Britannia Rules the Wastes: Britain and the Arid World, 1900-1960

这个项目探索了英国的历史，它的帝国和世界沙漠环境在20世纪交织在一起的方式。大英帝国通常被视为一个典型的海洋大国，海洋地理在英国政治认同中的地位得到了广泛认可。历史学家也倾向于强调英国在20世纪的全球承诺的缩减，而不是对“边缘”地区和民族的日益浓厚的兴趣。然而，在旧大陆的大干旱地区，以及新大陆的许多沙漠地区，英国发起了无数次尝试，以促进定居、控制游牧民族、发展交通、改造景观、建立军事基地、开采矿产资源、发动战争和进行核试验。这个项目考察了大英帝国和跨国联系是如何在从大西洋海岸到满洲大草原环绕帝国和全球的大沙漠带上留下印记的。自蒙古灭亡以来，很少有帝国能像20世纪的英国那样统治如此多的世界干旱地区。然而，这对帝国运作方式的影响，以及对英国社会和文化本身的影响，从未被探索过。近年来，学者们开始着手发展“一种新的大面积史学”。帝国历史、跨国历史和全球历史的复兴使人们注意到大规模区域格局的持久动态，而这种方法论的潜力在我们新的海洋历史中得到了更好的体现。然而，虽然“海洋转向”已经恢复了大西洋、太平洋和印度洋的许多世界，但许多其他环境——如山脉、沙漠和草原——才刚刚开始以这种方式进行探索。该项目将帝国主义、游牧社会和世界沙漠环境的现代历史融合在一起，重新定位这些“边缘”区域，使其成为历史遗址。它论证了欧亚干旱区与周围国家的现代历史的持续相关性，并揭示了特定的环境配置如何破坏帝国的政治和经济框架。该项目旨在参与世界各地区复苏的新议程，并引领其走向新的方向。其研究结果将通过在获奖期间准备的两篇新研究文章进行传播，并提交给《全球历史杂志》和《二十世纪英国历史》：这些文章将为未来关于英国和干旱世界的专著奠定基础。这项研究将在自然历史博物馆和皇家地理学会的公开讲座中与公众讨论，并在后者举办展览；与来自不同学科的学者一起参加研究研讨会；并与欧洲、北美、中东和中亚的学者、政府和非政府组织合作，通过一个由学者和实践者组成的国际跨学科网络，共同探讨世界沙漠环境的共同历史和未来。这个项目通过考察英国与干旱世界在政治、经济、环境和文化等各个方面的关系，对塑造英帝国主义的地理、年代和意识形态提供了新的理解。它建立在我现有的关于两次世界大战之间的叙利亚沙漠中的英国帝国主义的工作基础上，但使我能够对20世纪的“英国世界”和干旱世界之间的关系进行更加雄心勃勃的拷问。在这个过程中，它旨在推进一个新的研究议程，通过实例证明“海洋转向”的一些见解如何应用于其他环境，并敦促对沙漠和“废物”作为持久的政治、社会和文化领域的新认识。

This project explores the ways in which the histories of Britain, its empire and the world's desert environments became entwined in the twentieth-century. The British Empire is often seen as a quintessentially maritime power, with widespread recognition of the place of maritime geographies in British political identity. Historians have also tended to emphasise the scaling-down of Britain's global commitments in the twentieth-century, rather than a deepening interest in 'marginal' places and peoples. Across the Great Arid Zone of the Old World, however, and in many of the deserts of the New, Britain launched myriad attempts to promote settlement, control nomads, develop communications, transform landscapes, establish military bases, extract mineral resources, wage war and conduct nuclear tests. This project examines how Britain's imperial and transnational connections left their mark on the great belt of deserts that girdled the empire and the globe, from the shores of the Atlantic to the Manchurian steppe. Since the fall of the Mongols, few empires have dominated as much of the world's arid zone as did the British in the twentieth century. Yet the effect of this on how that empire functioned, and on British society and culture itself, has never been explored.In recent years, scholars have embarked on the development of 'a new historiography of large areas'. The revival of imperial, transnational and global history has drawn attention to the persistent dynamics of large-scale regional configurations, and nowhere has the potential of this methodology been better demonstrated than in our new histories of the sea. And yet, while the 'maritime turn' has recovered a number of Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean worlds, many other environments - such as mountains, deserts and steppes - are only beginning to be explored in this way. This project fuses together the modern histories of imperialism, nomadic societies and the world's desert environments to reposition these 'marginal' zones as sites of history in themselves. It argues for the continued relevance of the Eurasian Arid Zone to the modern history of the states around it, and reveals how specific environmental configurations could disrupt the political and economic frameworks of empire. This project is designed to engage with the emerging agenda of recovering world regions and to lead it in new directions. Its findings will be disseminated through two new research articles prepared during the award period and submitted to The Journal of Global History and Twentieth-Century British History: these form the foundation of a future monograph on Britain and the Arid World. The research will be discussed with the public at public lectures at the Natural History Museum and the Royal Geographical Society, and an exhibition at the latter; with academics from a variety of disciplines at an accompanying research workshop; and with scholars, government and non-governmental organisations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Central Asia through an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars and practitioners engaging with the shared histories and futures of the world's desert environments. This project offers a fresh understanding of the geography, chronology and ideologies shaping British imperialism by examining Britain's relationship with the arid world in all its dimensions: political, economic, environmental and cultural. It builds on my existing work on British imperialism in the interwar Syrian Desert, but enables me to undertake a substantially more ambitious interrogation of the relationship between the 'British World' and the Arid World in the twentieth-century. In the process, it aims to advance a new research agenda, demonstrating by example how some of the insights of the 'maritime turn' can be applied to other environments, and urging a new appreciation of deserts and 'wastes' as enduring political, social and cultural arenas.