HIS219: Decolonization: History Through Film
Welcome to the library research page for HIS219: Decolonization: History Through Film.
Welcome to the library research page for HIS219: Decolonization: History Through Film.Can film provide valid insight into our past? How do we understand film as historical artifact? Films in this course will examine aspects of colonial rule in Asia and Africa from the end of the First World War to the late 20th century. There will be an emphasis on the struggle for liberation from the grip of colonial empires and the neo-imperialism practiced by the superpowers during the Cold War.
Explore this page for useful resources and tools that will help you navigate this course.
The cartographic projection used for this image exaggerates the land mass of Canada relative to more equatorial locations. What does this image say about Victorian Canada?
Original source: Library and Archives Canada.
Useful Resources
TMU Libraries subscribe to many databases ideal for historical analysis, which are accessible to the TMU Community.
Visit the Journals and Articles page for vital databases that contain information not available on Google or Omni.
The following databases may be of particular use for this course.
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Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowThis database contains abstracts of articles from journals relating to the history of the world (excluding Canada and the US) from 1450 to the present. Also included are abstracts of important books in this field.
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America : History & Life This link opens in a new windowAmerica History and Life contains citations, with abstracts to social science and humanities literature on all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture and current affairs from prehistoric times to the present.
Maximum of 6 simultaneous users. -
Politics Collection This link opens in a new windowThis collection provides access to renowned databases such as PAIS and WPSA, covering the international literature in political science and public administration/policy, along with related fields. Together, they provide abstracts, indexing and full text coverage of journal articles, country reports, dissertations, think-tank reports, working papers, government documents and more, including full-text from many leading political science and international relations journals.
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FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database This link opens in a new windowThe International Index to Film Periodicals offers in-depth coverage of the world's foremost academic and popular film journals. This database contains FIAF's “Treasures from Film Archives”; a detailed index of the silent-era film holdings of archives from around the world, a selection of Reference volumes and the linked full-text of over 60 journals from 1972 to the present day.
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MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowThe MLA International Bibliography, produced by the Modern Languages Association of America, is the fundamental research tool for the humanities. The database is an index of international scholarly materials on modern language, literature, linguistics, and folklore. The citations are from over 4,000 journals and series, monographs, working papers and conference proceedings.
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Black Studies Center This link opens in a new windowBlack Studies Center brings together essential historical and current material for researching the past, present and future of African Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa itself. It is comprised of several cross-searchable, component databases, which include:
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Empire Online This link opens in a new windowThis resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
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Oral History Online This link opens in a new windowOral History Online provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,500 collections of Oral History in English from around the world.
The collection also provides keyword searching of more than 271,000 pages of full-text by some 9,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 3,000 audio and video files and over 17,000 bibliographic records.
Open Access (Free) Digital Resources
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Colonial Cinema ArchiveA digitized archive of the magazine published by the UK's Colonial Film Unit (1939-1955), a government unit set up by the Ministry of Information to produce, distribute and exhibit films throughout the British Empire. Hosted by the Cinema St. Andrews website maintained by the Dept. of Film Studies at St. Andrew's University, Scotland.
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Media History Digital LibraryThis is a non-profit initiative, led by David Pierce and Eric Hoyt, dedicated to digitizing historic books and magazines about film, broadcasting, and recorded sound for broad public access.
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South Asia Open Archives (SAOA)Much of the material in this collection predates the time of decolonization. However, it does include documents from Indian Censuses.
Useful Searches
An effective search can reduce stress and frustration, and will ensure you are able to get started on your reading and writing sooner.
For this course, you might think about the following searches to get you started. For guidance on using Omni, TMU's extensive catalogue, check out our 'starting your search' page. To find useful keywords, look for the terms used in some of the more prominent publications in the field.
Use keywords for your topic or historic person along with one of the following words:
- archives
- charters
- correspondence
- diaries
- documents
- interviews
- letters
- manuscripts
- notebooks
- oratory
- pamphlets
- personal narratives
- pictorial works
- sources [this term is often used for collections of primary sources]
- speeches
Examples of Omni, Advanced, Subject contains searches:
Some useful subject searches using Omni Browse Searching & Library of Congress Subject Heading:
Decolonization
Historical films History and criticism
History in motion pictures
Motion pictures and history
Nationalism
Postcolonialism
Self-determination, National
[Name of a country or geographic region] Colonization
[Name of country] History Autonomy and independence movements
[Name of a country or geographic region] History [may have subdivisions for time period, type of content etc.]
