History 516: Imperialism and the Colonial Experience
Edward Beasley
THEMES AND SCOPE: This is a class on European History. It is about what the Europeans did to the rest of the world and why.
First came the expansion of European (mainly Iberian) power into the New World after 1492. But then Great Britain supplanted
Spain as the chief imperial nation. By the nineteenth century, Great Britain had become the first industrial and the first largely urban
society in the history of the world. That is, while most of the rest of humanity was in stage two of human economic and cultural
development —the ten-thousand year-long agricultural phase—Great Britain moved into stage three, modernity. With modern technology, modern levels of population growth, and modern levels of financial, military, and political organization, Great Britain had
unprecedented power over a still mostly agricultural globe. It was the first world superpower. The result was the extension of different kinds of British imperial control around the world. Then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, other powers joined Great
Britain in modernizing. Thus, they were able to expand their own empires, bringing an age of imperial rivalries that led to the First
World War – and afterwards to the attempt to regulate and limit European imperialism.
How did European powers treat other societies? What was the nature of the formal expansion of European imperial control
(economic, political, and cultural) that bulks so large in the history of the nineteenth century? And to what extent was European
imperialism some kind of world system, touching areas outside formal European control? These are the questions that will come up
again and again in this class. European activities created much of the modern globalized world, and much of the history of Europe
from the World Wars to today. The focus here will be on Great Britain as the first and biggest modern global empire, but Spanish,
French, German, and other case studies will put features of British imperialism into perspective. We will reflect on imperialism as a
continual occurence in a globalized world divided between the economically advanced and the economically less advanced. We will
also examine a variety of theortical perspectives for understanding imperialism. These perspectives can be applied to other times and
places, from Ancient Rome to Modern America.
LEARNING GOALS: "LEARNING GOALS" AND "OUTCOMES" FOR THE CLASS: Our goal is to explore and make enquiries
into the recent European past, in a way that gives lasting knowledge of the subject. History is a way of thinking that employs
chronology and context in looking at the past as an interconnected web of events – not as a set of clearly separated economic
questions, or cultural questions, or military questions, or what have you. To try to get a handle on this interconnectedness – and to
keep our imaginations from straying too far from what really happened – historians have to exercise a lot of judgment in the examination, selection, and balancing of sources. So will you, in this class. Your written assignments will take the form of out-of-class
essays and an essay final. These assignments will be frequent enough to cover most of the material of the course as we go through it,
so you will get a good sense of the general story of Europe since 1789 – "the chronology and context" just mentioned. You will also
develop an individual research topic in consultation with me. In that paper, you will have the opportunity to research and explore in
greater depth some area of modern European history that connects to your interests in college and in life. The outcome: In your
assignments, you will demonstrate synthetic thinking (bringing multiple sources together) about the evidence that may be used to
address major questions; you will also demonstrate a critical awareness of what those major questions about Modern European
History might be; you will show a clear understanding of the periods and sequences against which these questions play out; and (one
hopes) you will write clearly and simply.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: You can demonstrate that you have met the learning goals by being able to select, organize, judge, and
incorporate into a thesis-evidence argument important evidence about some of the major trends and themes that we are studying.
Your task in the papers is not to summarize the reading. Your task is to exercise selection and judgment in taking from the readings
whatever you need to make your arguments. The arguments that you choose (and the understanding that you show in researching and
expressing these arguments) will help me to see that you know enough about the history. Let me be clear: I do not want to read
summaries or book reports; I want to read arguments of yours – arguments that show that you have mastered the readings and key
issues.
The larger assignments have an extra goal, as well: To help you use primary sources to ratify and deepen what you are
saying about history. In other words, we will try to capitalize on the special opportunities that arise when a European History class
happens to be on an English topic. Because you can read and examine the primary-source building blocks for yourself, you can
compare different levels of detail or generalization, from primary sources to specialized monographs to more general syntheses. You
evaluate how historians use evidence in monographs. You will compare these different scales of understanding in the Oral Review of
a Monograph assignment, explained below, and in looking at your monograph again in the Big Paper assignment, also explained
below. You will find and use your own English-language primary sources in the Big Paper assignment.
If your main area of interest in American, Latin American, Asian, or Ancient History, you can do your bigger paper on that
subject, and use the theroetical tools and readings from this course in order to ask questions about imperialism in your favorite place
or era. Your paper will also incorporate primary sources from your area of choice.
I. The Settlement Empires and India, 1492-1848.
WEEK I (25 AUG.): FROM 1492 TO 1707.
Readings: Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, pp. 25-122; Levine, The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset, pp. 31-35.
