Tom Menger

Tom Menger is a historian of empire in the period between c. 1870 and 1914. Tom acquired his PhD with a transimperial history of fin-de-siècle colonial violence and war (forthcoming as The Colonial Way of War with Cambridge University Press, 2025). His main interests lay in transimperial history, the history of colonial violence and the history of imperial infrastructures. On the subject of colonial violence as a transimperial phenomenon, besides his forthcoming monograph, Tom has published multiple peer-reviewed articles, is co-editing a journal special issue and organised a thematic workshop (LMU, 2022). At global dis:connect, Tom also studied (imperial) infrastructures of early oil extraction, asking how these infrastructures relate to global connectivity and disconnectivity. He furthermore organised several conferences and summer schools on the Centre’s research foci and taught on the history of industrial oil extraction. Currently, Tom is working on a project that seeks to take transimperial history beyond the dichotomy of ‘continental’ and ‘maritime’ empires by looking at how European empires, sea- and land-based, intervened in security forces reform in the Ottoman Empire in the decade before the First World War. The project also seeks to formulate transimperial answers to questions about possible transfers (or ‘boomerangs’) of colonial violence to the European continent in the twentieth century.

Tom Menger studied history and European studies at the University of Amsterdam between 2010 and 2014. He received a research MA in history from the same university in 2016. His MA thesis was subsequently awarded the Otto von der Gablentz Thesis Prize. Between 2017 and 2021, Tom wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Cologne and graduated summa cum laude for his dissertation entitled The Colonial Way of War: Extreme Violence in Knowledge and Practice of Colonial Warfare in the British, German and Dutch Colonial Empires, c. 1890-1914. This dissertation was shortlisted for the Hedwig Hintze Dissertation Prize of the VHD (German Historical Association) and was awarded the 2023 Dissertation Prize of the German Association for British Studies. During his doctoral phase, Tom was associate PhD at Queen Mary University of London (2018) and held a fellowship at the Institute for European History (IEG) in Mainz (2020). He has been a postdoctoral research associate at global dis:connect at LMU Munich since 2021.

For a full publication list, download Tom’s CV below.

Peer-reviewed

The Colonial Way of War: Violence and Colonial Warfare in the British, German and Dutch Empires, c. 1890-1914 (under contract with Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/colonial-way-of-war/0F3E02F14036481275F425952E91BD5C

‘Imperiale Infrastruktur und extraktive Ökonomie’ [Imperial infrastructure and extractive economies‘], in: Alexander Engel and Eva Brugger eds., Handbuch Koloniales Wirtschaften, 15. bis 21. Jahrhundert, Series Handbücher zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte [Handbook of Colonial Economy, 15^th to 21^st Century], forthcoming with De Gruyter.

‘Infrastructure’, in: Christopher Balme, Burcu Dogramaci and Roland Wenzlhuemer eds., Dis:connectivity in Processes of Globalisation. Concepts, Terms and Practices, forthcoming 2025.

‘Encountering the Enemy in Colonial Wars: Racial Difference and the Limits of Fellow Feeling. British, German and Dutch Cases, c. 1900’, in: Holly Furneaux and Matilda Greig eds., Enemy Encounters in Modern Warfare (2024) 95-115.

‘Energy Dis:connectivity in Europe’s Oil and Gas Supply’, Forum Global Dis:connections, Journal of Modern European History 21: 1 (2023) 6-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221148939

‘Concealing Colonial Comparability: British Exceptionalism, Imperial Violence, and The Dynamiting of Cave Refuges in Southern Africa, 1879-1897’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 50: 5 (2022) 860-889. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2022.2057742

‘“Press the Thumb onto the Eye”: Moral Effect, Extreme Violence, and the Transimperial Notions of British, German and Dutch Colonial Warfare, c. 1890-1914’, Itinerario 46: 1 (2022) 84-108.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115321000371

“Of ‘Big Bags’ and ‘Golden Bridges’: Thinking the Colonial Massacre in British, German, and Dutch Manuals of Colonial Warfare, 1860-1910,” European History Yearbook 22 (2021) 79-97.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110776232-005

Edited special issues

‘Transimperial histories of colonial violence, c. 1850-1930’, special issue of Itinerario co-edited with Dominique Biehl, Markus Wurzer and Ulrike Lindner, under review.

Popular scientific

‘Van blind spot tot zwarte pagina. De Herero-Nama genocide en de herontdekking van het Duitse koloniale verleden’ [From blind spot to black page. The Herero-Nama genocide and the rediscovery of the German colonial past], in: Krijn Thijs ed., Duitsland 1918-1991: twintig vensters op een bewogen eeuw [Germany 1918-1991: twenty windows onto an eventful century] (Amsterdam 2021).

‘Leidde het Duitse kolonialisme tot de Holocaust? Volkerenmoord in Namibië’ [‘Did German colonialism lead to the Holocaust? Genocide in Namibia’], Onderzoek Uitgelicht 7:6 (2018): https://www.tweedewereldoorlog.nl/onderzoekuitgelicht/omgaan-met-zwarte-bladzijden/leidde-het-duitse-kolonialisme-tot-de-holocaust/.

Download Tom’s CV here.