Could history lessons inform NATO’s pull-out from Iraq and Afghanistan?
19 November 2010
As politicians and military strategists try to negotiate the NATO withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, academics are looking at what history can tell us about how exits have been managed in the past. A research team from Oxford and Warwick Universities will examine two centuries of British imperialism, from the late eighteen century to the 1990s, in a wide-ranging study that focuses on the alliances and deals that the British brokered in conquering and controlling their empire.
The three-year research project, funded by the AHRC, will culminate in a conference in 2013 at which policymakers and academics will assess whether we can learn lessons from past experience.
At the heart of the research is how notions of loyalty to the British Empire, at its height the largest empire in history, were used to mediate a relationship between the imperial power and its subjects around the world.
The study will analyse histories of insurgencies – from the American war of independence in the late 18th century to the last wars of decolonisation at the end of the 20th century. It will also examine the Ulster Troubles – one of the longest and bitterest conflicts between Nationalists and Loyalists.
Rebellion and resistance by nationalists was central to Britain’s empire, yet the histories of the many loyalist movements that rallied to fight against the insurgents have rarely been told. Loyalists were the empire’s collaborators – allies of the British who were motivated by their own, local economic and political goals. Collaboration of this kind was the glue that held together the many parts of Britain’s imperial realm.
Professor David Anderson, from the Department of Politics and International Relations and the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, said: ‘The British Empire was founded on vast networks of collaborations. Loyalism was an expression of imperial citizenship, a common thread connecting Ireland, North America, India, South Africa, and even the South Pacific. In each place its manifestations were different, but always it stood opposed to nationalist insurgency.’
‘The research has a strong resonance with our current experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where military occupation and political intervention have divided local populations against themselves. Insurgents who oppose the occupations face collaborators who support the aims of the Americans, the British and their international allies. There are many in Iraq and Afghanistan who have sided with the Western powers, but we have to ask what their fate will be when the Western powers leave?’
Dr Daniel Branch, from the Department of History at the University of Warwick, said: ‘National myths don’t help us understand how empires worked and the fate of those who backed the losing side in anti-colonial rebellions. It is discomforting for some now to consider that as many Americans opposed the revolution there as supported it in the eighteenth century. The same is true for Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s.’The research will consider archival material from the United States, Canada, India, Kenya, South Africa, Cyprus, Malaysia and Ireland, focussing on critical moments of armed revolt and conflict - the American Revolution, the Indian Rebellion, the Anglo-Boer War, Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion, the communist insurgency in Malaya, and the civil strife on the streets of Ulster.
The project team will explore how loyalism shaped those conflicts. Using official records, personal diaries and other sources, it will look at the role of loyalists within the imperial armed forces, but also in militia groups and other organisations involved in putting down anti-colonial rebellions. The research will also focus on loyalism’s lasting effects. Did it, for instance, help make Canadians out of American colonialists? And what happened to supporters of British colonialism in independent Malaysia?
The project, which has been awarded almost £300,000 in funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, will employ a Research Fellow, with local Research Assistants in India and South Africa, as well as funding a research studentship (to be based at Warwick University) for work on South African history.
Dr Branch is a former Research Associate of Oxford's African Studies Centre, and was previously a doctoral student at St Peter's College, Oxford.
For more information or to arrange an interview, contact the University of Oxford Press Office on 44 (0) 1865 862837 or email press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk