Suchergebnisse

Imperial history and postcolonial theory -- The boundaries of Oxford's empire -- Imperial history and postcolonial studies revisited -- Exploration and empire -- The white man's world -- Debating the end of empire: exceptionalism and its critics -- On the American empire from a British imperial perspective -- The means and ends of empire -- The imperial history wars -- Does British history matter anymore?: Reflections on the age of Brexit and Trump

Decolonization is the term commonly used to refer to this transition from a world of colonial empires to a world of nation-states in the years after World War II. This work demonstrates that this process involved considerable violence and instability.

"Exploration was a central and perhaps defining aspect of the West's encounters with other peoples and lands. Rather than reproduce celebratory narratives of individual heroism and national glory, this volume focuses on exploration's instrumental role in shaping a European sense of exceptionalism and its iconic importance in defining the terms of cultural engagement with other peoples. In chapters offering broad geographic range, the contributors address many of the key themes of recent research on exploration, including exploration's contribution to European imperial expansion, Western scientific knowledge, Enlightenment ideas and practices, and metropolitan print culture. They reassess indigenous peoples' responses upon first contacts with European explorers, their involvement as intermediaries in the operations of expeditions, and the complications that their prior knowledge posed for European claims of discovery. Underscoring that exploration must be seen as a process of mediation between representation and reality, this book provides a fresh and accessible introduction to the ongoing reinterpretation of exploration's role in the making of the modern world"--

Kennedy's "The Means and Ends of Empires" offers a commentary on Julian Go's stimulating comparative study of the British and American empires, Patterns of Empire. It argues that Go's book is strongest in its analysis of the means by which the United States forged an empire, providing fresh insights into its strategies of expansion and control. By highlighting the ways those strategies built on—and diverged from—the ones employed by the British Empire, the book provides a bracing challenge to claims of American exceptionalism. It is less illuminating or original, however, in its assessment of Britain's imperial experience, and when Go turns from the means by which these empires are made and maintained to how they come to an end, he advances an argument that falls short both on evidentiary and interpretive grounds. The latter part of Kennedy's essay exposes the problems with Go's assessment of the causes and chronology of British imperial collapse, and it challenges his claim that the United States entered a similar stage of inexorable decline in the 1970s. It notes that the preoccupation with imperial decline often says more about the political and intellectual anxieties of its purveyors than it does about the empires themselves. Empires are resilient, making it difficult to differentiate temporary setbacks from lasting losses.

In December 1913, the English traveler and Orientalist Gertrude Bell set out from Damascus
on a four-month journey that looped southeast through Arabia to the city of Hayyil, then north to
Baghdad, and back across the Syrian desert to Damascus. The Syrian portion of the passage was
already familiar to her, and she was not the first European to follow the caravan routes through
Arabia. Charles Doughty and Wilfred and Anne Blunt, among others, had preceded her. Nor did
her efforts significantly advance European knowledge of the region. But her willingness to
undertake such an arduous and dangerous journey without European companions won her a gold
medal from the Royal Geographical Society and a reputation as an authority on the Middle East,
subsequently reinforced by her role in intelligence for the Arab Bureau during World War I and in
the establishment of the British-dominated Iraqi state afterward.

Richard Francis Burton (1820-1890) fut une des figures les plus controversées de l'action impériale britannique au XIX e siècle. Connu pour être le traducteur des Mille et une nuits et du Kama-Sutra , l'ouverture d'esprit dont il fit preuve, en l'occurrence à l'égard de l'islam, le mit en porte à faux avec les principes britanniques, moraux et religieux, de l'époque. Cette conduite illustrait sa pensée : parvenir à se faire l'avocat de l'Empire britannique tout lui opposant des critiques. Selon Burton, l'impérialisme était une caractéristique naturelle et inévitable des interactions entre États, mais ne tolérait pas la propension des Britanniques à justifier leur conquête par l'affirmation de leur supériorité morale.