Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire 

Becca Iliffe,  School of History  

Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire
Date: 21/10/20
Speaker: Professor Sujit Sivasundaram 

This was the first research event I have attended and so I was quite apprehensive about what to expect and whether I would be able to keep up with the pace of the discussion, particularly as it was on a subject I had no previous experience in. However, I am very interested in decolonising my own historical knowledge and this research seminar seemed like the ideal place to do that. Professor Sujit Sivasundaram began his talk about his book by examining the concept of the Age of Revolutions and explaining how he was attempting to examine it from a new perspective. By looking at the second British Empire through the lens of people living in the Pacific and Indian oceans he hoped to fill a gap in historiography which often overlooks their narratives. He has connected the wave of counter revolutions to bring together stories of people from across the Indian ocean, historiographies that in the past have been separated from each other because of later constructions about race. When discussing his intentions, he used the phrase ‘destabilise the colonial archive’ which I found particularly interesting as I am personally attempting to challenge learned assumptions that have previously been presented to me as facts but are reductionist in a way that promotes an imperialist view of history.   

Part of his discussion was dedicated to explaining his use of the metaphor of the wave and why he believed it was so relevant both because of the physical connotations of the word and how it is a way of avoiding the language of ‘imperial geographers’ who used terms like network when looking at global history. I found this part of the talk to be particularly interesting as, although I have looked at negative connotations of words in historiography previously, I did not realise the concept of a global network was not neutral. In addition, when I have looked at the use of the wave metaphor in the past relating to gender history and waves of feminism, it has always been presented as flawed. This is because of the way that the waves are seen as separate rather than one large movement growing and learning from each other. To see a wave metaphor used to connect smaller histories into one large narrative is therefore a new and interesting take.    

Professor Sivasundaram also emphasised the inclusion of environment in the writing of history in his presentation. This is again linked to the metaphor of the wave present throughout his talk but I considered this to be especially useful as it gave me an example of how history can be actively interdisciplinary without straying too far from a historical focus. The inclusion of environmental history is also particularly important in current historical scholarship as a way to demonstrate how the environment has shaped our past and will continue to do so, drawing attention to the fact that environmentalism is not a new concept and should not be regarded as a passing phase that can be ignored.   

I won’t pretend I understood absolutely everything that was presented in this research seminar- there were concepts that I was not familiar with, especially when it came to the questions and people from other disciplinary backgrounds applying theories to the work. However, as an introduction into research seminars I think it was extremely useful to my studies. It gave me a taste of how global histories are being re-examined in an attempt to decolonise them and introduced me to a period of history I had never heard about in depth before. It also demonstrated how concepts I considered to be neutral can have roots in imperialism and other undesirable origins which will steer me towards being even more critical in future when it comes to examining my biases.