British Asia and the British Atlantic, c.1500 - 1820: two worlds or one?

这项研究将早期不列颠海外帝国定位在一个单一的全球框架内进行解释。到目前为止，研究英属亚洲的历史学家很少与研究英属美洲的历史学家打交道，这意味着很少有关于大英帝国的研究将早期英国扩张活动的两大领域--印度洋和大西洋盆地--放在一起或同时考虑。因此，关于帝国的写作已经分裂为地理和主题研究的不同领域，历史学家现在开始认识到，这大大限制了我们对不列颠帝国主义的理解。这一根本问题只能通过合作的方式来解决，因此该项目汇集了来自英国、美国、加拿大、欧洲和印度的大西洋和印度洋地区的高素质国际历史学家团队，他们将考虑在世界不同地区同时发生的帝国进程。该项目的参与者将各自从自己的地理和学科角度分析一个关键主题，对比较和对比的详细探索将使人们能够首次对英国正在崛起的全球帝国进行适当的综合分析。有重点的讨论将鼓励与会者超越其惯常的调查领域，预计所有人都将受益于在不同地理背景下探讨类似主题和问题的见解。因此，这项研究将确定和分析帝国在英属大西洋和英属亚洲扩张所产生的共同过程、互动和反应，并将极大地促进对非洲在英国早期现代帝国中的地位的理解。到项目结束时，我们将更清楚地了解，英国在印度洋和大西洋盆地的扩张是创造了两个非常不同的帝国世界，还是创造了一个在某种程度上由公元1500年至1820年期间几大洲出现的潜在共同特征统一起来的世界。这项研究将通过讨论论文和一份主要出版物来整合和统一当前的学术研究，但该项目也将成为制定新议程的跳板，因为该项目参与者进行的思想交流将为未来大英帝国历史领域的工作提供信息。预计全球和比较研究方法将应用于探索英国早期现代帝国历史上的其他主题，新的研究人员将积极参与该项目的议程设置部分。因此，该项目无疑有潜力对有关大英帝国和帝国主义动态的研究和写作的长期发展做出重大和持久的贡献。仔细协调的活动计划将确保研究成果传播给英国和其他地方的学者、学生和普通受众。讲习班、研讨会介绍、国际会议上的小组讨论和在线项目报告都将促进对研究的批判性评估；该项目还将通过在新斯科舍省哈利法克斯的大西洋海事博物馆和伦敦格林威治的国家海事博物馆举行的活动，推动对帝国主义和帝国表现的公开讨论。

The research locates the early British overseas empire within a single, global framework of interpretation. Until now, historians of British Asia have seldom engaged with historians of British America, and this means that few studies of Britain's empire have ever considered together or simultaneously the two great arenas of early British expansionist activity: the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Basin. Consequently writing about the empire has fractured into separate fields of geographical and thematic study, and historians are now beginning to recognise that this significantly limits our understanding of British imperialism. This fundamental problem can only be overcome by a collaborative approach, and consequently the project brings together a high-quality international team of historians of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe, and India who will consider imperial processes that were occurring at the same time in different parts of the world. The participants in the project will each analyse a key theme from their own geographical and disciplinary perspective, and the detailed exploration of comparisons and contrasts will enable a properly integrated analysis to be made for the first time of Britain's emerging global empire. Focused discussion will encourage participants to look beyond their usual fields of inquiry and it is anticipated that all will benefit from the insights who engage with similar themes and problems in different geographical contexts. As a result the research will identify and analyse common processes, interactions, and responses generated by imperial expansion in the British Atlantic and British Asia, and it will significantly advance understanding of the position of Africa within Britain's early modern empire. By the end of the project we will have a much clearer understanding of whether British expansion in the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Basin served to create two very different imperial worlds or, alternatively, one world that was to some extent unified by underlying common characteristics that emerged across several continents between c.1500 and 1820. The research will integrate and unify current scholarship through discussion papers and a major publication, but the project will also act as a springboard for the development of new agendas because the exchanges of ideas undertaken by the participants in the project will inform future work in the field of British imperial history. It is anticipated that the global and comparative research approach will be applied to the exploration of other themes in the history of Britain's early modern empire, and new researchers will be actively engaged in the agenda-setting element of the project. Consequently, the project has the undoubted potential to make a major and lasting contribution to the long-term development of research and writing about the British empire and the dynamics of imperialism.A carefully co-ordinated programme of activities will ensure that the research findings will be disseminated to scholars, students, and a general audience, both in the UK and elsewhere. Workshops, seminar presentations, panel discussions at international meetings, and an online project report will each facilitate critical appraisal of the research; and the project will also feed into public discussion of imperialism and representations of empire through events staged at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.