Black Anticolonial Strategists: Norman Manley and Obafemi Awolowo as Neither Sell-Outs nor Heroes
Christopher Montague, PhD Candidate in Black Studies, Northwestern University
This paper draws upon a common theme from two chapters of my dissertation: that anti-colonial leaders were primarily strategists with limited amounts of power in the years leading up to independence. While Norman Manley and Obafemi Awolowo have been framed in public and academic history as either heroic leaders of national independence or sell-outs who did little to alter the colonial relationship of Jamaica and Nigeria to the West, I use their personal papers, newspapers, and Colonial Office documents to argue that both men tried to implement far-reaching visions for decolonization but came up against forces they could not overrule.
The Cedars and the Shrub: The Political Theory of Corporations and the Demise of the Massachusetts Bay Company
Boone Ayala, PhD Candidate in History and Master of Legal Studies Student, University of Chicago
This paper places the seizure of the Massachusetts charter in 1684 in the context of transimperial debates over the place of corporations in the English constitution during the reign of Charles II. It argues that both royal bureaucrats and colonial subjects understood the conflict over Massachusetts as part of this broader struggle over the extent of the royal prerogative and the liberty of the subject. In the process of advocating or opposing royal expansion at corporate expense, parties to the conflict articulated radically different theories of corporate power.
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Register and Request PaperAbout the British Studies Seminar Series
The British Studies Seminar brings together scholars to discuss work that addresses the history of Britain and the British Empire from the early modern period to present day. The seminar is co-sponsored by the Graduate Cluster in British Studies at Northwestern, Northwestern History, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies at the University of Chicago.