Dr David Patrick (University of the Free State), ‘The Wrong Kind of Genocide? Anglo-American Press Coverage of Rwanda, 1994’
On Thursday 10 December 2015 Dr David Patrick (University of the Free State) will present a paper entitled ‘The Wrong Kind of Genocide? Anglo-American Press Coverage of Rwanda, 1994’. The presentation forms part of the Centre for the History of Colonialisms’ occasional seminar programme and will take place at 5pm in Woolf College, seminar room 6.
Professor Fransjohan Pretorius (University of Pretoria), ‘Jan Smuts in the Boer War: The beginning of his sanguine years’
On 16 October 2015 Professor Fransjohan Pretorius (University of Pretoria) will present a paper entitled ‘Jan Smuts on the Boer War: The beginning of his sanguine years’. The presentation forms part of the Centre for the History of Colonialisms’ occasional seminar programme and will take place at 5pm in Rutherford College, seminar room 5.
All are welcome to attend.
On 14 October 2015, the Centre for the History of Colonialisms’ director, Giacomo Macola, will deliver one of the ‘Africa Talks’ seminars (full programme details) to the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham.
His paper – ‘Firearms in Nineteenth-Century Central Africa: A Revisionist History’ – presents the main conclusion of his forthcoming monograph: The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2016). Marrying the insights of Africanist historiography with those of consumption and science and technology studies, the paper adopts a culturally sensitive perspective that encompasses both the practical and the symbolic attributes of firearms. Informed by the view that the power of objects extends beyond their immediate service functions, the paper presents Africans as agents of technological re-innovation who understood guns in terms of their changing social structures and political interests.
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Bai Bureh, one of the rebel leaders in the 1898 Hut Tax War
In September 2015, Christine Whyte participated in a workshop on colonial violence at Queen Mary University, London organised by Dr Kim Wagner. Her paper, ‘”A very carnival of slaughter” Charles Braithwaite Wallis and the counter-insurgency campaign in Sierra Leone’ analysed the form and nature of colonial violence in the so-called Hut Tax War of 1898 in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone. It closely examined the memoir and ‘bush-fighting guide’ of colonial commander, Charles Braithwaite Wallis for insight into why the repression of the revolt took a particularly brutal turn in the summer of 1898.
The workshop, ‘Cultures of Colonial Violence and Warfare’ broadly addressed the question: ‘What was ‘colonial’ about colonial violence and counter-insurgency?’ brought together scholars working on various aspects of colonial violence, from the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 to murders in colonial Indochina.
Gitxsan Totem Pole (1960), Thunderbird Park, Victoria, BC, Canada. Carved by Mungo Martin, Henry Hunt, and Tony Hunt
In June 2015, Emily Manktelow organised a panel at the 2015 Society of the History of Children and Youth conference in Vancouver on the topic of: ‘Imagining Colonial Futures: Children and the Politics of Belonging in the British Colonial World’. Christine Whyte also participated in this panel, which highlighted the the role of colonial children in imagining imperial futures. The panel placed childhood experiences, and adult expectations, at the heart of British imperial history, and reflected upon the importance of histories of childhood in the politics of imperial belonging. As such it explored children’s relationship with empire, with race and difference, and with the idea and practice of the colonial lives. Christine and Emily were joined by Onni Gust (Nottingham) and local talent Laura Ishiguro (UBC) and the papers, which spanned from the remote plains of colonial British Columbia to the crowded streets of 19th-century Bombay, sparked a lively debate about the relationships between colonial settings, ideas about the future and the role of children.
PANEL: Imagining Colonial Futures: Children and the Politics of Belonging in the British Colonial World.
SHCY Eighth Biennial Conference Program University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Wednesday, June 24 – Friday, June 26, 2015
University of British Columbia, Canada
The University of Kent’s Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies will be hosting a one-day, interdisciplinary conference on 22 May 2015. The conference, organised by Maria Ridda (University of Kent), Enrique Galvan-Alvarez (International University of La Rioja) and Ole Birk Laursen (University of Copenhagen), will include a keynote lecture from Priyamvada Gopal of the University of Cambridge.
Scholars working in the disciplines of history, literature, political science, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, human geography, religious studies and other related areas have been invited to submit proposals reflecting an interdisciplinary approach on the following themes:
More information can be found on the conference’s website and Facebook page.
Professor William Gervase Clarence-Smith will deliver a paper, ‘Animals of War in the Middle East, 1914-18’, to the Centre on Tuesday 10 February at 17.00 in Woolf Seminar Room 3. Tea, coffee and biscuits available for attendees.
Professor Clarence-Smith is Professor of the Economic History of Asia and Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is also the Chief Editor of the Journal of Global History and the author of, inter alia, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery(London : Hurst, 2006).
More information about Professor Clarence-Smith can be found on his SOAS profile page.
The Centre is proud to host its second annual lecture. Entitled ‘The Uganda Museum and the History of Heritage in Africa’, the lecture will be delivered at 17.00 on Friday 6 March in Grimond Lecture Theatre 2 by Professor Derek Peterson. The lecture will be followed by a wine reception.
Derek Peterson was Senior Lecturer in Cambridge and he is now Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Michigan. His latest monograph, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), has been awarded the African Studies Association’s Herskovits Prize and the American Historical Association’s Martin Klein Prize. Professor Peterson has also edited collections of a wide range of subjects: from Idi Amin’s Uganda to history-writing in colonial Africa, passing through the politics of British slave abolition. He is one of the three editors of the New African Histories book series at Ohio University Press.
More information about Professor Peterson can be found on his University of Michigan profile page.