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Dr. Patrick Rummel

  • Dissertation

    The previously ignored model of Greek colonization attracted numerous actors in the 19th-century British empire: historians, politicians, administrators, military personnel, journalists or anonymous commentators used the ancient paradigm in order to advocate for a global federation exclusively encompassing Great Britain and the settler colonies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Unlike other historical templates, Greek colonization could be viewed as innovative and unspent: innovative because of the possibility of combining empire and liberty and unspent due to its very novelty. It did not contain the 'imperial vice' the other models had so often shown and which had always led to their political and cultural decline.

    In my dissertation, I analyze this Greek model during Victorian times as an alternative to 'ordinary' templates for the British empire. Building upon the Greek model, an array of actors welcomed or rejected it, tried to implement it or prevented it from being implemented. Corresponding concepts sought to define 'empire' as a space of expansion rather than a vehicle of conquest, and in this way designed new strategies of imperial self-perception as well as innovative imperial architectures between liberalism, federalism, and republicanism.

    Publication available from Nomos: https://www.nomos-shop.de/nomos/titel/ein-foederales-imperium-id-88086/

  • Publications

    Kaiserin Viktoria: Imperiale Architektur und imperiales Selbstbild, in: Friedegund Freitag (Hrsg.), Dynastie – Wissenschaft – Kunst. Die Verbindungen der Dynastien Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg und Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha zum Britischen Empire, Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg 2020, S. 221-234.

    Ein föderales Imperium? Das britische Empire und das Modell griechischer Kolonisation, 1829–1920, NOMOS: Historische Grundlagen der Moderne, Bd. 21, Baden-Baden 2021.

    Eine „imperiale Nation“? Großbritannien, Kanada, Australien und Neuseeland: Ideen Greater Britains im 19. Jahrhundert und heute, in: Aleksandra Salamurović (Hrsg.), Konzepte der NATION im europäischen Kontext im 21. Jahrhundert. Geschichts-, politik- und sprachwissenschaftliche Zugänge, J.B. Metzler: Berlin und Heidelberg 2023, S. 201-218.