He is the son of Alexander MacKenzie and Hannah (née Whitby) and was schooled in Glasgow (Scotland) and Ndola (Zambia), before graduating from the University of Glasgow and completing his Ph.D (1969) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and in London.[1] This cosmopolitan upbringing developed his interest in the history of the British Empire, a subject he has written about in Echoes of Empire[2] and How Empire Shaped Us,[3] and he has travelled extensively throughout its former territories. At Lancaster University he became the first Dean of Arts and Humanities. Among his non-academic posts and responsibilities, he was also chairman of governors of two schools in Morecambe, Lancashire, and was a magistrate of the Lancaster petty sessions (1990-2000). He retired from Lancaster University in 2002 and now lives in Perthshire, Scotland.
His early work, the subject of his Ph.D, was on labour migration and pre-colonial technology and trade in Central Africa. He conducted oral research throughout Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1973-74 and this gave him a keen awareness of the traditional relationships between African communities and their environments. He was also influenced by his experiences as an archaeologist both in Scotland and in Africa, which served to emphasise his belief that historical evidence is to be found in sources other than documents. This helped lead to his pioneering development of the study of the popular culture of imperialism in his books Propaganda and Empire (1984) and (edited) Imperialism and Popular Culture (1986), in which he argued that empire had just as significant effects upon the dominant as upon the subordinate societies. He used a wide range of materials from cultural sources, including ephemera. This proved to be controversial since some elements of the historical Establishment considered that British domestic history was somehow little connected with its empire.[citation needed]
In the Porter–MacKenzie debate his ideas were challenged by Bernard Porter in the latter’s The Absent-Minded Imperialists,[5] although Porter never actually confronted MacKenzie's evidence head-on.[citation needed] However, MacKenzie’s followers have mounted a vigorous fight-back, not least in the many books in the Manchester University Press ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series dealing with the cultural history of empire, which he established and edited from 1984 to 2012. By 2022 it had reached a total of almost 180 titles making it the most successful academic series in British publishing. Its prime concern remains the conviction that imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies.[citation needed] Cross-disciplinary work has appeared across the full spectrum of cultural phenomena, examining aspects of sex and gender, law, science, the environment, language and literature, migration, patriotic societies and much else.
His next book, The Empire of Nature (1988), was an early contribution to the environmental history of empire, particularly charting the human relationship with animals, through both hunting and conservation, in the imperial take-over of Africa and India. His wider ideas on environmental history were set out in the Thomas Callander Memorial Lectures at the University of Aberdeen in 1995,[6] and helped to open up a major field to which many other scholars have contributed.[citation needed]
He once again entered the realm of controversy with his critique of Edward Said's Orientalism,[7] published in 1995, which was badly received by post-Saidians and post-colonialists, although many of his early publications pioneered their later work.[citation needed] Said's strict binarism and concentration on concepts of the 'other' were countered by MacKenzie's insistence that Orientalism could, in certain circumstances, involve constructive cross-cultural influences, notably in the arts. These notions were later accepted and developed by other scholars. His interest in the visual arts was reflected in his chapter on the subject in the Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (1996)[8] as well as in Exhibiting the Empire (2015).
His 1991 professorial inaugural lecture ‘Scotland and the British Empire’[9] was well received and opened up new fields for him, including various aspects of work on the Scottish Diaspora. This led to his book The Scots in South Africa (with Nigel R. Dalziel) of 2007 (while associated with to the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at Aberdeen University) and a number of edited works. These analysed notions of sub-British ethnicity and identity, not least in their associational, religious and cultural manifestations. He then developed the concept of the four nations and empire, extending the arguments of J.G.A. Pocock to the British Empire, suggesting that it was not so much ‘British’ as a combination of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English empires, reflecting a range of ethnic skill sets, cultures and identities which in turn influenced British domestic history.
His lifelong interest in museums produced Museums and Empire (2009), a work resulting from a Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellowship which examined the dispersal of the idea of the museum in Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and elsewhere. This embedded the development of these institutions within the colonial bourgeois public spheres while reflecting contemporary interests in natural history and ethnography which in turn served to develop the individual identities of various colonies. In recent years he has become particularly interested in comparative empires and the manner in which such parallel studies can illuminate the history of the British Empire.
Andrew S. Thompson’s edited book Writing Imperial Histories[10] was published in 2013 celebrating the significance and influence of his ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series. The same year Karl S. Hele’s edited The Nature of Empires and the Empires of Nature,[11] consciously echoing the title of his own earlier book of 1997, examined his environmental work while greatly extending it, notably in Canada.
In 2016 a festschrift conference was held in MacKenzie's honour at the Burn House in Angus, Scotland. The resulting book, The MacKenzie Moment and Imperial History edited by Stephanie Barczewski and Martin Farr,[12] described itself as celebrating the career of 'eminent historian of the British Empire, John M. MacKenzie, who pioneered the examination of the impact of the Empire on metropolitan culture'. It was structured around the cultural impact of empire, ‘Four-Nations’ history, and the global and transnational perspectives, in essays demonstrating MacKenzie’s influence but also interrogating his legacy for the study of imperial history, not only for Britain and the nations of Britain but also in comparative and transnational context. The contributions from seventeen international scholars 'make crystal clear why the interpretational shifts initiated by MacKenzie’s work are of lasting importance’ (Martin Thomas, University of Exeter UK).
In 2020 MacKenzie published the first of two complementary synoptic works addressing cultural aspects of the British Empire. Pursuing his long-standing interest in the built environment, The British Empire Through Buildings sought to illuminate the history of the empire through the examination of its architecture and urban planning. It revealed the manner in which imperial rule was established and consolidated, and its globalising impact in both styles of architecture and urban development. It also illustrated the ways in which the economic ambitions of colonies together with the needs of British settlers and agents were met.
This analysis illuminated the complexities of class and the racial dimensions of empire, and further insights were gleaned from the manner in which aspects of the built environment have been adopted and adapted for a post-colonial world. This was the first work to analyse such issues across the entire British Empire, in all its various types of colonies across five continents.
A second equally ambitious work emerged in 2022 with A Cultural History of the British Empire, a ground-breaking history and analysis of British imperial culture involving everything from sports such as horse-racing and cricket to art, statuary, theatre and ceremonial forms. As these were dispersed across the world through the agency of British representatives, emigrants and travellers, facilitated by the rapid growth of print, photography, film, and radio, imperialists imagined this new global culture would cement the unity of the empire. Instead, MacKenzie showed that this remarkably wide-ranging spread of ideas and influences had unintended and surprising results. Colonized peoples adapted elements to their own ends, subverting British expectations and eventually beating them at their own game. As indigenous communities integrated their own cultures with the British imports, with a profound influence on the global culture of the present day, the empire itself was increasingly undermined.
Editorial roles
He has also been an editor of major reference works, including Peoples, Nations and Cultures (2005) and the four-volume Encyclopaedia of Empire (2016), and has contributed many articles and reviews to journals as well as chapters in books. He was editor of the journal Environment and History, 2000-2005 and was editor-in-chief of Britain and the World, the Journal of the British Scholar Society 2015-20.
Media and other
He has given BBC Radio talks, has appeared on television programmes relating to the British Empire, and has written for The Scotsman and other newspapers. He was historical adviser for exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (both on David Livingstone, 1997) and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London ('Inventing New Britain: The Victorian Vision', 2001). He also contributed to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition 'Inspired by the East: how the Islamic world influenced Western art', held at the British Museum, London, in 2019.[13]
Cultural imperialism comprises the cultural dimensions of imperialism. The word "imperialism" describes practices in which a country engages culture to create and maintain unequal social and economic relationships among social groups. Cultural imperialism often uses wealth, media power and violence to implement the system of cultural hegemony that legitimizes imperialism.
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power and soft power. Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
Hegemony is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states, either regional or global.
Media imperialism is an area in the international political economy of communications research tradition that focuses on how "all Empires, in territorial or nonterritorial forms, rely upon communications technologies and mass media industries to expand and shore up their economic, geopolitical, and cultural influence." In the main, most media imperialism research examines how the unequal relations of economic, military and cultural power between an imperialist country and those on the receiving end of its influence tend to be expressed and perpetuated by mass media and cultural industries.
Scottish literature is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers. It includes works in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Brythonic, French, Latin, Norn or other languages written within the modern boundaries of Scotland.
Environmental history is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time, emphasising the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs and vice versa.
The Empire Marketing Board was formed in May 1926 by the Colonial Secretary Leo Amery to promote intra-Empire trade and to persuade consumers to 'Buy Empire'. It was established as a substitute for tariff reform and protectionist legislation and this is why it was eventually abolished in 1933, as a system of imperial preference replaced free trade. During its brief existence, the Empire Marketing Board was unsuccessful in raising Britain's imports of products from the Empire.
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.
Scottish art is the body of visual art made in what is now Scotland, or about Scottish subjects, since prehistoric times. It forms a distinctive tradition within European art, but the political union with England has led its partial subsumation in British art.
Scientific imperialism is a term that appears to have been coined by Ellis T. Powell when addressing the Commonwealth Club of Canada on 8 September 1920. He defined imperialism as "the sense of arbitrary and capricious domination over the bodies and souls of men," he used the term "scientific imperialism" to mean "the subjection of all the developed and undeveloped powers of the earth to the mind of man."
Jeffrey Richards is a British historian.
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.
The architecture of Scotland includes all human building within the modern borders of Scotland, from the Neolithic era to the present day. The earliest surviving houses go back around 9500 years, and the first villages 6000 years: Skara Brae on the Mainland of Orkney being the earliest preserved example in Europe. Crannogs, roundhouses, each built on an artificial island, date from the Bronze Age and stone buildings called Atlantic roundhouses and larger earthwork hill forts from the Iron Age. The arrival of the Romans from about 71 AD led to the creation of forts like that at Trimontium, and a continuous fortification between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde known as the Antonine Wall, built in the second century AD. Beyond Roman influence, there is evidence of wheelhouses and underground souterrains. After the departure of the Romans there were a series of nucleated hill forts, often utilising major geographical features, as at Dunadd and Dunbarton.
Romanticism in Scotland was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that developed between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. It was part of the wider European Romantic movement, which was partly a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment, emphasising individual, national and emotional responses, moving beyond Renaissance and Classicist models, particularly into nostalgia for the Middle Ages. The concept of a separate national Scottish Romanticism was first articulated by the critics Ian Duncan and Murray Pittock in the Scottish Romanticism in World Literatures Conference held at UC Berkeley in 2006 and in the latter's Scottish and Irish Romanticism (2008), which argued for a national Romanticism based on the concepts of a distinct national public sphere and differentiated inflection of literary genres; the use of Scots language; the creation of a heroic national history through an Ossianic or Scottian 'taxonomy of glory' and the performance of a distinct national self in diaspora.
Architecture of Scotland in the Industrial Revolution includes all building in Scotland between the mid-eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century. During this period, the country underwent an economic and social transformation as a result of industrialisation, which was reflected in new architectural forms, techniques and scale of building. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Edinburgh was the focus of a classically inspired building boom that reflected the growing wealth and confidence of the capital. Housing often took the form of horizontally divided tenement flats. Some of the leading European architects during this period were Scottish, including Robert Adam and William Chambers.
Literature in early modern Scotland is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers between the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century and the beginnings of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution in mid-eighteenth century. By the beginning of this era Gaelic had been in geographical decline for three centuries and had begun to be a second class language, confined to the Highlands and Islands, but the tradition of Classic Gaelic Poetry survived. Middle Scots became the language of both the nobility and the majority population. The establishment of a printing press in 1507 made it easier to disseminate Scottish literature and was probably aimed at bolstering Scottish national identity.
Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is opposition to imperialism or neocolonialism. Anti-imperialist sentiment typically manifests as a political principle in independence struggles against intervention or influence from a global superpower, as well as in opposition to colonial rule. Anti-imperialism can also arise from 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. 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.
Andrew Stuart Thompson is a British historian and academic. He specialises in modern British history, Imperialism, and the British Empire. Since September 2019, he has been Professor of Global Imperial History at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He previously taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Exeter. He was Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) from 2018 to 2020, having previously been its chief executive on a part-time basis.
The Porter–MacKenzie debate is a historiographical controversy in the field of Modern British and Imperial history. It focuses on the extent to which colonialism was an important influence within British culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. The debate was characterised by disagreement between the academic historians Bernard Porter and John MacKenzie, beginning in 2004. Porter argued that British imperial expansion during the era of New Imperialism had little effect on ordinary people in the United Kingdom, while MacKenzie argued that colonialism dominated British popular culture for much of the period.
Professor Andrekos Varnava,, is a dual national Cypriot/Australian writer and historian, who is best known for his work confronting controversial moments in modern history and their consequences.
↑ ‘Analysing Echoes of Empire in Contemporary Context: the Personal Odyssey of an imperial historian (1970s-present)’, in Kalypso Nikolaidis, Berny Sebe and Gabrielle Maas (eds.), Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (I.B. Tauris, London 2015), pp. 189-206.
↑ ‘Empire From Above and From Below’ in Antoinette Burton and Dane Kennedy (eds.), How Empire Shaped Us (Bloomsbury, London 2016), pp. 37-47.
↑ Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists. Empire, Society and Culture in Britain (Oxford U.P. 2004).
↑ Later published as: Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires: Imperialism, Scotland and the Environment, the Callander Lectures 1995, University of Aberdeen (Tuckwell, East Linton 1997).
↑ Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, Pantheon, 1978).
↑ 'Art and the Empire' in P.J. Marshall (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (Cambridge U.P. 1996), pp.296-316.
↑ Later published as: ‘Essay and Reflection: on Scotland and the Empire’, in The International History Review (Simon Fraser University), Vol.XV, No.4, Nov. 1993, pp.714-739.
↑ Andrew S. Thompson (ed.), Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester University Press 2013).
↑ Karl S. Hele (ed.), The Nature of Empires and the Empires of Nature. Indigenous Peoples and the Great Lakes Environment (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2013).
↑ Stephanie Barczewski and Martin Farr (eds.), The MacKenzie Moment and Imperial History (Palgrave Macmillan 2019).
↑ John M. MacKenzie,‘The Orientalism Debate,’ in William Greenwood and Lucien de Guise (eds), Inspired by the East: how the Islamic world influenced Western art, British Museum 2019, pp.16-29.
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