Product Description

This work explores the lives of people of sub-Saharan Africa and their descendants, how they were shaped by empire, and how they in turn influenced the empire in everything from material goods to cultural style. The black experience varied greatly across space and over time. Accordingly, thirteen substantive essays and a scene-setting introduction range from West Africa in the sixteenth century, through the history of the slave trade and slavery down to the 1830s, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century participation of blacks in the empire as workers, soldiers, members of colonial elites, intellectuals, athletes, and musicians. No people were more uprooted and dislocated; or travelled more within the empire; or created more of a trans-imperial culture. In the crucible of the British empire, blacks invented cultural mixes that were precursors to our modern selves - hybrid, fluid, ambiguous, and constantly in motion. SERIES DESCRIPTION The purpose of the five volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire was to provide a comprehensive study of the Empire from its beginning to end, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history. The volumes in the Companion Series carry forward this purpose by exploring themes that were not possible to cover adequately in the main series, and to provide fresh interpretations of significant topics

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #489845 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Laura Tabili, Journal of British Studies
"...stimulating essays..."

Review
...stimulating essays... (Laura Tabili, Journal of British Studies )

[an] excellent volume. (David Killingray, The Round Table, Vol. 96, No. 389 )

Laura Tabili, Journal of British Studies
"...stimulating essays..."

Customer Reviews

Excellent resource material
This book contains 14 detailed essays on the socio-cultural, economic and political experiences of black people within the British Empire. The essays address different time spans, ranging from pre-Empire times to post-Empire times. Specific historical events like the slave trade, emancipation, colonialization and de-colonization are examined from the perspective of how black people would have experienced these events. A lot of focus is given to specific categories of black people- like workers, women, the intelligentsia etc, in these examinations. There is also a regional focus on both Africa and the West Indies, showing how blacks distributed across these locations would have experienced the empire. A lot of details are given about socio-cultural, political and economic developments in the various black communities in the empire over time and how these shaped and were shaped by British imperialism. The essays clearly show how there could have been no empire without "the blacks" and, even more interestingly, how there could have been no "the blacks" without the empire. I found this last point particularly intriguing. If the reader reads nothing else, the last essay by Kwame Anthony Appiah is a must.