Martin Thomas

Professor Martin Thomas

Mid-Career Fellow 2015-16

Imperialist Humanitarianism: Tracing Colonial Connections in Post-Colonial Interventions in Africa and Asia

Where does the colonial past intersect with the deployment of European military forces and relief missions in the global South? Is the use of 'soft power' to underwrite democratic governance in former colonial dependencies imperialistic? These questions raise unsettling possibilities because the presumption that humanitarian interventionism, whether involving security forces or non-governmental agencies, is driven by compassion and urgent need is belied by its specific geographies.

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Areas of interest

Decolonisation Globalisation Colonial History History Empire Imperialism Colonialism Postcolonialism Anti-Colonialism Colonial Violence Violence Political Economy North Africa State Violence Global Politics

Cohort

MCF2

Biography

Martin Thomas is Professor of History at the University of Exeter.

Martin studied Modern History at Oxford University, graduating in 1985. He returned to Oxford where he completed his D.Phil in 1991. He taught at the University of the West of England, Bristol for eleven years before joining the Exeter History Department in 2003.

Martin works on the meanings and impacts of colonial disintegration, focusing primarily on the interactions between decolonisation and globalisation. Between 2019 and 2022 he held a three-year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship Globalising decolonisation: connecting processes of global transformation.

Martin is especially interested in patterns of empire collapse and the nature and extent of political violence during contested decolonisation. He explored these issues in The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization, published with Princeton University Press. An earlier outcome of this work is Fight or Flight: Britain, France and their Roads from Empire, a book published with Oxford University Press in 2014.

Biographical details correct as of 07.02.25