Mapping the British world

The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 1-15

  Bridge, Carl ^a   Fedorowich, Kent ^b  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84905957675     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203009116     Document Type: Chapter

References (130)

1. Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Inclusive Edition, 1885-1932, 4th edn (London, 1937), 743-44.
2. This poem was first published by Kipling in his Debits and Credits (London, 1926).
3. For a critique see Phillip Buckner, 'Was there a "British" Empire? The Oxford History of theBritish Empire from a Canadian Perspective', Acadiensis, 32 (2002), 110-28.
4. A similar line of argument is explored by
5. Andrew Thompson, 'Is Humpty Dumpty Together Again?', Twentieth Century British History, 12 (2001), 9-23.
6. Also see Dane Kennedy's explication, 'The Boundaries of Oxford's Empire', International History Review, 23 (2001), 604-22.
7. Other reviews include D.A.Low, 'Rule Britannia. Subjects and Empire. The Oxford Elistory of the British Empire', Modern Asian Studies, 36 (2002), 491-503.
8. One partial exception is Frederick Madden (ed.), Select Documents on the ConstitutionalHistory of the British Empire and Commonwealth, vols.4 and 6 (Westport, CT, 1990 and 1993).
9. Volume one of The Cambridge History of the British Empire was published in 1929 with most of the subsequent volumes appearing in the 1930s. The exceptions were volumes two and three, which were published in 1940 and 1959 respectively. The first two volumes of the five-volume Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, published in 1937 and 1942 respectively, were written by W.K.Flancock and dealt with the inter-war period, especially problems of nationality (vol.1) and the economy (vol.2). Volumes three and four were written by Nicholas Mansergh and appeared in 1952 and 1958 respectively. They focused on problems of external policy in the 1930s and on wartime co-operation and post-war change (1939-52). The final volume (vol.5) was written by J.D.B.Miller and appeared in 1974. Its remit was decolonisation and the emerging Commonwealth between 1953 and 1969.
10. Sir Charles W.Dilke, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countriesduring 1866 and 1867, 2 vols. (London, 1868);
11. Sir John R.Seeley, The Expansion ofEngland (London, 1883).
12. Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians (London, 1961);
13. and Ronald Robinson, 'Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration', in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds.), Studies in theTheory of Imperialism (London, 1972), 117-42.
14. David Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire 1830-1914 (London, 1974).
15. P.J.Cain and A.G.Hopkins, British Imperialism, vol.1 Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914 (London, 1993);
16. vol.2 Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914-1990 (London, 1993).
17. See also Raymond E.Dummett (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism (London, 1999).
18. J.Gallagher, The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire: The Ford Lectures andother Essays (Cambridge, 1982).
19. Since then, several imperial historians have accepted the challenge. Two of the best examples are John Darwin, 'lmperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of Territorial Expansion', English Historical Review, 112 (1997), 614-42;
20. and Andrew S.Thompson, Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics c. 1880-1932 (London, 2000).
21. David Fieldhouse, 'Can Humpty-Dumpty be put together again? Imperial History in the 1980s', Journal of lmperial and Commonwealth History, 12 (1984), 9-23.
22. A.G.Hopkins, 'Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History', Past &Present, no.164 (1999), 198-243.
23. Edward W.Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978);
24. and, for example, Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (eds.), Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850 (London, 1999);
25. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects (Cambridge, 2002);
26. and Lynette Russell (ed.), Colonial Frontiers: Indigenous-European Encounters in Settler Societies (Manchester, 2001).
27. David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire (London, 2000)
