EUH/WOH5934 Topics in European/World History: Empire
Spring 2013
Office hours: Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 and by appt
DESCRIPTION
This course introduces students to the historiography, current debates, and various topics in the study of empires and imperialism. We will examine a wide a range of early modern and modern empires, with special attention to the empires of the Ottomans, Britain, and France. Students will be required to work on a semester-long research project concerning some aspect of the history of imperialism.
OBJECTIVES
>Familiarize students with the historiography of empires and imperialism by closely examining how historians and other scholars have studied empires. What are the central categories of analysis, primary methodologies, and main debates? What accounts for the current resurgence in the study of empires? How are historians currently writing the history of empires?
>Provide an opportunity for students to hone their skills in designing and executing research projects
>Help prepare students for the world history minor field
>Discuss and explore ways to teach undergraduates about the history of empires
REQUIRED TEXTS
Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)
Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850 (Anchor, 2004)
Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism 1880-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)
Tim Parsons, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
plus articles, chapters, and selections available online and on ARES
ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING
>historiographical essay [15%] – in a 5-7-page paper explore at least one topic we cover during Weeks 1-4 in light of the historiography of your research topic
>intellectual biography (including bibliography) [15%] – write a 4-5-page paper tracing the intellectual genealogy and biography of one established scholar, preferably of British history, who has taken the “imperial turn” (potential subjects include Catherine Hall, Linda Colley, David Cannadine, Richard Price, Martin Wiener, Emma Rothschild, John Mackenzie…). Connect the scholar’s trajectory to the topics and issues discussed during Weeks 1-6. Include a complete bibliography. Note: subject must be approved by the professor.
>undergraduate assignment design [10%] – drawing on Burbank and Cooper’s Empires in World History and primary sources related to your research topic, design an assignment for undergraduates enrolled in WOH 4264 Empires and Imperialism
>
research paper (including lead-up assignments) [40%]:
topic statement [1-2 pages]
prospectus [2-3 pages plus bibliography of primary and secondary sources]
progress report [in class – 5-10 minutes]
conference presentation [15 minutes, plus Q&A]
final paper [c.20 pages]
>participation [20%] – attendance and punctuality; engagement with texts and with seminar participants; contributions that are clear, direct, and on point and that take our conversations in productive directions
SCHEDULE
Theorizing Empires and Imperialism
Week 1 Jan 8 Course introduction/ early studies
Karl Marx, “The Future Results of British Rule in India” (1853) [Works of Karl Marx]
John A. Hobson, “Imperialism” (1902) [Modern History Sourcebook]
V. I. Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism” (1916) Preface + Sections VI, VII, X [Modern History Sourcebook]
John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” The Economic History Review New Series 6, 1 (1953): 1-15 [link]
Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: a sketch for a theory of collaboration” (1972) in William Roger Louis, ed., Imperialism: The Robinson and Gallagher Controversy (New York, 1976), 128-51 [pdf (NB: pdf is from a different edition so page numbers are different)]
Week 2 Jan 15 Definitions/Concepts/Theories
Trevor R. Getz and Heather Streets-Salter, “Introduction,” Modern Imperialism and Colonialism: A Global Perspective (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2011), 1-15 [pdf]
Patrick Wolfe, “History and Imperialism: A Century of Theory, from Marx to Postcolonialism,” American Historical Review 102, 2 (Apr 1997): 388-402
Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)
Part I “Introduction: Colonial Questions, Historical Trajectories,” and Chapter 1, “The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Colonial Studies, 1951-2001”
> TOPIC STATEMENT DUE
Week 3 Jan 22 The Postcolonial Critique
Dane Kennedy, “Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 24, 3 (1996): 345-363 [link]
Edward Said, Orientalism (NY: Vintage Books, 1978), selections [link]
Gyan Prakash, “Orientalism Now,” History and Theory 34, 3 (October 1995): 199-212
Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography,” Nepantla: Views from South 1, 1 (2000): 9-32 [link]
Subaltern Studies bibliography
Week 4 Jan 29 Gender and Empire
Catherine Hall, “Feminism and Feminist History,” in White, Male, and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (London: Routledge, 1992): 1 – 40 [link]
Ann Laura Stoler, “Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (1992): 514-51
Summarize and assess (1-2 pages) one chapter from any of the following edited volumes. Please circulate to the listserv or bring hard copies to class.
