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Commentary: New directions for historical geographies of colonialism
Author(s) -
Lester Alan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
new zealand geographer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.335
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1745-7939
pISSN - 0028-8144
DOI - 10.1111/nzg.12099
Subject(s) - colonialism , commonwealth , citation , bureaucracy , empire , history , library science , sociology , media studies , art history , classics , politics , law , political science , computer science , archaeology
In recent years historical geographers have perhaps had more impact within the field of colonial, imperial and postcolonial studies than in any other branch of broader historical studies (Driver 2013). Prominent imperial historians have drawn explicit attention to a ‘spatial turn’ within their discipline, citing the works of geographers such as Doreen Massey and of the historical geographers who have deployed the concepts of relational space that she articulates so well (Massey 2005; Lester 2013). The American ‘new imperial historian’, Antoinette Burton writes that her field is ‘highly interdisciplinary, drawing on scholarship in literary studies, anthropology, and geography – geography being perhaps the most influential in the long run for recourse to spatial ways of thinking and interpreting’ (Burton 2011, 14-15). The purpose of this commentary is to ask ‘what next’? Having helped engineer greater attention to trans-imperial networks, mobilities and flows that destabilise core-periphery binaries within imperial and colonial studies, where are historical geographers poised to make the most innovative contributions within this same interdisciplinary field in the coming years?