The State of the Field

Twenty-five years ago, the British Empire was at best a minor presence in British historical scholarship. Although the field of imperial studies was showing signs of renewed vigor, British history invariably meant the history of metropolitan Britain, and “Britain” all too often served as a synonym for the union’s English core. Today, the situation is practically reversed. Imperial themes pervade scholarship on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; India, Ireland, and America feature prominently in early modern narratives; and the British nation of England, Scotland, and Wales has regained its proper character as a “multiple monarchy” or empire. A graduate student preparing for comprehensive exams is likely to know as much about soil depletion in Virginia as crop rotation in Suffolk, as much about interracial sexuality in Bengal as worker radicalism in the Midlands, and a great deal more than earlier generations would have thought possible about marronage in Jamaica, Protestant missions in Nigeria, and educational reform in the Highlands.