19th & 20th century British Imperial & Commonwealth History

The Commonwealth Institute and the Commonwealth Arts Festival: Architecture, Performance and Multiculturalism in Late-Imperial London

by Ruth Craggs

Published in The London Journal, Volume 36, Number 3, November 2011 , pp. 247-268(22)

This paper considers London, an imperial capital, in an era of decolonization. Through a focus on the Commonwealth... more This paper considers London, an imperial capital, in an era of decolonization. Through a focus on the Commonwealth Institute, opened in 1962, and the Commonwealth Arts Festival, held in 1965, it discusses the place of narratives of the 'modern' Commonwealth in the city. Architecture, display and performance come together to highlight the ways in which postwar narratives of the Commonwealth were produced, experienced and received in London. The paper underlines the optimistic discourses of multiracial cultural community articulated at the institute and festival, and the ways in which these emerged alongside, and in relation to, other more exclusionary stories of immigration and miscegenation in the capital. It concludes by noting the sidelining of these Commonwealth spaces and discourses in the city today.

The Kohimarama Conference of 1860: A Contextual Reading

by Lachy Paterson

Journal of New Zealand Studies, NS12 (2011): 29-46.

Paradoxically, the Kohimarama Conference of 1860 stands in contemporary historiography as a shining example of Maori... more Paradoxically, the Kohimarama Conference of 1860 stands in contemporary historiography as a shining example of Maori interaction with the Crown and of what might have been possible if the government was not being so dastardly in its other pursuits. However, the month-long conference, attended by over 100 Māori chiefs, was not a “ratification” of the Treaty of Waitangi as argued by some historians, but an attempt by the government, then under extreme pressure during the first Taranaki war, to avert a more wide-spread conflict, and to advance its colonial project. Using both Maori and English-lnguage newspapers, the conference, the largest propaganda effort and political theatre directed towards Maori, was further projected out to the Maori and Pakeha reading publics.

“Britain’s Informal Empire in the Gulf, 1820–1971” (2005)

by James Onley

Journal of Social Affairs, Vol. 22, No. 87 (Winter 2005), pp. 29–45.

The Journal of Social Affairs is published by the Sociological Association of the UAE and the American University of Sharjah. It is the main journal of the Department of International Studies at AUS, which I was a member of during 2003-2007.