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Desperate: An image of a family home during the Irish famine from 1845 to 1850, in which more than a million people died. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
BRITISH EMPIRE

The British Empire’s impact on Ireland’s Great Hunger

Drew Forrest looks at the role of Victorian laissez-faire in the terrible Irish famine

  • Drew Forrest
8 min read
(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)
BRITISH EMPIRE

A tale of two risings: Ireland and South Africa

There are marked parallels between the two countries’ liberation wars

  • Drew Forrest
8 min read
Britain’s King Charles III attends the Presentation of Addresses by both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall, inside the Palace of Westminster, central London on September 12, 2022 in London. Photo: Getty Images
BARNEY BARNATO

For Africans, the British empire was neither benign nor good

Britain consolidated its rapacious theft of territories in Africa and Asia during the reign of Elizabeth II’s great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria

  • Tembeka Ngcukaitobi
9 min read
The Queen And Prince Philip On Tour In Kiribati, South Pacific (Photo by Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)
BRITISH EMPIRE

Queen Elizabeth – the monarch who had to adjust from Empire to Commonwealth

The late British monarch played a low-key role in helping to keep the commonwealth together through many disputes about race

  • Roger Southall
7 min read
Students must push back and demand that African scholarship is the first and central source in African Studies versus being an afterthought. (Eddie Keogh/Reuters)
AFRICA

There is no Africa in African studies

The experience of studying Africa in London makes the writers question the validity of "African Studies" as is currently taught in Britain.

  • Jesutofunmi Odugbemi
  • Orapeleng Rammala
  • Wangui Wa Kamonji
8 min read