Memories of Post-Imperial Nations presents the first transnational comparison of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy and Japan, all of whom lost or 'decolonized' their overseas empires after 1945. Since the empires of the world crumbled, the post-imperial nations have been struggling to come to terms with the present, and as recall sets in 'wars of memory' have arisen, leading to a process of collective 'editing'. As these nations rebuild themselves they shed old characteristics and acquire new ones, looking at new orientations. This book brings together varying perspectives with historians and political scientists of these nations attempting to bind memory and its experience of different post-imperial nations.

Memories of Post-Imperial Nations presents the first transnational comparison of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy and Japan, all of whom lost or 'decolonized' their overseas empires after 1945. Since the empires of the world crumbled, the post-imperial nations have been struggling to come to terms with the present, and as recall sets in 'wars of memory' have arisen, leading to a process of collective 'editing'. As these nations rebuild themselves they shed old characteristics and acquire new ones, looking at new orientations. This book brings together varying perspectives with historians and political scientists of these nations attempting to bind memory and its experience of different post-imperial nations.

Europe’s great colonial empires have long been a thing of the past, but the memories they generated are still all around us. They have left deep imprints on the different memory communities that were affected by the processes of establishing, running and dismantling these systems of imperial rule, and they are still vibrant and evocative today. This volume brings together a collection of innovative and fresh studies exploring different sites of imperial memory – those conceptual and real places where the memories of former colonial rulers and of former colonial subjects have crystallised into a lasting form. The volume explores how memory was built up, re-shaped and preserved across different empires, continents and centuries. It shows how it found concrete expression in stone and bronze, how it adhered to the stories that were told and retold about great individuals and how it was suppressed, denied and neglected.

This volume is first consistent effort to systematically analyze the features and consequences of colonial repatriation in comparative terms, examining the trajectories of returnees in six former colonial countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Portugal). Each contributor examines these cases through a shared cultural sociology frame, unifying the historical and sociological analyses carried out in the collection. More particularly, the book strengthens and improves one of the most important and popular current streams of cultural sociology, that of collective trauma. Using a comparative perspective to study the trajectories of similarly traumatized groups in different countries allows for not only a thick description of the return processes, but also a thick explanation of the mechanisms and factors shaping them. Learning from these various cases of colonial returnees, the authors have been able to develop a new theoretical framework that may help cultural sociologists to explain why seemingly similar claims of collective trauma and victimhood garner respect and recognition in certain contexts, but fail in others.

This volume comprises a broad interdisciplinary examination of the many different approaches by which contemporary scholars record our history. The editors provide a comprehensive overview through thirty-eight chapters divided into four parts: a) Historical Culture and Public Uses of History; b) The Appeal of the Nation in History Education of Postcolonial Societies; c) Reflections on History Learning and Teaching; d) Educational Resources: Curricula, Textbooks and New Media. This unique text integrates contributions of researchers from history, education, collective memory, museum studies, heritage, social and cognitive psychology, and other social sciences, stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue. Contributors come from various countries of Northern and Southern America, Europe and Asia, providing an international perspective that does justice to the complexity of this field of study. The Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education provides state-of-the-art research, focussing on how citizens and societies make sense of the past through different ways of representing it.

British culture after Empire is the first collection of its kind to explore the intertwined social, cultural and political aftermath of empire in Britain from 1945 up to and beyond the Brexit referendum of 2016, combining approaches from the fields of history, English and cultural studies. Against those who would deny, downplay or attempt to forget Britain’s imperial legacy, the various contributions expose and explore how the British Empire and the consequences of its end continue to shape Britain at the local, national and international level. As an important and urgent intervention in a field of increasing relevance within and beyond the academy, the book offers fresh perspectives on the colonial hangovers in post-colonial Britain from up-and-coming as well as established scholars.

This volume contends that young individuals across Europe relate to their country’s history in complex and often ambivalent ways. It pays attention to how both formal education and broader culture communicate ideas about the past, and how young people respond to these ideas. The studies collected in this volume show that such ideas about the past are central to the formation of the group identities of nations, social movements, or religious groups. Young people express received historical narratives in new, potentially subversive, ways. As young people tend to be more mobile and ready to interrogate their own roots than later generations, they selectively privilege certain aspects of their identities and their identification with their family or nation while neglecting others. This collection aims to correct the popular misperception that young people are indifferent towards history and prove instead that historical narratives are constitutive to their individual identities and their sense of belonging to something broader than themselves.