Global

histories a student journal

From Imperial Science to Post-Patriotism: The Polemics and Ethics of British Imperial History Emma Gattey

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/GHSJ.2021.357

Source: Global Histories, Vol. 6, No. 2 (January 2021), pp. 90-101. ISSN: 2366-780X

Copyright © 2021 Emma Gattey

License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publisher information: ‘Global Histories: A Student Journal’ is an open-access bi-annual journal founded in 2015 by students of the M.A. program Global History at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. ‘Global Histories’ is published by an editorial board of Global History students in association with the Freie Universität Berlin.

Freie Universität Berlin Global Histories: A Student Journal Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut Koserstraße 20 14195 Berlin

Contact information: For more information, please consult our website www.globalhistories.com or contact the editor at: [email protected]. From Imperial Science to Post-Patriotism: The Polemics and Ethics of British Imperial History

by EMMA GATTEY

90 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 E m a G t e y ABSTRACT

Through a brief intellectual biography of British imperial history,

| this article examines and expands upon recent academic F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P demands for a renovated ‘professional ethics’ of history. It also tracks new developments in global environmental historiography, and asks how global and imperial historians can best acquit themselves of their professional and ethical responsibilities in the Anthropocene. The ideological operation of imperial history was manifest in the racist self-justification of imperialism and its associated policies of dispossession,

exploitation, genocide, and assimilation, as disseminated o s t - P through British imperial history taught at Oxbridge in the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. But it is also present, if a t r i o s m less obvious, in the transnational histories of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which tend to ignore climate change. The latter strand of imperial history thus functions to disguise or vindicate the political and economic interests of the Global North in failing to mitigate and adapt to further climate change, and the resulting crises which will be disproportionately borne by the states and citizens of the Global South. This article argues that in order to identify the harms of empire—both epistemic and physical, past and ongoing—imperial history must address the role of empire-building in the origins and trajectory of the climate crisis.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emma Gattey is a first-year PhD student in History at the University of Cambridge. Her current work focuses on Māori activist-intellectuals and their participation in transnational anticolonial networks in the late twentieth century. She is a writer and literary critic from Aotearoa New Zealand, a former barrister, and has studied law and history at the University of Otago, and Global and Imperial History at the University of Oxford.

Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 91 From its inception in the work. However, these historians’ late nineteenth century, the field of entreaties are marked by their a t r i o s m British imperial history was intended own positionality, one which o s t - P to provide ideological and practical focuses on ideological and political support for empire. Although this battlegrounds between polities and sub-discipline has evolved through empires, at the expense of a truly multiple theoretical ‘turns’ in recent global focus on the most pressing decades, inevitably affected by the planetary conjuncture of our time: methodological developments in the climate crisis, and its enduring global history, imperial history is connections with empire. This still used to naturalise global power essay summarises these debates, F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P | structures as well as geopolitical and which have long tended to sidestep economic imparities. It is also used environmental and climatic concerns, to criticize these same hierarchies, before surveying recent global but as several global and imperial histories which have closely analysed E m a G t e y historians have remarked, there are the interconnections between serious ethical challenges associated empire and climate change. Paying with tethering history to policy, and closer attention to the dialectics of to public understandings of the past. world-ecology,2 these new works of To meet these challenges, Richard scholarship signal a tipping point in Drayton and Dane Kennedy have global environmental historiography. urged academics to adopt a ‘post- Taking Drayton and Kennedy’s patriotic’, self-reflective imperial demands for a ‘professional ethics’ history, one which transcends of history as a springboard, this ideology.1 Well-known scholars essay argues that historians must within the burgeoning sub-discipline expand our professional ethical of global and imperial history, and agenda to a fully global, or planetary, with extensive publications on scale. This essay recognises the the history of science, race, and ‘special responsibilities’ of global and British imperialism, both Drayton imperial historians to spur a post- and Kennedy have cast a keen imperial ‘global studies’ movement.3 methodological eye towards global It highlights our related obligations history’s longevity, morality and to be self-reflexive about our impact. This is no doubt meaningful practices and positionality, and to expose presentist, ideological claims about the past.4 But it also takes 1 Richard Drayton, “Where Does the World these arguments further, in order to Historian Write From? Objectivity, Moral Conscience and the Past and Present of Imperialism,” Journal of Contemporary History 46, no. 3 (July 2011): 684, https:// 2 See Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in www.jstor.org/stable/41305352; Dane the Web of Life: Ecology and the Kennedy, “The Imperial History Wars,” Accumulation of Capital (London: Verso, Journal of British Studies 54 (January 2015). 2015): 5–22, https://doi.org/10.1017/ 3 Drayton, “Human Future,” 158, 166-9. jbr.2014.166. 4 Kennedy, “Imperial History Wars,” 5-6, 22.

