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David Olusoga
David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, producer and presenter. He is the author of Civilizations: Encounters and the Cult of Progress, The World’s War, which won First World War Book of the Year, Black & British: A Forgotten History, which was awarded the Longman-History Today Trustees Award and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, and The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. He writes for the Observer, Guardian, New Statesman and BBC History Magazine. His work as a presenter includes Civilizations, Black and British: A Forgotten History, The World’s War, A House Through Time and the BAFTA-winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. He has also worked as an Executive Producer on Generation Windrush, The Unremembered and Britain’s Bloody Heroes. His latest book is A House Through Time.
Session
The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire
David Olusoga in conversation with Yasmin Khan
In conversation with historian Yasmin Khan, David Olusoga describes how Europe's Great War became the World's War – a multi-racial, multi-national struggle, fought in Africa and Asia as well as in Europe, which pulled in men and resources from across the globe, especially India. Throughout, they expose the complex, shocking paraphernalia of the era's racial obsessions, which dictated which men would serve, how they would serve and to what degree they would suffer. As vivid and moving as it is revelatory and authoritative, The World's War explores the experiences and sacrifices of four million non-European, non-white people whose stories have remained too long in the shadows.
Olusoga has been a prominent commentator on the Black Lives Matter movement and will also make reference to recent events in America and the UK following the death of George Floyd, the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston and the wider questions of what to do with the legacy of colonialism.