This historical monograph offers a unique look at the independence movement in Tunisia, during French colonial rule, from a perspective largely neglected by scholars: the voice of the students who were major participants. The experience of Tunisia's students lends to a better comprehension of the relationship between Western education and the inception and development of a nationalist movement. James Natsis takes a sweeping look at student/youth associations and organizations from their beginnings in 1896 to independence in 1956. The theoretical framework of this study is based on colonial educational policy and its resulting effects on conflict theory and alienation theory. Natsis also considers the impact of external influences such as Communism and Pan-Arabism.

This collection fills the need for a resource that adequately conceptualizes the place of non-European histories in the larger narrative of world history. These essays were selected with special emphasis on their comparative outlook. The chapters range from the British Empire (India, Egypt, Palestine) to Indonesia, French colonialism (Brittany and Algeria), South Africa, Fiji, and Japanese imperialism. Within the chapters, key concepts such as gender, land and law, and regimes of knowledge are considered.

This book is an in-depth study of the importnace of the Empire-Commonwealth in the two decades after WWII for Britain's self-image as a great power. By studying a wide range of debates on general and specific imperial problems, the book highlights the "official mind" of decolonization - and of late imperialism.

"Betts is to be commended on his careful and insightful elucidation of the complex and novel sets of dilemnas now facing the British people at a time of superficial calm masking serious divisions."--"Albion"
The erosion of British sovereignty, national identity and culture, the subversion of its history and traditions, and the demoralization of its institutions and public services, are a source of increasing unease to many. The process began, Betts argues, with the end of the colonial empires. Since the beginning of the last decade, concern about the consequences has been heightened by global instability. The demise of the Communist empire, the rise of national independence movements, and the eruption of long standing and bitter ethno-national conflicts have resulted in a mass migration of economic refugees and asylum seekers to Britain and other Western nations.
In Britain, public attitudes are ambivalent. In part this is a consequence of the promotion of the myth of the multiracial Commonwealth, the regional devolution of the United Kingdom, and the transition from a European Economic Union into a politically federalized European super-state. Britain's national interests have become secondary to those of the United Nations and an inchoate and unwilling international community. Influenced by an outmoded UN Convention on Refugees and the lack of a consistent immigration policy and failure of those immigration controls that do exist, gradual but major political, social, and cultural shifts have occurred without the express consent of the majority of the British electorate. Virtually all public debate by the government and by politicians on these issues has been taboo, effectively silenced by fear of being accused of xenophobia, discrimination, and racism. The result is cynicism and disenchantment with the political process as a whole.
Betts's objective is to promote responsible and informed discussion of these issues. In the absence of this, he warns, we risk the twilight of a harmonious British society, diminished pride in British institutions and national identity, and competing and conflicting separatist ethnic, racial, and cultural claims. "Twilight of Britain" will be of interest to general readers, those interested in modern Britain and Europe, as well as sociologists, political scientists, and philosophers.
G. Gordon Betts was educated in the Universities of Cambridge, Birmingham, Greenwich, and Kent at Canterbury. He is a chartered chemical engineer, having spent his professional career with a major British oil company in the petrochemical industry.

The standard image of the Raj is of an aloof, pampered and prejudiced British elite lording it over an oppressed and hostile Indian subject population. Like most caricatures, this obscures as much truth as it reveals. The British had not always been so aloof. The earlier, more cosmopolitan period of East India Company rule saw abundant 'interracial' sex and occasional marriage, alongside greater cultural openness and exchange. The result was a large and growing 'mixed-race' community, known by the early twentieth century as Anglo-Indians. Notwithstanding its faults, Empire could never have been maintained without the active, sometimes enthusiastic, support of many colonial subjects. These included Indian elites, professionals, civil servants, businesspeople and minority groups of all kinds, who flourished under the patronage of the imperial state, and could be used in a 'divide and rule' strategy to prolong colonial rule. Independence was profoundly unsettling to those destined to become minorities in the new nation, and the Anglo-Indians were no exception. This refreshing account looks at the dramatic end of British rule in India through Anglo-Indian eyes, a perspective that is neither colonial apologia nor nationalist polemic. Its history resonates strikingly with the complex identity debates of the twenty-first century.

Drawing from a range of materials, including religious texts, women's literature, field interviews, historical archives, critical theories, and rap music, this book offers important critiques of the way religious and feminist knowledge is constructed. This text looks at white feminist theology and its misunderstanding of Native North American women, Chinese footbinding, and veiling by Muslim women, as well as the Jewish emancipation in France, the symbolic dissection of black women by rap and sermons, and the potential to rewrite and reclaim religious stories. This important reassessment of religious studies offers new visions for the development of anti-colonialist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist discourses of liberation.

A study of the first three decades of British rule in Hong Kong, focusing on the troubled and controversial process of establishing a British colony at Hong Kong and on the reception of British rule by people in the region.

The history of European nation-building and identity formation is inextricably connected with museums, and the role they play in displaying the acquired spoils and glorious symbols of geopolitical power in order to mobilize public support for expansionist ventures. This book examines the contemporary debate surrounding the museum in postcolonial Europe.

