Robert Fletcher

Professor Robert Fletcher
Professor of History and Kinder Professor of British History
408A Jesse Hall
573-882-0534
r.fletcher@missouri.edu
Bio

Director of International Research Collaboration at the Kinder Institute

 

My work explores the history of Britain and its empire in the modern period, and the interplay of national, transnational, and global histories. I read Modern History at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, and lived in Tokushima, Japan, before returning to Oxford to complete my doctoral studies. I've previously held positions as the Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Global History at Oxford, Lecturer in Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter, and Reader in the History of Britain and Empire at the University of Warwick.

My work has appeared in Past and Present, The English Historical Review, Journal of Historical Geography, and Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. My first book, British Imperialism and ‘The Tribal Question’: Desert Administration and Nomadic Societies in the Middle East, 1919-1936 (Oxford University Press, 2015), explores what happened when the British empire and Bedouin communities met on the desert frontiers between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. My second book, The Ghost of Namamugi: Charles Lenox Richardson and the Anglo-Satsuma War (Amsterdam University Press, 2019) examines mercantile ambition and imperial power in nineteenth-century Yokohama and Shanghai.

I've collaborated with colleagues to produce three co-edited volumes on topics across imperial and global history. I've also been the Principal Investigator on a number of research projects supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, including a Science in Culture award on the international campaign against the desert locust in the twentieth century. In conducting my research, I've collaborated with a number of museums and public organisations in the UK, Europe, and Australia. 

 

Books

 

Articles

 

Public collaboration