92 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 E m a G t e y augment both the discipline itself and associated with imperialism during the public response to anthropogenic the interwar period,9 imperial history, climate change. In short, to identify too, was a crucial weapon in the

| the harms of empire, imperial history pedagogical arsenal of empire.10 F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P must address the role of empire- From the late twentieth century, in building in the origins and trajectory the wake of postcolonial studies, of the climate crisis. The twenty-first deconstructionism and structuralism, century ‘professional ethics’ of history anticolonial critiques have spread demands nothing less. to encompass anthropology and ethnography. Both disciplines have grappled with issues of appropriation, AN ‘IMPERIAL SCIENCE’? decolonisation and representation, o s t - P

often being equated with colonial a t r i o s m Assuming ‘specifically ideology.11 Imperial history, however, imperial roles’ by training colonial has not faced the same degree of administrators in both theory and external critique and disciplinary praxis, select British universities soul-searching. Since each of these became ‘stakeholders in Empire’ disciplines had such a formative and an integral part of ‘the position in shaping racist knowledge, apparatus of Britain’s imperial their practitioners bear a special system’.5 Within this apparatus, responsibility to acknowledge imperial history served as both past wrongs and to reorient and ideological justification for empire decolonise methodologies for the and colonization, and as an integral present and future.12 part in the training programme Against this evolving for colonial administrators.6 The background of intra-disciplinary twentieth-century consolidation politics, several leading historians of colonial rule in Britain’s newer have stepped into the breach. colonies in Africa led to, amongst Drayton has repeatedly traced the other things, the inauguration of intellectual genealogy of British Colonial Service training at Oxford imperial history as a ‘patriotic and Cambridge in 1926.7 Both universities developed particular expertise in the emergent subfield of 9 Stockwell, British End, 27. 10 8 Dane Kennedy, “Imperial History and imperial and Commonwealth history. Post-Colonial Theory,” The Journal of Although anthropology became Imperial and Commonwealth History 24, the social science most intimately no. 3 (September 1996): 345, https://doi. org/10.1080/03086539608582983. 11 Nicholas Thomas, The Return of Curiosity: What Museums are Good for in the 5 Sarah E. Stockwell, The British End of the Twenty-first Century (London: Reaktion British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge Books, 2016), 12, 20. University Press, 2018), 7-8, 23. 12 See Gurminder K Bhambra, Dalia 6 Stockwell, British End, 26-7. Gebrial and Kerem Nişancioğlu (eds.), 7 Stockwell, British End, 23. Decolonising the University (London: Pluto 8 Stockwell, British End, 27, 30. Press, 2018).

Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 93 enterprise’ which inflicts both British polity.’17 The scholarship of Sir epistemic and physical violence by Reginald Coupland, Beit Professor of a t r i o s m obscuring the role of coercion and Colonial History at Oxford (1920-1948), o s t - P violence in the expansion of empire.13 epitomises the ideological defence of Writing most recently as Rhodes empire. Coupland spoke and wrote of Professor of Imperial History at King’s the British Empire as an honourable College London, Drayton’s self- trustee: a benevolent force in the described polemics are animated by world, operating according to ‘the a sense of professional responsibility doctrine of trusteeship’.18 In this view, to interrogate this historiographical he was no outlier. In 1942, Oxford’s past.14 Drawing a direct line between Registrar Sir Douglas Veale wrote to F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P | the ‘national chauvinism and pro- Sir Ralph Furse, Director of Service imperial sentiment’ of John Seeley’s Recruitment at the Colonial Office, The Expansion of England and assuring him that at Oxford, cadets the twenty-first century imperialist would be exposed to ‘objective’ E m a G t e y hagiography of the Scottish-American scholarly assessments of Britain’s popular historian Niall Ferguson,15 imperial record, but would still believe Drayton also examines the earliest in ‘the value of what they are doing … incumbents of the endowed chairs at that on the whole the British Empire Oxford, who adopted and preached has been a beneficent Institution’.19 a ‘uniformly benign view of British Clearly, this training involved the imperium’.16 very antithesis of ‘objective’ historical While conceding that the scholarship. Imperial history was an Oxford programme was attractive extension of, and even a monument in its chronological and geographic to, the benevolent spread of British scope (the centuries-long timeframe cultural, socio-political, and economic and worldwide focus of colonial systems. history), Drayton argues that this history was ‘wholly subordinated to the psychological needs of the

17 Richard Drayton, “Imperial and Commonwealth History: A Genealogy” 13 Drayton, ‘Where Does the World Historian (address to Modern History Faculty, Write From?,” 675. See also Richard Oxford, 29 October 1997): 7-8. Drayton, “Imperial History and the Human 18 See Reginald C. Coupland, The Empire in Future,” History Workshop Journal 74, These Days: An Interpretation (London: no. 1 (Autumn 2012): 156-172, https://doi. Macmillan, 1935). For a critique of the org/10.1093/hwj/dbr074. mandate system of the League of Nations 14 Drayton, “Human Future,” 158. and its successor, the trusteeship system 15 Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian under the United Nations, see Antony Write From?,” 672, 675. For an account Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the of Ferguson’s neo-imperialist history, see Making of International Law (Cambridge: Pankaj Mishra, ‘Watch This Man’, London Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch 3. Review of Books, 33/21 (3 November 2011) 19 Bodleian Library, Oxford University https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n21/ Archives, UR 6/Col/6, Sir Douglas Veale to pankaj-mishra/watch-this-man. Sir Ralph Furse, 11 September 1942, cited 16 Drayton, “Human Future,” 157. in Stockwell, British End, 34.

94 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 E m a G t e y HISTORIOGRAPHICAL Still, this ostensibly ‘anti-ideological EVOLUTION turn’ could not, of course, transcend ideology.22 By refocusing attention

| Predictably, the on indigenous agents and the F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P historiographical pendulum ‘submerged’ histories of specific swung on. Co-authors and leading peripheries,23 Gallagher and Oxbridge historians of imperial Robinson’s thesis insulated the and commonwealth history, Jack imperial core and ‘the national story’ Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, from association with overseas challenged this patriotic orthodoxy violence.24 from the 1950s. Through their work, In 1984, David Fieldhouse they extended the scope of imperial (arguably once the world’s ‘leading o s t - P 25 history beyond formal empire imperial economic historian’) a t r i o s m and recognised the colonized as and the American historian Robin agents of historical change.20 Not Winks separately diagnosed needing the subject-recognition of the fragmentation—presumably academic observers, Indigenous irreparable—of imperial history in the and other colonized peoples had aftermath of decolonization.26 Both long recognised themselves as historians saw the field dissolving agents of historical change and into nationalist histories in service creators of historical meaning.21 of the new nation-states. However,

