ProfessorRobert Aldrich

Robert Aldrich is author (with Andreas Stucki) of The Colonial World: A History of European Empires, 1780s to the Present (Bloomsbury, London, 2023). This 536-page volume provides a wide-ranging coverage and analysis of modern colonialism; the three sections are devoted to a chronological overview, a series of chapters on particular themes (e.g., colonialism and the body, representations of colonialism, migration and crossed destines), and selected case studies anchored in a particular moment in the colonial history of a country. He has writen and edited various other books on the history of colonialism, especially in the French overseas empire, and on the legacy of the colonial period.

In recent years, Aldrich has been engaged in collaborative work on the history of modern monarchy. Works in that area include an authored book, Banished Potentates: Dethroning and Exiling Indigenous Monarchs under British and French Colonial Rule, 1815-1955 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2017) - which examines the circumstances of the deposition of hereditary indigenous rulers, their fate in exile (and occasional repatriation), and their posthumous place in national commemoration and historical narrative. With Cindy McCreery, Aldrich has edited Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empires (2016),Royals on Tour: Politics, Pageantry and Colonialism (2018), and Monarchies and Decolonisation in Asia (2020), all published by Manchester University Press. Global Royal Families: Cultures of Transnational Monarchy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (co-edited by Aldrich with Cindy McCreery and Falko Schnicke) was published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Among other recent works is a study co-authored with John Connell, The Ends of Empire: The Last Colonies Revisited (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2020).