Andrew S Thompson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3782483 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew S Thompson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew S |
| FAMILY NAME | Thompson |
| SIGNATURE | THOMPSON A S |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 41 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 4 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 41 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Britain and decolonization in an Era of Global Change
This chapter considers processes of decolonization in Britain’s ‘empires’, incorporating discussion not just of the key dynamics and manifestations of decolonization in the colonial empire in India, Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere, but also in Britain’s residual ‘informal’ empire in the Middle East, and in the ‘old’ Commonwealth countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. The chapter argues that decolonization across these d…
Global Wars and Decolonization in East and South-East Asia (1937–1954)
This chapter discusses how, between 1937 and 1954, two global conflicts combined to affect the course of East and South-East Asian decolonization profoundly—the Second World War and the Cold War. It covers how the Americans gained the upper hand in the region from 1945 by occupying Japan alone (unlike in Germany) and how the Chinese communist victory in 1949 and Mao’s alliance with Stalin a few months later readjusted the balance. It explains how…
Nationalism, Development, and Welfare Colonialism: Gender and the Dynamics of Decolonization
Much has been written on multiple aspects of gender and empire since the 1980s, but its importance in the ending of empires has, however, been accorded less attention, although gender continued to be highly significant in understanding the dynamics of decolonization. Decolonization was, and still is, represented as a process where the key actors were male development experts, politicians, and colonial officials who negotiated the post-colonial fu…
Anti-Colonialism: Origins, Practices, and Historical Legacies
Anti-colonialism as a historical phenomenon defies easy categorization. Despite its use as an expression across a range of academic disciplines, it resists simple definitions of practical form, political scope, and empirical content due to the ubiquity of anti-colonial thought and activism across time and geography. It is arguably one of the oldest forms of political conduct in the basic sense of opposing foreign domination. Yet, in most cases, i…
France: The Longue Durée of French Decolonization
This chapter reviews the course of French decolonization by taking a long view of the central ideological tenets of French colonialism and the cultural ideas that underpinned governmental practice. The chapter also explores ideas of imperial structure, constitutional structures, and the basic architectures of French colonial rule. It looks at specific examples of French colonial areas, including Algeria, Indochina, and the Caribbean, as well as t…
Empire by Imitation? US Economic Imperialism within a British World System
Most comparative studies of the British and American empires focus on the pre-1945 British Empire and the post-1945 American Empire. The tendency to avoid contemporaneous studies of the two empires suggests that there may be more differences than similarities between them, particularly when examining their imperial trade policies from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. For those studies attempting such comparisons, the so-called Open Do…
Islamic Revolutionaries and the End of Empire
This chapter examines the global history of Islamic movements in anti-imperial struggles, spanning from West Africa to Southeast Asia. It demonstrates that Islamic movements, ranging from messianic to reformist groups, were at the very centre of the struggles against the European empires across the lands of Islam. It traces the diverse forms of anti-colonial resistance adopted by the various Islamic movements, including violent opposition, which …
Remnants of Empire
In the 1960s, as large swathes of the British Empire had either achieved independence or were on the verge of doing so, the UK government commissioned a survey of the smaller territories and attempted to find ways of decolonizing them. It was keen to avoid criticism from the international community, particularly the United Nations Organization. However, Britain’s withdrawal from empire is still not complete, and a number of islands and the Gibral…
Literature and Decolonization
The recasting of decolonization through the lens of cultural agents demands a recognition that a key element of the process of uncoupling colonizer and colonized involves the imagination (or re-imagination) of postcolonial futures. These practices take place in novels, poetry, and theatre as much as they do in law, philosophy, or political theory. An expanded focus on the cultures of decolonization emphasizes, at the same time, the transnational …
Unravelling the Relationships between Humanitarianism, Human Rights, and Decolonization: Time for a Radical Rethink?
