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This book is a study of a small war fought over six days in the New Territories of Hong Kong, between 14 and 19 April 1899. This war was the only military campaign fought within the Hong Kong area during the period of British administration, other than the fighting against the Japanese during the last World War. It was an Imperial war, fought to secure an expansion of the British Empire, taking place during the period when Imperialism as a belief-system was at its peak in Britain and the British Overseas Dominions, and this makes it an interesting area of study. The campaign was ill-managed by the Hong Kong military authorities. Provision of supplies to the British troops was extremely poor. The leaders of the insurgency were taken from the traditional village leadership, and comprised almost exclusively gentry figures of great wealth and status, men older than the average from their villages.

This introductory chapter surveys the current literature on British prisoners of war in Germany during the Second World War and the state of the archival sources. It also highlights some of the core themes that will be developed in subsequent chapters: the domestic political context within which POW policy was made in London, notably the existence of an attentive lobby group in the form of the prisoners' next‐of‐kin, the Dominion governments' influence over UK policy‐making, the way in which POW issues fed into Britain's broader political relationship with the German government, and finally the particularities of inter‐belligerent ‘POW diplomacy’ and the key role played by neutral intermediaries.

This chapter takes a broad view of British POW policy‐making over the war by highlighting the part played by the Dominion governments. It shows how the Dominions came, over time, to acknowledge their individual responsibility for their nationals in enemy captivity, and how this reflected their growing maturity as independent members of the international community. Waxing concern in the Dominions over the fate of their prisoners led to demand for an increased say in Whitehall policy‐making. Particular emphasis is given to the role of the Canadian government, and the Canadian high commissioner in London, Sir Vincent Massey, in challenging British policy during the shackling crisis, and elevating humanitarianism to the centre of Canadian diplomacy over the middle years of the war.

In 1919 and 1945, an English-speaking alliance had a seeming solidity born of victory. In the inter-war period, a British-led Anglosphere continued and even increased trading connections in times of crisis and remained a defence unit, while the Americans went into isolation, which was broken up by another war. After 1945, American hegemony of the Anglosphere, and the rest of the Western world, was a given and trumped the British Empire. This led to NATO, as the British imperial element of this ‘Anglo’ order was undergoing change. Australia and New Zealand could not join NATO, while Canada did, and formed ANZUS with the United States and without Britain. Trade divergence ensued, as Britain joined the EEC and the former Dominions went separate ways embedded in their regions. In the post-Cold War era, the Anglosphere remains one of the cornerstones of a global security structure, whereas, ominous for Brexit, in the important area of world trade, the Anglosphere has no relevance.

This chapter focuses on Part II of Imperialism: A Study, the part least often read in modern times. Part II was twice as long as Part I and contained some of Hobson's finest writing. In it were discussed a range of issues that he undoubtedly believed were of equal importance to the more nakedly economic arguments at the beginning of the book. In Part II, Hobson first investigated the political, social, and ideological forces making for expansion in Britain and then went on to discuss the impact of imperialism upon Africa, India, and China and upon the settlement colonies, the emerging Dominions. The chapter ends with a short survey of the reception of Imperialism: A Study. It shows that Imperialism: A Study was not received with acclaim even among those opposed to British policy in South Africa.

This chapter investigates the imperial integration and traces its emergence during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It focuses on Britain and the settler colonies — known to contemporaries as Dominions — of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. It shows that the distinct privileged position occupied by the Dominions in the imperial hierarchy, as component parts of what some contemporaries saw as a ‘Great Britain’. ‘Old Commonwealth’, or ‘British world’, united by a common sense of Britishness. It highlights connections between the English-language press in Britain and the colonies of settlement, but does not deny that French Canadian or Afrikaner newspapers, or papers in India and the so-called Crown colonies had an important role to play in the life of the British Empire. It aims to give a fuller and more revealing perspective on the history of the press in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Britain.

This chapter begins by discussing that in historical writing about the British press, newspapers are seen as having contributed to a national tradition. It then argues that the press acted as a key agent in the process of national integration. It adds that the imperial press system influenced the development of newspapers in Britain as much as in the Dominions. It also discusses that journalism was traditionally a profession that encouraged social and geographical mobility, providing a lifestyle well suited to colonial adventurers. It clarifies that movement around the empire did not take place solely as a result of itchy feet. It explains that temporary and permanent mobility was institutionalised, encouraged by those who controlled the empire's large press enterprises. It also discusses how the distribution of news around the world developed.

This chapter begins by defining constructive imperialism as a response to Britain's late 19th-century ‘relative decline’, as the country fell behind foreign industrial rivals such as Germany and the USA. It discusses that during the latter part of the 19th century, the imperial federation movement was formed by pressing for closer union with the Dominions, in order for Britain to compete with its foreign rivals. It adds that even if this movement failed, the union between Britain and the Dominions remained. It argues that the fourth estate theory had never provided a very accurate description of the political role of the press. It explains that many readers of the newspapers wanted to read what the well-respected commentators had to say on the political issues of the day. It discusses that broader commercialisation of the press lead to an increase of mass-circulation of newspapers.

