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Condos Colour (Cropped)

Dr Mark Condos

Senior Lecturer in Imperial and Global History

Research interests

  • Conflict
  • History
  • Law

Contact details

Biography

Mark Condos, Co-Director of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War, is a historian interested in the intersections between violence, race, and law within the British and French Empires, with a particular focus on India and Algeria. 

He completed both his BA (Hons.) and MA at Queen’s University in Canada. In 2013, he received his PhD from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining King's College London in January 2020, Mark held a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at Queen Mary, University of London, between 2014 and 2017, and subsequently worked as a Lecturer in Imperial and Global History between 2017 and 2020.

Research

His previous research has examined the relationship between militarism, violence, and state-building in colonial Punjab and along the North-West Frontier of British India. This work explored how colonial anxieties, fears, and vulnerabilities played an important role in determining the authoritarian and often violent practices of the British colonial state. 

Mark has also written extensively on the phenomenon of ‘fanaticism’ along the North-West Frontier of British India, tracing the colonial origins of some of the key legal and discursive tropes in contemporary engagements with terrorist violence. 

He is currently working on two different projects. The first examines how various forms of legal and extrajudicial violence were incorporated by the British and French empires in their attempts to police different frontier regions, with particular emphasis on the ways that Indian revolutionaries used the tangled legal geography of British and French India to carry out their activities in the early 20th century. The second project looks at how concepts of prestige, dignity, and honour informed imperial practices of retributive violence, and the ways that imperial powers attempted to justify these within legal, moral, and other normative frameworks.

  • Colonial India and Punjab
  • Imperial and global history, c. 1750-1947
  • French Algeria
  • Colonial anxiety, fear, and terror
  • Anti-colonial resistance and insurgency
  • Race and violence
  • Law
  • Imperial policing and pacification
  • Frontiers
  • Empire

Publications

Monographs:

The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India, 1849-1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Articles:

'The Ajnala Massacre of 1857 and the Politics of Colonial Violence and Commemoration in Contemporary India', Journal of Genocide Studies (January, 2022), 1-19

The Indian “Alsatia”: Sovereignty, Extradition, and the Limits of Franco-British Colonial Policing’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 48, no. 1 (2020), 101-126

With Gavin Rand, ‘Coercion and Conciliation at the Edge of Empire: State-Building and its Limits in Waziristan, 1849-1914’, The Historical Journal, vol. 61, no. 3 (2018), 695-718

Fanaticism and the Politics of Resistance along the North West Frontier of British India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 58, no. 3 (2016), 717-745

License to Kill: The Murderous Outrages Act and the Rule of Law in Colonial India, 1867-1925’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 50, no. 2 (2016), 479-517

News

Sir Michael Howard Annual Lecture explored the the history of counting in early modern and modern warfare

Dr Erica Charters delivered a fascinating insight into the political and social implications of metrics of counting morality in war in early modern and...

SMHC 2021 lecture

Conference draws an audience of 100s to reflect on the Franco Prussian War

On the 150th anniversary, this two-day conference researches the conflict ushered in transformative changes this war brought to the European geopolitical system

Franco-Prussian War Promo

Events

01FebSMHC New Direction copy

Thinking the Border Otherwise: Solidarity, Resistance and Relationality

Join the Sir Michael Howard Centre for a talk with Dr Nivi Manchanda on borderlands and their histories of anti-colonial resistance.

Please note: this event has passed.

27AprSMHC New Direction copy

An epidemic of nervous breakdowns: The psychological fallout of crisis in pre-World War II Britain

This event will explore the myriad ways and forms the international ‘war of nerves’ crisis was personalised and internalised.

Please note: this event has passed.

09FebSMHC New Direction copy

Understanding colonial war and violence beyond national-imperial borders

This event will examine how we can come to understand colonial war and violence around 1900 as a transimperial phenomenon

Please note: this event has passed.

23FebSMHC New Direction copy

The strange life of WC Hopkinson: From irrational anxieties to illegible bodies in the surveillance of Indians in British Columbia, 1908-1914

This event will explore how WC Hopkinson can be used to understand the neuroses that came to plague Britain, Canada and the United States in their desire to...

