Global & Imperial History
Courses Online & in London

Trace the history of pearls from 5000 BCE to the 21st century. Did Cleopatra drink a pearl cocktail? Where can you harvest black pearls? Who wrote the Pearl Fishers? How has global warming affected pearl production?

Eat you way around India, China and Japan through the eyes of Edward Terry and others. The Mongols in China and the Turkic conquerors of India initiated a fusion of cooking traditions still apparent today.

Writer, traveller, social critic, and medical innovator, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a remarkable woman. We look at her contribution to 18th-century literature, her groundbreaking travel writing, and advocacy for smallpox inoculation.

Discover the lesser-known histories of WW2 on this 6-week, co-taught course, from the role played by Indians during the independence era to the experiences of Africans and the First Nation peoples of the USA. 

In 1914 Britain was undoubtedly the world’s super power; yet by 1960 this had all changed, as recognized by the British Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan who announced the process of decolonialization in his Winds of Change speech. Join us to discover the history of the decline of the British Empire and the foundations of the Commonwealth. 

Discover who were the barbarians in the Ancient and Medieval World. How did the Chinese and the West interact with ‘the other’? Were the Vikings simply ‘long-haired tourists who occasionally roughed up the natives’ (Wallace-Hadrill 1975)? We will spend the morning at the City Lit and afternoon at the  British museum.    

During this lunchtime lecture we will assess the role of Britain in nuclear testing, developments and warfare in the late 1950s with reference to the controversy surrounding the detonation of Nuclear bombs off the coast of Christmas Island in the Pacific. Tutor: Ellen Carpenter. Ellen is the daughter of a British Christmas Island veteran.