Histories, empires and the post-colonial moment

In the late twentieth century questions about cultural identity seem to have become critical everywhere. ‘Who are we?’ ‘Where do we come from?’ ‘Which “we” are we talking about when we talk about “we”?’ Such questions are always there, intimately connected to but distinct from the insistent questions of origin that engage every child, but they have a new salience in the contemporary moment. The global changes of the last fifty years have involved the movements of peoples on an unprecedented scale, the break-up of empires and decolonisation, the creation of the New Europe and other new power blocs, the destruction of old nations and the re-formation of new ones. Such shifts, taking place on such a scale, are profoundly destabilising. They provide the context for the contradictory tendencies which surround us – globalism alongside localism, new nationalisms and ethnic identities alongside the international communication highways. Questions as to roots and origins haunt the imaginations of disparate peoples across national and inter-continental boundaries.