David Thackeray
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198816713
- eISBN:
- 9780191858345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198816713.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Economic History
Forging a British World of Trade explores the politics of culture, ethnicity, and market in the Empire-Commonwealth between the 1880s and 1970s, focusing on efforts to promote an economic system ...
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Forging a British World of Trade explores the politics of culture, ethnicity, and market in the Empire-Commonwealth between the 1880s and 1970s, focusing on efforts to promote an economic system centred on trade between the UK and the old Commonwealth. This chapter situates the themes of the study within the existing historiography on British World networks. In recent years British World studies have received significant criticism both for the focus of their research and its absences. A key part of the problem here is that studies of the British World too often neglect key questions of uneven cultural and power relations. No one idea about the optimal future of British World collaboration was ever hegemonic. We should not discard the British World as a category of analysis, but rather explore how British World economic networks competed over time with alternative national, regional, and international ideas of trade community.Less
Forging a British World of Trade explores the politics of culture, ethnicity, and market in the Empire-Commonwealth between the 1880s and 1970s, focusing on efforts to promote an economic system centred on trade between the UK and the old Commonwealth. This chapter situates the themes of the study within the existing historiography on British World networks. In recent years British World studies have received significant criticism both for the focus of their research and its absences. A key part of the problem here is that studies of the British World too often neglect key questions of uneven cultural and power relations. No one idea about the optimal future of British World collaboration was ever hegemonic. We should not discard the British World as a category of analysis, but rather explore how British World economic networks competed over time with alternative national, regional, and international ideas of trade community.
Anne Spry Rush
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199588558
- eISBN:
- 9780191728990
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588558.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter opens with an overview of the nature of middle-class West Indian understandings of Britishness, and suggests the impact of Caribbean British identity on West Indian societies in the ...
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This chapter opens with an overview of the nature of middle-class West Indian understandings of Britishness, and suggests the impact of Caribbean British identity on West Indian societies in the twentieth-century colonial period. West Indians’ idea of Britishness, which combined a focus on respectability with expectations of racial and geographical inclusiveness, allowed them to form strong bonds with native Britons (persons born and bred in the British Isles) and create a place for themselves in the colonial world. As empire declined they would struggle to unravel Caribbean society from the Britishness they considered a vital part of their own identity. This introduction explores these ideas in the context of recent literature on the British World, colonial Caribbean society, decolonization, and the meaning of imperial culture, outlines the geographical and analytical parameters of the book, and provides working definitions of significant terms used in the text.Less
This chapter opens with an overview of the nature of middle-class West Indian understandings of Britishness, and suggests the impact of Caribbean British identity on West Indian societies in the twentieth-century colonial period. West Indians’ idea of Britishness, which combined a focus on respectability with expectations of racial and geographical inclusiveness, allowed them to form strong bonds with native Britons (persons born and bred in the British Isles) and create a place for themselves in the colonial world. As empire declined they would struggle to unravel Caribbean society from the Britishness they considered a vital part of their own identity. This introduction explores these ideas in the context of recent literature on the British World, colonial Caribbean society, decolonization, and the meaning of imperial culture, outlines the geographical and analytical parameters of the book, and provides working definitions of significant terms used in the text.
Barry Crosbie and Mark Hampton (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097898
- eISBN:
- 9781526104403
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097898.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, ...
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This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, Hong Kong, and Australia, as well as sites of informal British influence such as the Ottoman Empire and southern China. The book considers the ways in which British culture circulated within what John Darwin has called the British “world system”. In this, the book builds on existing imperial scholarship while innovating in several ways: it focuses on the movement of ideas and cultural praxis, whereas Darwin has focused mostly on imperial structures —financial, demographic, and military. The book examines the transmission, reception, and adaptation of British culture in the Metropole, the empire and informal colonial spaces, whereas many recent scholars have considered British imperial influence on the Metropole alone. It examines Britain's Atlantic and Asian imperial experiences from the eighteenth to the twentieth century together. Through focusing on political ideology, literary movements, material culture, marriage, and the construction of national identities, the essays demonstrate the salience of culture in making a “British World”.Less
This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, Hong Kong, and Australia, as well as sites of informal British influence such as the Ottoman Empire and southern China. The book considers the ways in which British culture circulated within what John Darwin has called the British “world system”. In this, the book builds on existing imperial scholarship while innovating in several ways: it focuses on the movement of ideas and cultural praxis, whereas Darwin has focused mostly on imperial structures —financial, demographic, and military. The book examines the transmission, reception, and adaptation of British culture in the Metropole, the empire and informal colonial spaces, whereas many recent scholars have considered British imperial influence on the Metropole alone. It examines Britain's Atlantic and Asian imperial experiences from the eighteenth to the twentieth century together. Through focusing on political ideology, literary movements, material culture, marriage, and the construction of national identities, the essays demonstrate the salience of culture in making a “British World”.
