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| Unit name |
Building New Britains |
| Unit code |
HISTM0027 |
| Credit points |
20 |
| Level of study |
M/7
|
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
|
| Unit director |
Dr. Cervantes |
| Open unit status |
Open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department |
Department of History (Historical Studies) |
| Faculty |
Faculty of Arts |
Description including Unit Aims
During the second half of the nineteenth century, ‘explosive colonisation’ transformed Britain’s hitherto modest outposts in North America and Australasia, creating ‘New Britains’ overseas. This course examines this process and its consequences, looking at the economic, demographic, cultural and sentimental connections that created and sustained the British world. Drawing on a wealth of recent historical writing and readily available primary material, we will consider the particular role played by women in building this new order, and the subordinate and precarious position of indigenous peoples and non-whites. We will also discuss why South Africa never fitted comfortably into the British world, why attempts to unite the British world economically and constitutionally largely failed, and how and why the British world unravelled in the 1950s and 1960s.
Intended Learning Outcomes
- To allow students to assess the nature and value of the contributions made by economic, political and cultural history to our understanding of the British World.
- To place students in direct contact with the current research interests of the academic tutor and to enable them to explore the issues surrounding the state of research in the field.
- To develop students’ ability to work with primary sources relating to this field, including digital newspapers.
- To develop students’ abilities to integrate primary source material into a wider historical analysis.
- To develop students’ ability to learn independently within a small-group context.
Teaching Information
10 x 1.5 hour seminars
Assessment Information
5000 word summative essay
Reading and References
- James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: the settler revolution and the rise of the Angloworld (Oxford, 2009)
- Gary B. Magee and Andrew S. Thompson, Empire and Globalisation: networks of people, goods and capital in the British world, c. 1850-1914 (Cambridge, 2010)
- Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis (eds.), Rediscovering the British World (Calgary, 2005)
- Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich (eds.), The British World: diaspora, culture and identity (London, 2003), also published as a special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31/2 (May 2003)
