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Empires and Decolonizations Research Hub

Empires have been common over several millennia and part of the lived experience of people around the globe. Understanding their history is more important than ever as societies grapple with imperial legacies, ongoing imperialisms and decolonizing processes. These different empires had their own temporalities, modalities, dynamics and contexts, but comparative study facilitates understanding and can open up new fruitful lines of enquiry.

King’s College London has long been a centre for the study of empires. Classical Greek and Roman history has been taught at King’s ever since the College opened in 1831. In the twentieth century its staff played a seminal part in the development of British imperial history after the College became only the second place in the world to have a chair in the subject with the foundation of the Rhodes Professorship of Imperial History (now the Professorship of Imperial and Global History). Unusually among British universities, the College has long established expertise in Portuguese and Brazilian studies. In 1947 Charles Ralph Boxer (1904-2000) a historian of Dutch and Portuguese colonialism was appointed Camões Chair of Portuguese, a chair founded and part funded by Portuguese institutions, and at the time the only chair of its kind in the English-speaking world. In 1997 a new chair named the Charles Boxer Chair dedicated to the history of the Portuguese speaking world was created in his honour.

Today’s generation of King’s historians begin from very different perspectives to their early twentieth-century forbears, who were invested in empire and in various ways participants in Britain’s imperial project. But while our approach may be very different, the College maintains exceptional expertise in the study of empires, ancient and modern. Our interests extend from the ancient Roman empire via the early modern European empires to modern European overseas and continental empires. We have concentrations of expertise in the history of decolonization. The College has large numbers of PhD students working on the history of empires, and regularly hosts visiting scholars from other institutions also engaged in forms of colonial and imperial history. In coming together in this research hub, we aim to facilitate exchanges across empires and periods through regular lunchtime meetings. At the same time, the hub will be hosting more focused, period-specific workshops and reading groups.  Our aim is to serve both the King’s community and the wider national and international one, by initiating conversations around the history of empires as well as through resources available via our website.  

Members

Francisco Bethencourt

Francisco Bethencourt

Charles Boxer Professor

Richard Drayton

Richard Drayton

Professor of Imperial and Global History

Max Edling

Professor of Early American History

Bérénice Guyot-Réchard

Bérénice Guyot-Réchard

Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century International History

Peter Heather

Peter Heather

Professor of Medieval History

Katrin Schreiter

Katrin Schreiter

Senior Lecturer in German & History

Jean Smith

Jean Smith

Lecturer in British Imperial History

Sarah Stockwell

Sarah Stockwell

Professor of Imperial & Commonwealth History

Jon Wilson

Jon Wilson

Professor in Modern History; Vice-Dean (Education)

Books written or edited by Hub members:

Richard Drayton

  • Ed. with Saul Dubow, Commonwealth History in the Twenty-First Century (London, 2020)
  • Whose Constitution? Law, Justice and History in the Caribbean (Port of Spain, 2016)
  • Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the 'Improvement' World (London and New Haven, 2000)

Max Edling

  • Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the U.S. Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2021 [Audiobook Tantor Media, 2021]).
  • Co-edited with Peter Kastor, Washington’s Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration (University of Virginia Press, 2021).
  • The Creation of the Constitution (American Historical Association and the Institute for Constitutional Studies, 2018)
  • .A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State 1783-1867 (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
  • A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (Oxford University Press, 2003 [pbk 2008]).

Bérénice Guyot-Réchard

  • Shadow States: India, China and the Himalayas, 1910-62 (Cambridge, 2016)
  • Ed. With Elisabeth Leake, South Asia Unbound: New International Histories of the Subcontinent (Leiden, forthcoming)

Peter Heather

  • The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Orion, 2005).
  • Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development, and State Formation in the First Millennium (Orion, 2009).
  • Rome Resurgent: War & Empire in the Age of Justinian (OUP, 2018)
  • Christendom: Triumph of a Religion (Penguin, 2022 forthcoming).
  • With John Rapley, WHY EMPIRES FALL: America, Rome and the Decline of the West (Penguin, in press).

Jean Smith

  • Settlers at the End of Empire: Race and the Politics of Migration in South Africa, Rhodesia and the United Kingdom (Manchester, 2022)

Sarah Stockwell

  • Co-edited with Véronique Dimier, The Business of Development in Post-Colonial Africa (Palgrave, 2021)
  • The British End of the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
  • Co-edited with L.J. Butler, The Wind of Change. Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
  • Ed., The Rise and Fall of Modern Empires, Volume III: Economics and Politics
  • Co-edited with Robert Holland, Ambiguities of Empire. Essays in Honour of Andrew Porter (Routledge, 2009).
  • Ed., The British Empire. Themes and Perspectives (Blackwell, 2008)
  • The Business of Decolonisation. British Business Strategies in the Gold Coast (Oxford University Press, 2000)
  • Co-edited with S.R. Ashton, Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice, 1925-45 (British Documents on the End of Empire, Series A, Volume 1, HMSO, 1996).

Jon Wilson

  • The Domination of Strangers. Modern Governance in Eastern India, c.1785-1830 (2008)
  • India Conquered. Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire (2016) (published in North America as The Chaos of Empire. The British Raj and the Conquest of India

Institutions and the Colonial Past, 20 May 2022

Bringing together researchers at universities, museums and other heritage organisations, this workshop will focus on the practicalities and challenges of researching and presenting work on the colonial past (broadly defined) of institutions. The aim of the workshop is to learn from one another’s experience and to form an ongoing network.