History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | empire

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Jewish Historians and the Construction of Regional Identities during the German Empire

Dr Mathias Seiter, Principal Lecturer and Subject Area Lead for History, has recently published an article in the journal German History on the importance of regional identities for Jews in imperial Germany. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here.   Abstract:  The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a wave of interest in history among Jews in Germany. The popularity of the subject extended to those who lived at the geographic margins of the German Empire, in the Prussian Province of Posen and the Reichsland of Alsace-Lorraine. Living in borderlands in which national identities were contested, Jewish historians established and joined […]

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Empire and its Afterlives 3: Using primary sources to avoid simplistic narratives of history

This is the third post in the Empire and its afterlives series. The introduction can be found here and the second installment here.   Several students mentioned current debates around #RhodesMustFall in South Africa and the UK and the idea of decolonising the curriculum, in order to reflect on what that might mean for the teaching of colonial history and its legacies. They had worked on a range of publications and reflections on the topic in class, and drew on their own reading as well to inform their discussions of the curriculum. Some students outlined ways in which black history and black political philosophy could be made a full part of […]

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Empire and its Afterlives 1: Applying the skills of the historian to the present

This is the first post in a series of four showcasing the work of second year students from across the University of Portsmouth Faculty of Social Sciences Click this link to see a video of George the Poet on the Benin Bronzes Empire and its Afterlives is a module available for second year students across History, Politics, International Development, International Relations and Languages. Newly created for the 2020/2021 academic year by Natalya Vince and Tony Chafer, it encouraged students to draw on research from a range of disciplines in order to better understand empires from a historical perspective, their legacies, and the way they are present and represented around us […]

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Nationalism, Regionalism and British identity in early 20th century England

Dr Melanie Bassett is a Research Associate for the Port Towns and Urban Cultures project. She also teaches undergraduate units in History. Here she talks about her chapter which is published in the Four Nations Approaches to Modern ‘British’ History. A (Dis)United Kingdom? edited collection, which is out now. In 2015 I gave a paper at the United Kingdom? Four Nations Approaches to Modern ‘British’ History conference which prompted me to look at my research from a different perspective. My PhD thesis (completed at the University of Portsmouth) was entitled The Royal Dockyard Worker in Edwardian England: Culture, Leisure and Empire, and although I briefly considered the role of ‘Englishness’ […]

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