Institutions and Empire 18th – 20th centuries
Nuffield College Oxford, 9 June 2011
The workshop opened with a brilliant paper by John Elliot, entitled ‘British and Spanish Imperial
Models c. 1500 – 1800’, which analysed the respective modes of empire that two asymmetrical
composite monarchies imposed abroad. It discussed their respective legal and moral frameworks,
their institutions, and treatment of subject peoples, as well as the significant changes that occurred
in the eighteenth century, and was very impressive both in the acuteness of its analysis and in its
lucidity. It certainly gave rise to a lively discussion.
The next session, ‘War Recovery and Institutional Reform’, included three short papers of fifteen
minutes each and a 45 minutes discussion, a format that throughout the workshop proved very
fruitful and is certainly worth imitating. Steven Pincus’s paper, ‘Post-revolutionary Wars and the
creation of the imperial state c.1689 – c.1722’, treated the different visions of empire espoused by
the Whigs and the Tories, which he summarised as ‘having’ or ‘being’ and empire, the difference
between a territorial or a commercial vision, whose consequences for policy he outlined. In his
paper, ‘The New Toryism and Imperial Reconstruction in 1763 and 1783’, James Vaughn from the
University of Texas also differentiated between an ‘old empire’ centred on commerce and a ‘second
empire’ of territorial and political dominion. John Darwin concluded the session by discussing the
‘Third British Empire: 1917-1932’.
After a sandwich lunch with lively discussions the third session focussed on economic institutions.
Huw Bowen discussed the role of Respondentia Bonds, and the very dynamic nature of private
trade, which, whilst acknowledged in the country trade, remains severly understudied in its guise of
transoceanic trade. He outlined its most salient features, especially the respondentia bonds, and its
various forms, as official privileged trade, as smuggling, as interloping direct voyages from London,
and, especially in the 1780s and 1790s, as conducted under foreign flags. Frank Trentmann then
discussed the notions of 19th-century liberal empire and consumer society, focussing particularly on
Africa and lavishly illustrating his paper with advertisements for colonial goods. The session
concluded with Tom Tomlinson’s ‘Shaping post-imperial Asia: from Colombo to Bandung 1950-1955’,
outlining the different attempts to form post-imperial institutions in Asia.
The final session was dedicated to pressure groups, with Gabriel Glickman discussing the promotion
of colonial interests in England and Scotland between 1660 and 1702, Doug Bradburn from the State
University of New York outlining tobacco trade pressure groups and a short-lived cartel system of
merchants and planters, and with Andrew Thompson from Leeds University focussing on pressure
groups in the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.
All in all a very inspiring workshop, that gave rise to lively and fruitful discussions. I wouldn’t have
minded another day or two of this!