[Name of country or geographic region] Politics and government
Algeria History Revolution, 1954-1962
Africa Politics and government 1960-
Great Britain Foreign relations 1945-1964
India History Autonomy and independence movements [searches for these terms in advanced search: subject contains]
Indochinese War, 1946-1954 United States
Punjab (India) History Partition, 1947
United States Foreign relations 1953-1961
United States Foreign relations Vietnam
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Sources
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Mass media and the war
The Name of the film as a subject heading or in subject contains
Battle of Algiers (Motion Picture) [searches for these terms in advanced search: subject contains]
Battaglia di Algeri (Motion Picture) [searches for these terms in advanced search: subject contains]
The Name of a person searched as a subject
Jinnah, Mahomed Ali, 1876-1948
Mountbatten of Burma, Louis Mountbatten, Earl, 1900-1979
Mountbatten of Burma, Edwina Ashley Mountbatten, Countess, 1901-1960
Keyword/default search for name of a person
Saadi Yacef (former FLN commander)
Zohra Drif (married name is Zohra Drif-Bitat)
Keyword/default search for topic
A Sampling From the Collection
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The Battle of Algiers
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ISBN: 9788869770791Publication Date: 2019-04-17The Battle of Algiers is a figure for liberation and it can still communicate a sense of euphoria to those who experience and study it. The purpose of this book is to account for this power in terms of the film's complexity and ambivalence - in terms, that is, of the film's 'impure' means. Building on a large body of scholarship, the book focuses on the key themes of location, address and temporality. What is the precise role of the city of Algiers in the film? What are the consequences of its address to multiple audiences, including those in the old colonizing North? What are the effects of the fi lm's activity of reenactment and what can these tell us about revolutionary agency? Ultimately, the account here of the power of The Battle of Algiers is intended to shed light on the means and capacities of historical and political cinema as such. -
Decolonization
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ISBN: 9780199340491Publication Date: 2016-05-02Millions of Africans, Asians, and other peoples were the subjects of colonial rule by overseas empires through the mid-twentieth century. By the end of the century, however, nearly all of these peoples had become citizens of independent nation-states. The United Nations grew from 51 member states at its founding in 1945 to 193 today. Its nearly four-fold increase is one measure of the historic shift in international relations that has occurred over the past half-century. Decolonization is the term commonly used to refer to this transition from a world of colonial empires to a world of nation-states in the years after World War II.Both ex-imperial states and post-colonial regimes have promoted a selective and sanitized version of decolonization that casts their own conduct in a positive light, characterizing the process as negotiated and the outcome as inevitable. This book draws on recent scholarship to challenge that view, demonstrating that considerable violence and instability accompanied the end of empire and that the outcome was often up for grabs.This book highlights three themes. The first is that global war between empires precipitated decolonization, creating the economic and political crises that gave colonial subjects the opportunity to seek independence. The second theme is that nation-state was not the only option pursued by anti-colonial activists. Many of them sought pan- and trans-national polities instead, but a combination of international and institutional pressures made the nation-state the standard template. The third theme is that the struggle to escape imperial subjugation and create nation-states generated widespread violence and produced huge refugee populations, leading to political problems that persist to the present day. By focusing on these crucial points, Dane Kennedy reminds us how the tumultuous, even tragic, changes caused by the decolonization profoundly shaped the world we live in. -
Films for the Colonies
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ISBN: 9780520300392Publication Date: 2019-09-03Films for the Colonies examines the British Government's use of film across its vast Empire from the 1920s until widespread independence in the 1960s. Central to this work was the Colonial Film Unit, which produced, distributed, and, through its network of mobile cinemas, exhibited instructional and educational films throughout the British colonies. Using extensive archival research and rarely seen films, Films for the Colonies provides a new historical perspective on the last decades of the British Empire. It also offers a fresh exploration of British and global cinema, charting the emergence and endurance of new forms of cinema culture from Ghana to Jamaica, Malta to Malaysia. In highlighting the integral role of film in managing and maintaining a rapidly changing Empire, Tom Rice offers a compelling and far-reaching account of the media, propaganda, and the legacies of colonialism. -
First Vietnam War
