The Middle East and Asia during the Age of Revolutions, 1760–1830

Abstract

My interest in this period of imperial history arose first from attempts to find a more general context within which to understand the British conquest of India between 1790 and 1820 and second from an uneasy feeling that our overseas history in Cambridge before 1880 was simply disappearing, and that this would result in the fatal weakening of much of the rest. By ‘overseas history’ I mean: finding a broader context of debate and comparison within which to set more detailed work on particular regions. It is perhaps the very success of such generalising and comparison for the later 19th century — the partition of Africa debate — and the twentieth century debates on the ‘crisis of empires’, ‘depression to independence’ and the new nation states which has had this effect on foreshortening.