Alan Lester University of Sussex and La Trobe University Winston Churchill is an iconic figure. For many, he stands for the idealised qualities of the British nation: a bulldog spirit leavened with a sense of fair play and deep attachment to freedom. His character, contribution to historical events and legacy have been contested to greater or lesser extents ever since he became a public figure at the beginning of the twentieth century, but after Black Lives Matter protestors named him a racist by graffitiing his stocky, brooding statue in Westminster in June 2020, he also become more central to the […]
Talk delivered to ALES virtual event: Communications of Archives as Public History 18 March 2024 The sociologist James Davison Hunter first used the term ‘culture war’ in a book on American religious authority and politics since the 1960s, first published in 1991. He identified a worrying tendency: a ‘political and social hostility rooted in different systems of moral understanding’.[1] Hunter believed this new form of divisiveness was emerging over issues such as reproductive rights, child-care, affirmative action, gay rights and multiculturalism. These issues all rest upon moral authority – ‘the basis by which people determine whether something is good or […]
Alan Lester University of Sussex and La Trobe University Winston Churchill is an iconic figure. For many, he stands for the idealised qualities of the British nation: a bulldog spirit leavened with a sense of fair play and deep attachment…
In the early stages of World War I, the Raj came to the south coast of England in the form of over 4,000 wounded Indian soldiers. They convalesced in a number of specially constructed hospitals, including in the Brighton Pavilion.…
Alan Lester Colonial Realities Colonialism is, by its very nature, incompatible with many of the ideals of justice that we hold dear today. The very definition of the word, according to the Oxford Online Dictionary, is “the policy or practice…
With statues at the heart of the culture war over empire and with retain & explain as government policy, it’s important to explain them fully and sensitively. This has been tried in the case of the Redvers Buller statue in Exeter. A blog here on his career and its interpretation. Philip Halling / Statue of General Sir Redvers Buller / CC BY-SA 2.0
I hope to be able to run this summer school again next year now that places have sold out for 2023.
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History has recently published my Extended Critique of Nigel Biggar’s book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. Prof. Biggar’s Reply was published alongside it. Like his history of colonialism, Biggar’s reply has unorthodox features, some of…
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2023.2209947
Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning has been very positively reviewed in certain right-wing oriented publications and is a best-seller. Those who take pride in the British Empire see it as a key resource with which to defend its record. Here is my review (click here), written from the perspective of someone who has researched that empire for decades.