20 Jack Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, (eds.), Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic the World of Franz Boas (New Haven, History Review 6, no. 1 (August 1953): 1-15, 2018), pp. 3-41. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.1953. 22 Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian tb01482.x; Ronald Robinson and John Write From?,” 677-8. Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The 23 Gallagher and Robinson, “Imperialism of Official Mind of Imperialism (London: Free Trade,” 1. Macmillan, 1957). Gallagher (1963-70) and 24 Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian Robinson (1971-87) were successive Beit Write From?,” 678. Professors of Commonwealth History at 25 Peter Burroughs, ‘David Fieldhouse Oxford. Gallagher went on to become and the Business of Empire’, in Peter Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial Burroughs and A.J. Stockwell (eds.), and Naval History at the University of Managing the Business of Empire: Essays Cambridge (1971-80). in Honour of David Fieldhouse (London: 21 See, for scant but significant examples, Routledge, 1998), 7. Makereti, The Old-Time Maori (London, 26 David Fieldhouse, “Can Humpty-Dumpty 1938; repr. Auckland, 1986); Te Rangihiroa, Be Put Together Again? Imperial History ‘The Coming of the Maori’, in Cawthron in the 1980s,” Journal of Imperial Lectures: Volume II (Nelson, 1925), pp. and Commonwealth History 12, no. 17-57. For analysis, see Jane Carey, ‘A 2 (January 1984): 9–23, https://doi. “Happy Blending”? Māori Networks, org/10.1080/03086538408582657; Robin Anthropology and “Native” Policy in New W. Winks, “Problem Child of British History: Zealand, the Pacific and Beyond’, in Jane The British Empire-Commonwealth,” in Carey and Jane Lydon (eds.), Indigenous Recent Views on British History: Essays Networks: Mobility, Connections and on Historical Writing Since 1966, ed. R. Exchange (New York, 2014), pp. 184-215; Schlatter (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Lorado Wilner University Press, 1984): 451–92.

Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 95 these have proved premature ‘colonization’) of postcolonial theory,30 eulogies. From the 1980s onwards, imperial historians have increasingly a t r i o s m subjecting itself to turn after turn, adopted its innovations and dialectics o s t - P imperial history has constantly to assess the cultural, discursive, regenerated its field of inquiry and and racist dimensions of imperial methodology through interaction power.31 Drawing on structuralist, with other disciplines.27 As part of the deconstructivist and postmodernist social and cultural turns of the 1980s, strands of literary theory, Said’s imperial history has extended its critical analysis revealed the imperial sphere of concern and methodology sciences of Orientalism as disciplines by borrowing from comparative yoked to the imperial project of F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P | literature, historical anthropology, constructing an Oriental ‘Other’ and feminist history and gender history.28 thus, in opposition, constructing This brings us to the font of the Occidental ‘Self’.32 This analysis postcolonial studies: the influential has helped imperial historians E m a G t e y literary and cultural critic, Edward to understand the creation and Said. Flowing from Said’s seminal preservation of cultural hegemony. text, Orientalism, postcolonial theory In another foundational postcolonial revealed that imperial power is not text, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, the reducible to material phenomena, literary scholar and critical feminist but endures as an epistemological theorist Gayatri Spivak similarly system sustaining relations of argued that the geopolitical and power which have far outlasted economic hegemony of ‘the West’ political decolonization.29 Racist is not a miracle of parthenogenesis. power relations remain one of the Indeed, ‘to buy a self-contained most salient, violent vectors of the version of the West is to ignore intersectional harms of imperial its production by the imperialist legacies. Although initially hostile project’.33 As a corrective to this to the perceived encroachment (or epistemic violence, Spivak advocated for ‘counterhegemonic ideological production’, to be achieved through

27 See Christopher Bayly, Imperial Meridian: rigorous ideological analysis of forms The British Empire and the World, of representation.34 1780-1830 (London: Longman, 1989); Peter J. Cain and Antony G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-2000 (Harlow: Longman, 2002); Linda Colley, Britons: 30 Kennedy, “Imperial History,” 346. Forging the Nation, 1707-1820 (London: 31 Kennedy, “Imperial History Wars,” 9. Pimlico, 2003). 32 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: 28 See, for example, Philippa Levine, ed., Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 21, 27. Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford 33 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the University Press, 2004); Dipesh Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson Postcolonial Thought and Historical and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana, IL: Difference (Princeton: Princeton University University of Illinois Press, 1988), 86. Press, 2000). 34 Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” 69, 29 Kennedy, “Imperial History,” 347. 75.

