Empires of the Mind - The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present

Prize-winning historian Robert Gildea dissects the legacy of empire for the former colonial powers and their subjects.

List of contents

List of illustrations; Introduction; 1. Empires constructed and contested; 2. Empires in crisis: two world wars; 3. The imperialism of decolonisation; 4. Neo-colonialism, new global empire; 5. Colonising in reverse and colonialist backlash; 6. Europe: in or out?; 7. Islamism and the retreat to monocultural nationalism; 8. Hubris and nemesis: Iraq, the colonial fracture and global economic crisis; 9. The empire strikes back; 10. Fantasy, anguish and working through; Conclusion; Acknowledgements; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

About the author

Robert Gildea is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on French and European history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the many awards his publications have garnered, Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (2015) was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize and Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation (2003) won the 2003 Wolfson History Prize.

Summary

Prize-winning historian Robert Gildea shows that how empires did not vanish after 1945 but were constantly reinvented as neo-colonialisms. He shows how postwar immigration from the former colonies provoked racism, segregation and exclusion in metropolitan Britain and France and how imperial nostalgia has bedevilled Britain's relations with Europe.

Product details

• Authors: Robert Gildea, Robert (University of Oxford) Gildea, Gildea Robert, Gildea Robert Gildea
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.01.2021
• EAN: 9781316612330
• ISBN: 978-1-316-61233-0
• No. of pages: 366
• Series: The Wiles Lectures
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; HISTORY / Europe / General, Colonialism & imperialism, Colonialism and imperialism, National liberation & independence, post-colonialism, National liberation and independence