The School of Oriental and African Studies
Imperial Training and the Expansion of Learning

A history of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London from its foundation in 1916.

Ian Brown (Author)

9781107164420, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 July 2016

346 pages, 27 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.65 kg

'Ian Brown has written an authoritative institutional history without losing sight of the individuals who populate it. The School of Oriental and African Studies is one of the world's foremost centres of teaching and scholarship over its vast range of interests. Ian Brown shows that its very survival is near-miraculous, as it faced other jealous institutions, government bureaucracies full of promise and short on their fulfilment, parsimonious governments and indifferent commercial interests … This is a fine example of what an institutional history should aspire to be.' M. C. Ricklefs, Australian National University

The School of Oriental and African Studies, a college of the University of London, was established in 1916 principally to train the colonial administrators who ran the British Empire in the languages of Asia and Africa. It was founded, that is, with an explicitly imperial purpose. Yet the School would come to transcend this function to become a world centre of scholarship and learning, in many important ways challenging that imperial origin. Drawing on the School's own extensive administrative records, on interviews with current and past staff, and on the records of government departments, Ian Brown explores the work of the School over its first century. He considers the expansion in the School's configuration of studies from the initial focus on languages, its changing relationships with government, and the major contributions that have been made by the School to scholarly and public understandings of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Introduction
1. 'Long contemplated and too long delayed': the founding of the School
2. 'Partly a research institution and partly a vocational training centre': 1917–38
3. The war years, 1939–45
4. The great post-war expansion
5. Expansion into the social sciences
6. The great contraction
7. The 1990s: renewed expansion but unresolved issues
8. The past in the present
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Universities [JNMN], 21st century history: from c 2000 - [HBLX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]