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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017The harem, slavery and British imperial culture
Anglo-Muslim relations in the late nineteenth century
by Diane Robinson-Dunn
This book focuses on British efforts to suppress the traffic in female slaves destined for Egyptian harems during the late-nineteenth century. It considers this campaign in relation to gender debates in England, and examines the ways in which the assumptions and dominant imperialist discourses of these abolitionists were challenged by the newly-established Muslim communities in England, as well as by English people who converted to or were sympathetic with Islam. While previous scholars have treated antislavery activity in Egypt first and foremost as an extension of earlier efforts to abolish plantation slavery in the New World, this book considers it in terms of encounters with Islam during a period which it argues marked a new departure in Anglo-Muslim relations. This approach illuminates the role of Islam in the creation of English national identities within the global cultural system of the British Empire. This book would appeal to those with an interest in British imperial history; Islam; gender, feminism, and women's studies; slavery and race; the formation of national identities; global processes; Orientalism; and Middle Eastern studies.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2017Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation
Passengers, pilots, publicity
by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie
The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017Imperial cities
Landscape, display and identity
by Felix Driver, David Gilbert
Imperial cities explores the influence of imperialism in the landscapes of modern European cities including London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Marseilles, Glasgow and Seville. Examines large-scale architectural schemes and monuments, including the Queen Victoria Memorial in London and the Vittoriano in Rome. Focuses on imperial display throughout the city, from spectacular exhibitions and ceremonies, to more private displays of empire in suburban gardens. Cconsiders the changing cultural and political identities in the imperial city, looking particularly at nationalism, masculinity and anti-imperialism.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2023The imperial Commonwealth
Australia and the project of empire, 1867-1914
by Wm. Matthew Kennedy
From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, Australian settler colonists mobilised their unique settler experiences to develop their own vision of what 'empire' was and could be. Reinterpreting their histories and attempting to divine their futures with a much heavier concentration on racialized visions of humanity, white Australian settlers came to believe that their whiteness as well as their Britishness qualified them for an equal voice in the running of Britain's imperial project. Through asserting their case, many soon claimed that, as newly minted citizens of a progressive and exemplary Australian Commonwealth, white settlers such as themselves were actually better suited to the modern task of empire. Such a settler political cosmology with empire at its center ultimately led Australians to claim an empire of their own in the Pacific Islands, complete with its own, unique imperial governmentality.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2012Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation
Passengers, pilots, publicity
by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie
The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2017Visions of empire
Patriotism, popular culture and the city, 1870–1939
by Brad Beaven
The emergence of a vibrant imperial culture in British society from the 1890s both fascinated and appalled contemporaries. It has also consistently provoked controversy among historians. This book offers a ground-breaking perspective on how imperial culture was disseminated. It identifies the important synergies that grew between a new civic culture and the wider imperial project. Beaven shows that the ebb and flow of imperial enthusiasm was shaped through a fusion of local patriotism and a broader imperial identity. Imperial culture was neither generic nor unimportant but was instead multi-layered and recast to capture the concerns of a locality. The book draws on a rich seam of primary sources from three representative English cities. These case studies are considered against an extensive analysis of seminal and current historiography. This renders the book invaluable to those interested in the fields of imperialism, social and cultural history, popular culture, historical geography and urban history.
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Humanities & Social SciencesDecember 2024
British culture after empire
Race, decolonisation and migration since 1945
by Josh Doble, Liam Liburd, Emma Parker
British culture after Empire is the first collection of its kind to explore the intertwined social, cultural and political aftermath of empire in Britain from 1945 up to and beyond the Brexit referendum of 2016, combining approaches from the fields of history, English and cultural studies. Against those who would deny, downplay or attempt to forget Britain's imperial legacy, the various contributions expose and explore how the British Empire and the consequences of its end continue to shape Britain at the local, national and international level. As an important and urgent intervention in a field of increasing relevance within and beyond the academy, the book offers fresh perspectives on the colonial hangovers in post-colonial Britain from up-and-coming as well as established scholars.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2017Welsh missionaries and British imperialism
The Empire of Clouds in north-east India
by Andrew May
In 1841, the Welsh sent their first missionary, Thomas Jones, to evangelise the tribal peoples of the Khasi Hills of north-east India. This book follows Jones from rural Wales to Cherrapunji, the wettest place on earth and now one of the most Christianised parts of India. As colonised colonisers, the Welsh were to have a profound impact on the culture and beliefs of the Khasis. The book also foregrounds broader political, scientific, racial and military ideologies that mobilised the Khasi Hills into an interconnected network of imperial control. Its themes are universal: crises of authority, the loneliness of geographical isolation, sexual scandal, greed and exploitation, personal and institutional dogma, individual and group morality. Written by a direct descendant of Thomas Jones, it makes a significant contribution in orienting the scholarship of imperialism to a much-neglected corner of India, and will appeal to students of the British imperial experience more broadly.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2014The harem, slavery and British imperial culture
Anglo-Muslim relations in the late nineteenth century
by Diane Robinson-Dunn, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie, Kim Latham
