HIST 2512A: Britain & Empire, 1914-present

HIST 2512A: Britain & Empire, 1914-present
Winter 2026

Description: This lecture-and-discussion course surveys the history of the United Kingdom and its empire after 1914. Material in the course will be organized chronologically (ie/ we’ll start just before the First World War and slowly make our way to the present), discussing key political, social, cultural, military, and economic transformations that occurred along the way. We’ll examine all things “modern Britain”: what, when, where, and why was it, who was thought to be included and excluded from British national belonging, and how was imperial and colonial development mutually constitutive with British “domestic” development. Themes in the course will be: the rise of modern consumerism; the centrality of empire and colonialism to Britain in the twentieth century; experiences and transformations in the two World Wars; economic depression and deindustrialization; social justice movements; decolonization; tensions between England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; British party politics; neo-liberalism and fascism; the “special relationship” with the United States; the Commonwealth; and the European Union and Brexit. The course will foreground cultural and identarian issues and as such we’ll often discuss the histories of class, race, gender, sexuality, ethnic, and religious difference. While this course is meant to continue from where HIST 2502 (Britain & Empire in the 19^th Century) leaves off, you do not need to have completed HIST 2502 to take this course.

Format: This is a 0.5 credit lecture course that will be delivered face-to-face in the classroom. Students will be expected to attend lectures twice per week – these lectures will not be recorded.

Evaluation: Each lecture will contain keywords that students should take notes on. Most lectures will also have a large group discussion element on a source that students will be expected to have read prior to coming to class. The reading load will be about 30 pages or less per week of an academic journal article or primary source, which is about 2-3 hours of reading per week in addition to attending lectures. There will be an in-class midterm and an in-person final exam (to be scheduled by the registrar) that will assess the student’s knowledge of some of the keywords from lecture and, likely, some of the assigned readings as well. In addition, there will be one or two summative written research-and-analysis assignments that, together, will amount to about 10 pages (double-spaced) of writing.

Readings and other primary sources for the course will be made available online; there will be no textbook to purchase.