Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall

Cities of the Empire

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture

Wednesday 23rd November 2016

5:00-6:30pm

Wolfson Theatre, NAB

Speaker: The Hon Dr Tristram Hunt, MP

The Hon Dr Tristram Hunt, MP, will speak on the cities of Calcutta, Bombay and New Delhi, and their role in making the Empire over a century, drawing direct and close links between the colonial cities and their relationship with cities like Liverpool on the one hand, and Britain as a whole on the other. 

The Hon Dr Tristram Hunt, MP, is an intellectual and cultural historian specialising in urban pasts. He is Senior Lecturer in modern British history at Queen Mary University of London, and Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central. He is the author of Ten Cities that made an Empire  (2014).

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.

‘The Bloomsbury Indians’: Writing Across the Tracks in Colonial London

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture.

Thursday 26 January 2017

6:30-8:00pm

Thai Theatre, NAB

Speaker: Susheila Nasta

‘Bloomsbury’ is often represented as a culturally dynamic space, the familiar crucible oftwentieth century Euro-American modernism where bohemians lived in squares but loved in triangles. Many of those very streets, squares and lodging houses which criss-cross its parameters were inhabited by several hundreds of Indian students, intellectuals and writers who had taken up residence at the heart of Empire through the 19th-20th centuries. Drawing on recent research, Nasta’s lecture will reveal how the Indian presence in Bloomsbury began to shape a transnational global modernity, simultaneously shifting British perspectives and angles of vision. In mapping such material traces, one simultaneously encounters the fascinating characters who once walked its streets: novelist, public intellectual and BBC broadcaster, Mulk Raj Anand;  poet, editor and publisher, Tambimuttu; Labour councillor and Founding Editor of the Penguin Pelican series, Krishna Menon;  and gay Irish-Indian novelist, drama critic and journalist, Aubrey Menen. Although writing Britain from a range of different perspectives, this distinctive group were key to exposing the hidden contours of a differently inflected modernity situated both within and outside the European body.  

Susheila Nasta is professor in Modern Literature at the Open University. She has earlier held teaching and research positions at Queen Mary University of London, Cambridge and the University of Portsmouth. Nasta have always been interested in issues of cultural difference and diversity having grown up in India, Britain, Holland and Germany.  In 1984, she founded the famous literary magazine, Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing, now housed at the Open University and co-published with Routledge. 

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.    

Forgotten Soldiers of the Raj

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture.

Wednesday 8th February 2017

6:30-8:00pm

Venue: tbc 

Speaker: Shrabani Basu

Shrabani Basu will speak about the nearly one and a half million soldiers from the Indian subcontinent who fought in the British army in the First World War. Travelling from remote villages in India to the harsh trenches of Flanders and France for a war that was not of their making, they fought with unquestioning valour and loyalty, winning some of the highest bravery awards.Despite being the largest colonial military contingent, their contribution to Britain’s military engagement is almost completely forgotten.

Shrabani Basu is a journalist and writer. Her latest book For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front 1914-1918  (2015) tells, for the first time, the stories of Indian soldiers who went to the Western Front: from a Maharaja who fought for Empire to the Pathan who won the first Victoria Cross; from cooks and sweepers who accompanied the troops to the young pilots who brought down German planes; from the Indian Muslim soldiers who prayed to Mecca in the fields of France to the bonds that were forged in the mud and blood of the battlefields.  

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.

Flights of Empire: Allies, Aeronautics, and Adversary in World War II Bangalore

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture.

Wednesday 8th March 2017

6:30-8:00pm

Venue: tbc

Speaker: Jahnavi Phalkey

Jahnavi Phalkey will tell the little-known story of an aircraft base in Bangalore -- part of Britain’s Southeast Asia Command during World War II -- its relationship with Germany, and its use by British and allied armies to plan military action in Southeast Asia. Being able to use India as a base gave the British a strategic advantage in the region beginning from Burma to Japan. What is less known is its connection to the establishment of aeronautics research in independent India. 

Jahnavi Phalkey is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science and Technology at King’s College London. She is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India (2013).

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.    

Distorting History: Robert Clive and the Capture of Bengal in 1757

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture

Wednesday 17th May 2017

6:30-8:00pm

Alumni Theatre, NAB

Speaker: Roy Moxham 

Roy Moxham has made his mark in readers’ minds with his sensitive studies of the great hedge (2002) and tea (2003), highlighting the stark yet unknown consequences of British imperial rule in the subcontinent; he has also written a book on Phoolan Devi, India’s ‘Bandit Queen’ (2010). His forthcoming book The Theft of India (2017) deals with the human cost and consequences of Clive’s annexation of Bengal in 1757; while the Battle of Plassey (which led to the final defeat of Bengal is well-known, the tremendous human suffering and loss of life is a rarely discussed chapter in history. The Theft of India will be on sale at his lecture.

Roy Moxham grew up in Worcestershire. His varied and exciting life has seen him work on a Herefordshire fruit farm; as a tea planter in Nyasaland, and later Malawi – spending 13 years in Eastern Africa before returning to London in 1974 to set up a gallery of African art. He is a trained book and paper conservator, has worked at the Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Senate House library, University of London. From 2005, Moxham spends his time in writing and giving talks.

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.