WEEK II (1 SEPT.): THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EMPIRES AND THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1707-1789
Readings: Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, pp. 123-199; P.J. Marshall, "Empire and Opportunity in Britain,
1763-75," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, ser. 6, vol. 5 (1995): 111-128; Levine, The British
Empire: Sunrise to Sunset, pp. 1-29, 36-42. [Graduate Students: Also read: J.R. Ward, "The Industrial Revolution
and British Imperialism, 1750-1850," Economic History Review, 47:1 (1994): 44-65]
WEEK III (8 SEPT.): THE SLAVERY QUESTION, BEFORE AND AFTER THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Readings: Drescher, Econocide, pp. 3-124. [Graduate Students: Add the Preface, the Forward, and pp. 125-186;
and also read David Beck Ryan, "Does Decline Make Sense?: The West Indian Economy and the Abolition of
the British Slave Trade," Journal of Intersiciplinary History 31:3 (Winter 2001): 347-374.]
WEEK IV (15 SEPT.): EXPLANATORY APPROACH #1: RACISM.
Readings: Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, pp. 200-258 [Graduate Students: Go to the end of the book, and go
back and read the introduction]; Beasley, The Victorian Reinvention of Race, chaps 1-3, 9 [Graduate Students:
Also read the rest of the book except for Chapter 8.]
WEEK V (22 SEPT.): EXPLANATORY APPROACH #2: ECOLOGY.
Reading: Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism [Graduate Students: Also read B.R Tomlinson, "Empire of the
Dandelion: Ecological Imperialism and European Expansion, 1860-1914," Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History 26:2 (May 1998): 84-99.]
WEEK VI (29 SEPT.): EXPLANATORY APPROACH #3: CAPITALIST LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES.
Reading: Anderson, Imagined Communities, 1-140
Select supplementary book.
WEEK VII (6 OCT.): EXPLANATORY APPROACH #4: TECHNOLOGICAL IMBALANCES AND INNOVATIONS.
Reading: Headrick, The Tools of Empire – read eight of the fifteen chapters. [Graduate Students: Read all of
them.]
II. The Expansion of Formal Imperial Control, 1848-1914.
WEEK VIII (13 OCT.): RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE.
Reading: Levine, The British Empire, pp. 43-60; John Stuart Mill, Considerations upon Representative
Government (1861), (online), Chapters III, IV, XV, and XVI; [Graduate Students: Also read Alan Lester,
"British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire," History Workshop Journal 54 (Autumn 2002): 24-48.]
WEEK IX (20 OCT.): SUFFERING FOR INDIA
Readings: Levine, The British Empire, pp. 61-81; John Stuart Mill, Considerations upon Representative
Government, Chapter XVIII; selections from Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847) (online); Gregory Barton, "Keepers of
the Jungle: Environmental Management in British India, 1855-1900," Historian 62:3 (Spring 2000): 557-574.
[Graduate Students: Also read: Douglas M. Peers, "'Those Noble Exemplars of the True Military Tradition';
Constructions of the Indian Army in the Mid-Victorian Press,"Modern Asian Studies 31:1 (February 1997):
109-142.]
WEEK X (27 OCT): NEW PLAYERS: GERMANY AND THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA; THE USA AND ITS COLONIES—TO
1914.
Reading: Eça de Queiroz, "The English in Egypt" (1882) (available on my website); Levine, The British Empire:
Sunrise to Sunset, pp. 82-141.
WEEK XI (3 NOV.): EXPLANATORY APPROACHES # 5: ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM.
Reading: from Walter Bagehot, Lombard Sreet (1873), "Introductory," from the 3rd paragraph to the end (look
up "Bagehot Lombard Street" in the Catalog search at www.hathitrust.org); P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins,
"Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas, I, the Old Colonial System, 1688-1850," Economic
History Review, 2nd ser., 39:4 (Nov. 1987): 501-525; P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, "Gentlemanly Capitalism
and British Expansion Overseas, II, New Imperialism, 1850-1945," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 40:1
(Feb. 1987): 1-26; P.J. Cain, "Capitalism, Aristocracy, and Empire: Some 'Classical' Theories of Imperialism
Revisited," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35:1 (March 2007): 25-47.
WEEK XII (10 NOV.): EXPLANATORY APPROACH #6: DOMINO THEORIES AND THE UNSETTLED FRONTIER
HYPOTHESIS.
