The Imperial History Wars

Abstract

The key question posed by this essay is why historians' interest in Britain's imperial past has increased rather than diminished in recent decades. It argues that this interest has been sustained in part by a preoccupation with certain contemporary social and political issues, and differences of opinion about these issues have helped fuel the "imperial history wars." The nature of the debate has differed for Americanand British-based historians. For the former, British imperial history has served as an analogy for thinking about America's racial politics and its role as a global power. For the latter, it has served as a focal point for contending claims about Britain's past and deepening anxieties about its future. The essay concludes by urging historians to be more self-reflexive about their own practices and more rigorous in exposing presentist claims about die past. I t has become all b u t impossible for historians w ho study m odern Britain to ignore its em pire. T he field has been sw am ped in recent years by a seemingly endless stream o f books, articles, conferences, and other scholarly expressions o f this preoccupation w ith Britain's im perial past. A lthough plenty o f British histo rians still steadfasdy resist the siren song o f em pire, they have seen countless others succum b to its appeal. Consider, for example, h ow m any w ell-known historians w ho m ade their reputations w ith w ork on British dom estic history have subsequently taken the "im perial tu rn ." 1 T heir change o f direction is indicative o f the way the boundaries o f British historiography, and, indeed, British studies m ore generally, have broadened over the past tw o decades to incorporate Britain's engagem ent in empire. This is a striking, even surprising, developm ent, yet the reasons for it have rarely been examined. W hy should an em pire th at for all practical purposes disap peared som e fifty years ago retain such a pow erful hold over o u r imaginations? Or, to p u t it m ore precisely, w hy should o u r collective interest in th at em pire have increased, rather than decreased, even th o u g h it has receded ever further into the past?To answer these questions requires us to direct our attention to the circumstances th at have given rise to this grow ing body o f scholarship: in other w ords, its condi tions o f production. These conditions operate at several distinct levels o f effect. T he first and m ost familiar level consists o f the analytical, m ethodological, and

Unfinished Decolonisation and Globalisation

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Global histories of empire and climate in the Anthropocene

“…Ross describes this ‘ideological holdover’ as ‘profoundly inappropriate—even dangerous’ in the 21st century (Ross, 2017). Influential global and imperial historians have denounced a scholarly focus on the epistemic violence of empire, arguing that this obscures ‘real’, physical violence (Drayton, 2011; Kennedy, 2015). However, using the concepts of the Great Divergence, postcolonial theory, and ‘climatic orientalism’ (Locher & Fressoz, 2012), Ross and other historians have analysed these dovetailing forms of violence—epistemic and physical—as mutually reinforcing within the history of empire and climate change (Klein, 2015; Klein, 2019; Radkau, 2008; Ross, 2017).…”

Unfinished Decolonisation and Globalisation

“…In reshaping how people thought about British Imperialism, 'Robinson and Gallagher' -directly and as supervisors of a generation of imperial historians -did much to frame the later study of decolonisation. 14 Their first collaboration was on their 1953 article on 'The Imperialism of Free Trade'. 15 This asked why Britain seemed to shift from mid-nineteenth century 'antiimperialism' (in an era when free trade was apparently preferred to territorial control) to rapid expansion later.…”

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