Tony Ballantyne (historian)

[1][2] Tony Ballantyne (born Dunedin, 1972) is a New Zealand historian at the University of Otago. His works examine the development of imperial intellectual and cultural life in Ireland, India, New Zealand, and Britain. After completing his schooling at King's High School, Dunedin, he graduated BA at the University of Otago and obtained a PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Christopher Bayly.[3] While his career has been based at Otago, he has previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Illinois, and the National University of Ireland.[4] In 2012 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.[5] He is currently Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Humanities at Otago, a position he assumed in 2015.

He has been a proponent for the value of history and the humanities in New Zealand.[6] However his career has also been marred by controversy in this regard. Shortly after he assumed the role of Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Humanities he initiated a process that resulted in 16 full-time equivalent academic staff being made redundant, with other academics impelled to take early retirement.[7][8][9][10][11][12] He also advocated eliminating the Art History program and it was subsequently disestablished.[13][14]

Scholarship

His work is an example of the 'new imperial history', a tradition of scholarship that sees colonialism as a cultural undertaking as well as a political and economic project. He is best known for forwarding a model for analysing the empire's development in his Orientalism and Race (2002)[15] and Between Colonialism and Diaspora (2006).[16] In both works he suggested that the structure of the British empire was like a web, with 'vertical' connections developing between Britain and its colonies and 'horizontal' connections linking various colonies directly. He has suggested that the key work of historians of imperialism is to reconstruct these 'webs of empire' to understand how the empire operated and the ways in which it incorporated new lands and peoples.[17] More specifically, Orientalism and Race analysed the 'orientalizing' texts of British officials in colonial India and their attempts to decode both Hinduism and Sikhism more broadly in terms of their understandings of Aryanism and race; at the same time it examined similar discourses directed toward understandings of Maori as, first, "Semitic", then Indo-Aryan, and ultimately, Maori reconfigurations of Christianity on their own terms.

His writings have addressed a range of issues, including print culture and colonial knowledge in New Zealand, Ireland and India, the changing structure of the empire, and the place of race and religion in cross-cultural history. He has published extensively on both India and New Zealand. With Antoinette Burton he has also made an important contribution to the writing of world history, highlighting the importance of race and gender in cross-cultural encounters.[18][19]

With regard to Sikh history Ballantyne has criticised scholarship that focuses narrowly on Sikh texts, arguing that the experiences of colonialism and migration have been crucial in making Sikh identities.[16][20][21]

In recent years Ballantyne, who directs Otago's Centre for Research on Colonial Culture, has mainly written on New Zealand's colonial history. This work has sought to internationalise New Zealand historical writing as he has stressed the importance of historical connections to India and China in shaping colonial culture. He has also highlighted the importance of print culture and literacy in the encounters between Māori and the Pākehā colonists.[22] His most recent book, Entanglements of Empire, has been praised for offering a new assessment of early New Zealand history and the foundations of relationship between Māori and Pākehā.[23][24] It was awarded the W.H. Oliver prize for the best book on New Zealand history between 2013 and 2015 by the New Zealand Historical Association.[25] In 2016 he was awarded the Humanities Aronui Medal from the Royal Society of New Zealand for innovation in humanities research.[26]

Works
  • Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Māori, and the Question of the Body (Duke University Press, 2014).
  • Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand's Colonial Past (Bridget Williams Books, 2012).
  • Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World (Duke University Press, 2006).
  • Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, Palgrave, 2001).
  • Co-editor, Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire (University of Illinois Press, 2007).
  • Editor, Textures of the Sikh Past: New Historical Interpretations (Oxford University Press, 2007).
  • Co-editor, Disputed Histories: Reimagining New Zealand's Pasts (Otago University Press, 2006).
  • Co-editor, Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History (Duke University Press, 2005).

References
  1. "Toxic management by Otago administrators". 9 March 2020.
  2. "Protests against cuts by PVC Ballantyne".
  3. Archived 6 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  4. "31 July 2015, Otago selects leading historian as its next Head of Humanities, News at Otago, University of Otago, New Zealand". otago.ac.nz. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  5. "Five Otago academic selected RSNZ fellows | Otago Daily Times Online News : Otago, South Island, New Zealand & International News". Otago Daily Times. 18 October 2012. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  6. "Humanities 'crisis' hits enrolments | Otago Daily Times Online News : Otago, South Island, New Zealand & International News". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  7. Taylor, Margot (27 July 2016). ""Humanities cuts closer at University"". Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  8. Taylor, Margot (25 August 2016). ""400 protest humanities cuts"". Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  9. Prof Kevin Clements & Rev Dr Peter Matheson (18 November 2019). ""Toxic atmosphere at Otago Uni risks becoming 'chronic'"". Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  10. Munro, Bruce (9 March 2020). ""A culture of control"". Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  11. Elder, Vaughn (22 February 2017). ""Vice-chancellor accused of intimidation"". Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  12. ""The university's blues"". 11 March 2020. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  13. [McPhee, Elena (26 September 2018). "Otago Uni votes to scrap art history". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 24 April 2019. "Elimination of Art History"] Check |url= value (help).
  14. "Art history's proposed demise 'sad but predictable'. McPhee, Elena (27 August 2018) Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 11 July 2020". 27 August 2018.
  15. "Orientalism and Race | Palgrave Macmillan". Palgrave.com. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  16. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 3 September 2007. Retrieved 10 November 2018.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  18. "Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History – Google Books". Books.google.co.nz. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  19. "Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire – Google Books". Books.google.co.nz. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  20. "historycooperative.org". historycooperative.org. Archived from the original on 21 August 2008. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  21. "Textures of the Sikh Past – Hardcover – Tony Ballantyne – Oxford University Press". Oup.com. 15 July 2008. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  23. Reid, Nicholas (20 April 2015). "Reid's Reader – A Blog of Book Reviews and Comment.: Something New". Reid's Reader – A Blog of Book Reviews and Comment. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  24. "The tangled history of Maori and missionaries". Stuff. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  25. nzha.org.nz/2015/12/07/re-w-h-oliver-prize-announcement/
  26. http://www.otago.ac.nz/humanities/news/otago627646.html
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.