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      • 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
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2020

        The British political elite and Europe, 1959-1984

        A higher loyalty

        by Bob Nicholls

        This book offers an original interpretation of Britain's relationship with Europe over a 25 year period: 1959-84 and advances the argument that the current problems over EU membership resulted from much earlier political machinations. This evidence based account of the seminal period analyses the applications for EEC membership, the 1975 referendum, and the role of the press. Was the British public misled over the true aims of the European project? How significant was the role of the press in changing public opinion from anti, to pro Common Market membership? Why, after over 40 years since Britain became a member of the European community, does the issue continue to deeply divide not only the political elite, but also the British public? These, and other pertinent questions are answered in this timely book on a subject that remains topical and highly controversial.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2014

        The harem, slavery and British imperial culture

        Anglo-Muslim relations in the late nineteenth century

        by Diane Robinson-Dunn, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie, Kim Latham

        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 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 will 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

        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
        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
        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
        September 2023

        Negotiating relief and freedom

        Responses to disaster in the British Caribbean, 1812-1907

        by Oscar Webber

        Negotiating relief and freedom is an investigation of short- and long-term responses to disaster in the British Caribbean colonies during the 'long' nineteenth century. It explores how colonial environmental degradation made their inhabitants both more vulnerable to and expanded the impact of natural phenomena such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. It shows that British approaches to disaster 'relief' prioritised colonial control and 'fiscal prudence' ahead of the relief of the relief of suffering. In turn, that this pattern played out continuously in the long nineteenth century is a reminder that in the Caribbean the transition from slavery to waged labour was not a clean one. Times of crisis brought racial and social tensions to the fore and freedoms once granted, were often quickly curtailed.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2024

        Ireland, slavery and the Caribbean

        Interdisciplinary perspectives

        by Finola O'Kane, Ciarán O'Neill

        Ireland, slavery and the Caribbean is a complex and ground-breaking collection of essays. Grounded in history, it integrates perspectives from art historians, architectural and landscape historians, and literary scholars to produce a genuinely interdisciplinary collection that spans from 1620-1830: the high point of European colonialism. By exploring imperial, national and familial relationships from their building blocks of plantation, migration, property and trade, it finds new ways to re-create and question how slavery made the Atlantic world.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Acts of supremacy

        by J. Bratton, Richard Cave, Brendan Gregory, Michael Pickering

        Imperialist discourse interacted with regional and class discourses. Imperialism's incorporation of Welsh, Scots and Irish identities, was both necessary to its own success and one of its most powerful functions in terms of the control of British society. Most cultures have a place for the concept of heroism, and for the heroic figure in narrative fiction; stage heroes are part of the drama's definition of self, the exploration and understanding of personal identity. Theatrical and quasi-theatrical presentations, whether in music hall, clubroom, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre or the streets and ceremonial spaces of the capital, contributed to that much-discussed national mood. This book examines the theatre as the locus for nineteenth century discourses of power and the use of stereotype in productions of the Shakespearean history canon. It discusses the development of the working class and naval hero myth of Jack Tar, the portrayal of Ireland and the Irish, and the portrayal of British India on the spectacular exhibition stage. The racial implications of the ubiquitous black-face minstrelsy are focused upon. The ideology cluster which made up the imperial mindset had the capacity to re-arrange and re-interpret history and to influence the portrayal of the tragic or comic potential of personal dilemmas. Though the British may have prided themselves on having preceded America in the abolition of slavery and thus outpacing Brother Jonathan in humanitarian philanthropy, abnegation of hierarchisation and the acceptance of equality of status between black and white ethnic groups was not part of that achievement.