David Thackeray
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198816713
- eISBN:
- 9780191858345
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198816713.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Economic History
Brexit is likely to lead to the largest shift in Britain’s economic orientation in living memory. Some have argued that leaving the EU will enable Britain to revive markets in Commonwealth countries ...
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Brexit is likely to lead to the largest shift in Britain’s economic orientation in living memory. Some have argued that leaving the EU will enable Britain to revive markets in Commonwealth countries with which it has long-standing historical ties. Their opponents argue that such claims are based on forms of imperial nostalgia which ignore the often uncomfortable historical trade relations between Britain and these countries, as well as the UK’s historical role as a global, rather than chiefly imperial, economy. This book explores how efforts to promote a ‘British World’ system, centred on promoting trade between Britain and the Dominions, grew and declined in influence between the 1880s and 1970s. At the beginning of the twentieth century many people from London, to Sydney, Auckland, and Toronto considered themselves to belong to culturally British nations. British politicians and business leaders invested significant resources in promoting trade with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa out of a perception that these were great markets of the future. However, ideas about promoting trade between ‘British’ peoples were racially exclusive. From the 1920s onwards colonized and decolonizing populations questioned and challenged the bases of British World networks, making use of alternative forms of international collaboration promoted firstly by the League of Nations and then by the United Nations. Schemes for imperial collaboration amongst ethnically ‘British’ peoples were hollowed out by the actions of a variety of political and business leaders across Asia and Africa who reshaped the functions and identity of the Commonwealth.Less
Brexit is likely to lead to the largest shift in Britain’s economic orientation in living memory. Some have argued that leaving the EU will enable Britain to revive markets in Commonwealth countries with which it has long-standing historical ties. Their opponents argue that such claims are based on forms of imperial nostalgia which ignore the often uncomfortable historical trade relations between Britain and these countries, as well as the UK’s historical role as a global, rather than chiefly imperial, economy. This book explores how efforts to promote a ‘British World’ system, centred on promoting trade between Britain and the Dominions, grew and declined in influence between the 1880s and 1970s. At the beginning of the twentieth century many people from London, to Sydney, Auckland, and Toronto considered themselves to belong to culturally British nations. British politicians and business leaders invested significant resources in promoting trade with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa out of a perception that these were great markets of the future. However, ideas about promoting trade between ‘British’ peoples were racially exclusive. From the 1920s onwards colonized and decolonizing populations questioned and challenged the bases of British World networks, making use of alternative forms of international collaboration promoted firstly by the League of Nations and then by the United Nations. Schemes for imperial collaboration amongst ethnically ‘British’ peoples were hollowed out by the actions of a variety of political and business leaders across Asia and Africa who reshaped the functions and identity of the Commonwealth.
Anne Spry Rush
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199588558
- eISBN:
- 9780191728990
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588558.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This concluding chapter considers how West Indian understandings of Britishness, as well as the institutional and migratory pathways through which they were reinforced, may have influenced both ...
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This concluding chapter considers how West Indian understandings of Britishness, as well as the institutional and migratory pathways through which they were reinforced, may have influenced both Britain and the Caribbean in the post-colonial era. It suggests that continuing bonds between Caribbean peoples and native Britons had an important and complex impact on the newly constituted independent societies in the Caribbean as well as on post-war domestic British culture. It comments on related literature on colonial relationships to Britishness, particularly that dealing with the concept of respectability as developed by colonials of color in other parts the British World. It encourages further explorations of British identity amongst these peoples, as well as amongst white West Indians and the working classes in the context of British royalty, generational and ethnic factors, the English language, and religion.Less
This concluding chapter considers how West Indian understandings of Britishness, as well as the institutional and migratory pathways through which they were reinforced, may have influenced both Britain and the Caribbean in the post-colonial era. It suggests that continuing bonds between Caribbean peoples and native Britons had an important and complex impact on the newly constituted independent societies in the Caribbean as well as on post-war domestic British culture. It comments on related literature on colonial relationships to Britishness, particularly that dealing with the concept of respectability as developed by colonials of color in other parts the British World. It encourages further explorations of British identity amongst these peoples, as well as amongst white West Indians and the working classes in the context of British royalty, generational and ethnic factors, the English language, and religion.
Ryan A. Vieira
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198737544
- eISBN:
- 9780191800962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198737544.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Political History
This chapter situates the emergence of a modern understanding of parliament within the context of, what historians call, the British World. It argues that a desire amongst British colonists to adopt ...
