Insurgent Empire
Subtitle: Anticolonialism and the Making of British Dissent
Edition: Paperback first edition
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2020
Place of publication: London, UK
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 607
ISBN-13: 9781784784126
Copyright date: 2019
First sentence: On 4 August 1857, some three months after the commencement of the insurgency in India, though it is unlikely he was aware of it at the time, former slave and American abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a speech in Rochester, in New York State, felicitating a different revolutionary moment.
Description: "Insurgent Empire shows how Britain's enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation. Not only that, they shaped British ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom. Priyamvada Gopal examines dissenting politics in Britain and shows that it was influenced by rebellions and resistance among the colonies in the West Indies, East Africa, Egypt, and India. In addition, a pivotal role in fomenting resistance was played by anticolonial campaigners based in London, right at the heart of empire. Much has been written on how colonized peoples took up British and European ideas and turned them against empire when making claims to freedom and self-determination. Insurgent Empire sets the record straight in demonstrating that these people were much more than victims of imperialism or, subsequently, the passive beneficiaries of an enlightened Western conscience - they were insurgents whose legacy today benefits the culture of the nation that once oppressed them"--
Table of contents: label: Acknowledgements
title: vii; label: Introduction: Enemies of Empire
title: 1; title: PART I. CRISES AND CONNECTIONS; label: 1. The Spirit of the Sepoy Host: The 1857 Uprising in India and Early British Critics of Empire
title: 41; label: 2. A Barbaric Independence: Rebel Voice and Transnational Solidarity, Morant Bay, 1865
title: 83; label: 3. The Accidental Anticolonialist: Egypt's 'Urabi' Rebellion and the Late Victorian Critiques of Imperialism
title: 127; label: 4. Passages to Internationalism: The 'New Spirit' in India and Edwardian Travellers
title: 166; title: PART II. AGITATIONS AND ALLIANCES; label: 5. The Interpreter of Insurgencies: Shapurji Saklatvala and Democratic Voice in Britain and India
title: 209; label: 6. The Revolt of the Oppressed World: British Internationalism from Meetut to the League against Imperialism
title: 245; title: 7. Black Voices Matter: Race, Resistance and Reverse Pedagogy in the Metropole.; label: 8. Internationalizing African Opinion: Race, Writing and Resistance
title: 319; label: 9. Smash Our Own Imperialism: George Padmore, the New Leader and 'Colonial Fascism'
title: 355; label: 10. A Terrible Assertion of Discontent: 'Mau Mau' and the Imperial Benevolence
title: 395; label: Epilogue: That Wondrous Horse of Freedom
title: 442; label: Notes
title: 475; label: Bibliography
title: 547; label: Index
title: 583