      • Trusted Partner
        April 2022

        The Blackest Thing in Slavery Was Not the Black Man

        The Last Testament of Eric Williams

        by Brinsley Samaroo

        The Blackest Thing in Slavery Was Not the Black Man: The Last Testament of Eric Williams represents the final instalment of research and analysis by one of the Caribbean’s foremost historians. In this volume, Eric Williams reflects on the institution of slavery from the ancient period in Europe down to New World African slavery and considers, too, other forms of bondage that followed slavery, including of Japanese, Chinese, Indians and Pacific peoples in many locations worldwide. Williams points ways in which this bondage led to European and American prosperity and the manner in which bonded peoples created their own spaces. This they did through the preservation and revival of the transported culture to the new locations.   The Blackest Thing in Slavery makes a significant contribution in that it moves beyond African slavery. It continues the narrative after abolition by showing how the capitalist impulse enabled Europe and the United States to devise other (non-slavery) ways of further exploiting of non-African people in developing countries. These nations fought this further exploitation in banding together to create the south-to-south nonaligned movement, which gave mutual assistance in a number of areas. Most other works tend to separate these issues or deal with them on a regional basis. Eric Williams offers a comprehensive view, tying together many themes in a vast compendium.

      • Trusted Partner
        November 2021

        British Notes

        by Ai Bo

        The author has lived and worked in the UK for more than 20 years since he studied in the UK in the early 1990s. This book is an observation essay on his life in the UK over the years. The author has a wealth of experience in the UK, has done management, served the community, has been a volunteer, and has several emotional experiences with foreign girls. Through the author’s narration and contact with the author’s own personal experience, the life picture of British society is clearly laid out. The British culture, various characters, customs and customs are truly presented, providing a body for readers who have never experienced life abroad. Feeling on the spot. The author's essays are calm, objective, truthful and witty, easy to read, and have something to read.

      • 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

        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
        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
        Biography & True Stories
        September 2024

        Bedsit land

        The strange worlds of Soft Cell

        by Patrick Clarke

        A rich and revealing examination of the legendary pop duo Soft Cell. Soft Cell are not your average pop band. Marc Almond and Dave Ball may be best known for the string of hits they released in 1981, but the powerful first phase of their collaboration embraced a staggering array of sounds, influences and innovations that would change the face of music to come. In Bedsit land, Patrick Clarke plunges into the archives and interviews more than sixty contributors, including the band members themselves, to follow Soft Cell through the many strange and sprawling worlds that shaped their extraordinary career. They lead him from the faded camp glamour of the British seaside to the dizzying thrills of the New York club scene. From transgressive student performance art to the sleaze and squalor of pre-gentrified Soho. From the glitz of British showbiz to the drug-addled chaos of post-Franco Spain. He emerges on the other side with the most in-depth, innovative and entertaining account of the duo ever written.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Child, nation, race and empire

        Child rescue discourse, England, Canada and Australia, 1850–1915

        by Margot Hillel, Shurlee Swain, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        Child, nation, race and empire is an innovative, inter-disciplinary, cross cultural study that contributes to understandings of both contemporary child welfare practices and the complex dynamics of empire. It analyses the construction and transmission of nineteenth-century British child rescue ideology. Locating the origins of contemporary practice in the publications of the prominent English Child rescuers, Dr Barnardo, Thomas Bowman Stephenson, Benjamin Waugh, Edward de Montjoie Rudolf and their colonial disciples and literature written for children, it shows how the vulnerable body of the child at risk came to be reconstituted as central to the survival of nation, race and empire. Yet, as the shocking testimony before the many official enquiries into the past treatment of children in out-of-home 'care' held in Britain, Ireland, Australia and Canada make clear, there was no guarantee that the rescued child would be protected from further harm.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        'The better class' of Indians

        Social rank, Imperial identity, and South Asians in Britain 1858–1914

        by A. Wainwright

        This is the first book-length study to focus primarily on the role of class in the encounter between South Asians and British institutions in the United Kingdom at the height of British imperialism. In a departure from previous scholarship on the South Asian presence in Britain, 'The better class' of Indians emphasizes the importance of class as the register through which British polite society interpreted other social distinctions such as race, gender, and religion. Drawing mainly on unpublished material from the India Office Records, the National Archives, and private collections of charitable organizations, this book examines not only the attitudes of British officials towards South Asians in their midst, but also the actual application of these attitudes in decisions pertaining to them. This fascinating book will be of particular interest to scholars and general readers of imperialism, immigration as well as British and Indian social history.

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