BA History

In recent years, many people have become increasingly dissatisfied with the ways in which British history has been taught, from schools to universities, as they regard the histories that they have encountered as narrowly focused and with little to say about important topics such as empire or migration. Recently, the BBC’s landmark series Black and British: A Forgotten History, and the accompanying book by David Olusoga, and Yasmin Khan’s documentaries on South Asian migration have brought these histories to new audiences and generations. Likewise, Rosina Visram’s Asians in Britain (2002) documents four centuries of migration and settlement to Britain that are often overlooked. This module provides a broad survey of the widely neglected histories of Black and South Asian Britons. The module does not assume any prior knowledge and would be suitable for a wide range of interests, from exploring your own heritage, developing a grounding for more specialist modules on these themes later in the course, or teaching on these topics in the future.

Offer a broad, introductory survey of Black and South Asian histories of Britain, for Level 1 history students, and provide a solid foundation for further study and more specialist modules at Level 2, Level 3, and PGT within history.  

The module will be delivered through in-person lectures (1hr per week) and seminars (2 hours per week). Students will be introduced to the use of online databases and collections and be expected to navigate the physical and electronic resources available through the Library. This format has been deliberately chosen to help us reinforce the focus on primary sources during seminars and allow for possible visits to archives.

• Demonstrate a broad comprehension of Black and South Asian History in Britain from the early modern period onwards to the present. 

• Recognise how and why these important histories remain neglected and underrepresented, via exploration of institutional inequalities in UK History, heritage and archive sectors. 

• Understand the broader chronologies and geographies of people of various African and South Asian heritage in Britain as well as the historical forces that contributed to their migration and settlement, and communities at key junctures in British history. 
• Understand how shifting notions of Britishness has impacted the lived experiences of people of various African and South Asian heritage. 

• Recognise the role of people of various African and South Asian heritage within modern British society and culture, including their formative role in building movements for racial and social justice. 

• Understand the nature of a primary source and be able to locate, analyse, and synthesise them. 

• Critically engage with historiographical issues of inclusion, exclusion, and the nature of the curriculum. 

• Understand the historical processes behind constructions of race and citizenship in modern British society. 

• Learn how to identify a historical problem and develop a research question. 

• Understand how to situate primary research in relation to broader historical debates and themes. 

• Understand basic principles of archival practice and research. Students will use digital and/or physical archives to conduct original historical research. 

• Cultivate their written and oral communication skills 

• Critically examine societal values as well as their own personal norms, attitudes, and cultural identities. 

• Enhance the ability of students to discuss and write about histories of race, migration, politics, culture and social movements. 

Turnitin.

Orally feedback on formative assessment, in seminars/office hours.

There will be three core texts for the course: 

Rosina Visram, Asians in Britain (2002). 

Peter Fryer, Staying Power (1984). 

David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016). 

The following additional texts also cover many of the course themes: 

Ashutosh Kumar, Coolies of the Empire: Indentured Indians in the Sugar Colonies, 1830-1920 (2018) 

Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (2013) 

Catherina Hall et al, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Britain (2014) 

Caroline Bressey, Empire, Race and the Politics of Anti-Caste (2013) 

David Dabydeen, Hogarth's Blacks: Images of Blacks in Eighteenth-Century English Art (1987) 

Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (2013) 

Gretchen Gerzina, Black London: Life Before Emancipation (1995) 

Hakim Adi, African and Caribbean People in Britain (2022) 

Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible (2008) 

Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in The Postwar Era (1997) 

Kennetta Hammond Perry, London is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship, and the Politics of Race (2015) 

Olivette Otele, African Europeans: An Untold History (2020) 

Onyeka Nubia, England's Other Countrymen: Blackness in Tudor Society (2019) 

Paul Gilroy, There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (1992) 

Rob Waters, Thinking Black: Britain, 1964-1985 (2019) 

Sadiah Qureshi, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire and Anthropology in Britain (2011) 

Stuart Hall, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands (2017) 

Sumita Mukherjee, Indian Suffragettes: Female Identities and Transnational Networks (2018)

Expected outcomes:

• Carry out research into primary and secondary material. 
• Organise and synthesise cogently a high number of source materials. 
• Produce research outputs. 
• Debate complex and difficult histories with respect, intelligence and deftness. 
• Team work and communication skills 
• Independent initiative and research resulting in tangible outputs in the form of assessed reports. 
• The ability to organise and make sense of a large amount of evidence/data. 
• Close attention to detail in the form of reading intensely particular texts. 
• Complex cognitive skills in the form of thinking through a large body of information in order to devise a detailed and sophisticated arguments. 
• Team work in the form of collaborating with colleagues/classmates in seminars and in research processes.

This module will contribute directly to the broader EDI aims of the department, and broader institution in multiple ways: 

• Aim to introduce all students to these histories by not assuming any prior knowledge and emphasising that Black and South Asian histories of Britain allow us to understand British, and global history more broadly.   

• Will introduce students to these neglected histories from the very start of their course, and provide an ideal foundation for more specialist modules at level 2, level 3, and postgraduate study. 

• Contribute to the broader curriculum reform and decolonising initiatives by embedding Black and South Asian histories, race, migration, and diasporic histories, into the curriculum. By its very nature, the course will showcase a wide variety of authors, creatives, and activists of Black and South Asian heritage.