96 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 E m a G t e y The discipline continued to Popular historical texts reverberate evolve, with a fresh turn in the 1990s in public and political attitudes to the to ‘new imperial history’, marked by past and therefore influence opinions

| a theoretical shift from the notion of on the use of coercion and power F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P unilateral subjugation to concepts abroad.38 of networks and connections. Historians working under this novel approach challenge the metropolitan/ PROFESSIONAL ETHICS colonial binary and maintain that both colonizer and colonized must Instead of passive or active be studied, because ‘Britain’s collusion with the imperial project, relationship with its empire was Drayton calls for ‘post-patriotism’ in o s t - P 35 mutually constitutive’. imperial history, one which rejects a t r i o s m Drayton argues, however, that false ‘nostalgia and teleology’.39 although these successive ‘turns’ are Setting a professional ethical agenda, not sanguine accounts of empire, Drayton suggests that historians nor are they sufficiently sanguinary. have ‘special responsibilities’ to In their metaphysical focus on galvanize a post-imperial ‘global ‘epistemic violence’, historians studies’ movement, which is both have ignored the reality of physical interdisciplinary and collaborative violence throughout imperial history.36 across universities.40 Within this The ethical implications of writing project, world (or global) history post-colonial global and imperial ought to lead the way. All historians history are significant, because while ought to recognise the constitutive academic historians remain silent power of how they narrate the story on violence, the ideological project of the past, which shapes the very of imperialism is ongoing in both form of the present.41 explicit and more insidious, discursive Kennedy similarly emphasizes ways. Pro-imperial views of the past, the global historian’s two-pronged Drayton suggests, have obvious obligations: (i) to be self-reflexive political valence in the contemporary about our practices, or ‘self-aware era of imperial violence and terror.37 of our own subject positions’, recognising how our specific

35 Kennedy, “Imperial History Wars,” 9; see Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, 38 Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian “Between Metropole and Colony: Write From?,” 680. Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in 39 Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Write From?,” 684. Bourgeois World, eds. Frederick Cooper 40 Drayton, “Human Future,” 158, 166-9. and Ann Stoler (Berkeley, CA: University of An ethical scholarly agenda remarkably California Press, 1997), 1. fulfilled in Catherine Hall’s ‘Legacies of 36 Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian British Slave-Ownership’ Project: “The Write From?,” 680. Database”, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ 37 Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian project/details/. Write From?,” 676. 41 Drayton, “Human Future,” 166-7.

Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 97 temporal and spatial settings inform This focus on ideology our scholarship; and (ii) to expose ignores the longer-term violence a t r i o s m presentist, ideologically weighted humankind has inflicted on the planet o s t - P claims about the past and to through greenhouse gas emissions, illuminate the agendas such claims a process inextricably connected are intended to serve.42 These dual with the British empire, the primary professional ethics will improve the causes of industrialization, the rise discipline itself, by revealing ‘the of manufacturing, and the global forces that have helped to ensure extraction and exploitation of natural that British imperial history retains its resources.47 This position ignores relevance today’.43 the interconnections between F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P | exploitation of the environment, labour, social reproductive A PLANET-SIZED BLINDSPOT? capacity, women and children, and the violence inflicted on E m a G t e y And yet, these clarion calls various constructed categories for a professional ethics of global of ‘Other’. This is grimly similar to and imperial history are incomplete. the denunciation of the ‘planetary Oddly, their blind spot is the globe analytic’ of the Anthropocene for itself.44 In their self-avowedly its erasure of histories of racism, polemical and provocative works, slavery, and violent dispossession.48 Kennedy and Drayton show no Too much is omitted; too many are consciousness of physical space. omitted. This position also ignores With their focus being political— the global carbon imbalance, specifically, with the ‘Military whereby developing countries of Intellectual Complex’45—they neglect the Global South have contributed to engage with the interrelated far less to human-induced climate history of climate, colonization and change (with certain areas even empire. In so doing, they forgo acting as carbon sinks at various the role of imperialism in critically periods) than developed countries, endangering the biosphere, and yet are far more likely to geosphere, atmosphere, in the blink experience the worst of the climate of a geological eye.46 crisis, and sooner.49 One would