Although there is no consensus on the European colonial experience, the process of decolonization in Europe has involved an examination of the museum's place, and ethnic minorities and immigrants have insisted upon improved representation in the genealogies of European nation-states. Museological practices have been subjected to greater scrutiny in light of these political and social transformations. In addition to the refurbishment and restructuring of colonial-era museums, new spaces have also been inaugurated to highlight the contemporary importance of museums in postcolonial Europe, as well as the significance of incorporating the perspective of postcolonial European populations into these spaces.

This book includes contributions from leading experts in their fields and represents a comparative trans-historical and transcolonial examination which contextualises and reinterpretates to the legacies and experiences of European museums.

This book was published as a special issue of Africa and Black Diaspora: An International Journal.

Imperial Networks investigates the discourses and practices of British Colonialism. It reveals how British colonialism in the region was informed by, and itself informed, imperial ideas and activities elsewhere, both in Britain and in other colonies.
Drawing on materialist South African historiography, postcolonial theory and geographical conceptions, imperial Networks examines:
* the origins and early nineteenth century development of the three interacting discourses of colonialism - official, humanitarian and settler
* the contests, compromises and interplay between these discourses and their proponents
* the analysis of these discourses in the light of a global humanitarian movement in the aftermath of the antislavery campaign
* the eventual colonisation of the Xhosa and the construction of colonial settler identities.
Imperial Networks introduces students to key debates in the historiography of nineteenth century South Africa, as well as in materialist and postcolonial constructions of the past.

Travel writing, it has been said, helped produce the rest of the world for a Western audience. Could the same be said more recently of so-called "postcolonial" writing? In "The Postcolonial Exotic," Graham Huggan examines some of the processes by which value is given to postcolonial works within their cultural field. Using both literary-critical and sociological methods of analysis, Huggan discusses both the exoticist discourses that run through postcolonial studies, and the means by which postcolonial "products" are marketed and domesticated for Western consumption. This timely and challenging volume examines everything from well-meaning multiculturalism, tourism, and pseudo-anthropology, to the Booker prize, anthologies, and academic texts. It points to the urgent need for a more carefully grounded understanding of the processes of production, dissemination and consumption that have surrounded the rapid development of the postcolonial field.

'A living testimony to Sartre as a significant anti-colonial figure, with not only an analytic brain but ethical precepts worthy of emulation. It provides a detailed and massively well-informed insight into French Colonial policies in Algeria.' - Human Nature Review

The Gordonia region of the Northern Cape province has received relatively little attention from historians. In Hidden Histories of Gordonia: Land dispossession and resistance in the Northern Cape, 1800-1990, Martin Legassick explores aspects of the generally unknown 'brown' and 'black' history of the region. Emphasising the lives of ordinary people, his writing is also in part an exercise in 'applied history' - historical writing with a direct application to people's lives in the present. Tracing the indigenous history of Gordonia as well as the northward movement of Basters and whites from the western Cape through Bushmanland to the Orange River, the book presents accounts of family histories, episodes of indigenous resistance to colonisation, and studies of the ultimate imposition of racial segregation and land dispossession on the inhabitants of the region. A recurrent theme is the question of identity and how the extreme ethnic fluidity and social mixing apparent in earlier times crystallised in the colonial period into racial identities, until with final conquest came imposed racial classification.

Author Biography:
Richard Allen is a Senior Lecturer in Literature at The Open University, Harish Trivedi is Professor of English at the University of Delhi.

Perhaps no two nations in modern times have had a more complex cultural engagement than imperial Britain and colonised India. This unique anthology of stories, poems, historical documents and extracts from novels - most unavailable elsewhere - enables readers to examine the cultures of these two countries in an integrated way.
Introductory chapters by Richard Allen and Harish Trivedi and others set out agendas for reconsideration of classic texts from the period. Major themes include:
The British nation and the colonies
Literature, nation and revolution
Poetry and nation
Liberal dilemmas in England and India
Gandhian nationalism
Independence and after
Post-colonial hybridity
Literature and Nation helps readers understand how critical thinking in the post-colonial area has developed. It also extends the field of post-colonial studies by presenting fresh primary materials translated into English from other languages. It is essential reading for all those interested in Britain and India, in colonial and post-colonial discourse, and in the interface of literature and history.

Nishapuri flourished in the 12th century and wrote a succinct history in Persian of the Saljuq Turks, a tribal group from Central Asia who in the 11th century established a vast empire, enduring for some century and a half and bringing about lasting changes to the ethnic composition and the patterns of land utilisation in the northern tier of the Middle East.

Defenders of the Union is a concise and readable overview of the history and contentious politics of Unionism and the affect it has had on Anglo-Irish relations over the last two hundred years. It is an essential guide to this confusing topic and covers key areas such as:
* definition of unionism
* establishment of the union
* Unionist literature
* loyalists since 1972.

