Böcker av Dane Kennedy

Few historical subjects have generated such intense and sustained interest in recent decades as Britain's imperial past. What accounts for this preoccupation? Why has it gained such purchase on the historical imagination? How has it endured even as its subject slips further into the past?In seeking to answer these questions, the proposed volume brings together some of the leading figures in the field, historians of different generations, different nationalities, different methodological and theoretical perspectives and different ideological persuasions. Each addresses the relationship between their personal development as historians of empire and the larger forces and events that helped to shape their careers. The result is a book that investigates the connections between the past and the present, the private and the public, the professional practices of historians and the political environments within which they take shape. This intellectual genealogy of the recent historiography of empire will be of great value to anyone studying or researching in the field of imperial history.

The challenge of opening Africa and Australia to British imperial influence fell to a coterie of proto-professional explorers who sought knowledge, adventure, and fame but often experienced confusion, fear, and failure. The Last Blank Spaces follows the arc of these explorations, from idea to practice, intention to outcome, myth to reality.

Though best known as an adventurer who entered Mecca in disguise and sought the source of the White Nile, Richard Burton contributed so forcefully to his generation that he provides us with a singularly panoramic perspective of the Victorian world. This book is an important contribution to our understanding of a remarkable man and a crucial era.

Focusing on Britain and her Empire, this survey provides an introduction for readers coming to the subject for the first time. It covers the economics and politics of expansion, and the social and cultural impact of the Empire.