Week 20: 'States of Emergency', 1945-1960

This week we will interrogate how the nationalist rhetoric and peasant consciousness of previous weeks coalesced by surveying three overlapping rebellions: the Malayan Emergency, the Cyprus Emergency, and the Kenyan Emergency. We will examine how different groups campaigned for independence from Britain.

Seminar Questions:

1) How important was popular resistance in triggering the end of empire?

2) How did Britain suppress anti-colonial resistance in the mid-twentieth century?

3) Was anti-colonial resistance ever cohesive and unified?