Abstract:World history, as well as empire, has provided a unique opportunity for the field of British history. Scholars like Tony Hopkins have convincingly argued that imperialism provided the best entre to th...World history, as well as empire, has provided a unique opportunity for the field of British history. Scholars like Tony Hopkins have convincingly argued that imperialism provided the best entre to the history of globalization. Scholars of Atlantic Studies have succeeded in creating a new field that engages the interactions of trade, migration and cultural exchange around the Atlantic ocean that include Britain, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The British World conception, however, expands the boundaries of this investigation further, and proposes an intellectual symbiosis that moves beyond questions of the metropole and the periphery. Scholars of the British World understand the interplay of knowledge, culture, and historical events from an almost endless integration of indigenous and western experience that is as wide as the world itself. They make the claim that almost no part of the globe can be understood without exploring the domestic, imperial and world-wide interactions of Britain—British citizens, the British Diaspora, and British subjects of every race, sex, creed, and orientation. From this imperial synthesis, which went far beyond the formal empire, new knowledge, new culture, and new interactions resulted in much of the global civilization that we call the modern world. British Scholar did not invent the British World category, though it plays a major role in expanding its definition and application. In the last 10 years a flowering of conferences has captured this idea in part. There have been numerous British World Conferences, in addition to other conferences focused on informal empire, environmentalism, and other approaches too numerous to list. But the British World conception has expanded beyond the laudable, but still limited idea of including the settler colonies as a central part of the imperial investigation. Scholars are following the logic of linking the investigation of Britain and the modern world, and this in turn has now led to the British World conception as a new field of global history. British Scholar Vol. II, Issue 2, 177-80, March 2010Read More
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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