AMERICA’S struggle to impose order on Iraq has prompted a boom in courses on the British empire at universities across the United States.

Some of Britain’s most eminent imperial historians have been lured to teach the do’s and don’ts of running an empire.

“The history of empire used to be a very unpopular subject but now there is a great revival,” said William Roger Louis, editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire and founder of a course entitled Adventures with Britannia at the University of Texas. “Obviously this is to do with events in the Middle East.”

Criticism of Washington’s lack of planning for post-war Iraq and the failure to win hearts and minds have triggered comparisons with Britain’s management of colonies. One problem has been ambivalence. “Neo-conservative” hawks in Washington accept that the United States is an imperial power and talk about where to go next, but others in the Bush administration prefer to think of themselves as liberators.

“Whatever your view on what America is doing and whether the so-called Pax Americana is a good thing, it’s helpful if you realise that doing an empire is difficult,” said Linda Colley, author of Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850. “It’s costly, economically, in time and in lives.

“History has a way of reminding you and it would have been useful if people had thought more about the British empire in the Middle East in the early 20th century and how difficult that had been before embarking on this. I think George Bush, and indeed Tony Blair, should sit down with a history book.”

Colley is leaving the London School of Economics to teach imperial history at Princeton. She emphasises that her courses will not be of the sort once taught at Oxford and Cambridge to white males, who would then sort out other parts of the world: “I don’t think anyone teaches do-it-yourself empire or how to become a colonial governor, but the idea is getting through that Pax Britannica shaped global events and in many parts of the world America has picked up where British influence is receding.”

Not only are British academics who specialise in empire becoming hot properties, but many colonial period collections are also being snapped up by rich American universities.

“I increasingly find myself competing with Americans for archive material,” said Dr Gareth Griffiths, director of the Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. “We’re seeing a growth in interest in the United States because of the increasing significance of American power. You look back at historical precedents, so it is understandable that you would look back at the British empire.”

In Britain, empire studies are not part of history teaching. Professor Niall Ferguson, the author of Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order, recently called for their restoration to the school history curriculum, and was accused of trying to “rehabilitate” the empire. He is unlikely to face such criticism at New York University, where he now teaches.

Others point out that history is squeezed into one or two hours a week in secondary schools and there is little time to talk about the empire.

The children may be no less ill-informed than their parents. Griffiths said: “It turns out we must assume that the visitor brings absolutely no knowledge of empire. Instead for most people what they know is derived from films like Carry On Up the Khyber. When they do think of empire, they think of India, maybe South Africa and Australia — 85% of people have no idea that Britain was involved in the Middle East.”

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