Readings: John S. Galbraith, "The 'Turbulent Frontier' as a Factor in British Expansion," Comparative Studies
in Society and History 2:2 (January 1960): 150-168; John Darwin, "Imperialism and the Victorians: The
Dynamics of Territorial Expansion," English Historical Review 112 (June 1997): 614-642.
III. Imperialism Changes Europe.
WEEK XIII (17 NOV.): THE BOER WAR, CONCENTRATION CAMPS, AND “THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL
ENGLAND.”
Readings: Bill Nasson, "Waging Total War in South Africa: Some Centenary Writings on the Anglo-Boer War,
1899-1902," Journal of Military History 66:3 (July 2002): 813-828; Andrew Thompson, "The Language of
Imperialism and the Meanings of Empire: Imperial Discourse and British Politics, 1895-1914," Journal of
British Studies 36:2 (April 1997): 147-177.
WEEK XIV (24 NOV.): THE EUROPEAN IMPERIAL WORLD BY THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY.
Reading: Anderson, 141-185; Levine, The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset, pp. 142-164. [Graduate Students: Also
read Ellen Strain, "Exotic Bodies, Distant Landscapes: Touristic Viewing and Popularized Anthropology in the
Nineteenth Century," Wide Angle 18:2 (1996): 70-100.] Big Papers Due.
WEEK XV (1 DEC.): DECOLONIZATION.
Reading: Levine, The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset, pp. 167-209; A.G. Hopkins, "Rethinking Decolonization,"
Past & Present 200 (August 2008): 211-247.
WEEK XVI (8 DEC.): CONTEMPORARY ISSUES AND THE FINAL EXAM REVIEW. Reading: Paul K. MacDonald, "Those
Who Forget Historiography are Doomed to Republish It: Empire, Imperialism, and Contemporary Debates
About American Power," Review of International Studies 35 (2009): 45-67. [Graduate Students: Also read
Dane Kennedy, "Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory," Journal of Imperial and Colonial History 24:3
(September 1996): 345-363; and Durba Ghosh, "Gender And Colonialism: Expansion or Marginalization?"
Historical Journal 17:3 (2004): 737-755.]
REQUIRED READINGS FOR EVERYONE IN THE CLASS:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2006 ed)
Edward Beasley, The Victorian Reinvention of Race (2010)
Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism (1986; 2004)
Seymour Drescher, Econocide (2nd edn, 2010)
Daniel Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (1981)
Philippa Levine, The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset (2013)
María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (2008).
ASSIGNMENTS:
Grading Policy: Making a case and having a (1) good introduction, (2) a good organization, (3) a good way of using evidence, and
(4) a good flowing movement through careful transitions to a thoughtful conclusion (a complete 1-2-3-4 structure, in other words)
equals a B. An incomplete or unclear 1-2-3-4 structure, such as a paper lacking one element, or where one or more of the 1-2-3-4
elements fails to be convincing due to a pattern of grammatical errors, equals a C, or a lower grade if there are multiple problems. An
A is like a B, but it shows deeper selection and judgment on your part. That is, it shows that you know the readings well enough to
select the best evidence to make your case and develop it interestingly (a B shows merely good enough evidence from the readings,
good enough familiarity with them, and may contain minor grammatical mistake)s. An A paper will not make the mistakes listed at
the end of this syllabus; a B paper will show no repeated patterns of them. Citations and endnotes should be in the Univ. of Chicago
format that is normal for history.
Personal Contact / Lateness Policy: For my convenience in keeping track of things, and because this is not a correspondence
course and I want to make sure that you stay involved, all written work must be given to me in person in class or in office hours. No
work can be left for me in any place or mailed to me in any format. My time needs to go toward talking with you and reading your
work, not trying to figure out where it is or where to file randomly appearing papers. Late work will be docked.
Reading Write-ups: In Weeks IV and VIII, you need to turn in a 4-page, typed, double-spaced, thesis-evidence based write-up on
an important issue in the recent course readings. Your paper will have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion, and you will cite
your sources in the standard (Univ. of Chicago) way. (14% each, totalling 28% of the course grade) *GRADUATE STUDENTS:
ALSO TURN A WRITE-UP IN DURING WEEK XV; EACH WILL BE WORTH 10%.
Big Paper: You will write a paper (due in class in Week XIV) that is an argument about a theme in the history of imperialism in any
period or place of interest to you. To choose your theme, pick a book from the supplementary lists on modern European imperialism
(see p. 7 below, under “Further Details: Oral Review of a Monograph,”). Or, if you are going outside the modern period or European
history, bring me the book you pick so I can OK it..
