The End of Empires: Imperialism to Decolonization

3 Credits

Today, we live in a world which, for perhaps the first time in human history contains––officially at least––no empires. Yet less than 75 years ago, in the middle of the twentieth century, they suddenly disappeared throughout the world. How can we explain this transformation? What is the nature of the political world in which we now live? How is it so different to those that have come before – and why? What does it mean for a political community to be independent? This multidisciplinary course considers a stretch in the history of western civilization––from the age of imperialism to the era of global decolonization––in which a world inhabited by empires was replaced by one of nation-states.