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Embers Of Empire: Towards A World History Of End Of Britain

Date: Friday, 6 December 2013
Venue: British Institute in Eastern Africa, Laikipia Road, Kileleshwa
Time: 10.30 am
Entry; prior Reservation

Abstract

Since the 1970s, writers, historians and journalists have reflected widely on the impending “Break-up of Britain“, a theme that has acquired new momentum in the light of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Equally, there has been a tendency to link the crisis of Britishness with the decolonization of the British Empire, as though these two processes were somehow intrinsically linked. But rarely, if ever, is this link established in any coherent or convincing way. These papers offers new perspectives on an old problem by looking at Britishness as the world’s first global civic idea, which ran into increasing difficulties after WWII as the credibility of its transnational reach was increasingly called into question by the pressures for global decolonization. By studying the fate of British civic culture around the world, from Africa to Australasia, the Caribbean, South Asia and Canada since the 1950s, we can gain a new purchase on the problems of national cohesion and civic purpose that have erupted periodically in Britain and elsewhere since that time.

This seminar focuses on two talks by Prof. Stuart Ward and Christian Damm Pedersen, both historians from Copenhagen University, Denmark. Both speakers are part of a collaborative research project at Copenhagen University on ‘Embers of empire: The receding frontiers of post-imperial Britain’, funded by the Velux Foundation.

For more information on this project please visit: embersofempire.ku.dk

Seminar by: Professor Stuart Ward & Christian Damm Pedersen, University of Copenhagen
Chair: Professor Ambreena Manji, British Institute in Eastern Africa