History Research Seminar, University of Amsterdam
Thursday 9 May 2019
Greater Wars and the first global wave of contested decolonization
Martin Thomas, University of Exeter
Discussant: Peter Romijn, NIOD
The paper examines the ways in which the twentieth century’s World Wars seeped into colonial conflicts to create something bigger: the first global wave of contested decolonization. Historians of the disorderly aftermath of the First World War discern a particular quality to the political uncertainties and social upheaval provoked by preceding global conflict. The paper will refract growing insecurity in the European colonial empires after World War I through a prism of ‘globalization’. The term connotes the transnational mechanisms, some cultural, others institutional and political, which spurred the movement of people and ideas, plus the transmission of practices across societies and states. While these ideas and practices, in some ways accelerated the interdependence between imperial powers and their empires, in other ways, they were disintegrative, signifying processes identifiable with decolonization.
15:00-17:00: Bushuis (Kloveniersburgwal 48), VOC Zaal
followed by drinks