Along with that book, cover the treatment of the theme, or the evidence about it, that is available in two of the regular
(nonsupplementary) readings from this class. I you are going outside our Modern European focus, you can nonetheless try to apply
the explanatory approaches that we will study in Weeks IV-VII and XI-XII. You can use two readings from those weeks.
Also, pursue your theme more fully by adding to your paper some substantial analysis of one or more primary sources (see
below, under “Further Details: Primary Source Requirement, for some tips on how to do this).
In sum, analyze an important aspect of imperialism based upon a close analysis of your three readings and your primary
source(s). As you develop your theme and make your case, include a thoughtful analysis of how well your approach can cover the
history of imperialism, a very broad phenomenon; for example, what other kinds of evidence would you need to push your analysis
further? 9-10 pages. (30%)
*GRADUATE STUDENTS, DO 18-20 PAGES AND ALSO READ AND COVER A SECOND BOOK FROM THE SAME
SECTION OF THE SUPPLEMENTARY LIST, AND ONE BOOK FROM ANOTHER SECTION. OR IF YOU ARE GOING
OUTSIDE THE AREA OF MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY, TALK TO ME ABOUT THE THREE BOOKS YOU WANT TO
USE, AND SHOW THEM TO ME. YOUR BIG PAPER WILL BE WORTH 28% OF YOUR COURSE GRADE.
Oral Review of a Monograph: You will present the extra book that you have read, on a day assigned by me. (12% of grade) (See
below, under “Further Details: Oral Review of a Monograph.” )
Final Exam: 30% of the grade. It will be held in the regularly scheduled final exam period for our class: Weds., 15 Dec., 4:00-6:00.
FURTHER DETAILS: PRIMARY SOURCE REQUIREMENT. Here are some options for British sources. If you want to
look at American, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, or ancient Greek or Roman imperialism, then you will need
to get other leads. Remember, too , the British wrote about these other cases of imperialism. We have British consular
reports. And there a number of good sources on British ideas about Ancient Greece and Rome, and other ancient empires.
Government Reports, Records of Testimony, and the like:
Do not miss the Parliamentary Papers, listed under that name among the library databases. We have a subscription to
everything 1800-1900. Included are all the the testimony and reports generated by the British Parliament in the nineteenth century.
Legally, much of this was material presented “by command” to parliament, so they are also called Command Papers. You may also
see them called Sessional Papers and Blue Books. Cite them carefully – see the Chicago Manual of Style.
This same online source also has all the acts passed by parliament and all of the consular reports from British diplomatic
personal throughout the world. So if you are interested in Japan, or Latin America, or the Unites States, or wherever the British
maintained diplomatic representation, there is a wealth of material for you.
More detailed guidance to British official papers is available. In the reference area on the main floor (floor 1), you might
want to look at P. and G. Ford, A Guide to Parliamentary Papers: What They Are, How to Find Them, How to Use Them (J 301 F67
1972); and upstairs, P. Ford and G. Ford, Select List of British Parliamentary Papers, 1833-1899 (J301 M3), Frank Rodgers, A
Guide to British Government Publications (J301 R62 1980) and Stephen Richard, Directory of British Official Publications: A
Guide to Sources (J301 R524).
More then 10,000 nineteenth-century Parliamentary Papers on Ireland (not restricted to the nineteenth century) are
available online here: http://www.eppi.ac.uk/eppi/digbib/home .
Parliamentary Debates:
And then there is Hansard, which is the traditional name for what are also called House of Commons Debates and House
of Lords Debates. The books include what was said in parliament, often in a well-informed speeches that could go on for hours, but
they also include more detailed written answers inserted into the record later. Someone might ask a cabinet minister for shipping
statistics, for example, and later on the minister will hand in an elaborate answer. (“Hansard” was the company that first produced the
transcripts; now a generic name like “xerox,” “Hansard” can be used for most sets of parliamentary papers in the British-influenced
world.) Hansard is online at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/ .
To understand the limits of Hansard's as a source in the earlier periods, see Olive Anderson, "Hansard's Hazards: An
Illustration from Recent Interpretations of Married Women's Property Law and the 1857 Divorce Act", English Historical Review,
112, no. 449 (Nov. 1997), pp. 1202-1215.
The National Archives (British version, that is) at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk. If you have a reference to an unpublished
source in the National Archives (say from one of the books you are reading), or if you find something by using their search engine,
they will send you a copy online, often for the equivalent of twenty dollars or less, and sometimes for free. Note also that the
National Archives used to be called the Public Record Office, and older references to the documents held there will start with the
abbreviation "PRO". But now they use the abbreviation "TNA".
They also have a tremendous numner of sets of documents already on-line as "Digital Microfilm". The have picked specific
subjects for this, such as the Chartist Disturbances and the investigation over the sinking of the Titanic:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/digital-microfilm.htm
19th-Century Newspapers
We do have microfilm rolls of the (London) Times going back to the eighteenth century, at F-147, and there is a printed
index to the Times (many volumes, each covering a few years) sitting in the reference section at AI21 T5. UCSD has the Times
online. Go to the UCSD Library website: https://libraries.ucsd.edu/info/resources/resource-access/ucsd-only . You will have to go to
the UCSD Library to access them.
Another great nineteenth-century newspaper – and the voice of free trade and big business – was The Manchester
Guardian. You can search it online at http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/guardian/advancedsearch.html . Seeing the actual newspapers
costs money, but very little.
A huge number of nineteenth-century newspapers, including papers from smaller towns, are available here:
http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ (this does not include the Times or the Manchester Guardian). As with the Guardian, the
searching is free but seeing the newspapers themsleves costs a few dollars for one day's access.
Books as Primary Sources:
Our library includes the published collected letters and papers of major and some minor nineteenth-century figures. Also,
many of the oldest biographies, published in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, include large numbers of letters and
papers in the body of the work. Sometimes these letters are heavily edited or expurgated, but these sources are close enough to being
“primary” to count for most purposes – if you keep the possible editorial bias in mind and try to work around it. Many of these books
have one-or-two-page evaluations of their reliability and quality in John Powell, Art, Truth, and High Politics: A Bibliographic Study
of the Official Lives of Queen Victoria's Ministers in Cabinet, 1843-1969, which is in our library at DA562 P69 1996.
Fot art, see museum websites:
The Victorian and Albert Museum, http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/v/victorian-social-life/ ,
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/v/victorian-design/ , http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/0-9/19th-century-design-styles/ ,
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/v/victorian-architecture/ .
The National Portrait Gallery, http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/explore.php
The Tate Britain, http://www.tate.org.uk/art
The National Maritime Musuem, http://collections.rmg.co.uk/
The National Army Museum, http://www.nam.ac.uk/collection
The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, http://www.bmagic.org.uk/ , http://www.preraphaelites.org/
The Scottish National Gallery, http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/323/
FURTHER DETAILS: ORAL REVIEW OF A MONOGRAPH
One book per person from one of the lists later on in the syllabus. No two students presenting the same book.
The book lists and the Oral Review of a Monograph
I want you each to sign up for an oral report on one monograph. A monograph is unified book (not a set of articles bound
together) in which one author explores primary sources to make an argument and pursue a theme.
Several people will report per day once the reports get started. Signup-days and procedures will be discussed in class.
In writing an academic “monograph”, a scholar gets interested in something. In order to light up this corner of the world
she or he researches primary sources, and then writes up an argument and/or story in one volume that is checked (“peer reviewed”)
by other experts before it is published. Ideally, the audience for the academic monograph is both other academic specialists and some
advanced general readers (including students like yourself). The requirement for research and originality means that as we retell and
extend our stories about the past, we are not just restating things endlessly, compounding each other's mistakes. We are extending
what was known – both for its own sake and so we can look at what people already knew in new ways.
Some good monographs have been excluded from these lists simply because they are too big to fit. I did not want the
outside book assignment to involve much over three hundred pages above the weekly reading on the syllabus. While some of the
books that are listed below do go a bit over this limit, you can cope if you are interested in the topic. Where books have well over
three hundred pages of text, the list will indicate that you are to read them only in part. Come to me if you are interested in one or
these books and we will look at it together and see what “in part” means in each case – so bring the book.
What should you be looking for in your list book?
For every work of history that you read, there are THREE key questions which I really want you to ask yourself. Each of them takes
you closer to thinking like an historian:
1. Could this evidence support these conclusions in the way the author would like? That is, are the conclusions of the book well
supported according to the evidence presented? (With this first question, you are asking yourself how the book works on its own
terms.)
2. Are the book's conclusions well-supported according to the evidence that might have been presented? Answering this question
involves exercising your historical imagination about the nature of other evidence out there in the world. (Answering Question 2
means going beyond the careful thinking of the generalist reader, which was all that was needed to answer Question 1. For
Question 1, you had to judge the book from the inside, on how well it seemed to work based upon the terms parameters set by the
author. Question 2 asks you to judge the book by the wider world of other history and other possible historical sources.)