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ISBN: 9780674023925Publication Date: 2007-03-07How did the conflict between Vietnamese nationalists and French colonial rulers erupt into a major Cold War struggle between communism and Western liberalism? To understand the course of the Vietnam wars, it is essential to explore the connections between events within Vietnam and global geopolitical currents in the decade after the Second World War. In this illuminating work, leading scholars examine various dimensions of the struggle between France and Vietnamese revolutionaries that began in 1945 and reached its climax at Dien Bien Phu. Several essays break new ground in the study of the Vietnamese revolution and the establishment of the political and military apparatus that successfully challenged both France and the United States. Other essays explore the roles of China, France, Great Britain, and the United States, all of which contributed to the transformation of the conflict from a colonial skirmish to a Cold War crisis. Taken together, the essays enable us to understand the origins of the later American war in Indochina by positioning Vietnam at the center of the grand clash between East and West and North and South in the middle years of the twentieth century. -
The Franco-Algerian War Through a Twenty-First Century Lens
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ISBN: 9781474262811Publication Date: 2019-05-02The Franco-Algerian War (1954-62) remains a powerful international symbol of Third Worldism and the finality of Empire. Through its nuanced analysis of the war's depiction in film, The Franco-Algerian War through a Twenty-First Century Lens locates an international reckoning with history that both condemns and exonerates past generations. Algerian and French production partnerships-such as Hors-la-loi, (Outside the Law, Rachid Bouchareb, 2010) and Loubia Hamra (Bloody Beans, Narimane Mari, 2013)-are one of several ways citizens collaborate to unearth a shared history and its legacy. Nicole Beth Wallenbrock probes cinematic discourse to shed new light on topics including: the media revelation of torture and atomic bomb tests; immigration's role in the evolution of the war's meaning; and the complex relationship of the intertwined film cultures. The first chapter summarizes the Franco-Algerian War in 20th-century film, thus grounding subsequent queries with Algeria's moudjahid or freedom-fighter films and the French new wave's perceived disinterest in the conflict. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars seeking to understand cinema's role in re-evaluating war and reconstructing international memory. -
History Goes to the Movies
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ISBN: 9780415328289Publication Date: 2006-09-29Can films be used as historical evidence? Do historical films make good or bad history? Are documentaries more useful to historians than historical drama? Written from an international perspective, this book offers a lucid introduction to the ways films are made and used, cumulating with the exploration of the fundamental question, what is history and what is it for? Incorporating film analysis, advertisements, merchandise and internet forums; and ranging from late-nineteenth century short films to twenty-first century DVD 'special editions', this survey evaluates the varied ways in which filmmakers, promoters, viewers and scholars understand film as history. From Saving Private Ryan to Picnic at Hanging Rock to Pocahontas, History Goes to the Movies considers that history is not simply to be found in films, but in the perceptions and arguments of those who make and view them. This helpful introductory text blends historical and methodological issues with real examples to create a systematic guide to issues involved in using historical film in the study of history. History Goes to the Movies is a much-needed overview of an increasingly popular subject. -
History on Film/Film on History
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ISBN: 9781408282557Publication Date: 2012-03-22History on Film/Film on History demonstrates how films can be analyzed as historical sources. It offers undergraduates an introduction to some of the first issues involved with studying historical films.nbsp; Rosenstone argues that to leave history films out of the discussion of the meaning of the past is to ignore a major factor in our understanding of past events. He examines what history films convey about the past and how they convey it, demonstrating the need to learn how to read and understand this new visual world. This new edition places this 'classic' text in the context of work done elsewhere in the field over the ten years since this book first published, and help to renew the title for a new generation of undergraduates. -
The last thousand days of the British Empire
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ISBN: 9780713998306'I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire'
Winston Churchill's famous statement in November 1942, just as the tide of the Second World War was beginning to turn, pugnaciously proclaimed his loyalty to the world-wide institution which he had served devotedly for most of his life. Yet less than five years after Churchill's trenchant speech, and despite - apparently - winning the war, the British Empire effectively ended with Indian Independence in August 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine in May 1948. How did this rapid change of fortune come about?