Humanitarianism, human rights, and decolonization have each generated their own historiography. This chapter demonstrates how their histories were so closely entangled that they are barely comprehensible when studied in isolation. The central argument is that the post-colonial world was forged at the intersection of these three post-war geopolitical forces, and that the study of human rights and humanitarianism enable us to see decolonization in …
The End of Empire in the Maghreb: The Common Heritage and Distinct Destinies of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia
This chapter devotes itself to explaining the dichotomy in the paths to decolonization followed by the French territories in the North African Maghreb: Morocco and Tunisia, compared to Algeria. The seminal event of the end of the French Empire, the Algerian war of independence was terribly bloody, and its most extreme acts of violence were concentrated within Algeria. Its impact on French society was profound: the long-term engagement of French t…
The Caribbean in an International and Regional Context: Revolution, Neo-Colonialism, and Diaspora
In terms of demography, ecology, culture, and politics, the modern Caribbean is rooted in a hybrid/creole past. This is significant because many theorists have identified the local as the antithesis of the global and parochial sentiment as a key motive for resistance to globalization. The destruction of the indigenous Caribbean society and the repopulation of the islands in the aftermath of the European conquests made the notion of a Black Atlant…
The Collapse of the Romanov Empire
This chapter considers the changing approaches adopted after the October Revolution towards Russia’s ethnic minority populations alongside efforts to construct a shared Russian or Soviet national identity within what remained a culturally diffuse land empire. Politicians and historians have produced multiple narratives of the collapse of the Romanov empire. The initial history of the Bolsheviks stressed the role of the national movements against …
Apologies, Restitutions, and Compensation: Making Reparations for Colonialism
Coming to terms with an imperial past has involved difficult and often divisive questions of how far the inhabitants of former imperial powers should accept responsibility for the deeds of their predecessors, how far back into the past one might go to remedy such injustices, and what happens when the reparative demands of injured parties conflict with the security and well-being of others. This chapter looks at a range of cases and claims for res…
Exceptional Italy? The Many Ends of the Italian Colonial Empire
Both the history of Italian colonialismand its end have often been seen as exceptional. Depending on the opinions of different historians, the Italian colonial empire was either built too late or remained too small to be compared to the large overseas possessions of other European imperial powers, such as Portugal, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom. Focusing on the particularities of an Italian Empire built in East Africa and in Libya, this c…
The First Postcolonial Nation in Europe? The End of the German Empire
Contrasting the ‘early’ decolonization imposed on defeated Germany after World War I with the subsequent creation of a Nazi Empire, dismantled after years of war and occupation, this chapter examines what made Germany’s twentieth century colonialism and its aftermath so different. It briefly points out why historians and politicians have ignored or downplayed Germany’s colonial past. It then looks at the variety of ways in which colonialism shape…
Postcolonial Migrations to Europe
The global dynamics of decolonization set in train a whole matrix of mobility that in turn transformed European social and political trajectories. Ostensibly a moment in which empire vanished, metropole and colony in fact switched roles—the massive inward migration of formerly colonized peoples now made the major cities of Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands much more ethnically diverse. This chapter examines the debates these…
Repressive Developmentalism: Idioms, Repertoires, and Trajectories in Late Colonialism
The politics of planning development and the planning of politics were intertwined facets of late colonialism. This chapter shows that planning socio-economic development was a paramount political act, and that it was a form of imagining and enacting imperial permanence, both formal and informal. Idioms, repertoires, and techniques of developmentalism—and its close cousin, welfarism—became integral to the plural trajectories that constituted the …
Portugal: Decolonization without Agency
This chapter examines the singularities of Portuguese decolonization by contrasting Salazarist ideas of ‘lusotropicalism’ and ‘pluricontinentalism’ with the widespread turn to insurgent violence that heralded the rebellions of the early 1960s that ultimately tore the empire apart. If the term ‘decolonization’ is taken to imply a policy actively pursued by the colonial power, its use in relation to Portugal in 1974-75 may be problematic. Portugal’…
Rethinking Empire: Lessons from Imperial and Post-Imperial Japan