*Chaudhuri and Strobel, eds, Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington, 1992)
*Clancy-Smith and Gouda, eds, Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville, 1998)
*Pierson and Chaudhuri, eds, Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race (Bloomington, 1998)
*Midgley, ed, Gender and Imperialism (Manchester, 1998)
*Burton, ed, Gender, Sexuality, and Colonial Modernities (NY, 1999) [not at UF]
Catherine Hall, “Introduction,” Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002): 1-22 [link]
Durba Ghosh , “Decoding the Nameless: Gender, Subjectivity, and Historical Methodologies in Reading the Archives of Colonial India,” in Kathleen Wilson, ed, A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 297-316 [link]
Recommended:
Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis?” AHR 91, 5 (Dec 1986)
Philippa Levine, “Introduction,” Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1-13
> HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY DUE (Feb 1)
Moving beyond the Nation
Week 5 Feb 5 Oceanic history
Antoinette Burton, "Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating 'British' History," Journal of Historical Sociology 10, 3 (Sept 1997): 227-248
Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), Introduction [Google Preview] and Conclusion [link]
Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” AHR 111, 3 (2006): 741-57
Examine one bibliography in the Atlantic History section of Oxford Bibliographies Online.
David Abulafia, "What is Mediterranean History?" in The Mediterranean in History (Thames and Hudson, 2003): 11-32 [pdf]
Week 6 Feb 12 Imperial Turns
Shula Marks, “History, the Nation and Empire: Sniping from the Periphery,” History Workshop Journal 29 (Spring 1990): 111-19 [pdf]
Richard Price, "One Big Thing: Britain, Its Empire, and Their Imperial Culture," Journal of British Studies 45, 3 (Jul 2006): 602-27
Durba Ghosh, “Another Set of Imperial Turns?” and Gary Wilder, “From Optic to Topic: the Foreclosure Effect of Historiographic Turns,” AHR 117, 3 (June 2012)
Gregory A. Barton, “Toward A Global History of Britain” Perspectives (Oct 2012) [link]
Recommended:
Antoinette Burton, “Rules of Thumb: British History and ‘Imperial Culture’ in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Britain,” Women’s History Review 3, 4 (1994): 483-500
NACBS Report on the Future of British Studies (1999) [link]
> INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY DUE
Week 7 Feb 19 Empires and World History, I
Jerry Bentley, "The Task of World History," Oxford Handbook of World History (Oxford: OUP, 2011) [pdf]
AHR Conversation on Transnational History (December 2006) [link]
Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History, chapters 3, 4, 6, and Conclusion
"The Future of the Discipline," Perspectives (December 2012) [link]
-see especially articles by Frederick Cooper, Lisa Lindsay, Mae M. Ngai, and Joan W. Scott
Recommended:
Patel, Kirna Klaus. “Transnational History,” European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History (2011) [link]
> PROSPECTUS DUE FRIDAY
Week 8 Feb 26 Empires and World History, II
Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History, chapters tba
> UNDERGRADUATE ASSIGNMENT DUE
Week 9 Spring Break
Practicing Imperial History
Week 10 Mar 12
Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Alan Mikhail and Christine M. Philliou, "The Ottoman Empire and the Imperial Turn," Comparative Studies in Society and History54, 4 (2012): 721-745.
Week 11 Mar 19
Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850 (Anchor, 2004)
> PROGRESS REPORTS (GROUP A)
Week 12 Mar 26
Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
> PROGRESS REPORTS (GROUP B)
Week 13 Apr 2 Research week
Week 14 Apr 9
J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism 1880-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)
Week 15 Apr 16
Tim Parsons, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
Week 16 Apr 23 Class conference
> FINAL PAPER DUE Apr 26