This book focuses on British efforts to suppress the traffic in female slaves destined for Egyptian harems during the late nineteenth century. It considers this campaign in relation to gender debates in England, and examines the ways in which the assumptions and dominant imperialist discourses of these abolitionists were challenged by the newly established Muslim communities in England, as well as by English people who converted to or were sympathetic with Islam. While previous scholars treated antislavery activity in Egypt first and foremost as an extension of earlier efforts to abolish plantation slavery in the New World, this book considers it in terms of encounters with Islam during a period which it argues marked a new departure in Anglo-Muslim relations. This approach illuminates the role of Islam in the creation of English national identities within the global cultural system of the British Empire. This book will appeal to those with an interest in British imperial history; Islam; gender, feminism and women's studies; slavery and race; the formation of national identities; global processes; Orientalism; and Middle Eastern studies. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017
Imperialism and the natural world
by John M. MacKenzie
Imperial power, both formal and informal, and research in the natural sciences were closely dependent in the nineteenth century. This book examines a portion of the mass-produced juvenile literature, focusing on the cluster of ideas connected with Britain's role in the maintenance of order and the spread of civilization. It discusses the political economy of Western ecological systems, and the consequences of their extension to the colonial periphery, particularly in forms of forest conservation. Progress and consumerism were major constituents of the consensus that helped stabilise the late Victorian society, but consumerism only works if it can deliver the goods. From 1842 onwards, almost all major episodes of coordinated popular resistance to colonial rule in India were preceded by phases of vigorous resistance to colonial forest control. By the late 1840s, a limited number of professional positions were available for geologists in British imperial service, but imperial geology had a longer pedigree. Modern imperialism or 'municipal imperialism' offers a broader framework for understanding the origins, long duration and persistent support for overseas expansion which transcended the rise and fall of cabinets or international realignments in the 1800s. Although medical scientists began to discern and control the microbiological causes of tropical ills after the mid-nineteenth century, the claims for climatic causation did not undergo a corresponding decline. Arthur Pearson's Pearson's Magazine was patriotic, militaristic and devoted to royalty. The book explores how science emerged as an important feature of the development policies of the Colonial Office (CO) of the colonial empire.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017
Popular imperialism and the military, 1850-1950
by John M. MacKenzie
Colonial war played a vital part in transforming the reputation of the military and placing it on a standing equal to that of the navy. The book is concerned with the interactive culture of colonial warfare, with the representation of the military in popular media at home, and how these images affected attitudes towards war itself and wider intellectual and institutional forces. It sets out to relate the changing image of the military to these fundamental facts. For the dominant people they were an atavistic form of war, shorn of guilt by Social Darwinian and racial ideas, and rendered less dangerous by the increasing technological gap between Europe and the world. Attempts to justify and understand war were naturally important to dominant people, for the extension of imperial power was seldom a peaceful process. The entertainment value of war in the British imperial experience does seem to have taken new and more intensive forms from roughly the middle of the nineteenth century. Themes such as the delusive seduction of martial music, the sketch of the music hall song, powerful mythic texts of popular imperialism, and heroic myths of empire are discussed extensively. The first important British war correspondent was William Howard Russell (1820-1907) of The Times, in the Crimea. The 1870s saw a dramatic change in the representation of the officer in British battle painting. Up to that point it was the officer's courage, tactical wisdom and social prestige that were put on display.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017Gender and imperialism
by Clare Midgley
This book marks an important new intervention into a vibrant area of scholarship, creating a dialogue between the histories of imperialism and of women and gender. By engaging critically with both traditional British imperial history and colonial discourse analysis, the essays demonstrate how feminist historians can play a central role in creating new histories of British imperialism. Chronologically, the focus is on the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, while geographically the essays range from the Caribbean to Australia and span India, Africa, Ireland and Britain itself. Topics explored include the question of female agency in imperial contexts, the relationships between feminism and nationalism, and questions of sexuality, masculinity and imperial power.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMarch 2017
Imperialism and juvenile literature
by Jeffrey Richards
Popular culture is invariably a vehicle for the dominant ideas of its age. Never was this truer than in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it reflected the nationalist and imperialist ideologies current throughout Europe. It both reflects popular attitudes, ideas and preconceptions and it generates support for selected views and opinions. This book examines the various media through which nationalist ideas were conveyed in late-Victorian and Edwardian times: in the theatre, "ethnic" shows, juvenile literature, education and the iconography of popular art. It seeks to examine in detail the articulation and diffusion of imperialism in the field of juvenile literature by stressing its pervasiveness across boundaries of class, nation and gender. It analyses the production, distribution and marketing of imperially-charged juvenile fiction, stressing the significance of the Victorians' discovery of adolescence, technological advance and educational reforms as the context of the great expansion of such literature. An overview of the phenomenon of Robinson Crusoe follows, tracing the process of its transformation into a classic text of imperialism and imperial masculinity for boys. The imperial commitment took to the air in the form of the heroic airmen of inter-war fiction. The book highlights that athleticism, imperialism and militarism become enmeshed at the public schools. It also explores the promotion of imperialism and imperialist role models in fiction for girls, particularly Girl Guide stories.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2017Country houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930
by Stephanie Barczewski
