1865 and the disenchantment of empire

Abstract

This article contextualizes 1865 as a key moment in global history and in the world of the British Empire. Central to this discussion is a theorization of the concept of keydates, which is developed through a reconsideration of Raymond Williams’ important cultural studies text Keywords. Taking 1865 as an important keydate, the authors examine how temporality as an organizing hermeneutic and as a site of study might function to reorient discussions in specific fields of area studies and reimagine fixed projects (those of the nation, empire, identity, genre, geography and so on). The authors also explore the uses of the concept of disenchantment of empire as a way of contextualizing the sensibility of the age of the late 19th century and 1865 in particular. However, this work marks out an important distinction between the disenchantment of empire and Max Weber’s question of the ‘disenchantment of the world’. If the disenchantment of the world is about rationalization and secularization, the authors suggest disenchantment of empire as a possibility for rethinking structures of empire in terms of disorienting outcomes.