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the world’s territory was carved into a handful of colonial empires. With few exceptions, the so-called ‘new imperialism’ of these years incorporated states into the world system either as colonizers or colonized. Japan’s case was unusual: the country started out as a victim of imperialism in the nineteenth century, but became an aggressor in the twentieth. Accounts of Japan’s empire have …
Beyond Dependency: North–South Relationships in the Age of Development
This chapter examines the degree of continuity and rupture between the colonial/post-colonial divide in Africa, and argues that the years between 1930 and the 1970s constitute a single, world historical period in which state-directed and managed plans for economic and social advancement were shared widely among colonial, national, and international organizations and states. It examines important shifts and breaks that occurred throughout the peri…
Refugees and the End of Empire
The major Empires that collapsed during the twentieth century produced successor states which developed new forms of exclusivist nationalist ideologies which identified, and often expelled, sectors of their populations that did not possess the right ethnic ‘credentials’. This process first manifested itself with the end of the Ottoman Empire, where successor states in the Balkans ‘exchanged’ populations while the newly nationalist rump Turkey eli…
Film and the End of Empire: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Colonial Pasts and their Legacy in World Cinemas
The social, political and economic upheavals that marked the end of empire were mediated through the medium of film, while film was used to present new post-war conceptions of empire—for example, based on partnership and development. This chapter will examine how film was used to represent, legitimize and prolong colonial rule, within and beyond Europe. It will use the subject of film to open up wider questions of how culture could operate variou…
The Eclipse of Empire in China: From the Manchus to Mao
China’s end of empire, as elsewhere, was a protracted process, the ramifications of which are still being felt, and its imperial situation was especially complex. From the middle of the nineteenth-century onwards, more than a dozen foreign powers acquired an imperial foothold in China but none secured (and rarely sought) anything more than small pockets of territorial jurisdiction until the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945. This chapter considers t…
Decolonization in Tropical Africa
The end of empire in Africa was not a single moment separating independence from colonial rule, but a prolonged time of uncertainty extending from the immediate aftermath of World War II through 1994’s end of white rule in South Africa. Colonial empire was a moving target, adjusting to new situations and pressures. African political activists were not limited to creating independent states as expressions of a particular national sentiment. Some s…
The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title w…
Imperial Business Interests, Decolonization, and Post-Colonial Diversification
This chapter scrutinizes the ways in which corporations with substantial colonial interests both anticipated and reacted to decolonization. In particular, it focuses on patterns of co-operation with post-colonial governments and the strategies of commercial diversification adopted in order to conserve regional stakes in emerging economies. Temporarily exhilarated by the Second Colonial Occupation as European imperial regimes refortified the siege…
The Impact of the South African War
This exciting new book marks a major shift in the study of the South African War. It turns attention from the war's much debated causes onto its more neglected consequences. An international team of scholars explores the myriad legacies of the war - for South Africa, for Britain, for the Empire and beyond. The extensive introduction sets the contributions in context, and the elegant afterword offers thought-provoking reflections on their cumulati…
Britain's Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century
Introduction 1. Britain as a Global Power in the Twentieth Century 2. From the Empire of Christ to the Third World: Religion and the Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century 3. The Empire Comes Home: Commonwealth Migration to Britain 4. The Empire and British Politics 5. The Empire/Commonwealth in British Economic Thinking and Policy 6. Social Life and Cultural Representation: Empire in the Public Imagination 7. Empire, Nation, and National …
Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, C. 1850-1914
Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics, c. 1880-1932
This new study considers the impact of the empire upon modern British political culture. The economic and cultural legacy of empire have received a great deal of attention, but historians have neglected the effects of empire upon the domestic British political scene. Dr Thompson explores economic, demographic, intellectual and military influences and he shows how parliamentary and party opinion interacted with imperial ideas and interests in the …
Empire, migration and identity in the British world
