From Britons to Britishers: Mapping a Global Imaginary

Talk by Professor Stuart Ward. This is the first keynote talk of the conference "Spatial Imaginations of Europe: Ideas, Politics, Economics and Law" and covers a longue durée perspective of the conference themes.

It is more than thirty years since Linda Colley published her seminal Britons: Forging the Nation, where she famously posited a Hegelian ‘other’ as instrumental to the emergence of shared British sentiment in the 18th century. Colley’s insular take has been challenged in recent years by the ‘need to think the empire whole’ (Pincus et. al, 2019), and to consider the impress of global modernity that brought a revolution in ‘spatio-temporal consciousness’ (Bell, 2007). The term ‘Britisher’ was coined at some point in the 19th century to encompass a more expansive, global British selfhood, and its general usage clearly posited a subtle distinction from the ‘Britons’ of Britain. Neither term resonates today (in the sense that no one really refers to themselves a Briton or a Britisher) but their semantic jostling for more than a century suggests a profound tension between fixed and indeterminate frontiers. The question of how, when, and why being British acquired uniquely global properties (and I use ‘uniquely’ with every expectation that there will be pushback) is the main object of this paper.

Bio

Stuart Ward is currently the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University for the 2025-26 academic year. Originally from Australia (BA, UQ; PhD University of Sydney) he has been based at the University of Copenhagen since 2003, most recently at the Saxo Institute where he also served as Department Chair from 2018-23. He specializes in the history of settler colonialism and the global legacies of decolonization in the twentieth century across multiple contexts, from Africa to South Asia, Canada, the Caribbean and Australia. He has held many visiting appointments and fellowships, including positions at the European University Institute, King’s College London, University College Dublin, the University of Greenland, the Australian National University, the University of Exeter and Nuffield College Oxford.

His most recent work has explored the implications of imperial retrenchment abroad for the social and political cohesion of the United Kingdom – culminating in Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023). The book has been widely debated and reviewed, described variously as ‘a work of remarkable ambition and scope’, (Journal of Modern History); ‘superbly stimulating’ (The Guardian); ‘immensely erudite and engaging’, (Journal of British Studies); and ‘an invigorating worldwide journey’ (Times Literary Supplement). It has just been issued in paperback in August 2025. At the conclusion of his term at Harvard he will take up a position as Professor of Global History at Adelaide University.