The School of Oriental and African Studies
The School of Oriental and African Studies

Author: Ian Brown

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-07-21

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1316712591

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The School of Oriental and African Studies, a college of the University of London, was established in 1916 principally to train the colonial administrators who ran the British Empire in the languages of Asia and Africa. It was founded, that is, with an explicitly imperial purpose. Yet the School would come to transcend this function to become a world centre of scholarship and learning, in many important ways challenging that imperial origin. Drawing on the School's own extensive administrative records, on interviews with current and past staff, and on the records of government departments, Ian Brown explores the work of the School over its first century. He considers the expansion in the School's configuration of studies from the initial focus on languages, its changing relationships with government, and the major contributions that have been made by the School to scholarly and public understandings of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

On Chester On
On Chester On

Author: Graeme J. White

Publisher: University of Chester

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1908258179

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Although there has been a University of Chester only since 2005, its predecessor, Chester College, dates back further than most UK universities, to 1839. This book celebrates the 175th anniversary of the foundation in 2014. The story is a remarkable one of survival and success. The early College was a pioneering venture with a unique approach to learning and the University still houses the first buildings in England specifically designed for the training of teachers. Three times, in the 1860s, the 1930s and the 1970s, Chester College came near to closure, only repeatedly to emerge intact and to become stronger than before. In the early twenty-first century, the University has a growing reputation within the higher education sector and can claim some of the highest rates of student satisfaction in the country. The book's title is taken from the College motto of the late-Victorian and Edwardian period: as appropriate today as when it was coined.

Eavesdropping on the Emperor
Eavesdropping on the Emperor

Author: Peter Kornicki

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-12-01

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 0197644082

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When Japanese signals were decoded at Bletchley Park, who translated them into English? When Japanese soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, who interrogated them? When Japanese maps and plans were captured on the battlefield, who deciphered them for Britain? When Great Britain found itself at war with Japan in December 1941, there was a linguistic battle to be fought--but Britain was hopelessly unprepared. Eavesdropping on the Emperor traces the men and women with a talent for languages who were put on crash courses in Japanese, and unfolds the history of their war. Some were sent with their new skills to India; others to Mauritius, where there was a secret radio intercept station; or to Australia, where they worked with Australian and American codebreakers. Translating the despatches of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin after his conversations with Hitler; retrieving filthy but valuable documents from the battlefield in Burma; monitoring Japanese airwaves to warn of air-raids--Britain depended on these forgotten 'war heroes'. The accuracy of their translations was a matter of life or death, and they rose to the challenge. Based on declassified archives and interviews with the few survivors, this fascinating, globe-trotting book tells their stories.