Please note: this event has passed.

18MaySMHC New Direction copy

‘I’d rather have a fast life and then death’: ‘Terrorist Time’ in West German post-terrorist autobiography

This event will explore the roles gender and class in constructions of ‘terrorist time’.

Please note: this event has passed.

04MaySMHC New Direction copy

'These are not ordinary women': Empire, famine, and labour in Second World War India

This event will explore the profound effects of the Second World War and famine on women in British India.

Please note: this event has passed.

27OctSMHC New Direction copy

Looking at images of war, seeing indigenous agency, Libya and Morocco, 1912

A Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War New Directions series event with William Gallios

Please note: this event has passed.

13OctSMHC New Direction copy

'I am a soldier like you!' Race, rank and relationships in France's Armée d’Afrique, 1914-1918

A Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War New Directions series event with Claire Eldridge

Please note: this event has passed.

10NovSMHC New Direction copy

The Commonwealth Graves Commission Non-Commemoration Report

A Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War New Directions series event with Gavin Rand and Amandeep Madra

Please note: this event has passed.

06DecSMHC New Direction copy

Small Soldiers? Children in colonial insurgencies and counterinsurgency tactics, 1945-60

A Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War New Directions series event with Stacey Hynd

Please note: this event has passed.

News

Sir Michael Howard Annual Lecture explored the the history of counting in early modern and modern warfare

Dr Erica Charters delivered a fascinating insight into the political and social implications of metrics of counting morality in war in early modern and...

SMHC 2021 lecture

Conference draws an audience of 100s to reflect on the Franco Prussian War

On the 150th anniversary, this two-day conference researches the conflict ushered in transformative changes this war brought to the European geopolitical system

Franco-Prussian War Promo

Events

01FebSMHC New Direction copy

Thinking the Border Otherwise: Solidarity, Resistance and Relationality

Join the Sir Michael Howard Centre for a talk with Dr Nivi Manchanda on borderlands and their histories of anti-colonial resistance.

Please note: this event has passed.

27AprSMHC New Direction copy

An epidemic of nervous breakdowns: The psychological fallout of crisis in pre-World War II Britain

This event will explore the myriad ways and forms the international ‘war of nerves’ crisis was personalised and internalised.

Please note: this event has passed.

09FebSMHC New Direction copy

Understanding colonial war and violence beyond national-imperial borders

This event will examine how we can come to understand colonial war and violence around 1900 as a transimperial phenomenon

Please note: this event has passed.

23FebSMHC New Direction copy

The strange life of WC Hopkinson: From irrational anxieties to illegible bodies in the surveillance of Indians in British Columbia, 1908-1914

This event will explore how WC Hopkinson can be used to understand the neuroses that came to plague Britain, Canada and the United States in their desire to...

Please note: this event has passed.

18MaySMHC New Direction copy

‘I’d rather have a fast life and then death’: ‘Terrorist Time’ in West German post-terrorist autobiography

This event will explore the roles gender and class in constructions of ‘terrorist time’.

Please note: this event has passed.

04MaySMHC New Direction copy

'These are not ordinary women': Empire, famine, and labour in Second World War India

This event will explore the profound effects of the Second World War and famine on women in British India.

Please note: this event has passed.

27OctSMHC New Direction copy

Looking at images of war, seeing indigenous agency, Libya and Morocco, 1912

A Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War New Directions series event with William Gallios

Please note: this event has passed.

13OctSMHC New Direction copy

'I am a soldier like you!' Race, rank and relationships in France's Armée d’Afrique, 1914-1918

A Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War New Directions series event with Claire Eldridge

Please note: this event has passed.

10NovSMHC New Direction copy

The Commonwealth Graves Commission Non-Commemoration Report

A Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War New Directions series event with Gavin Rand and Amandeep Madra

Please note: this event has passed.

06DecSMHC New Direction copy

Small Soldiers? Children in colonial insurgencies and counterinsurgency tactics, 1945-60

A Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War New Directions series event with Stacey Hynd

Please note: this event has passed.