Empire and Decolonization

This class examines the global history of empire and decolonization, focusing on the case studies
of the Spanish Empire from the nineteenth century and the British Empire in the twentieth
century. These two great empires the first running from the 15th to the 19th centuries, the
second from the 18th to the 20th are often contrasted as opposites: Where the Spanish Empire
is seen as the great bastion of medieval Catholicism, the British Empire is taken as Protestant and
liberal. Where the first is thought of as founded through conquest and war, the second is often
described as taking place through settlement and commerce. Where Spain defended its
dominion in the name of God, imagining the Americas as a staging ground for a biblical crusade,
Britain justified its empire with law and reason.
This course will question these oppositions, examining how both colonial projects of rule, and
the nationalist movements that emerged against them, helped create the ideas and institutions
associated with liberalism and democracy. Both empires, and their dismantling, created a
political map that continues to structure much of the globe: The breakup of the Spanish Empire
created nations in Spanish America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific (the Philippines), while
decolonization in the British Empire gave rise to nations in the modern Middle East, South Asia
(India, Pakistan, Burma, Bangladesh), Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa), Europe
(Ireland), and North America (Canada and the United States).
We will examine shifts in society, culture, and economy across these empires from different
perspectives: colonial agents, religious groups, the middle and educated classes, women and
peasants, and the many-faceted struggles for independence. Secondary sources (books and
articles) will be read in conjunction with primary sources (political treatises, short-stories) that
speak to the more general issues at hand: imperial states and economies, political identities and
nationalism, collective memory and violence, and the presence of the colonial past in postcolonial societies.