BLOCKADE

Stephen Crowley is a doctoral researchers and is part of BLOCKADE’s Hamburg-based team. His project aims to investigate the role of Britain’s empire in Africa in the blockade of the Axis and its impact on imperial rule in the region and on the eventual process of decolonisation. As the era’s pre-eminent seapower, Britain’s ability to enact and enforce its blockade of the Axis rested heavily on its empire, yet the role of, and consequences for, its empire in this process have yet to be examined in depth. His project proposes to examine this question through a focus on three separate but interconnected lenses; the military, the socio-economic, and the intellectual.

It aims to fill the gap in the literature on the impact of this “hidden weapon” within the broader context of imperial rule, colonial violence, and the end of empire, examining the era of the World Wars and that of decolonisation as a single phenomenon rather than two distinct historical ages.

Crowley previously studied history and Irish at University College Cork, followed by a joint MA in War Studies at the University of Potsdam and University College Dublin. Through the MA, he also spent a semester at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm as the first international exchange student between Potsdam and the SDU’s Institute of Military History. His main research interests and specialisations are primarily focused on imperial, colonial, and environmental warfare, combining these fields in his master’s thesis which examined these elements in the context of the Tudor conquest of Ireland.