Linda Colley

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Award-winning historian and author Professor Linda Colley explains how constitutions evolved in tandem with warfare across the world.

Colley shows how constitutions were drawn up to advance empires as well as promote nations and how they worked to exclude as well as to liberate. Her range includes the Corsican constitution of 1755, Catherine the Great of Russia and her remarkable Nakaz, Japan’s 1889 constitution, Sierra Leone’s James Africanus Horton, and the creator of the first modern Islamic constitution Tunisia’s Khayr-al-Din.

Colley’s books include Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, winner of the Wolfson Prize, and Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600-1850. She is Shelby MC Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton and a fellow of the British Academy.