Intends to assess the fate of the nation as a subject of disciplinary inquiry. This title investigates whether the nation remains central, adequate, or even possible as an analytical category for studying history. It includes twenty essays that exemplify cultural approaches to histories of nationalism and imperialism.

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: On the Inadequacy and the Indispensability of the Nation / Antoinette Burton 1 1. Nations, Empires, Disciplines: Thinking beyond the Boundaries Rethinking British Studies: Is There Life after Empire? / Susan D. Pennybacker 27 Transcending the Nation: A Global Imperial History? / Stuart Ward 44 Empire and “the Nation”: Institutional Practice, Pedagogy, and Nation in the Classroom / Heather Streets 57 We've Just Started Making National Histories, and You Want Us to Stop Already? / Ann Curthoys 70 Losing Our Way after the Imperial Turn: Charting Academic Uses of the Postcolonial / Terri A. Hasseler and Paula M. Krebs 90 Rereading the Archive and Opening up the Nation-State: Colonial Knowledge in South Asia (and Beyond) / Tony Ballantyne 102 2. Fortresses and Frontiers: Beyond and Within Unthinking French History: Colonial Studies beyond National Identity / Gary Wilder 125 Notes on a History of “Imperial Turns” in Modern Germany / Lora Wildenthal 144 After “Spain”: A Dialogue with Josep M. Fradera on Spanish Colonial Historiography / Christopher Schmidt-Nowara 157 Making the World Safe for American History / Robert Gregg 170 Asian American Global Discourses and the Problem of History / Augusto Espiritu 186 Race, Nationality, Mobility: A History of the Passport / Radhika Viyas Mongia 196 3. Reorienting the Nation: Logics of Empire, Colony, Globe Periodizing Johnson: Anticolonial Modernity as Crux and Critique / Clement Hawes 217 The Pudding and the Palace: Labor, Print Culture, and Imperial Britain in 1851 / Lara Kriegel 230 Double Meanings: Nation and Empire in the Edwardian Era / Ian Christopher Fletcher 246 The Fashionable World: Imagined Communities of Dress / Kristin Hoganson 260 The Romance of White Nations: Imperialism, Popular Culture, and National Histories / Hsu-Ming Teo 279 Britain's Finest: The Royal Hong Kong Police / Karen Fang 293 One-Way Traffic: George Lamming and the Portable Empire / John Plotz 308 The Whiteness of Civilization: The Transatlantic Crisis of White Supremacy and British Television Programming in the United States in the 1970s / Douglas M. Haynes 324 Selected Bibliography 343 About the Contributors 357 Index 361

“After the Imperial Turn is an important collection of essays marking the 'coming of age' of 'new imperial history.’ One of its great strengths is its range—from the big picture to the local study, from the pedagogic to the institutional, from the British exemplar to a number of comparative perspectives, from the U.S. to the Caribbean and Hong Kong. This is an essential read for aspiring young historians.”—Catherine Hall, author of Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867

Essays in this collection assess "the nation" as a subject of disciplinary inquiry, considering both its enduring relevance and its inadequacy as an analytical category for studying history, literature, and culture