This volume brings together established scholars with a new generation of migration and transnational historians. Their work weaves together the ‘new’ imperial and the ‘new’ migration histories, and explores the interplay of migration within and between the local, regional, imperial, and transnational arenas
Writing imperial histories
Introduction - Andrew Thompson 1. The MacKenziean moment in retrospect (or how one hundred volumes bloomed) - Stuart Ward 2. The power of culture and the cultures of power: John MacKenzie and the study of imperialism - Cherry Leonardi 3. Sex matters: Sexuality and the writing of colonial history - Robert Aldrich 4. Exploration, the environment, and empire - Dane Kennedy 5. Spatial concepts and the historical geographies of British colonialism - A…
On the Side of the Angels: Canada and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
When it comes to upholding human rights both at home and abroad, many Canadians would like to believe that we have always been “on the side of the angels.” This book tells the story of Canada’s contributions – both good and bad – to the development and advancement of international human rights law at the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) from 1946 to 2006. The CHR gave Canada the opportunity to forge a reputation as a human rights leader. This boo…
Violence, Insurgency, and the End of Empires
There are three macro-level actors typically identified in the connection between contested decolonization, escalating levels of violence, and shrinking civilian spaces: the imperial authorities that resisted pressure to withdraw, settler populations wedded to white minority rule, and the anti-colonial nationalist groups determined to impose social control. This chapter discusses how reductive explanations of this type begin to unravel as soon as…
Imperial Business Interests, Decolonization, and Post-Colonial Diversification
This chapter scrutinizes the ways in which corporations with substantial colonial interests both anticipated and reacted to decolonization. In particular, it focuses on patterns of co-operation with post-colonial governments and the strategies of commercial diversification adopted in order to conserve regional stakes in emerging economies. Temporarily exhilarated by the Second Colonial Occupation as European imperial regimes refortified the siege…
The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title w…
Britain and decolonization in an Era of Global Change
This chapter considers processes of decolonization in Britain’s ‘empires’, incorporating discussion not just of the key dynamics and manifestations of decolonization in the colonial empire in India, Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere, but also in Britain’s residual ‘informal’ empire in the Middle East, and in the ‘old’ Commonwealth countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. The chapter argues that decolonization across these d…
Global Wars and Decolonization in East and South-East Asia (1937–1954)
This chapter discusses how, between 1937 and 1954, two global conflicts combined to affect the course of East and South-East Asian decolonization profoundly—the Second World War and the Cold War. It covers how the Americans gained the upper hand in the region from 1945 by occupying Japan alone (unlike in Germany) and how the Chinese communist victory in 1949 and Mao’s alliance with Stalin a few months later readjusted the balance. It explains how…
Nationalism, Development, and Welfare Colonialism: Gender and the Dynamics of Decolonization
Much has been written on multiple aspects of gender and empire since the 1980s, but its importance in the ending of empires has, however, been accorded less attention, although gender continued to be highly significant in understanding the dynamics of decolonization. Decolonization was, and still is, represented as a process where the key actors were male development experts, politicians, and colonial officials who negotiated the post-colonial fu…
Anti-Colonialism: Origins, Practices, and Historical Legacies
Anti-colonialism as a historical phenomenon defies easy categorization. Despite its use as an expression across a range of academic disciplines, it resists simple definitions of practical form, political scope, and empirical content due to the ubiquity of anti-colonial thought and activism across time and geography. It is arguably one of the oldest forms of political conduct in the basic sense of opposing foreign domination. Yet, in most cases, i…
France: The Longue Durée of French Decolonization
This chapter reviews the course of French decolonization by taking a long view of the central ideological tenets of French colonialism and the cultural ideas that underpinned governmental practice. The chapter also explores ideas of imperial structure, constitutional structures, and the basic architectures of French colonial rule. It looks at specific examples of French colonial areas, including Algeria, Indochina, and the Caribbean, as well as t…
Empire by Imitation? US Economic Imperialism within a British World System
