Antony Gerald Hopkins, FBA (born 21 February 1938) is a British historian specialising in the economic history of Africa, European colonialism, and globalisation. [1] [2] He is Emeritus Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge, an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge and a fellow of the British Academy.
Antony Gerald Hopkins was born on 21 February 1938, the son of George Henry Hopkins and his wife, Queenie Ethel née Knight. [3] Following schooling at St Paul's School between 1953 and 1957, he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in History at the University of London, graduating in 1960. [3] [4] He then completed a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (1964), with a thesis entitled "An Economic History of Lagos, 1880–1914". [5]
After completing his doctorate, Hopkins was employed as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Birmingham; he was subsequently a Lecturer and then a Reader there, before his appointment in 1977 as a Professor of Economic History on the University's faculty. In 1988, he moved over to the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva to be Professor of History, an appointment which lasted until 1994, when he became Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge. From 2002 to 2013 he held the Walter Prescott Webb Chair of History at the University of Texas at Austin, [3] where he won the University 'Eyes of Texas' Teaching Award, and the College of Liberal Arts Student Council Teaching Award.
He received honorary doctorates from the University of Stirling (D. Univ.) in 1996 and the University of Birmingham (D. Litt.) in 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996. In 2011, former students and colleagues presented him with a book of essays, edited by Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, entitled Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honorof A. G. Hopkins (Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC).
Hopkins is known for his extensive work on the history of Africa, empires, and globalisation. He has been an editor of both the Journal of African History and the Economic History Review. His principal works include An Economic History of West Africa (1973), and, with Peter Cain, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (1993), which won the Forkosch Prize awarded by the American Historical Association in 1995 and is considered to be one of the most influential interpretations of the British Empire proposed in the last half century. His most recent work is a study of the United States from an imperial perspective, entitled American Empire: A Global History (2018). [6]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
Colonialism is a practice by which a country controls people or areas, often by establishing colonies, generally for strategic and economic advancement. There is no clear definition of colonialism; definitions may vary depending on the use and context.
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing not only hard power, but also soft power. Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire.
American imperialism is the expansion of American political, economic, cultural, media and military influence beyond the boundaries of the United States. Depending on the commentator, it may include imperialism through outright military conquest; gunboat diplomacy; unequal treaties; subsidization of preferred factions; regime change; or economic penetration through private companies, potentially followed by diplomatic or forceful intervention when those interests are threatened.
Cobdenism is an economic ideology which perceives international free trade and a non-interventionist foreign policy as the key requirements for prosperity and world peace. It is named after the British statesman and economist Richard Cobden and had its heyday of political influence in the British Empire during the mid-19th century, amidst and after the endeavour to abolish the Corn Laws.
Samir Amin was an Egyptian-French Marxian economist, political scientist and world-systems analyst. He is noted for his introduction of the term Eurocentrism in 1988 and considered a pioneer of Dependency Theory.
Imperialism: A Study (1902), by John A. Hobson, is a politico-economic discourse about the negative financial, economic, and moral aspects of imperialism as a nationalistic business enterprise. Hobson argues that capitalist business activity brought about imperialism.
Giovanni Arrighi was an Italian economist, sociologist and world-systems analyst, from 1998 a Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His work has been translated into over fifteen languages.
The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time. Ancient and medieval colonialism was practiced by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Turks, and the Arabs.
The Panic of 1866 was an international financial downturn that accompanied the failure of Overend, Gurney and Company in London, and the corso forzoso abandonment of the silver standard in Italy.
The historiography of the British Empire refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to develop a history of the British Empire. Historians and their ideas are the main focus here; specific lands and historical dates and episodes are covered in the article on the British Empire. Scholars have long studied the Empire, looking at the causes for its formation, its relations to the French and other empires, and the kinds of people who became imperialists or anti-imperialists, together with their mindsets. The history of the breakdown of the Empire has attracted scholars of the histories of the United States, the British Raj, and the African colonies. John Darwin (2013) identifies four imperial goals: colonising, civilising, converting, and commerce.
William Roger Louis CBE FBA, commonly known as Wm. Roger Louis or, informally, Roger Louis, is an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Louis is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire, a former president of the American Historical Association (AHA), a former chairman of the U.S. Department of State's Historical Advisory Committee, and a founding director of the AHA's National History Center in Washington, D. C.
David Kenneth Fieldhouse, FBA was an English historian of the British Empire. Fieldhouse was born to missionary parents in Mussoorie, northern India. He was sent to England for his education at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, from 1938 to 1943. Fieldhouse then completed naval service, before reading history at The Queen's College, Oxford.
Egypt–United Kingdom relations are the diplomatic, economic, and cultural relationships between Egypt and Great Britain. Relations are longstanding. They involve politics, defence, trade and education, and especially issues regarding the Suez Canal.
Gentlemanly capitalism is a theory of New Imperialism first put forward by the historians Peter J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins in the 1980s and developed in their 1993 work British Imperialism. The theory posits that British imperialism was driven by the business interests of the City of London and landed interests. It encourages a shift of emphasis, away from seeing provincial manufacturers and geopolitical strategy as important influences, and towards seeing the expansion of empire as emanating from London and the financial sector.
"The Imperialism of Free Trade" is an academic article by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson first published in The Economic History Review in 1953. The article was influential in the debate concerning the causes of British imperial expansion in the 19th-century which, since John A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study (1902), had focused on economic motivation. Instead, Gallagher and Robinson claimed that the New Imperialism – "the new spate of imperial expansion that gathered momentum from the 1880s" – could be best characterised as a continuation of a longer-term policy begun in the 1850s in which informal empire, based on the principles of free trade, was favoured over formal imperial control unless circumstances made such rule impossible. As well as reigniting scholarly interest in theorizing New Imperialism, the article helped launch the Cambridge School of historiography.
The Cambridge School of historiography was a school of thought which approached the study of the British Empire from the imperialist point of view. It emerged especially at the University of Cambridge in the 1960s. John Andrew Gallagher (1919–80) was especially influential, particularly in his article with Ronald Robinson on "The Imperialism of Free Trade".
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, originally published as Imperialism, the Newest Stage of Capitalism, is a book written by Vladimir Lenin in 1916 and published in 1917. It describes the formation of oligopoly, by the interlacing of bank and industrial capital, in order to create a financial oligarchy, and explains the function of financial capital in generating profits from the exploitation colonialism inherent to imperialism, as the final stage of capitalism. The essay synthesises Lenin's developments of Karl Marx's theories of political economy in Das Kapital (1867).
Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is opposition to imperialism or neocolonialism. Anti-imperialist sentiment manifests in several forms, such as in ethnicity, religion, moral conscience, or as a political principle in independence struggles. However, anti-imperialism typically manifests as a specific economic theory, such as in the Leninist interpretation of imperialism, which is derived from Lenin's 1917 work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The term "anti-imperialist" may also refer to opponents of an interventionist foreign policy. People who categorize themselves as anti-imperialists often state that they are opposed to colonialism, colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism and the territorial expansion of a country beyond its established borders.
The theory of imperialism refers to a range of theoretical approaches to understanding the expansion of capitalism into new areas, the unequal development of different countries, and economic systems that may lead to the dominance of some countries over others. These theories are considered distinct from other uses of the word imperialism which refer to the general tendency for empires throughout history to seek power and territorial expansion. The theory of imperialism is often associated with Marxist economics, but many theories were developed by non-Marxists. Most theories of imperialism, with the notable exception of ultra-imperialism, hold that imperialist exploitation leads to warfare, colonization, and international inequality.
Adom Getachew is an Ethiopian-American political scientist. She is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination.
