By Sumit Guha Empires ancient and modern are large, hierarchical organizations, structurally founded on deep inequalities of risk and reward. The British Empire in Asia was no exception. At the front lines of imperial power were, all too often, common men (and some women) who were tricked, cozened, misled, coerced, and whipped into serving as […]
The Public Archive: Indian Revolt of 1857
Millions of tweets and millions of state documents. Intimate oral histories and international radio addresses. Ancient pottery and yesterday’s memes. Historians have access to this immense store of online material for doing research, but what else can we do with it? In Spring 2018, graduate students in the Public and Digital History Seminar at UT […]
Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum by James Delbourgo (2017)
by Diana Heredia López A biography of an English scientist during the early Enlightenment may not seem like cutting edge scholarship.. In Collecting the World, James Delbourgo tells the multifaceted story of Hans Sloane, an Englishman who amassed a collection of nearly eighty thousand natural objects and curiosities through his work in natural history, commerce, […]
Victoria & Abdul: Simulacra & Simulation
by Gajendra Singh University of Exeter Posted in partnership with the History Department at the University of Exeter and The Imperial and Global Forum. One of the earliest films to be shot and then screened throughout India were scenes from the Delhi Durbar between December 29, 1902 and January 10, 1903 The Imperial Durbar, created to celebrate […]
An Apology for Propaganda
By David Rahimi Writing in the middle of World War II, Freya Stark, a well-known British explorer and Arabist working for the Ministry of Information in the Middle East, penned an unpublished – and ultimately unfinished – twenty-five page essay, which she entitled Apology for Propaganda. When we think of government propaganda, we typically think […]
A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks, by Stewart Gordon (2015)
By Cynthia Talbot The world’s attention was captured in 2012 by the disaster that befell the Costa Concordia, a cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy leading to 32 deaths. This shipwreck is the most recent one covered in A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks, whose expansive gaze covers much of […]
US Survey Course: Mexico-US Interactions and Hispanic America
During the summer of 2016, we will be bringing together our previously published articles, book reviews, and podcasts on key themes and periods in the history of the USA. Each grouping is designed to correspond to the core areas of the US History Survey Courses taken by undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Web of Empire, By Alison Games (2008)
By Mark Sheaves Between 1560 and 1660, English and Scottish merchants, ministers, travellers, and statesmen traversed the globe in search of adventure and economic opportunities. Frustrated by England’s weak economy, religious and political turmoil, and social conflict, these entrepreneurial individuals settled all over the world. But how did they integrate into those diverse societies? In […]
Five Books on the End of Empire, by Wm. Roger Louis
It is a pleasure to read a full account of the British side of the American Revolution. In Andrew O’Shaughnessy’s “The Men Who Lost America,” we see the beginning of the story through the eyes of George III, who was still physically strong and mentally robust.
The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester (2005)
The nineteenth century in Britain was a time of grand figures, grand projects, and Imperial expansion. Imperialism was spreading the English language across the globe, yet there was still not a definitive guide to the language.