KarakterløftetImperialism and Its Legacy
You will learn to explain the British Empire's rise and fall, the histories of oppression it connects to – and discuss how the past is remembered and repaired.
What do you want to do now?
Just enough theory to use it
The British Empire is the reason this subject exists: it spread English, drew today's borders and created the ties – and wounds – your other topics keep meeting. Know the arc: the first empire (Atlantic: American colonies, Caribbean sugar, the transatlantic slave trade), the pivot to Asia and Africa after American independence, the Victorian high noon ('the empire on which the sun never sets', a quarter of the world), and decolonisation after 1945 – India 1947, African independence around 1960, with violent codas like Kenya's Mau Mau uprising. Alongside the arc, the histories of oppression the aims name: African-American history from 1619 through slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow segregation to the civil rights movement; and the settler-colonial policies of Canada and Australia, where Indigenous children were taken to residential schools and the Stolen Generations. The discussion layer is memory politics: changing attitudes to empire (pride, amnesia, reckoning), official apologies (Australia 2008, Canada's TRC, Cameron on Bloody Sunday), statue wars and reparations debates. Two skills matter: explain causes and consequences precisely, and analyse how nations narrate their pasts – the same tools you use on texts, applied to history itself. Kipling's 'The White Man's Burden' and the speeches of Douglass and Truth give you primary sources from both sides of the whip.
Need more theory? See resources for this topic →
Click a term to see it used in a sentence, not just as a definition.
Click to see what the voice stands for – and how to use it in your discussion.
Real stories you can use in your answer
Read the whole story before you use it – then you can answer when the teacher follows up.