3. Are the conclusions of the book based up new thinking and new research, or are they rehashed? (Answering Question 3 means
looking at other scholarship, in part through the book reviews in journals. You cannot answer this question out of your own head,
as you could with Questions 1 and 2, unless you already know the relevant historical literature.)
Getting to number (3), the issue of how well the book uses the scholarship of others, is more of a challenge. You need the
specialized knowledge of what that earlier scholarship actually was, not merely the general intelligence that you need for judging the
books under criteria (1) and (2). The book may seem to prove its case, until you look at other cases – and then you will be able to see
how adequate or how significant the book may or may not be.
To judge a book by criterion number (3), first and foremost get to know the academic journal reviews available through
the full-text databases called JSTOR (for some journals) and Project Muse (for others) – available through the SDSU library website
list of databases. Although JSTOR especially contains some Victorian material (including Royal Geographical Society journals and
various anthropological ones back to the early nineteenth century), you may have slim pickings when looking for reviews of some of
the older books listed below. There weren’t that many journals reviewing books in the 1930s, for example. Yet with various full-text
searches you should be able to find reviews of later books on the same subject that comment on how good (or not) your old book still
is.
And don’t forget the history.
Besides reviewing the book under the three numbered criteria, you need to give a rundown of the main historical arguments
and evidence that the book presents. In other words, review the book for us, but please review the history for us, too. Please do not
spend time during your presentation discussing where the author got her or his degrees, where they have taught, and so on.
BOOK LISTS:
Technological and Biological Substructure of European Expansion:
Daniel Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940 (1988)
Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (1989)
Phillip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (1989)
Daniel Headrick, The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851-1945 (1991)
Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860
(1995) [in part]
Phillip Curtin, Disease and Empire: The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa (1998)
Douglas Haynes, Imperial Medicine: Patrick Manson and the Conquest of Tropical Disease (2001)
Rod Edmond, Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History (2006)
S. Ravi Rajan, Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development, 1800-1950 (2006)
Economic Substructure of European Expansion:
Davis Landes, Bankers and Pashas: Western Finance and Economic Imperialism in Egypt (1958)
D.K. Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire, 1830-1914 (rev. ed 1983) – read first section and two geographical sections.
Lance Davis and Robert Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860-1912
(1986) [in part]
David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some so Poor (1998) [in part]
P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-1914 (2 vols., 1993; 2nd ed. published in one vol. under this title, 2002)
Slavery and the Caribbean:
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944)
Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in World History (1985)
Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (1986)
Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938 (1992) [in part]
Charlotte Sussman, Consuming Anxieties: Consumer Protest, Gender, and British Slavery, 1713-1833 (2000)
Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (2002)
Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867 (2002) [in part]
Julie Evans, Edward Eyre: Race and Colonial Governance (2005)
Kevin Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884-1926 (2005)
Gelien Matthews, Carribean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement (2006) – ends in 1834
Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (2012)
Europeans and the Pacific:
A.T. Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia: The Background to Exclusion 1896-1923 (1964)
Myra Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (1967)
Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia’s History (1968) [in part]
Charles Price, The Great White Walls are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australasia, 1836-1888 (1974)
Peter Adams, Fatal Necessity: British Intervention in New Zealand, 1830-1847 (1977)
Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California, 1850-1901 (1979)
James Belich, The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict: The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars (1986) [in part]
Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding (1987) [in part]
Robert Aldrich, The French Presence in the South Pacific, 1842-1940 (1990)
Jane Samson, Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands (1998)
David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850-1945 (1999)
Jonathan Lamb, Preserving the Self in the South Seas, 1680-1840 (2001).
Stuart Banner, Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska (2007)
Dane Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia (2013)
David Igler. The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (2013)
Informal Imperialism in China:
Jonathan Spence, To Change China: Western Advisers in China (1969)
Brian Inglis, The Opium War (1976)
J.Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856-60) in China (1998)
Robert Bickers, Britain in China, Community, Culture and Colonialism, 1900–49 (1999)
James Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (2003)
The Imperialism of the United States:
Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (1963)
William Appleman Williams, Empire as a Way of Life (1980)
Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right (1995)
William Weeks, Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from the Revolution to the Civil War (1996)
Claude Clegg, Jr., The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia (2004)
French Imperialism:
A.S. Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan: A Study in French Military Imperialism, (1969)
Robert Lee, France and the Exploitation of China, 1885-1901: A Study in Economic Imperialism (1989)
Robert Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (1996)
Martin Staum, Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race and Empire, 1815-1848 (2003)
Barnett Singer and John Langdon, Cultured Force: Makers and Defenders of the French Colonial Empire (2004)
Matt Matsuda, Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific (2005)
J.P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism (2007)
Jennifer Sessions, By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (2011)
German Imperialism:
A.J.P. Taylor, Germany’s First Bid for Colonies, 1884-1885 (1938)
Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (1961) [in part]
Volker Berghahn, Imperial Germany, 1871-1914 (1994) [in part]
Mark Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of the First World War (2004)
Arne Perras, Carl Peters and German Imperialism, 1856-1918: A Political Biography (2004)
Modern Theories of Imperialism:
Richard Koebner and Helmut Dan Schmidt, Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840-1960 (1964) [in part]
Winfried Baumgart, Imperialism: The Idea and Reality of British and French Colonial Expansion, 1880-1914 (rev. ed. 1982)
Norman Etherington, Theories of Imperialism (1984)
Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire (1991)
David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
British Imperial Idologies of Imperialism or Anti-Imperialism:
J.A. Hobson, Imperialism [1902]
Bernard Porter, Critics of Empire: British Radical Attitudes to Colonialism in Africa, 1895-1914 (1968)
C.C. Eldridge, England’s Mission: The Imperial Idea in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli, 1868-1880 (1973)
Bernard Semmel, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire: Theories of Imperialism from Adam Smith to Lenin (1993)
Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire In Britain, Spain, and France, c. 1500 – c. 1800 (Yale, 1995)
Jonathan Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (1999)
Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (2005)
Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900 (2007)
Gregory Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850-1920 (2010)
British Policies and Attitudes Toward India:
Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement (1963; 2nd ed. 1982)
Francis Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India (1967)
Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class under the Raj (1980)
Gauri Vishwanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (1989)
Ronald Inden, Imagining India (1990) [in part]
C.A. Bayley, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Comminuication in India (1996) [in part]
Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India (1997) – on English scholarship on Ancient India, Indian languages, and the
relationships between Indian and European cultures
Antoinette Burton, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (1998)
Jeffrey Cox, Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1814-1840 (2002)
Sudipta Sen, Distant Sovereignty: National Imperialism and the Origins of British India (2002)
Chandak Sengoopta, Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India (2003)
Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (2004)
David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste:Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (2006)
Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920 (2012)
C.A. Hagerman, Britain's Imperial Muse: The Classics, Imperialism, and the Indian Empire, 1784–1914 (2013)
Erica Wald, Vice in the the Barracks: Medicine, The Military, and the Making of Colonial Indi, 1780-1868 (2014)
Andrew Sartori, Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History (2014) -- about Bengal
Cultural Encounters and British Policies Regarding Africa:
Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (1961) [in part]
W.D. McIntyre, The Imperial Frontier in the Tropics (1967)
Brian Fagan, The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbbers, Tourists, and Archaeologists in Egypt (1975) [in part]
Howard Temperley, White Dreams, Black Africa: The Anti-Slavery Expedition to the Niger, 1841-2 (1991)
Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (1992)
Annie Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination in late Victorian and Edwardian
England (1994)
James Gump, The Dust Rose Like Smoke...: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux (1994)
Neil Parsons, King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain Through African Eyes (1998)
Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (2001)
Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (2008)
Richard Price, Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century South Africa (2008)
Dane Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia (2013)
Cultural Studies and European Imperialism:
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)
J.A. Mangan, The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal (1986)
Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 (1988)
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993)
John MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory, and the Arts (1995) – an empirical case against Said
Mark Crinson, Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (1996)
Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900 (2002)
Martin Wiener, An Empire on Trial: Race, Murder, and Justice under British Rule, 1870-1935 (2009)
Missionaries and Religion:
Neil Gunson, Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas 1797-1860 (1978)
Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Death of Sati in Colonial India (1998)
Rhonda Anne Semple, Missionary Women: Gender, Professionalism, and the Victorian Idea of Christian Mission (2003)
Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914 (2004)
Sujit Sivasundaram, Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795-1850 (2005)
Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000 (2006)
Esther Breitenbach, Empire and Scottish Society: The Impact of Foreign Missions at Home, c. 1790- to c. 1914 (2009)
Alison Twells, The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792–1850: The ‘Heathen’ at Home and Overseas (2009)
Hilary Carey, God’s Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World, c. 1801–1908 (2010)
Rosemary Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands: British Missionary Women in Asia (2013)
The Cultural Effects of Empire in Britain:
Kathryn Tidrick, Empire and the English Character (1990)
Laura Tabili, "We Ask for British Justice": Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (1994)
David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw the Empire (2001)
Linda Colley, Captives: The Story of Britain’s Pursuit of Empire and How Its Soldiers and Civilians Were Held Captive by the
Dream of Global Supremacy, 1600-1850 (2002)
Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867 [in part] (2002) – explores ties
between Jamaica and Protestant Dissenters in the north of England
Bernard Porter, Absent-Minded Imperialists (2004) [in part] —looks at popular culture in England to argues that the common people
and the poor were minding their own business, and not interested in the empire.