Country houses and the British empire, 1700-1930 assesses the economic and cultural links between country houses and the Empire between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Using sources from over fifty British and Irish archives, it enables readers to better understand the impact of the empire upon the British metropolis by showing both the geographical variations and its different cultural manifestations. Barczewski offers a rare scholarly analysis of the history of country houses that goes beyond an architectural or biographical study, and recognises their importance as the physical embodiments of imperial wealth and reflectors of imperial cultural influences. In so doing, she restores them to their true place of centrality in British culture over the last three centuries, and provides fresh insights into the role of the Empire in the British metropolis.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2015Sites of imperial memory
Commemorating colonial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
by Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie
Europe's great colonial empires have long been a thing of the past, but the memories they generated are still all around us. They have left deep imprints on the different memory communities that were affected by the processes of establishing, running and dismantling these systems of imperial rule, and they are still vibrant and evocative today. This volume brings together a collection of innovative and fresh studies exploring different sites of imperial memory - those conceptual and real places where the memories of former colonial rulers and of former colonial subjects have crystallised into a lasting form. The volume explores how memory was built up, re-shaped and preserved across different empires, continents and centuries. It shows how it found concrete expression in stone and bronze, how it adhered to the stories that were told and retold about great individuals and how it was suppressed, denied and neglected. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesSeptember 2024
Law across imperial borders
British consuls and colonial connections on China’s western frontiers, 1880-1943
by Emily Whewell
Law across imperial borders offers new perspectives on the complex legal connections between Britain's presence in Western China in the western frontier regions of Yunnan and Xinjiang, and the British colonies of Burma and India. Bringing together a transnational methodology with a social-legal focus, it demonstrates how inter-Asian mobility across frontiers shaped British authority in contested frontier regions of China. It examines the role of a range of actors who helped create, constitute and contest legal practice on the frontier-including consuls, indigenous elites and cultural mediators. The book will be of interest to historians of China, the British Empire in Asia and legal history.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2017Curating empire
Museums and the British imperial experience
by Sarah Longair, John McAleer
Curating empire explores the diverse roles played by museums and their curators in moulding and representing the British imperial experience. This collection demonstrates how individuals, their curatorial practices, and intellectual and political agendas influenced the development of a variety of museums across the globe. Taken together, these contributions suggest that museums are not just sites for accessing history but need to be considered as historical sites of significance in themselves. Individual essays examine the work of curators in museums in Britain and the colonies, the historical display and interpretation of empire in Britain, and the establishment of 'museum networks' in the British imperial context. Curating empire sheds new light on the relationship between museums, as repositories for objects and cultural institutions for conveying knowledge, and the politics of culture and the formation of identities throughout the British Empire.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2024Inner empire
Architecture and Imperialism in the British Isles, 1550-1950
by Daniel Maudlin, Alex Bremner
Inner Empire explores the impact of imperial cultures on the landscapes and urban environments of the British Isles from the sixteenth century through to the twentieth century. It asserts that Britain's four-hundred year entanglement with global empire left its mark upon the British Isles as much as it did the wider world. Buildings stood as one of the most conspicuous manifestations of the myriad relationships that Britain maintained with the theory and practice of colonialism in its modern history. Divided into two main sections, the volume's content considers 'internal' colonisation and its infrastructures of control, order, and suppression, alongside wider relationships between architecture, the imperial economy, and cultural identity. Taken together, the essays in this volume present for the first time a coherent analysis of the British Isles as an imperial setting understood through its buildings, spaces, and infrastructure.
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July 2025Intimate afterlives of empire
Memory and decolonisation in autobiography
by Astrid Rasch
Through close readings of almost twenty autobiographies written after the break-up of the British Empire, the book examines how individuals engage with the changing narrative landscape brought about by decolonisation. It considers the autobiographies less for what they may teach us about the moment remembered and more as windows on the act of remembering. This adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of the legacies of colonialism and how the ongoing process of decolonisation is reflected on the level of the individual. It argues that autobiographers are at once influenced by and seek to influence the cultural memory of empire and its legacies, and the authors' own position in both. Situated at the intersection of imperial/decolonisation history, memory studies, and life writing studies, the book uncovers this intimate afterlife of empire.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017From Jack Tar to Union Jack
Representing naval manhood in the British Empire, 1870–1918
by Mary A. Conley
Jack Tar to Union Jack examines the intersection between empire, navy, and manhood in British society from 1870 to 1918. Through analysis of sources that include courts-martial cases, sailors' own writings, and the HMS Pinafore, Conley charts new depictions of naval manhood during the Age of Empire, a period which witnessed the radical transformation of the navy, the intensification of imperial competition, the democratisation of British society, and the advent of mass culture. Jack Tar to Union Jack argues that popular representations of naval men increasingly reflected and informed imperial masculine ideals in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Conley shows how the British Bluejacket as both patriotic defender and dutiful husband and father stood in sharp contrast to the stereotypic image of the brave but bawdy tar of the Georgian navy. This book will be essential reading for students of British imperial history, naval and military history, and gender studies.