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This chapter situates the emergence of a modern understanding of parliament within the context of, what historians call, the British World. It argues that a desire amongst British colonists to adopt Westminster-style parliaments in the colonies gave the issue of parliamentary inefficiency a transnational significance. The rapid population and economic growth that characterized these imperial locations from the mid-nineteenth century accentuated the slowness of the ‘ancient rules’ of parliamentary law-making and an imperial network of news and newspapers circulated throughout the Empire the complaints over parliamentary inefficiency that were emerging in Britain. Colonists thus came to see the deficiencies of their own legislatures as part of a wider political problem within the British World.Less
This chapter situates the emergence of a modern understanding of parliament within the context of, what historians call, the British World. It argues that a desire amongst British colonists to adopt Westminster-style parliaments in the colonies gave the issue of parliamentary inefficiency a transnational significance. The rapid population and economic growth that characterized these imperial locations from the mid-nineteenth century accentuated the slowness of the ‘ancient rules’ of parliamentary law-making and an imperial network of news and newspapers circulated throughout the Empire the complaints over parliamentary inefficiency that were emerging in Britain. Colonists thus came to see the deficiencies of their own legislatures as part of a wider political problem within the British World.
Ryan A. Vieira
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198737544
- eISBN:
- 9780191800962
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198737544.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Political History
This book is a cultural and transnational history of modern procedural reform in the Westminster parliamentary system. The book centres on the nineteenth-century emergence of a desire to modernize ...
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This book is a cultural and transnational history of modern procedural reform in the Westminster parliamentary system. The book centres on the nineteenth-century emergence of a desire to modernize and make more efficient the procedural rules of parliamentary law-making. Contrary to existing interpretations, which see that history as a product of transformations in political structure and practice, this book demonstrates how the evolution of Parliament’s rules was structured by transformations within the wider culture of time. The spread of an increasingly rigorous time discipline in concert with a growing consciousness of being modern, this book argues, worked to progressively erode the legitimacy of the historically developed rules of parliamentary debate and law-making while simultaneously implanting new ways of judging the effectiveness of parliamentary institutions. By the 1880s, this process had transformed efficiency into the ultimate criterion of parliamentary effectiveness. Using the conceptual framework of the British World, the book then demonstrates how this new understanding of parliamentary effectiveness was exported to the colonies of settlement through a series of communicative networks and provided colonial parliamentarians with the ability to imagine the inefficiencies of their own legislatures as part of a larger transnational problem.Less
This book is a cultural and transnational history of modern procedural reform in the Westminster parliamentary system. The book centres on the nineteenth-century emergence of a desire to modernize and make more efficient the procedural rules of parliamentary law-making. Contrary to existing interpretations, which see that history as a product of transformations in political structure and practice, this book demonstrates how the evolution of Parliament’s rules was structured by transformations within the wider culture of time. The spread of an increasingly rigorous time discipline in concert with a growing consciousness of being modern, this book argues, worked to progressively erode the legitimacy of the historically developed rules of parliamentary debate and law-making while simultaneously implanting new ways of judging the effectiveness of parliamentary institutions. By the 1880s, this process had transformed efficiency into the ultimate criterion of parliamentary effectiveness. Using the conceptual framework of the British World, the book then demonstrates how this new understanding of parliamentary effectiveness was exported to the colonies of settlement through a series of communicative networks and provided colonial parliamentarians with the ability to imagine the inefficiencies of their own legislatures as part of a larger transnational problem.
Tobias Harper
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- February 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198841180
- eISBN:
- 9780191876714
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198841180.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter examines the creation of new orders at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was the culmination of a prolonged period of “unprecedented honorific inventiveness” starting in the ...
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This chapter examines the creation of new orders at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was the culmination of a prolonged period of “unprecedented honorific inventiveness” starting in the late nineteenth century. In Britain the new Order of the British Empire was branded the “Order of Britain’s Democracy” in recognition of the fact that it extended far deeper into non-elite classes in British society than any previous honour. Between 1917 and 1921 more than 20,000 people in Britain and throughout the British Empire were added to this new Order. This was an unprecedented number, orders of magnitude larger than honours lists in previous years. While the new Order was successful in reaching a wider, more middle-class audience than the honours system before the war, which was socially narrow, there was a substantial backlash to what was widely perceived by elites to be an excessive (and diluting) opening-up of the “fount of honour.” This backlash was connected to political controversies about the sale of honours that eventually helped bring about Lloyd George’s downfall. This chapter also contains a brief description of all the components of the British honours system at the beginning of the twentieth century.Less
This chapter examines the creation of new orders at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was the culmination of a prolonged period of “unprecedented honorific inventiveness” starting in the late nineteenth century. In Britain the new Order of the British Empire was branded the “Order of Britain’s Democracy” in recognition of the fact that it extended far deeper into non-elite classes in British society than any previous honour. Between 1917 and 1921 more than 20,000 people in Britain and throughout the British Empire were added to this new Order. This was an unprecedented number, orders of magnitude larger than honours lists in previous years. While the new Order was successful in reaching a wider, more middle-class audience than the honours system before the war, which was socially narrow, there was a substantial backlash to what was widely perceived by elites to be an excessive (and diluting) opening-up of the “fount of honour.” This backlash was connected to political controversies about the sale of honours that eventually helped bring about Lloyd George’s downfall. This chapter also contains a brief description of all the components of the British honours system at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Zara Anishanslin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300197051
- eISBN:
- 9780300220551
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300197051.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter focuses on Robert Feke's portraits of wealthy Boston merchant Charles Apthorp (1698–1758), his wife Grizzell, and their oldest daughter. Feke's portraits of Charles and Grizzell speak to ...
