The Fennell Lecture 2018 - Dr Sujit Sivasundaram

Travellers, Kings and Empire in the Pacific's Age of Revolutions

Dr Sujit Sivasundaram, Reader in World History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow in History at Gonville and Caius College.

In this lecture, Dr Sivasundaram will journey with European voyagers to the far-reaches of the globe, and show what the age of revolutions meant for Pacific islanders, in political, social and cultural terms. He will argue that an age of Pacific kings was wrapped around a European debate about what constituted good government and will discuss how the weapons, material culture and ideas of an European age of revolutions were utilised by Pacific peoples to chart their own future.

Dr Sivasundaram has worked primarily on the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries in the Indian and Pacific oceans, with a special emphasis on South and Southeast Asia and Polynesia. His research addresses the intersection of empires and globalisation with the environment, culture, race, science and medicine. Through separate research projects he is developing methods for world histories alongside and beyond 'area studies', to help reconsider processes of bordering – e.g. by focusing on islands (and the phenomenon of 'islanding'), 'small seas'  and the engineered, visualised and divided port. Dr Sivasundaram is currently completing a book, provisionally titled Revolutionary Empire, which links the British empire and the age of revolutions in the oceans of the global South – the Indian and Pacific seas.

The lecture will take place from 17.30 to 18.30 followed by a drinks reception from 18.30 to 19.30. All welcome.

The event is free but ticketed, please see the Eventbrite link to reserve tickets.