Peter Clarke's book is the first to analyse in detail the losing hand which Britain was dealt in the last year of the war, and then to see how that hand was played over the next two years by Churchill's successors. Its originality lies in the detailed narrative which shows how military, political and economic developments bore down upon each other. It makes superb recreates both the geopolitics and the atmosphere of the period. -
Past Imperfect: Time and African Decolonization, 1945-1960
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ISBN: 9781800345461Examining French and Francophone intellectual history in the period leading to the decolonization of sub-Saharan Africa (1945-1960), this text favours epistemological links between ethnology, museology, sociology and (art) history. In this discussion, a specific focus is placed on temporality and the role ascribed by these different disciplines to African pasts, presents and futures. It is argued here that the post-war context, characterized, inter alia, by the creation of UNESCO, the birth of Presence Africaine and the prevalence of existentialism, bore witness to the development of new regimes of historicity and to the partial refutation of a progress-based modernity. -
Post-Colonial Studies
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ISBN: 9780415428569Publication Date: 2008-01-11This best selling key guide, now in its second edition, provides an essential key to understanding the issues which characterize post-colonialism; explaining what it is, where it is encountered and why it is crucial in forging new cultural identities. As a subject, post-colonial studies stands at the intersection of debates about race, colonialism, gender, politics and language. Key topics covered include: Borderlands Transnational literatures Neo imperialism Neo liberalism Eco feminism. Post Colonial Studies: The Key Conceptsis fully updated and cross referenced throughout. With additional further reading this book has everything for students and anyone keen to learn more about this fascinating subject. -
Race, Class, and the Politics of Decolonization
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ISBN: 9781137540775Publication Date: 2015-11-04This book offers a detailed picture of Jamaica before and after independence. A 1961 journal sheds light on the political and social context before independence, while a 1968 journal shows how independence dissolved dissident forces and identifies the origins of Jamaica's current two party politics. -
Sovereignty and Struggle
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ISBN: 9780199915125Publication Date: 2014-11-18Sovereignty and Struggle: Africa and Africans in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1994 provides students with a deeper insight into African history during the period of decolonization and the Cold War. Examining Africa and Africans in the context of the global themes of liberation, economic development, and popular culture, author Jonathan T. Reynolds illustrates how Africans sought to defined their own lives on a global stage.The first three chapters of Sovereignty and Struggle offer a thematic approach, covering the politics of early liberation struggles, economics, and global Cold War complexities. They provide students with insight into the motivations and aspirations of Africans from around the continent during the Cold War period. The last two chapters focus on pop culture - music, nation building, and identity - and specifically on popular representations of mobility, modernity, and sovereignty in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s.
Historical Films Including Newsreels, Radio and Other Media
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AP ArchiveThis film and video archive of The Associated Press includes over 1.7 million global news and entertainment video stories dating back to 1895, sourced both from AP's own coverage and from our premium content partners. It includes the British Movietone collection of newsreels from 1895-1986.
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British Movietone Archive (via YouTube)Perhaps the world's largest newsreel archive spanning 1895-1986, this site is rich in coverage of news events, celebrities, sports, music, social history, science, lifestyle and quirky.
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British Film Institute (BFI) YouTube ChannelPresents content from the BFI's impressive archive of film, video and television programs.
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British PathéBritish Pathé is a dynamic cross-media company and a market leader in the licensing of footage to the broadcast industry. The company is a major supplier to production companies, museums and advertisers worldwide
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British Pathé YouTube ChannelNow considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world, British Pathé is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance.
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Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British EmpireThis website holds detailed information on over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 films are available for viewing online. You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword. Over 350 of the most important films in the catalogue are presented with extensive critical notes written by our academic research team.
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Moving Image Archive (Internet Archive)This rapidly growing library of digital films, movies and video can be limited to categories including News & Public Affairs, and Television Archive News Search Service
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UN Radio ClassicsAn online archive of documentary and dramatic programmes that offer a unique way of experiencing key historical moments of the United Nations and of the world throughout the second half of the 20th century.
Select Motion Pictures with Decolonization Themes
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A United KingdomCall Number: DVDPublication Date: 2016, released as DVD 2017Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana causes an international stir when he marries a white woman from London in the late 1940s. When they decided to marry, just as apartheid was being introduced into South Africa, it caused an international uproar. However, their passionate romance triumphed over every obstacle and changed the course of African history.
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The Battle of Algiers = Le bataille d'AlgerCall Number: DVDPublication Date: 1967, 2004 releaseDramatization of the conflict between Algerian nationalists and French colonialists that culminated in Algeria's independence in 1962. The DVD set includes documentary films about the historical events and about the making of the film.
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Cry FreedomCall Number: DVDPublication Date: 1987, released as DVD 1999The true story of the friendship between black activist Stephen Biko and white newspaper editor Donald Woods, who was instrumental in bringing Biko's anti-apartheid message to the international community.