British Imperial Culture

We talk about living in a global era, but the groundwork for it was laid more than a century ago. By the late 19th century, Europe, Japan, and the United States had taken control of most of the world. Travel and trade between home countries and colonies sent goods and technology to even themost remote corners of the globe. An English lady's letter home on smallpox inoculations in Turkey, an American missionary's account of the forcible collection of rubber in Belgian Congo, and a Chinese official's regulations for European merchants are among the primary sources that Bonnie Smith hasassembled to demonstrate the advantages and drawbacks of the new economy. Society, education, and the environment also underwent massive changes, as witnessed by the selection of excerpts from an exam in a German missionary school in Togo and British reports on the devastation of entire forests inBurma.Imperial growth did not come without a price. A Japanese document outlining governance in Korea and U.S. President Benjamin Harrison's defense of the annexation of Hawaii illustrate the militant nationalism, religious intolerance, and pseudo-scientific racist theories used to justify the bruteforce of colonial rule. The colonized nations fought back-a popular Chinese poem in praise of the Boxers' opposition to foreign rule attests to this rebellious spirit, and a Moroccan's shock at "barbaric" European mores illustrates the conquered's view of the conquerors. A picture essay, "Mixture,"showcases the amalgamation of global cultures through photographs of buildings, furniture, advertisements, sporting events, and sculpture. Bonnie Smith vividly captures the booming expansion of a flawed political system and expertly links the documentary evidence with informed commentary andprefatory essays to each chapter.

This work is a general volume of the British documents on the End of Empire Project. The documents cover defence, international relations and imperial economics, political and social development and colonial unrest. Based on material from official British archives, they reveal widely differing and conflicting perceptions of Britain's interests, obligations and motivations.

This is the first part in the three-section volume, The Conservative Government and the End of Empire. The documents in this volume reveal how the Conservative governments of Churchill and Eden were determined to maintain Britain's world role but were unable to resolve how to do so at affordable cost. Successive reviews of Britain's external commitments led in June 1956 to a major discussion paper by officials on The future for the United Kingdom in world affairs, a key document of the period which is reproduced.

Between 1957 and 1964 the Conservative governments of Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home presided over a short but key period in 20th-century British history. During this period the British Empire was transformed into a multi-racial Commonwealth. This title examines the end of the empire during its climactic phase and aims to provide a closer understanding of the dynamics involved in decolonization. Published in two parts, it contains 583 official documents and covers many aspects and areas of colonial disengagement together with the main strategic questions of continuing defence commitments in Aden, the Indian Ocean and Singapore.

First of a four-section volume, The Labour Government 1945-1951, the 444 documents in the volume provide a guide to imperial policy-making in all aspects during the early stages of the end of Empire between 1945 and 1951. Labour government ministers and their civil servants had to deal with a wide range of post-war problems, including those posed by Britain's own economic weakness, the development of international criticism articulated at the United Nations, the growth of an international threat in the shape of communist expansion and, in some areas, the emergence of colonial nationalism.

Agatha Ramm's two volumes containing correspondence between Gladstone and his Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, conducted at the height of British colonial power during the years 1868-1876, were published originally in 1952. This correspondence is now available in a single volume, and lends the mass of government papers usually studied by historians 'the enlivening touch'. The correspondence contained in the volumes is between two men who wrote to each other privately, but about matters which were, as Professor Matthew states in his introduction, 'the very stuff of official diplomatic exchange'. It also deals with the period of opposition during Disraeli's government of 1874-1880, as well as a wide range of non-political matters, in which the two men were active whether in or out of government. This Reprint gives the reader a valuable insight into the two correspondents and will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of British history.

Correspondence of Benjamin Disraeli, former UK Prime Minister who helped develop the modern Conservative Party. Collection provided through Randall Library.