23.10.2023 | Philosophische Fakultät, Seminar für Neuere Geschichte, Förderverein Geschichte

Scandal, Politics, Empire: How the British Remade their World

Semestereröffnungsvortrag des FB Geschichtswissenschaft

Das Seminar für Neuere Geschichte und der Förderverein Geschichte laden alle Interessierten herzlich zum Semestereröffnungsvortrag des Fachbereichs Geschichtswissenschaft für das Wintersemester 2023/24 ein.

In 1815 Britain emerged from half a century of war with a larger and more diverse empire than ever before. How should these disparate people and places be governed? To answer this question the British government sent commissions of inquiry to investigate almost all their colonies between 1819 and 1833. The intention was to make recommendations for cautious reform. But all did not go according to plan. Thousands of imperial subjects attempted to use the commissions to have their say in remaking a new British world. In this lecture, Kirsten McKenzie investigates the role played by scandal at this important moment in imperial politics – as a force prompting official investigation, as a tool for disempowered people to challenge authority, and as a mechanism for social control.

Kirsten McKenzie is Professor of History at the Department of History, University of Sydney, Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Royal Historical Society. Her sole-authored books include Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820–1850 (2004), A Swindler’s Progress: Nobles and Convicts in the Age of Liberty  (2009 and 2010) and Imperial Underworld: An Escaped Convict and the transformation of the British Colonial Order (2016). This lecture presents material from her forthcoming co-authored work Inquiring into Empire: Colonial Commissions and British Imperial Reform, 1819–1833 (with Lisa Ford, David A. Roberts and Naomi Parkinson).

Der Vortrag wird auch per Zoom übertragen. Anmeldungen hierfür bitte an Frau Kaiser: mechthild.kaiser@uni-tuebingen.de.