Public Lecture by Tony Ballantyne

History Post-Brexit: thinking through Britain, Europe and Empire

A public lecture by Tony Ballantyne, Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture, University of Otago

The links between British empire building and its shifting relationships with Europe have frequently been overlooked by historians, in part because they have been seen as two fundamentally distinct fields of inquiry.

Using the debates around Brexit as it departure point, this talk explores some of the key connections between the project of empire building and Britain’s engagements with Europe, tracing some key points of convergence from the 1760s on. But it will also explore the shifting terrain of recent historiography, tracing the ways in which Europe and empire have figured within British historical writing since the 1970s and how those relationships have also figured in important work from the former settler colonies.

Tony Ballantyne is a Professor of History and Pro-Vice Chancellor Humanities at the University of Otago, where he is also a Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture. He has published widely on the cultural history of the British Empire and his most recent sole-authored book is the award-winning Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Maori and the Question of the Body (Duke University Press, 2015).