Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain

While the British Empire is long gone, it survives as a recurring flashpoint in heated debates about the present and future of Britain and the nations over which Britain once ruled. Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain turns a critical eye to the widely-held notion that the long shadow of the imperial past has much to answer for, and asks to what extent should the residual after-effects of Britain’s colonial empire be taken at face value?

From the ‘Rhodes must fall’ controversy and contested anniversaries to immigration scares and the question of what Britishness is in a post-imperial world, an eclectic mix of expert researchers, writers and commentators consider the legacy of the British empire in the battle over Brexit. As the United Kingdom haggles its way out of the European Union and casts about for an alternative future, this volume shows how the memory of the empire is still as potent a political force as ever.

Stuart Ward is Professor and Head of the Saxo Institute of History, Ethnology, Archaeology and Classics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is the author of The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire (2010; co-authored with James Curran) and Australia and the British Embrace (2001), and the editor of British Culture and the End of Empire (2001).

Astrid Rasch is Associate Professor of English in the Department of Language and Literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. She is the editor of Life Writing After Empire (2017).