Imperial and post-colonial history
Interest in imperial history can be seen to have declined with the empires themselves, with in Britain attention shifting from the 1960s onwards to the study of former colonies and anti-colonial movements (seen as a 'bottom-up' approach as opposed to 'top-down' methods more interested in the impact of empire on Britian itself). In the 1980s cultural studies of nationalism and colonialism gained credence, epitomised by the work on Orientalism of Edward Said, whilst the recent move away from national histories towards comparative or global studies has revived the idea of empire as an informative unit of analysis.
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- Historians:
- Ferguson, Niall
Said, Edward - Institutions:
- African Studies Association (ASAUK]
Institute of Commonwealth Studies
School of Oriental and African Studies - Themes:
- African history
Cultural history
Global history
International history
Related publications
- A. G. Hopkins, 'Back to the future: from national history to imperial history', Past and Present, 164 (1999), 198–243
Douglas M. Peers, 'Is Humpty-Dumpty back together again? The revival of imperial history and the Oxford History of the British Empire', Journal of World History, 13, 2 (2002), 451–67
Patrick Wolfe, 'Review essay: history and imperialism: a century of theory, from Marx to post-colonialism', American Historical Review, 102, 2 (1997), 388–420