Most comparative studies of the British and American empires focus on the pre-1945 British Empire and the post-1945 American Empire. The tendency to avoid contemporaneous studies of the two empires suggests that there may be more differences than similarities between them, particularly when examining their imperial trade policies from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. For those studies attempting such comparisons, the so-called Open Do…
Islamic Revolutionaries and the End of Empire
This chapter examines the global history of Islamic movements in anti-imperial struggles, spanning from West Africa to Southeast Asia. It demonstrates that Islamic movements, ranging from messianic to reformist groups, were at the very centre of the struggles against the European empires across the lands of Islam. It traces the diverse forms of anti-colonial resistance adopted by the various Islamic movements, including violent opposition, which …
Remnants of Empire
In the 1960s, as large swathes of the British Empire had either achieved independence or were on the verge of doing so, the UK government commissioned a survey of the smaller territories and attempted to find ways of decolonizing them. It was keen to avoid criticism from the international community, particularly the United Nations Organization. However, Britain’s withdrawal from empire is still not complete, and a number of islands and the Gibral…
Literature and Decolonization
The recasting of decolonization through the lens of cultural agents demands a recognition that a key element of the process of uncoupling colonizer and colonized involves the imagination (or re-imagination) of postcolonial futures. These practices take place in novels, poetry, and theatre as much as they do in law, philosophy, or political theory. An expanded focus on the cultures of decolonization emphasizes, at the same time, the transnational …
Unravelling the Relationships between Humanitarianism, Human Rights, and Decolonization: Time for a Radical Rethink?
Humanitarianism, human rights, and decolonization have each generated their own historiography. This chapter demonstrates how their histories were so closely entangled that they are barely comprehensible when studied in isolation. The central argument is that the post-colonial world was forged at the intersection of these three post-war geopolitical forces, and that the study of human rights and humanitarianism enable us to see decolonization in …
The End of Empire in the Maghreb: The Common Heritage and Distinct Destinies of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia
This chapter devotes itself to explaining the dichotomy in the paths to decolonization followed by the French territories in the North African Maghreb: Morocco and Tunisia, compared to Algeria. The seminal event of the end of the French Empire, the Algerian war of independence was terribly bloody, and its most extreme acts of violence were concentrated within Algeria. Its impact on French society was profound: the long-term engagement of French t…
The Caribbean in an International and Regional Context: Revolution, Neo-Colonialism, and Diaspora
In terms of demography, ecology, culture, and politics, the modern Caribbean is rooted in a hybrid/creole past. This is significant because many theorists have identified the local as the antithesis of the global and parochial sentiment as a key motive for resistance to globalization. The destruction of the indigenous Caribbean society and the repopulation of the islands in the aftermath of the European conquests made the notion of a Black Atlant…
The Collapse of the Romanov Empire
This chapter considers the changing approaches adopted after the October Revolution towards Russia’s ethnic minority populations alongside efforts to construct a shared Russian or Soviet national identity within what remained a culturally diffuse land empire. Politicians and historians have produced multiple narratives of the collapse of the Romanov empire. The initial history of the Bolsheviks stressed the role of the national movements against …
Apologies, Restitutions, and Compensation: Making Reparations for Colonialism
Coming to terms with an imperial past has involved difficult and often divisive questions of how far the inhabitants of former imperial powers should accept responsibility for the deeds of their predecessors, how far back into the past one might go to remedy such injustices, and what happens when the reparative demands of injured parties conflict with the security and well-being of others. This chapter looks at a range of cases and claims for res…
Exceptional Italy? The Many Ends of the Italian Colonial Empire
Both the history of Italian colonialismand its end have often been seen as exceptional. Depending on the opinions of different historians, the Italian colonial empire was either built too late or remained too small to be compared to the large overseas possessions of other European imperial powers, such as Portugal, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom. Focusing on the particularities of an Italian Empire built in East Africa and in Libya, this c…
Political science (40 works) · Law (39 works) · History (36 works) · Politics (34 works) · Colonialism (30 works) · Empire (29 works) · Decolonization (28 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Ancient history (21 works) · Political economy (19 works)