled “The Demands of the Annamite People” among diplomats and informal spokesmen in the city’s shabbier neighbourhoods.

The newly enlisted informer took his assignment very seriously. He filed daily reports on just about every movement in the city’s Vietnamese community, producing a paper trail that can now only be traced through the National Archives in Paris and in the Colonial Archives in Aix-en-Provence. Continue reading “A Parisian Ho Chi Minh Trail: Writing Global History Through Interwar Paris” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

Published on by CIGH Exeter

Aftermath of the Wall Street explosion in 1920. Source: Getty
Aftermath of the Wall Street explosion in 1920. Getty

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From bombing Wall Street to rewriting the history of the Second World War, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

What was the Role of Scientific and Technical Intelligence During World War II?

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Allied drawing of a Focke-Achgelis Fa 223, a helicopter developed by Germany during the Second World War. Courtesy of Duke Library.
Allied drawing of a Focke-Achgelis Fa 223, a helicopter developed by Germany during the Second World War. Courtesy of Duke University Libraries Magazine.

Richard Toye
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @RichardToye

Intelligence is an aspect of World War II that has long held a fascination for historians and the public alike. Very naturally, much interest has focussed on the role of the Security Services and the role of Bletchley Park in cracking the Enigma Code – witness, for example, the success of the recent film about Alan Turing, The Imitation Game. Continue reading “What was the Role of Scientific and Technical Intelligence During World War II?” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

Published on by CIGH Exeter1 Comment
“De negro é española sale mulato” (A Black Man and a Spanish Woman Produce a Mulatto). Pintura de castas, ca. 1780.
“De negro é española sale mulato” (A Black Man and a Spanish Woman Produce a Mulatto). Pintura de castas, ca. 1780.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From the ‘imperialist’ Second World War to purchasing whiteness in colonial Latin America, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →