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EDGS Rajawali Speaker Series: "Comparative Empires in the International History of the Modern Era"

William Roger Louis, University of Texas-Austin

Wm. Roger Louis is the Kerr Professor of History at the University of Texas and an Honorary Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. He is former President of the American Historical Association. He has written or edited some thirty books, among them The British Empire in the Middle East. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford History of the British Empire.

There are two predominant views about the end of the British Empire. One holds that it was lost in the 1960s because of ‘infirmity of the will’, or in other words a loss of nerve. The British could have held on indefinitely, perhaps to the present, and the world today would be a better and happier place. The other view maintains that British decolonization was one of the most glorious chapters in British history—“a triumph for all that was best in British life”. In any event the end came at least symbolically in 1967 with the recall of all British troops East of Suez. Philip Larkin wrote in a poetic line “Our children will not know it’s a different country.”

*lunch included

co-sponsored by the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies