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Imperial Relations: Families in the British Empire

5-6 September 2011

Institute of Historical Research, London

In the past decade, historians have increasingly turned to the family as a key site of imperial processes. This conference aims to bring together local and international scholars working on any aspect of British imperial family history between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Across the British Empire, the family was a social and economic unit at the heart of life. It operated as a site of economic strategy and capital accumulation; shaped identity formation; and structured political, gendered, generational and racialised power relations. By exploring these themes, the conference aims to provoke a conversation about the multiple and complex ways in which the family operated as a critical building block that shaped, enabled, sustained and resisted colonialism in a range of geographic and temporal contexts, from British Columbia to British India. In so doing, the conference aims to facilitate deeper connections and future collaborations between historians interested in different aspects of family history, from the family economies of colonial rule to the social histories of imperial education.

Key themes include, but are not limited to:

• Sexuality
• Family intimacy at a distance
• Age and Generation
• Race, nation and ethnicity 
• Affective economies
• Colonial Networks

This conference is organised by Esmé Cleall, Laura Ishiguro and Emily Manktelow on behalf of the Family & Colonialism research network.

For more information, please contact Laura Ishiguro.