The rule of law, an ideology of equality and universality that justified Britain's eighteenth-century imperial claims, was the product not of abstract principles but imperial contact. As the Empire expanded, encompassing greater religious, ethnic and racial diversity, the law paradoxically contained and maintained these very differences.
This book revisits six notorious incidents that occasioned vigorous debate in London's courtrooms, streets and presses: the Jewish Naturalization Act and the Elizabeth Canning case (175354); the Somerset Case (177172); the Gordon Riots (1780); the...

Based upon years of research in libraries and archives in England, Germany, India and Switzerland, this book offers a new interpretation of global migration from the early nineteenth until the early twentieth century. Rather than focusing upon the mass transatlantic migration or the movement of Britons towards British colonies, it examines the elite German migrants who progressed to India, especially missionaries, scholars and scientists, businessmen and travellers. The story told here questions, for the first time, the concept of Europeans in India. Previous scholarship has ignored any...

Though the overthrow and exile of Napoleon in 1815 is a familiar episode in modern history, it is not well known that just a few months later, British colonisers toppled and banished the last king in Ceylon. Beginning with that case, this volume examines the deposition and exile of indigenous monarchs by the British and French with examples in India, Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam, Madagascar, Tunisia and Morocco from the early nineteenth century down to the eve of decolonisation. It argues that removal of native sovereigns, and sometimes abolition of dynasties, provided a powerful strategy used by...

The suppression of the Atlantic slave trade saw the British Empire turn naval power and moral outrage against a branch of commerce it had done so much to promote. The assembled authors bridge the gap between ship and shore to reveal the motives, effects, and legacies of this nineteenth-century campaign. -- .

Examines the nineteenth-century royal tour from the perspectives of various historical actors - including royals, politicians and indigenous people - in order to demonstrate how a multi-valent British culture was created throughout the empire. -- .

This book makes a new contribution to histories of medicine and health in the colonial era, with particular focus on Malawi, the British Empire and Southern Africa. It argues that mobility of people, ideas and materials was crucial within the dynamic, intertwined and networked medical culture of colonial Malawi. -- .

The volume builds upon developments in recent years in reconceptualising the British Empire as a system structured around complex, multi-layered networks, which transcended conventionally defined boundaries between metropolitan and colonial space. -- .

Travel by European and 'native' monarchs and other royals between Europe, Asia and Africa developed as a new form of personal and international politics in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The pageantry and politics of royal tours during the age of empire provides great insight into modern monarchy, colonialism and transnational cultural encounters. -- .

Savage Worlds examines frontier encounters between Germans and indigenous peoples in the age of high imperialism. It demonstrates the complexity of the colonial frontier and frontier zone encounters and poses the question of how far Germans were able to overcome their initial belief that, in leaving Europe, they were entering 'savage worlds'. -- .

A new interpretation of the creative work of well known British imperialists of the late nineteenth and early 20th century, exploring their links with the revolutionary psychological theories of Freud. -- .