Join historian Elizabeth F. Thompson (Mohamed S. Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace and Professor of History, American University, Washington D.C.) to discuss the global wave of democratic movements in the Allied territories in 1919. Thompson looks specifically at the four million veterans of colour who energised politics after the war, and how their violent suppression by leaders of the Paris Peace Conference blocked the peaceful expansion of democracy and set the stage for political and armed anticolonial resistance in the mid-20th century.

This public lecture will take place in the Neill Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub on Wednesday, 30 April at 1.00pm. This event will be in-person and not recorded or livestreamed. The event is open for bookings on Ticket Tailor.

A headshot of a woman with brunette shoulder length hair
Elizabeth F. Thompson is a historian of social movements and liberal constitutionalism in the Middle East, with a focus on how race and gender hierarchies have been reinforced by foreign intervention and the application of international law. She recently published her third book: How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Arab Congress and the Destruction of its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020). It explores how and why Arabs gathered in Damascus after World War I to establish a democratic regime, in contrast to the prevalence of authoritarian-nationalist regimes established elsewhere in the lands of the defeated Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. The book also considers the long-term, negative consequences of the destruction of the Arab democracy, authorized by the Paris Peace Conference and enforced by the new League of Nations.

This event has been organised by the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, part of the School of Languages Literatures and Cultural Studies.