This collection of essays resulted, in the main, from a workshop held at the University of Bristol, in September 2007, entitled ‘Development and Colonialism: The Past in the Present’. It was instigated by the Department of Politics' international development research group, and sought to explore interests in the similarities, and differences, between contemporary debates on socio-economic development, humanitarian intervention and aid, and the historical artefacts of European empire. It consciously sought to include historians and students of politics, and encouraged a broad eclecticism in terms of methodology and approach. Some of the papers presented here were given to a seminar series, which paralleled the workshop, having been generously funded by the Institute for Advanced Studies.

Comparing and contrasting differing historical periods with an apparently ‘unproblematic present’ is fraught with obvious risks. This is particularly true of comparisons involving colonialism and imperialism. The terms themselves are contested and difficult to contextualise, and historical periodisation is premised on the subjective interests of the student of politics and not necessarily the rigour of the historian. This difference in professional temperament was a noticeable feature of the workshop itself. Historians are far more cautious about embarking on macro-temporal comparisons, being concerned with specific, often singular, events reasoned within a narrow context. For them the apparent relevance of Empire to contemporary world politics is frequently rendered polemical, facile or tautologous, and is usually premised on a mistaken verisimilitude.