Paul Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics (2nd ed., 1990)
Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back?: The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (2005)
Martin Wainwright, 'The Better Class of Indians': Social Rank, Imperial Identity, and South Asians in Britain, 1858-1914 (2008)
Gender and the European Imperial World:
Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (1990)
Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (1994)
Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (1995)
Mrinalina Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and the' Effeminate Bengali' in the Late Nineteenth Century (1995)
Ann Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (1995)
Billie Melman, Women’s Orients—English Women and the Middle East, 1718-1918: Sexuality, Religion, and Work (1992)
Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849-1871 (2001)
Mary Procida, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in India, 1883-1947 (2002)
Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality (2003) [in part]
Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (2003) [1st half of book]
Diane Robinson-Dunn, The Harem, Slavery and British Imperial Culture: Anglo-Muslim Relations in the Late Nineteenth Century
(2006) —on British attempts to end the trade in harem women.
Angela Woollacott, Gender and Empire (2006)
Clare Midgley, Feminism and Empire: Women Activists in Imperial Britain, 1790-1865 (2007)
Joan Mickelson Gaughan, The Incumbrances: British Women in India, 1615-1856 (2013)
Ruby Lal, Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness (2013)
European Imperialism and the Idea of Race:
Henri Baudet, Paradise on Earth:Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man (1955)
V.S. Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind (1969)
Robert Huttenback, Racism and Empire: White Settlers and Colored Emigrants in the British Self-Governing Colonies, 1830-1910
(1976)
Syed Hussein Alatas, The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of Malays, Filipinos, and Javanese from the 16th to the
20th Century and its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism (1977)
Douglas Lorimer, Colour, Class, and the Victorians (1978)
George Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (1987)
Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (1995)
Ter Erlington, The Myth of the Noble Savage (2001)
Andrew Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (2001)
George Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (2002)
Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (2002) – on theories about where the Maori came from
Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930 (2003)
John Marriott, The Other Empire: Metropolis, India and Progress in the Colonial Imagination (2003)—on London and India as
places where poor people were put into racial hierarchies
Martin S. Staum, Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race, and Empire, 1815-1948 (2003)
Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 (2004)
Kate Flint, The Transatlantic Indian, 1776-1930 (2009)
Edward Beasley, The Victorian Reinvention of Race (2010)
Satoshi Mizutani, The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and the 'Domiciled Community' in British India, 1858-1930 (2011)
Bruce Nelson, Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race (2012)
Gyanendra Pandey, A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States (2013)
The Environment and Empire
Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (1992) – much on British ideas /
policies
David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (1993)
James Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art, and Conservation in South Asia and Australia, 1800-1920
(2011)
Imperial Information Flow and the European “Imperial Archive”:
Thomas Richards, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire (1993)
Annie Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination in late Victorian and Edwardian
England (1994)
Peter Raby, Bright Paradise: Victorian Scientific Travellers (1996)
Matthew W. Edny, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (1997) [in part]
C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (2000)
Felix Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire (2001)
Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (2001)
Lucile Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens (1979; 2nd. ed. 2002)
Ian Barrow, Making History, Drawing Territory: British Mapping in India, c. 1765-1905 (2003)
Graham Burnett, Masters of All They Surveyed: Exploration, Geography, and a British El Dorado (2003) – on Guyana
Chandrika Kaul, Reporting the Raj: The British Press and India, c. 1880–1922 (2003)
Simon Potter, News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System, 1876-1922 (2003)
Anandi Ramamurthy, Imperial Persuaders: Images of Africa and Asia in British Advertising (2003)
Robert Aguirre, Informal Empire: Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture (2005)
Edward Beasley, Empire as the Triumph of Theory (2004) [You cannot choose my book to report on in class, but graduate students
can choose it as a supplementary book for their papers.]
Edward Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists (2005) [You cannot choose my book to report on in class, but graduate students can
choose it as a supplementary book for their papers.]
Saul Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa, 1820-2000 (2006)
Zoë Laidlaw, Colonial Connections, 1815-1845: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (2006) [Not to
be used as a first choice]
Jessica Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1717-1927 (2007)
Avril A. Powell, Scottish Orientalists and India: The Muir Brothers, Religion, Education and Empire (2010)
Giordano Nanni, The Colonisation of Time: Ritual, Routine and Resistance in the British Empire (2012)
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