This is the first book to survey in comparative form the transmission of imperial ideas to the public in six European countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chapters, focusing on France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy, provide parallel studies of the manner in which colonial ambitions and events in the respective European empires were given wider popular visibility. The international group of contributors, who are all scholars working at the cutting edge of these fields, place their work in the context of governmental policies, the economic bases of...

The age of steam was the age of Britain's global maritime dominance, the age of enormous ocean liners and human mastery over the seas. The world seemed to shrink as timetabled shipping mapped out faster, more efficient and more reliable transoceanic networks. But what did this transport revolution look like at the other end of the line, at the edge of empire in the South Pacific?
Through the historical example of the largest and most important regional maritime enterprise - the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand - Frances Steel eloquently charts the diverse and often conflicting...

This is a pathbreaking comparative and trans-national study of the neglected influences of nation, empire and race upon the development and electoral fortunes of the Labour Party in Britain and the Australian Labor Party from their formative years of the 1900s to the elections of 2010. Based upon extensive primary and secondary source-based research in Britain and Australia over several years, it makes a new and original contribution to the fields of labour, imperial and 'British world' history. The book offers the challenging conclusion that the forces of nation, empire and race exerted much...

This book examines the study of natural history in the Spanish empire in the years 1750-1850. During this period, Spain made strenuous efforts to survey, inventory and exploit the natural productions of her overseas possessions, orchestrating a serries of scientific expeditions and cultivating and displaying American fauna and flora in metropolitan gardens and museums. This book assesses the cultural significance of natural history, emphasising the figurative and utilitarian value with which eighteenth-century Spaniards invested natural objects, from globetrotting elephants to three-legged...

"Imperial Spaces" takes two of the most influential minority groups of white settlers in the British Empire -- the Irish and the Scots -- and explores how they imagined themselves within the landscapes of its farthest reaches, the Australian colonies of Victoria and New South Wales. Using letters and diaries as well as records of collective activities such as committee meetings, parades, and dinners, the book examines how the Irish and Scottish built new identities as settlers in the unknown spaces of Empire. Utilizing critical geographical theories of "place" as the site of memory and...

This book is a study of the ambitions, activities and achievements of Methodist missionaries in northern Burma from 1887-1966 and the expulsion of the last missionaries by Ne Win. The story is told through painstaking original research in archives which contain thousands of hitherto unpublished documents and eyewitness accounts meticulously recorded by the Methodist missionaries.
This accessible study constitutes a significant contribution to a very little-known area of missionary history. Leigh pulls together the themes of conflict, politics and proselytisation in to a fascinating study...

Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation assembles an unprecedented mass of scattered evidence to examine the social exclusivity of people who used private and commercial aircraft to circulate though the empire in the 1930s. While airline publicity stressed flying patriotically and in style, flying was not always slick, romantic or modern. It did not end danger or delay, nor was it necessarily progressive. Imperial flying was mobility laced with imperious assumptions and prejudices. It reinforced social rank and continued to depend on the subservience and muscle of colonised...

During the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, colonial expansion prompted increasing numbers of genteel women to establish their family homes in far flung corners of the world. This work explores ways in which the women's values, as expressed through their material culture, specifically their dress, living rooms, gardens and food, were instrumental in constructing various forms of genteel society in alien settings.
Lawrence examines the transfer and adaptation of British female gentility in various locations across the British Empire, including...

The emergence of a vibrant imperial culture and its pervasive influence 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 of the late nineteenth century and the wider imperial project. From the late nineteenth century, pleasure seekers enjoyed the spectacular depiction of empire on stage and screen. Meanwhile school children began to learn...

In 1841, the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Foreign Missionary Society sent its first missionary to evangelise amongst the tribal peoples of the Khasi Hills of north-east India. As a history of the Welsh as agents of imperialism, this book follows Thomas 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 language, culture and beliefs of the Khasi people. As well as being a study of the early decades of missionary intervention, this book also foregrounds...