This chapter investigates the consequences of the First Imperial Conference commenced in London on June 5, 1909. It discusses that most contemporaries concluded that the Conference had encouraged closer relations between newspapermen in Britain and the Dominions. It adds that most of the people who attended the Conference argue that it formed friendships that united the empire and facilitated the exchange of information. It explains origins, planning, plotting, and scheming of the Conference.

The general histories of the two world wars and their origins, and in particular those of the second, until the 1960s, largely ignored the role of the British Empire-Commonwealth. A possible explanation for this is that the reluctance of the Dominions to fight in September 1938 was often cited as an explanation for Neville Chamberlain’s policy at Munich by those who endorsed ‘appeasement’. Britain’s Eastern policy during the First World War, and during the subsequent peace settlements, saw a vast addition to the British Empire in the Middle East. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, at a time when Australian Labor governments raised the question of severing the links with the British Crown, the matter of the defence of Singapore and Britain’s commitment to Australia’s defence just before and during the early stages of the Second World War again became a live political issue which stimulated academic controversy. The development of the Empire-Commonwealth during the Second World War is shown in this chapter. In making an overall assessment of the significance of the Second World War for the Commonwealth-Empire some scholars have offered profit-and-loss accounts.

The 20th-century British Empire cannot be understood without taking into account its Victorian origins. Thus, the volume begins with a chapter on the Empire before 1914, but the thematic design emphasizes the period from the outbreak of the First World War to the principal era of decolonization in the 1960s. In line with this, it highlights the contemporary view that the British Empire rested on sea power, that India was far and away its single most important component, and that the ‘Colonial Empire’ still included the Dominions as well as the colonies. This introductory chapter draws out of the regional chapters the dominating themes of nationalism and the granting of independence by the British. There are seven organizing themes that can be determined in the first half of the volume that help in understanding its overall design and purpose.

This chapter places the British Empire in the spirit of the times of the Edwardian era. The Dominions seemed unlikely to give as much help as Britain would have wished. The Empire came to an end, not from any failure of metropolitan will or from white colonial machinations, still less any physical degeneration of the British race. International pressures contributed to the eventual decolonization, but these were not quite those anticipated by the Edwardians. The challenges of the 20th century, many of them skilfully identified by the Edwardians, were tackled resourcefully, and not always unsuccessfully.

This chapter examines the Imperial defence of the British Empire. It is specifically devoted to the defence of the Empire before the Second World War and the revolution in technology that occurred during and after the war. The Committee for Imperial defence, if not able to create an Imperial general staff, was able to co-ordinate preparatory work and to ensure standardization of equipment and training. All the Dominions agreed that the defence of the metropole was paramount. If the metropole fell, the Dominions could not long survive. The defence of both the metropole and Empire depended upon sea power. A discussion on foreign and defence policies to 1939, internal security 1918–1939, and defence and security after 1945 is presented as well.

At the end of the 19th century, British rule in West Africa expanded far inland, from a few coastal outposts that were by-products of the Atlantic slave trade and its abolition. The Imperial history of British West Africa can be read in terms of the tension and conflict arising from this enlargement of perspective, and the priorities which it entailed. The experiences of West Africa during 1900–30 and the 1930s–1960s are shown in this chapter. In the greater part of British West Africa, colonial rule lasted scarcely sixty years. It ended calmly: the transfer of power was effected by the same constitutional process of white settlement as in the Dominions. Throughout former British West Africa, representative government was in general retreat by the 1960s.

Even if Ireland's juridical status and cultural complexion were not colonial ones during the nineteenth century, important aspects of British policy-making treated it as part of the external imperial system: this contention is explored further in this chapter. When ‘defence of the Empire’ emerged as a major electoral issue in 1880, it was mainly the Irish Home Rule question, for which Empire became virtually a synonym. It became clear amidst the first Home Rule crisis, ideas of ‘imperial patriotism’ were to be preferred to those of ‘Britishness’ and ‘British patriotism’, because the latter did not incorporate the Irish. There is little discussion of the notion of Ireland as colony: focus is mainly on the Empire building activities of the Irish diaspora, and on the Free State's relations with the Commonwealth and Dominions.

Often undervalued in the existing historiography of the Second World War, the dominions provided assistance to the UK in many ways that proved fundamental to British strategy. This chapter seeks to demonstrate how important this was in one such area—bolstering British maritime power. The most crucial support was provided by Canada in the North Atlantic. Canada helped maintain the link between North America and the UK, which was essential to both British survival and the capacity to maintain offensives. More surprisingly, the Union of South Africa had a vital role to fulfill on the Cape Route once the Mediterranean was effectively closed to Allied shipping. The island dominions of Australia and New Zealand could do little more than fall in line with Allied strategy, since the direction of the war to some extent marginalized the importance of their role in the British maritime effort. In the long attritional war at sea, the dominions proved foundational in their importance to British maritime power. This effort kept the Commonwealth connected during one of the most challenging phases of its existence.