Race Gender Class Colonial Power

AY2022/2023 Semester 1

British colonialism had important impacts upon colonized societies and understanding colonialism is important to understanding our contemporary post-colonial moment. This course examines the ways different forms of colonial power intersected with race, gender and class. With a focus on the British Empire, we will look at the manner in which colonial governments sought to settle, trade, govern, 'civilise,' know, and link the Empire. Students will enter into debates about the nature of British colonial power: was it a unified project or unstable, violent or intimate? We will analyse the relationship between the British metropole and the colonies, including the flow of ideas, people and goods within imperial networks and the 'counterflows' from colonial sites back to Britain. This course also asks how colonised people interacted with British colonial governments and institutions and how race, class and gender structured interactions between and amongst the colonisers and the colonised. We will examine everyday strategies colonised people adopted, from challenging colonial power to collaboration, as well as look at settler and anti-imperialist nationalisms. This course will examine `settler colonies' and `exploitation colonies' across the globe, but will have particular focus on colonies in Asia and the Pacific.