Rhodesia's illegal Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 is an act that not only shaped regional politics but also had a profound effect on Britain's attempt to retreat from its empire. This edited collection brings together leading voices in the field, whose contributions - on the role of finance, 'big business', and the regional and international actors involved in the country's negotiated independence - update long-held historiographical wisdoms, signalling a revival in economic and diplomatic explanations for the country's decolonisation. In particular, they shed fresh light on the role(s) played in the decolonisation of Zimbabwe by economic (private business) and political (liberation movements, Western and Southern African governments) actors that until now have been studied with very limited access to primary sources. As scholarship on Zimbabwe is currently dominated by studies that seek to understand the 'crisis' in which the country has recently found itself, this collection acts as a clarion call that reinforces the importance of studies of earlier historical processes. In doing so, the book provides a more nuanced understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between Zimbabwe's colonial and postcolonial history, and examines the roles played by external governments and individuals in the decolonisation of Zimbabwe. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.

In his new book, Bill Ashcroft gives us a revolutionary view of the ways in which post-colonial societies have responded to colonial control. The most comprehensive analysis of major features of post-colonial studies ever compiled, "Post-Colonial Transformation": * demonstrates how widespread the strategy of transformation has been
* investigates political and literary resistance
* examines the nature of post-colonial societies' engagement with imperial language, history, allegory, and place
* offers radical new perspectives in post-colonial theory in principles of habitation and horizonality.
"Post-Colonial Transformation" breaks new theoretical ground while demonstrating the relevance of a wide range of theoretical practices, and extending the exploration of topics fundamentally important to the field of post-colonial studies.

Author Biography:
Pal Ahluwalia is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Adelaide. He has written extensively on African Politics and post-colonial theory. His most recent publication, with Bill Ashcroft, is Edward Said: The Paradox of Identity, also published by Routledge.

This ground-breaking book makes sense of the complexities and dynamics of post-colonial African politics, illustrating how post-colonial theory has marginalised a huge part of its constituency, namely Africa.
Politics and Post-colonial Theory traces how African identity has been constituted and reconstituted by examining movements such as
* negritude
* the rise of nationalism
* decolonisation
and questions how helpful post-colonial analysis can be in understanding the complexities which define institutions such as
* the nation-state
* civil society
* human rights
* citizenship
Politics and Post-colonial Theory bravely breaks down disciplinary boundaries. Its radical vision will be essential reading for all those engaged in Politics, post-colonial studies and African studies.

The problems investigated in this collection had lasting consequences not only in the field of colonialism but in international politics as well. Decolonization and the Cold War, which brought about the most significant changes to global policits after 1945, are treated together.

When he was elected President in 1845, James K. Polk was only 49 years old-at that time the youngest president ever to be elected. He faced a conflicted nation on the verge of tremendous territorial expansion. James K. Polk's four years in office marked the greatest period of territorial acquisition in the history of the country-what New York journalist John O'Sullivan termed as the 'Manifest Destiny' of the United States to expand across the continent. By the end of Polk's presidency in 1849, U.S. possessions included the California, Oregon, and New Mexico territories. In addition, Texas had become part of the Union. This book analyzes Polk's political career and his role in each of these territorial expansions. James K. Polk: A Clear and Unquestionable Destiny shows that they were far more complex than the moral crusade that had been labeled 'Manifest Destiny.' Southern planters wanted to protect their 'peculiar institution' of slavery by adding new territories from which slave states would be carved. Commercial interests feared that war with England over any of these territories would adversely impact upon the nation's trade. Although the Oregon boundary dispute was settled with little friction, the Mexican War erupted after the annexation of Texas. This fascinating biography of our eleventh president and his successful efforts for expansion of U.S. territory will be of interest to students studying United States history, foreign policy, and the massive territorial expansion in the 1840s known as Manifest Destiny.

When he was elected President in 1845, James K. Polk was only 49 years old-at that time the youngest president ever to be elected. He faced a conflicted nation on the verge of tremendous territorial expansion. James K. Polk's four years in office marked the greatest period of territorial acquisition in the history of the country-what New York journalist John O'Sullivan termed as the 'Manifest Destiny' of the United States to expand across the continent. By the end of Polk's presidency in 1849, U.S. possessions included the California, Oregon, and New Mexico territories. In addition, Texas had become part of the Union. This book analyzes Polk's political career and his role in each of these territorial expansions. James K. Polk: A Clear and Unquestionable Destiny shows that they were far more complex than the moral crusade that had been labeled 'Manifest Destiny.' Southern planters wanted to protect their 'peculiar institution' of slavery by adding new territories from which slave states would be carved. Commercial interests feared that war with England over any of these territories would adversely impact upon the nation's trade. Although the Oregon boundary dispute was settled with little friction, the Mexican War erupted after the annexation of Texas. This fascinating biography of our eleventh president and his successful efforts for expansion of U.S. territory will be of interest to students studying United States history, foreign policy, and the massive territorial expansion in the 1840s known as Manifest Destiny.

By reinterpreting the way that Korean reformers confronted the process of modernization/Westernization between 1880 and 1910, this study challenges the "failure thesis" which maintains that subsequent Japanese colonization is an indication that the early modernization process in Korea was unsuccessful.