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Insurgent Empire:Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent
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How rebellious colonies changed British attitudes to empire
Much has been written on the how colonial subjects took up British and European ideas and turned them against empire when making claims to freedom and self-determination. The possibility of reverse influence has been largely overlooked. Insurgent Empire shows how Britain's enslaved and colonial subjects were not merely victims of empire and subsequent beneficiaries of its crises of conscience but also agents whose resistance both contributed to their own liberation and shaped British ideas about freedom and who could be free.
Insurgent Empire examines dissent over the question of empire in Britain and shows how it was influenced by rebellions and resistance in the colonies from the West Indies and East Africa to Egypt and India. It also shows how a pivotal role in fomenting dissent was played by anti-colonial campaigners based in London at the heart of the empire.
Reviews
Gopal has calmly and authoritatively produced this impressive study of resistance against Empire, in the face of the kind of constant hostility that only serves to reminds us why her work is so urgent in the first place. We all owe her a debt.
an astonishing writer and thinker, one who is fearless in how she uses history to explain where we are now. Her work is essential to showing how empire and colonialism pervades every nook and cranny of the British establishment today and why we should all continue to speak truth to power, like she does every damn day.
A superb study of anticolonial resistance
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This impressive book challenges the assumptions that underpin many academic and journalistic understandings of the British empire; it restores the idea of resistance and dissent, placing anti-colonial struggle from the 1857 uprising in India, to Mau Mau in Kenya, at the heart of historical change. It argues convincingly that, when it did occur, British anti-colonialism in the metropole was forged through exposure to imperial insurgency. By doing so, it tackles the whole premise of British liberal imperial progress and benevolence which remains so pervasive to this day. It’s also a hopeful book, indicating ways out of mythological cul-de-sacs. Erudite, but highly readable, this book will be definitely be on my reading lists for students.
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An outstanding contribution to our understanding of the struggles against the British empire
, Morning Star -
sets out to celebrate the political agency of colonised peoples, its importance in bringing an end to empire and the impact it had on metropolitan liberal and radical thinking.
, Times Higher Education -
A tremendous book that deserves the widest possible readership ... one of the most important books on the British Empire of the last Decade.
Race & Class -
Punchy
Prospect -
Impressive in its scope and rigour...Insurgent Empire is an important challenge to those that would rather uncritically accept the myth of a benevolent imperial power than work to celebrate radicalism and resistance as part of a national history.
Hong Kong Review of Books -
[Gopal] mounts a powerful challenge to the notion that anticolonial resistance was born of an education in British notions of liberty.
, London Review of Books -
Gopal’s meticulously researched study is a major contribution to the historiography of the British Empire, as notable for its research as it is for its lucid, forceful prose.
, Journal of British Studies -
Incisive ... Insurgent Empire demonstrates how often critics have hacked at the pedestals of imperial pieties, and how consistently voices outside Britain have inspired them.
, New Yorker -
A compelling account of how anti-colonial ideas were repeatedly re-litigated in the face of fierce opposition and shows the tireless work of these groups and individuals in slowly constructing and deconstructing concepts of liberty and equality.
, LSE Review of Books: Best Books of 2020 -
Excellent ... Gopal's exploration of the interplaybetween anti-colonial resistance in India, the West Indies and Britain deploys biography, history and cultural studies to support her persuasive argument that the colonies were not just the passive recipient of Britain's "civilising mission" but also the sources of a more refined understanding of key principles like equality and freedom.
, Big Issue -
Few academics are doing so much, and so boldly, to expose how the legacy of empire continues to warp our thinking and institutions.
Prospect: The world’s top 50 thinkers 2021 -
Wonderful ... turn[s] upside down the cliched and self-serving argument that British imperialism brought 'western' ideas of democracy and freedom to their poor benighted black and brown subjects in the colonies
, rs21