Professor Alan Lester will present his paper, titled ‘Governing the Nineteenth Century British Empire’, at this week’s History Seminar (Wednesday, 11am).

Abstract:

This paper presents some preliminary findings from the Leverhulme Trust funded project ‘Snapshots of Empire’. We have analysed all correspondence coming into and going out of the Colonial Office and East India Company (later India) Office for the years 1838, 1857 and 1879, to develop a more realistic picture of what imperial governance entailed, everywhere and all at once, during moments of the British Empire’s formation. Emphasising simultaneity rather than chronological succession, we focus on the themes of freedom, crisis and liberalism, examining how they played out differently across the empire during these moments.