Module Convenor: April Jackson

 

This module examines the long history of anti-colonial resistance in the British Empire from the 1600s through to the present day. The module is explicitly global in scale, and will use case studies from across the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Oceania to assess how people resisted enslavement, violence, and colonial power.

For 2025/26, the principal case studies will be: enslaved resistance in Colonial America and the Caribbean, the Indian Uprising of 1857, and the global evolution of anti-colonial nationalism during the twentieth century.

We will examine the development of different modalities of resistance, both violent and non-violent, across time and space. By examining the history of anti-colonial resistance, we will actively engage with a number of issues which are not only historically important, but which have strong resonance today. These include: decolonisation and decoloniality; historical agency; intersectional identities including gender, sexuality, class, caste, race and ethnicity; intergenerational trauma; and cultural identity.

Syllabus

Assessment

Background Reading