''The Oxford History of the British Empire'' is a five-volume history of the
British Empire published by the
Oxford University Press in 1998 and 1999. According to the publisher, the series "deals with the interaction of British and non-western societies from the
Elizabethan era to the late twentieth century, aiming to provide a balanced treatment of the ruled as well as the rulers, and to take into account the significance of the Empire for the peoples of the British Isles". The editor-in-chief for the main series was
Wm. Roger Louis
William Roger Louis Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (born May 8, 1936), commonly known as Wm. Roger Louis or, informally, Roger Louis, is an American historian and a professor at the ...
.
In addition to the principal five volumes, the ''Oxford History of the British Empire'' also includes a
spin-off
Spin-off may refer to:
*Spin-off (media), a media work derived from an existing work
*Corporate spin-off, a type of corporate action that forms a new company or entity
* Government spin-off, civilian goods which are the result of military or gove ...
"Companion Series" which "pursue themes that could not be covered adequately in the main series". 16 volumes have been published in the series since 2004.
Volumes
The Main Series
The ''Oxford History of the British Empire'' comprises five
edited volumes, tracing the
history of the British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
in a chronological manner:
*Volume I: ''The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century''. 1998. Editor:
Nicholas Canny
Nicholas Patrick Canny (born 1944) is an Irish historian and academic specializing in early modern Irish history. He has been a lecturer in Irish history at the University of Galway since 1972 and professor there from 1979 to 2011. He is Emeritu ...
.
*Volume II: ''The Eighteenth Century''. 1998. Editor:
P.J. Marshall.
*Volume III: ''The Nineteenth Century''. 1999. Editor:
Andrew Porter.
*Volume IV: ''The Twentieth Century''. 1999. Editors:
Judith M. Brown
Judith Margaret Brown (born 9 July 1944) is a British historian, academic and Anglican priest, who specialises in the study of modern South Asia. From 1990 to 2011, she was the Beit Professor of Commonwealth History and a Fellow of Balliol Col ...
and Wm. Roger Louis.
*Volume V: ''Historiography''. 1999. Editor:
Robin W. Winks.
The "Companion Series"
Besides the main series, the ''Oxford History of the British Empire (Companion Series)'' addresses a range of specific thematic or regional issues which fell outside the scope of the general volumes. They are mixed between monographs and edited volumes. Published from 2004, the series includes:
*''Ireland and the British Empire''. 2004. Editor:
Kevin Kenny.
*''Black Experience and the Empire''. 2004. Editors:
Philip D. Morgan
Philip D. Morgan (born 1949) is a British historian. He has specialized in Early Modern colonial British America and slavery in the Americas. In 1999, he won both the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize for his book ''Slave Counterpoin ...
and
Sean Hawkins
Sean, also spelled Seán or Séan in Irish English, is a male given name of Irish origin. It comes from the Irish versions of the Biblical Hebrew name '' Yohanan'' (), Seán ( anglicized as '' Shaun/Shawn/ Shon'') and Séan ( Ulster variant; ang ...
.
*''Gender and Empire''. 2004. Editor:
Philippa Levine
Philippa Judith Amanda Levine, FRAI, FRHistS, is a historian of the British Empire, gender, race, science and technology. She has spent most of her career in the United States and has been Mary Helen Thompson Centennial Professor in the Humaniti ...
.
*''Missions and Empire''. 2005. Editor:
Norman Etherington
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
.
*''Environment and Empire''. 2007. Authors:
William Beinart
William Beinart (born January 19, 1951 in Cape Town) is a South African historian and Africanist. He was educated at the University of Cape Town and School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He taught at the Univers ...
and
Lotte Hughes.
*''Australia's Empire''. 2008. Editors:
Deryck Schreuder
Derek is a masculine given name. It is the English language short form of ''Diederik'', the Low Franconian form of the name Theodoric. Theodoric is an old Germanic name with an original meaning of "people-ruler".
Common variants of the name are ...
and
Stuart Ward
Stuart may refer to:
Names
*Stuart (name), a given name and surname (and list of people with the name) Automobile
* Stuart (automobile)
Places
Australia Generally
* Stuart Highway, connecting South Australia and the Northern Territory
North ...
.
*''Canada and the British Empire''. 2010. Editor:
Phillip Buckner
Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who populariz ...
.
*''Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas''. 2010. Editor:
Robert Bickers.
*''Migration and Empire''. 2010. Authors:
Marjory Harper and
Stephen Constantine
Stephen Constantine (born 16 October 1962) is an English professional football coach and former player who is head coach of Indian Super League club East Bengal.
Early and personal life
Constantine was born on 16 October 1962 in London. He is ...
.
*''Scotland and the British Empire''. 2011. Editors:
John M. MacKenzie
John MacDonald MacKenzie (born 2 October 1943) is a British historian of imperialism who pioneered the study of popular and cultural imperialism, as well as aspects of environmental history. He has also written about Scottish migration and t ...
and
T. M. Devine
Sir Thomas Martin Devine (born 30 July 1945) is a Scottish national identity, Scottish academic and author, who specializes in the history of Scotland.
He is known for his overviews of modern Scottish history.
He is an advocate of the Nouve ...
.
*''Britain's Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century''. 2011. Editor:
Andrew Thompson.
*''India and the British Empire''. 2012. Editors:
Douglas M. Peers
Douglas may refer to:
People
* Douglas (given name)
* Douglas (surname)
Animals
*Douglas (parrot), macaw that starred as the parrot ''Rosalinda'' in Pippi Longstocking
* Douglas the camel, a camel in the Confederate Army in the American Civil ...
and
Nandini Gooptu.
*''British North America in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries''. 2013. Editor:
Stephen Foster
*''Winding up the British Empire in the Pacific Islands''. 2014. Author:
W. David McIntyre
William David McIntyre (4 September 1932 – 11 September 2022) was a British-born New Zealand historian, known for his expertise on the military and constitutional histories of the Commonwealth of Nations and British Empire.
Early life and f ...
.
*''Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire''. 2016. Editor:
G. A. Bremner
G is the seventh letter of the Latin alphabet.
G may also refer to:
Places
* Gabon, international license plate code G
* Glasgow, UK postal code G
* Eastern Quebec, Canadian postal prefix G
* Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australi ...
.
*''Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail''. 2021. Editors:
Douglas Hamilton
General Douglas Hamilton (8 April 1818 – 20 January 1892) was a British Indian Army officer, gazetted to the 21st Regiment of the Madras Native Infantry from 1837 to 1871. He was a well known surveyor of the early British hill stations in So ...
and
John McAleer
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Seco ...
.
Reviews
Max Beloff, reviewing the first two volumes in ''
History Today'', praised them for their readability and was pleased that his worry that they would be too anti-imperialist had not been realised.
Saul Dubow in
H-Net noted the uneven quality of the chapters in volume III and also the difficulty of such an endeavour given the state of
historiography of the British Empire and the impossibility of maintaining a triumphalist tone in the modern era. Dubow also felt that some of the authors had tended "to 'play safe', awed perhaps by the monumental nature of the enterprise".
Madhavi Kale
Madhavi Kale is professor of history of Bryn Mawr College and associate professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Kale received her BA from Yale University and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kale is a specialist in Britis ...
of
Bryn Mawr College, writing in ''
Social History
Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...
'', also felt that the history took a traditional approach to the historiography of the empire and placed the English, and to a lesser extent the Scottish, Irish and Welsh at the centre of the account, rather than the subject peoples of the empire. Kale summed up her review of volumes III–V of the history by saying it represented "a disturbingly revisionist project that seeks to neutralize ... the massive political and military brutality and repression" of the empire.
See also
*
Historiography of the British Empire
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oxford History of the British Empire
1998 non-fiction books
1999 non-fiction books
Series of history books
Historiography of the British Empire
Oxford University Press books