42 Kennedy, “Imperial History Wars,” 5-6, 22. the Course of Global History: A Rough 43 Kennedy, “Imperial History Wars,” 22. Journey (New York: Cambridge University 44 Julia Adeney Thomas, “The Present Press, 2014), 452. Climate of Economic History,” in Economic 47 Brooke, Climate Change, 470. Development and Environmental History 48 Kathryn Yusoff, A Billion Black in the Anthropocene: Perspectives on Asia Anthropocenes or None (Minneapolis: and Africa, ed. Gareth Austin (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 2-8. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 294-8. 49 Brooke, Climate Change, 487-8. See also 45 Drayton, “Where Does the World Historian J.R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Great Write From?,” 674. Acceleration. An Environmental History of 46 John L. Brooke, Climate Change and the Anthropocene Since 1945 (Cambridge,

98 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 E m a G t e y assume that the scientific consensus of this magnitude, amongst other on climate change would be salient methodological shifts, we need to to practitioners of global and imperial forge a decolonized, egalitarian

| history,50 particularly given the global and imperial history. Such F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P parallels with other metanarratives a history would examine climate and concepts within the field. For change ‘from below the elite level’, example, these inequities mirror include perspectives from the Global the self-perpetuating, inequitable South, and chart diverse ‘experiences and racist international division of climate against a human history of labour that was consolidated that is built on a scaffolding of following the Great Divergence.51 inequality’.53 However, most imperial historians Increasingly, global o s t - P are silent about the Anthropocene historians are addressing the a t r i o s m and the connections of empire to nexus between empire, colonialism the current climate crisis. Even when and climate change. One of the anthropogenic climate change is leading voices is the postcolonial the subject of historical analysis, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty.54 In racist global power hierarchies are his influential article, ‘The Climate paid insufficient attention. Indeed, of History’, Chakrabarty observes Pasifika scholars have described that historians must revise many this inattention to differentiated of their fundamental assumptions climate burdens and historical and procedures in this era of the responsibility as a ‘feeling of Anthropocene, in which ‘humans helplessness’ comparable to ‘former have become geological agents, colonies in Oceania being colonised changing the most basic physical a second time’.52 To study a topic

Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard and Tuvalu,” in Pacific Futures: Projects, University Press, 2014), 1-6, 155-205; Politics, and Interests, ed. Will Rollason and Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 228. Pasifika Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, is a collective term used to refer to MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). individuals/communities of Cook Island, 50 Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Māori, Niuean, Fijian, Tongan, Samoan Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: and other South Pacific nations. It includes Harvard University Press, 2003), 142- Island-born, New Zealand-raised or New 192; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Zealand-born and Island-raised people. Change (IPCC), Global Warming of 1.5°C. 53 Nancy J Jacobs, Danielle Johnstone and An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts Christopher S Kelly, ‘The Anthropocene of Global Warming of 1.5°C Above Pre- from Below’, in Antoinette Burton and industrial Levels (2018). Tony Ballantyne (eds.), World Histories 51 See Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great From Below: Disruption and Dissent, Divergence: China, Europe, and the 1750 to the Present (London: Bloomsbury, Making of the Modern World Economy 2016), 197. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 54 Most recently, in Dipesh Chakrabarty, The 2000), 11, 21-4. Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global 52 Vilsoni Hereniko, “The Human Face of and Planetary Histories (Oxford: Oxford Climate Change: Notes from Rotuma University Press, 2018).

Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 99 processes of the Earth’.55 However, studies reveal intimate, necessarily Chakrabarty’s advocacy of an longue durée linkages between a t r i o s m undifferentiated ‘species history’ has the industrialisation, fossil-fuel o s t - P both obscured global asymmetries combustion, and exploitative socio- in responsibility for climate change political structures underpinning both and deflected attention from the imperialism and climate change. intersections of imperialism and To master the empirical data environmental degradation.56 and multi-scalar nature of climate Through the lenses of the Great change, many academics have Divergence, postcolonial theory, argued that historians need renewed and ‘climatic orientalism’,57 along concepts and methodologies.59 F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P | with other concepts and themes Within existing analytical frameworks, of global history, John Brooke, however, global historians have Andreas Malm, Corey Ross and demonstrated that the discipline is other historians have shown that the well-equipped to assess the complex E m a G t e y two dovetailing forms of violence— role of imperialism in causing and epistemic and physical—are mutually intensifying climate change. Thus, reinforcing within the history of global historians ought to continue empire and climate change.58 These contributing to this inherently interdisciplinary, transnational field. The focus of ‘new imperial history’ 55 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of on circuits of material, economic History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry, 35, no. 2 (2009): 197-222, https://doi. and scientific exchange between— org/10.1086/596640. as well as within—empires is a 56 Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg, promising lens for examining the “The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative,” histories of atmospheric science The Anthropocene Review 1, no. and change beyond national frames 1 (January 2014): 64, https://doi. of reference.60 More scholarship is org/10.1177/2053019613516291. 57 Fabien Locher and Jean-Baptise Fressoz, “Modernity’s Frail Climate: A Climate History of Environmental Reflexivity,” Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power: Critical Inquiry 38, no. 3 (Spring 2012): 587, A Global History of the Environment https://doi.org/10.1086/664552. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 58 Brooke, Climate Change; Jason W Moore, 2008), 152; Naomi Klein, This Changes Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate and the Accumulation of Capital (London: (London: Penguin Books, 2015); Naomi Verso, 2015); Jason W Moore (ed.), Klein, On Fire: The Burning Case for a Anthropocene or Capitalocene: Nature, Green New Deal (London: Allen Lane, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism 2019). (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016); Andreas 59 Chakrabarty, “Climate of History”; Jorge Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam E. Viñuales, The Organisation of the Power and the Roots of Global Warming Anthropocene: In Our Hands? (Leiden: (London: Verso, 2016); Andreas Malm, Brill, 2018), 24; Thomas, “Present Climate,” The Progress of This Storm (London: 297-8. Verso, 2018); Corey Ross, Ecology and 60 See Alan Lester, “Imperial Circuits and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and Networks: Geographies of the British the Transformation of the Tropical World Empire,” History Compass 4, no. 1, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); (January 2006): 124–41, https://doi.

100 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2020 E m a G t e y required on intra- and inter-imperial examine all forms of empire as they forces and processes of exchange are connected to global warming and which stimulated and exacerbated the present climate crisis.

| global warming, work which F r o m I p e i a l S c n t P transcends dyadic core-periphery models of imperial relationships in order to understand the interrelation of climate and empire. In order to identify the harms of empire—both epistemic and physical, past and ongoing—imperial history must address the role of o s t - P empire-building in the origins and a t r i o s m trajectory of the climate crisis. Much of British imperial history has been directly involved in the ideological defence and perpetuation of slavery, empire, and the colonial project. While imperial history has grappled with its ideological underpinnings insofar as they relate to international geopolitical and economic inequities and contemporary violence, it has yet to engage fully with the intersections of empire and climate change. To resolve the seemingly internecine ‘family quarrel’ of imperial history, ‘self-reflection’ is a recurring prescription.61 But the current global moment requires a rallying point beyond the self, beyond party politics, beyond arbitrary national borders, and beyond clashes of civilization. To ‘speak truth unto power—power in the present and not simply in the past’,62 historians must

org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00189.x. 61 Durba Ghosh, “Another Set of Imperial Turns?,” The American Historical Review 117, no. 3 (June 2012): 774, https://doi. org/10.1086/ahr.117.3.772. 62 Linda Colley, “The Difficulties of Empire: Research 79, no. 205 (2006): 382, https:// Present, Past and Future,” Historical doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2006.00395.x.

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