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This chapter focuses on Robert Feke's portraits of wealthy Boston merchant Charles Apthorp (1698–1758), his wife Grizzell, and their oldest daughter. Feke's portraits of Charles and Grizzell speak to the ambivalent complexity of the colonizing efforts of the British Empire. On the surface, these portraits do exactly what they were meant to do: celebrate mercantile success and refinement in ways easily recognized around the British Atlantic World. However, they also remind us of particularly American, and sometimes troublingly dark, aspects of the imperial experiment. Colonists lived in a geographic space at risk of encroachment by the French Empire. In city and country, colonists employed forced labor and dispossession to further their settlement, practices that put them at constant risk of conflict with enslaved people and Native Americans. For all their wealth and costly goods, theirs was not the same provincial world inhabited by their counterparts across the Atlantic.Less
This chapter focuses on Robert Feke's portraits of wealthy Boston merchant Charles Apthorp (1698–1758), his wife Grizzell, and their oldest daughter. Feke's portraits of Charles and Grizzell speak to the ambivalent complexity of the colonizing efforts of the British Empire. On the surface, these portraits do exactly what they were meant to do: celebrate mercantile success and refinement in ways easily recognized around the British Atlantic World. However, they also remind us of particularly American, and sometimes troublingly dark, aspects of the imperial experiment. Colonists lived in a geographic space at risk of encroachment by the French Empire. In city and country, colonists employed forced labor and dispossession to further their settlement, practices that put them at constant risk of conflict with enslaved people and Native Americans. For all their wealth and costly goods, theirs was not the same provincial world inhabited by their counterparts across the Atlantic.
Tanja Bueltmann, David T. Gleeson, and Don MacRaild (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846318191
- eISBN:
- 9781846317712
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317712
- Subject:
- History, Economic History
After 1600, English emigration became one of Europe's most significant population movements. Yet compared to what has been written about the migration of Scots and Irish, relatively little energy has ...
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After 1600, English emigration became one of Europe's most significant population movements. Yet compared to what has been written about the migration of Scots and Irish, relatively little energy has been expended on the numerically more significant English flows. Whilst the Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Jewish and Black Diasporas are well known and much studied, there is virtual silence on the English. Why, then, is there no English Diaspora? Why has little been said about the English other than to map their main emigration flows? Did the English simply disappear into the host population? Or were they so fundamental, and foundational, to the Anglophone, Protestant cultures of the evolving British World that they could not be distinguished in the way Catholic Irish or continental Europeans were? With contributions from the UK, Europe North America and Australasia that examine themes as wide–ranging as Yorkshire societies in New Zealand and St George's societies in Montreal, to Anglo–Saxonism in the Atlantic World and the English Diaspora of the sixteenth century, this collection explores these and related key issues about the nature and character of English identity during the creation of the cultures of the wider British World. It does not do so uncritically. Several of the authors deal with and accept the invisibility of the English, while others take the opposite view. The result is a collection that combines reaffirmations of some existing ideas with empirical research, and new conceptualisations.Less
After 1600, English emigration became one of Europe's most significant population movements. Yet compared to what has been written about the migration of Scots and Irish, relatively little energy has been expended on the numerically more significant English flows. Whilst the Scottish, Irish, German, Italian, Jewish and Black Diasporas are well known and much studied, there is virtual silence on the English. Why, then, is there no English Diaspora? Why has little been said about the English other than to map their main emigration flows? Did the English simply disappear into the host population? Or were they so fundamental, and foundational, to the Anglophone, Protestant cultures of the evolving British World that they could not be distinguished in the way Catholic Irish or continental Europeans were? With contributions from the UK, Europe North America and Australasia that examine themes as wide–ranging as Yorkshire societies in New Zealand and St George's societies in Montreal, to Anglo–Saxonism in the Atlantic World and the English Diaspora of the sixteenth century, this collection explores these and related key issues about the nature and character of English identity during the creation of the cultures of the wider British World. It does not do so uncritically. Several of the authors deal with and accept the invisibility of the English, while others take the opposite view. The result is a collection that combines reaffirmations of some existing ideas with empirical research, and new conceptualisations.