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How British was the British World? The case of South Africa

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 23:56 authored by Saul Dubow
This paper discusses the utility of the term 'Britishness' in the context of the 'British World' conference series. It suggests reasons why the 'British world' idea as presently understood was relatively slow to emerge out of traditional nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperial and commonwealth history. Ranging over more than a century from the 1870s to the present, it surveys uses of the term 'British' in imperial historiography and draws most of its empirical evidence from the unusual case of South Africa. The paper eschews 'ethnic' or 'racial' definitions of Britishness and proposes instead a more capacious formulation capable of including elective, hyphenated forms of belonging. It suggests that there are advantages in thinking of the British Empire less in the possessive sense - the empire that belonged to Britain - and more in the adjectival mode as a mode of description capable of taking into account self-declared affinities and values.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

ISSN

0308-6534

Publisher

Routledge

Issue

1

Volume

37

Page range

1 - 27

Pages

27.0

Department affiliated with

  • History Publications

Notes

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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