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Winner of the Longman-History Today Book Award 2013
The White Man's World
Bill Schwarz
600 pages
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234x156mm
978-0-19-929691-0
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Hardback
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27 October 2011
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- The first book to address this topic
- Presents a clear argument about the remaking of England after empire by making explicit connections between past and present
- Written in an accessible, lively style
- Draws from sources from a range of disciplines: history, literary criticism, critical theory, and communications studies
Memories of Empire is a trilogy which explores the complex, subterranean political currents which emerged in English society during the years of postwar decolonization. Bill Schwarz shows that, through the medium of memory, the empire was to continue to possess strange afterlives long after imperial rule itself had vanished.
The White Man's World, the first volume in the trilogy, explores ideas of the white man as they evolved during the time of the British Empire, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, looking particularly at the transactions between
the colonies and the home society of England. The story works back from the popular response to Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968, in which identifications with racial whiteness came to be highly charged. Driving this new racial politics, Bill Schwarz proposes, were unappeased memories of Britain's imperial past.
The White Man's World surveys the founding of the so-called white colonies, looking in particular at Australia, South Africa, and Rhodesia, and argues that it was in this experience that contemporary meanings of racial whiteness first cohered. These colonial nations - 'white men's countries', as they were popularly known - embodied the conviction that the future of humankind lay in the hands of white men. The systems of thought which underwrote
the ideas of the white man, and of the white man's country, worked as a form of ethnic populism, which gave life to the concept of Greater Britain.
But if during the Victorian and Edwardian period the empire was largely narrated in heroic terms, in the masculine mode, by the time of decolonization in the 1960s racial whiteness had come to signify defeat and desperation, not only in the colonies but in the metropole too. Identifications with racial whiteness did not disappear in England in the moment of decolonization: they came alive again, fuelled by memories of what whiteness had once represented, recalling the empire as a lost racial utopia.Readership: Academics, historians, and students
of the British empire and modern Britain; theorists of race and ethnicity
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Bill Schwarz, School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London
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"wonderful the finest investigation of these themes for many years." - Stephen Howe, The Independent "Schwarz exhibits the breadth of his political and historiographical credentials." - The Irish Times "impressive in its reach and crammed with fascinating material." - Peter Parker, Times Literary Supplement "Schwarz should be congratulated on what he has achieved here Schwarz's knowledge of the secondary literature is outstanding; his writing is effortlessly readable and wonderfully mischievous at times." - Joanna Lewis, Times Higher Education "" - Juliet Gardiner, History Today "It is an elegant thesis, segueing with
delightful ease between history and memory, colony and capital and drawing on a diverse collection of sources ... One can but look forward with keen anticipation to his next instalment." - . Anna Sanderson, History Today "Schwarz has a thorough mastery of the complex historiography of the British Empire, and a mind supple enough to formulate new and interesting questions." - Michael Burleigh, The Literary Review "original and intellectually imaginative." - Martin Francis, English Historical Review "A highly accomplished and illuminating study of an imperial tradition in which hope and idealism co-exist (sometimes in a single individual) with feelings of loss and betrayal." - Saul Dubow, Twentieth
Century British History "This is an extremely significant book, a deeply impressive work." - Ashley Jackson, BBC History Magazine "It is hard to do justice to this magisterial piece of work ... The luxuriously long form of Schwarz's narrative is utterly inseparable from the force of his argument." - Antoinette Burton, American Historical Review "Though clearly inspired by recent works of memory studies, Schwarz avoids much of the jargon that prevails in them. Instead, he presents an in-depth reading of the writings of some of the prominent public figures in the history of the British Empire from the 19th to the late 20th centuries." - Q. E. Wang, CHOICE
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Introduction: 'The Thing'
Prologue: Reveries of Race, April 1968
1: Ethnic Populism
2: Colony and Metropolis
3: Remembering Race
4: The Romance of the Veld
5: Frontier Philosopher: Jan Christian Smuts
6: Defeated by Friends: The Central African Federation
7: Ian Smith: The Last White Man?
Index
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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