1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910150204303321

Autore

Brown Ian <1947->

Titolo

The School of Oriental and African Studies : imperial training and the expansion of learning / / Ian Brown

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2016

ISBN

1-316-71202-8

1-316-71316-4

1-316-71335-0

1-316-71354-7

1-316-71373-3

1-316-71430-6

1-316-68720-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (x, 335 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

378.421

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 04 Jul 2016).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Long contemplated and too long delayed: the founding of the school -- Partly a research institution and partly a vocational training centre: 1917-38 -- The war years, 1939-45 -- The great post-war expansion -- Expansion into the social sciences -- The great contraction -- The 1990s: renewed expansion but unresolved issues -- The past in the present.

Sommario/riassunto

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.