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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        The 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.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Wales and the British overseas empire

        Interactions and influences, 1650–1830

        by H.V. Bowen

        This unique collection of essays is the first book to explore the many relationships that developed between Wales and the British overseas empire between 1650 and 1830. Written by leading specialists in the field, the essays explore economic, social, cultural, political, and religious interactions between Wales and the empire. The geographical coverage is very broad, with examinations of the contributions made by Wales to expansion in the Atlantic world, Caribbean, and South Asia. The book explores Welsh influences on the emergence of 'British' imperialism, as well as the impact that the empire had upon the development of Wales itself. The book will be of interest to academic historians, postgraduate students, and undergraduates. It will be indispensable to those interested in the history of Wales, Britain, and the empire, as well as those who wish to compare Welsh imperial experiences with those of the English, Irish, and Scots.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        The British working class in postwar film

        by Philip Gillett

        An incidental pleasure of watching a film is what it tells us about the society in which it is made. Using a sociological model, The British working class in postwar film looks at how working-class people were portrayed in British feature films in the decade after the Second World War. Though some of the films examined are well known, others have been forgotten and deserve reassessment. Original statistical data is used to assess the popularity of the films with audiences. With its interdisciplinary approach and the avoidance of jargon, this book seeks to broaden the approach to film studies. Students of media and cultural studies are introduced to the skills of other disciplines, while sociologists and historians are encouraged to consider the value of film evidence in their own fields. This work should appeal to all readers interested in social history and in how cinema and society works.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Cultures 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.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2025

        Islamophobia, anti-racism and the British left

        by Scarlet Harris

        Islamophobia is one of the most misunderstood and pernicious forms of racism in Britain. But how do those committed to challenging Islamophobia understand it? And what does this mean for their practices 'on the ground'? Islamophobia, anti-racism and the British left combines first-hand accounts from activists and community workers across two British cities with sociological theory, critically interrogating Islamophobia's relationship to 'race', racial capitalism and other modalities of racism. Setting this discussion against some of the most pertinent political shifts in Britain in recent years - from the resurgence of left nationalism to Black Lives Matter - the book assesses the limits of recent attempts to think about and tackle Islamophobia, and considers the possibilities of an alternative approach from and for the anti-racist left.

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        May 2024

        Jewish refugees and the British nursing profession

        A gendered opportunity

        by Jane Brooks

        This book follows the lives of female Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution and became nurses. Nursing was nominally a profession but with its poor pay and harsh discipline, it was unpopular with British women. In the years preceding the Second World War, hospitals in Britain suffered chronic nurse staffing crises. As the country faced inevitable war, the Government and the profession's elite courted refugees as an antidote to the shortages, but many hospitals refused to employ Continental Jews. The book explores the changes in the refugees' status and lives from the war years to the foundation of the National Health Service and to the latter decades of the twentieth century. It places the refugees at the forefront of manoeuvres in nursing practice, education and research at a time of social upheaval and alterations in the position of women.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2024

        British Bangladeshi Muslims in the East End

        The changing landscape of dress and language

        by Fatima Rajina

        Drawing on the everyday experiences of 43 British-Bangladeshi Muslims living in East London, this book explores stories of migration and belonging vis-à-vis dress and language. In narrating those stories, the book is framed within the broader socio-political conversations happening regarding Muslims in Britain and their 'place' in this society. Recent work on Muslims focuses on their religious identity and its formation, not paying attention to the role of dress and language. With the former, much of it tends to, obsessively, focus on Muslim women only. This book, alternatively, explores religious identity formation in addition to examining the British-Bangladeshi Muslim community's relationship with their ethnic identity vis-à-vis dress and language. As such, the analysis provides a rich, bottom-up analysis of the community, and readers will be able to understand a community holistically, away from the over-sensationalised community within broader socio-political context.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 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.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Country 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.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Payment and philanthropy in British healthcare, 1918–48

        by George Campbell Gosling, Keir Waddington

        This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence. At a time when payment is claiming a greater place than ever before within the NHS, this book provides the first in-depth investigation of the workings, scale and meaning of payment in British hospitals before the NHS. There were only three decades in British history when it was the norm for patients to pay the hospital; those between the end of the First World War and the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948. Payment played an important part in redefining rather than abandoning medical philanthropy, based on class divisions and the notion of financial contribution as a civic duty. With new insights on the scope of private medicine and the workings of the means test in the hospital, as well as the civic, consumer and charitable meanings associated with paying the hospital, Gosling offers a fresh perspective on healthcare before the NHS and welfare before the welfare state.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Welsh 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.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Servants of the empire

        The Irish in Punjab 1881–1921

        by Patrick O'Leary, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        Punjab, 'the pride of British India', attracted the cream of the Indian Civil Service, many of the most influential of whom were Irish. Some of these men, along with Irish viceroys, were inspired by their Irish backgrounds to ensure security of tenure for the Punjabi peasant, besides developing vast irrigation schemes which resulted in the province becoming India's most affluent. But similar inspiration contributed to the severity of measures taken against Indian nationalist dissent, culminating in the Amritsar massacre which so catastrophically transformed politics on the sub-continent. Setting the experiences of Irish public servants in Punjab in the context of the Irish diaspora and of linked agrarian problems in Ireland and India, this book descrides the beneficial effects the Irish had on the prosperity of India's most volatile province. Alongside the baleful contribution of some towards a growing Indian antipathy towards British rule. Links are established between policies pursued by Irishmen of the Victorian era and current happenings on the Pakistan-Afghan border and in Punjab.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        ‘Ten Pound Poms’

        A life history of British postwar emigration to Australia

        by A. James Hammerton, Alistair Thomson, Becca Parkinson

        A riveting history of the 'Ten Pound Poms', a wave of British citizens who migrated to Australia and New Zealand after the Second World War. Between the 1940s and 1970s, more than a million Britons migrated to Australia. They were the famous 'Ten Pound Poms' and this is their story. The authors draw on a vast trove of letters, diaries and personal photographs, as well as hundreds of interviews with former migrants, to offer original insights into key historical themes. They explore people's motivations for emigrating, gender relations and family dynamics, the clashing experience of the 'very familiar and awfully strange', homesickness and the personal and national identities of both settlers and returnees. Filled with fascinating testimonies that shed light on migrant life histories, 'Ten Pound Poms' will engage readers interested in British and Australian migration history and intrigued about the power of migrant memories for individuals, families and nations.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Cultural identities and the aesthetics of Britishness

        by Dana Arnold

        Considers how notions of Britishness were constructed and promoted through architecture, landscape, painting, sculpture and literature. Maps important moments in the self-conscious evolution of the idea of 'nation' against a broad cultural historical framework. An important addition to the field of postcolonial studies as it looks at how British identity creation affected those living in England - most study in this area has thus far focused on the effect of such identity creation upon the colonial subject. Broad appeal due to wide subject matter covered. Examines just how 'constructed' a national identity is - past and present.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        British imperialism in Cyprus, 1878–1915

        by Andrekos Varnava

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2019

        The British political elite and Europe 1959-1984

        by Bob Nicholls

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