[We have a notice of the following session, to be held tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. at the Library of Congress's Kluge Center.]
Decolonization is widely considered one of the foundational processes of the modern world—an old imperial order was swept away, and a new world of nations emerged to replace it. But is the modern era really a world of nations or largely the detritus of broken-down empires? Is a world of nations an attainable or even desirable situation?
John Darwin will address these questions in a lecture titled "Decolonization—a History of Failure?" at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, July 13, in room 119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The lecture is part of a decolonization seminar hosted by the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Center and sponsored by the National History Center, with funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The lecture is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are needed. Darwin teaches imperial and global history at the University of Oxford, where he is a fellow of Nuffield College. His recent publications include "The Empire Project: the Rise and Fall of the British World System 1830-1970" (2009) and "After Tamerlane: the Global History of Empire" (2007). Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world’s best thinkers to stimulate and energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources and to interact with policymakers in Washington. Further information on the Kluge Center is here.
