HY471      One Unit
European Empires and Global Conflict, 1935-1948

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The course examines the history of the European empires in the Second World War. It covers the history of the war fought in the imperial world and its impact on the lives of millions of colonial civilians; the political, military, and social history of colonial soldiers who fought in Europe’s multi-ethnic and multi-religious armies; the history of anti-colonial movements during the war, from Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh to Gandhi’s Quit India movement; and the history of the war’s impact on decolonisation and the twentieth century world order. Overall, the course explores the non-European experience of the Second World War, examining the ways in which the conflict shaped societies and political orders in Africa, Asia, and beyond. Drawing on key secondary texts, primary sources, and visual material, the course provides a broad introduction to the most destructive and cataclysmic conflict in modern global history.

20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

Essay

Students will be expected to produce one essay (2,500 to 3,000 words) in the AT; one presentation in the AT; and one presentation in the WT.  Students will also be required to prepare short summaries of the readings (bullet points) for the weekly meetings.

• C. A. Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire and the War with Japan (London, 2004).
• Judith A. Byfield, Carolyn A. Brown, Timothy Parsons, and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga (eds.), Africa and World War II (Cambridge, 2015).
• Ronald Hyam, Britain's Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-1968 (Cambridge, 2007).
• Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (London, 2006).
• Eric T. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe and Indochina, 1940-1944 (Stanford, 2001).
• John Kent, The Internationalization of Colonialism: Britain, France and Black Africa, 1939-1956 (Oxford, 1992).
• Yasmin Khan, The Raj at War: A People’s History Of India’s Second World War (London, 2015).
• David Killingray and Richard Rathbone (ed.), Africa and the Second World War (London, 1986).
• William Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay, 1941-45: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire (Oxford, 1977).
• Emily S. Rosenberg (ed.), A World Connecting, 1870-1945 (Cambridge, MA, 2012).
• Aviel Roshwald, Estranged Bedfellows: Britain and France in the Middle East during the Second World War (New York, 1990).
• Alberto Sbacchi, Ethiopia under Mussolini: Fascism and the Colonial Experience (London, 1985).
• Martin Thomas, The French Empire at War, 1940-1945 (Manchester, 1998).
• Stein Tønnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh and de Gaulle in a World at War (London, 1991).
• Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge, 2005).

Course participation (15%)

Essay (85%, 5000 words)