Oct/Nove 2010 (TBA)

Convened by:
Dr Neil Ramsey, ANU, E: neil.ramsey@anu.edu.au
 

Venue: Sir Roland Wilson Building, ANU

Emerging in relation to a ‘new imperial history’ (Wilson) concerned with the cultural as well as political aspects of empire, a number of recent studies have argued that religion played an important role in the development of modern imperialism. This conference will seek to contribute to this growing area of research by drawing together work that examines the cultural intersection of war and religion in the formation of the second British empire, broadly conceived as the period from 1750-1870. This was an era in which Britain’s Protestant heritage came to the fore, as the nation defined itself through a series of wars against a hostile Catholic French ‘Other’. Religiosity carried over into the numerous smaller colonial conflicts of the era. Britain’s imperial expansion came to be intimately linked with protestant evangelism and a pervasive spirit of reform. Missionary societies grew enormously from the end of the eighteenth century and millenarianism gained widespread currency as a response to the seemingly apocalyptic conflicts of the Napoleonic era. By the 1850s, the idea of the Christian soldier defending the British Empire had emerged as a core element of national identity and the nation’s relationship to empire, war and the military. This period was also, however, a time of religious reform. The Anglican Church began to lose its close associations with the British state, while dissenting traditions and, by the end of the period, even Catholicism gained increasing legitimacy. Religion both supported and contested the state’s political ambitions, with some of the most virulent protests against war being religious in origin. So too, indigenous resistance to British imperialism, such as Pontiac’s War in the 1760s or the Hauhau Wars in New Zealand during the 1860s, were frequently associated with radicalised religiosity. In numerous ways, religion was used during these years as a framework within which to make sense of imperial conflicts, colonial expansion, and Britain’s role as an imperial power. Exploring these themes can help us to better understand the interlinked network of issues surrounding civilization, violence, identity and virtue that marked the rise of the second empire, issues with ongoing relevance for our contemporary ‘globalised’ world and its own concerns with religion and violence.

Topics

• Religious justifications for war and empire;
• Religion and anti-war rhetoric;
• Religious conflict;
• British protestant evangelism;
• Bible reading, virtue and military reform;
• Church reform and the nation;
• War and civilisation;
• Missionary societies, violence and empire;
• Traditional Christian views of warfare;
• Millenarian culture;
• Romanticism, empire and war;
• Indigenous resistance and religion;
• The relationship of war and global modernity.