London and the British Empire

3 Credits

Focuses on the people, places, and policies that shaped the development of the British Empire, the single largest trans-cultural phenomenon in the world since 1500. Students examine how ideology, migration, technology and resistance shaped the expansion and eventual retrenchment of British imperial power in the Atlantic world and the Indian sub-continent. With the nation's capital as our classroom, students explore the complex workings and legacies of the British Empire from the perspective of its nerve center. The curriculum illuminates the experience of empire for subjects both in the colonies and the metropole and will pay particular attention to the maritime origins of empire, the lives of black Britons and the abolition of slavery, and the rise and fall of the British in India.