The British Empire, 1760-1965: An Exercise in Globalization?

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The course investigates the history of the British Empire from the late eighteenth-century to the mid-1960s. The first half deals with Britain's involvement in the slave trade, the establishment of the Raj in India, British intervention in Ireland, and its conquests in Africa. The second half of the course looks at the twentieth-century, when Britain fought two world wars and the empire reached its greatest extent. But it was also a period when the settler colonies began to question their connection with Britain and Britain was forced to withdraw from some of her most prized possessions in India, Africa, and the Middle East. The course examines how Britain coped with this decline and fall of Empire and the extent to which Empire promoted not so much globalization but 'Anglobalization'.