28. promises much and adds little to the debate. An exception in the growing literature on the colonial 'other' is the stimulating work assembled by Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds.), Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Between Nation and Colony.Rethinking a Research Agenda (Berkeley, 1997).
29. James Belich, 'Neo-Britains', paper delivered to the conference on 'The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity', Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, June 1998. He has recently developed this theme in his two-volume history of New Zealand, MakingPeoples. A History of the New Zealanders. From Polynesian Settlement to the End of theNineteenth Century (Auckland, 1996), and
30. Paradise Reforged: A History of the NewZealanders. From the 1880s to the year 2000 (Auckland, 2001)
31. by which time 'neo-Britains' had become 'better Britains'. Toronto Globe, 25 Sept. 1901
32. cited in Phillip Buckner's chapter below. J.G.A.Pocock coined the phrase 'neo-Britains' in his 'British History: A Plea for a New Subject', New Zealand Journal of History, 8 (1974), 3-21.
33. Stuart Ward, 'The British World', Australian Historical Association Bulletin, no.94 (June 2002), 30-33;
34. P.A.Buckner and Carl Bridge, 'Reinventing the British World', Round Table, 92 (2003), 77-88.
35. Pocock, 'British History'. Also see the revised version and debate in the Journal of ModernHistory, 47 (1975), 601-28.
36. Linda Colley, 'Britishness and Otherness: An Argument', Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992), 309-29;
37. idem, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven and London, 1992).
38. For a critique of Colley's thesis see J.C.D.Clark, 'Protestantism, Nationalism, and National Identity, 1660-1832', Historical Journal, 43 (2000), 249-76.
39. Post-colonialists and political scientists have been busy defining 'Britishness' as well. See Bill Schwarz (ed.), TheExpansion of England: Race, Ethnicity and Cultural History (London, 1996);
40. Keith Robbins, Great Britain: Identities, Institutions and the Idea of Britishness (London, 1998);
41. David McCrone, 'Unmasking Britannia: The Rise and Fall of British National Identity', Nationsand Nationalism, 3 (1997), 579-96;
42. Rebecca Langlands, 'Britishness or Englishness? The Historical Problem of National Identity in Britain', Nations and Nationalism, 5 (1999), 53-69;
43. Ben Wellings, 'Empire-Nation: National and Imperial Discourses in England', Nations and Nationalism, 8 (2002), 95-109.
44. Nicholas Canny, The Origins of Empire: An Introduction', Oxford History of the BritishEmpire, vol.1 The Origins of Empire (London, 1998), 24-25.
45. See below the essay by Stephen Constantine, 'British Emigration to the EmpireCommonwealth since 1880: From Overseas Settlement to Diaspora?'. See also Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London, 1997).
46. Andy Bielenberg, 'lrish Emigration to the British Empire, 1700-1914', in Andy Bielenberg (ed.), The Irish Diaspora (London, 2000), 215-16.
47. Hiram Morgan, 'An Unwelcome Heritage: Ireland's Role in British EmpireBuilding', History of European Ideas, 19 (1994), 619-25;
48. Keith Jeffery (ed.), An Irish Empire? Aspectsof lreland and the British Empire (Manchester, 1996);
49. C.A.Bayly, 'lreland, India, and the Empire, 1780-1914', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 10 (2000), 377-97;
50. and Donald H.Akenson, Ifthe Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730 (Liverpool, 1997).
51. Marjory Harper, 'British Migration and the Peopling of the Empire', in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol.3 The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1999), 75.
52. The latter figure is cited in Phillip Buckner, 'Whatever Happened to the British Empire?', Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 4 (1993), 14.
53. Buckner, 'Whatever Happened', 17;
54. Bielenberg, Irish Diaspora, 224.
55. Bielenberg, Irish Diaspora, 218-20.
56. Paul Hudson, 'English Emigration to New Zealand, 1839-1850: Information Diffusion and Marketing a New World', Economic History Review, 54 (2001), 68098. Our thanks to Andrew Thompson for this reference. For other examples of how important the diffusion of information was to the migration process after 1914, see Marjory Harper, Emigration fromScotland between the Wars: Opportunity or Exile? (Manchester, 1998);
57. Michael Roe, Australia, Britain and Migration, 19151940 (Cambridge, 1995).
58. Stephen Constantine, 'lntroduction: Empire Migration and Imperial Harmony', in S. Constantine (ed.), Emigrants and Empire: British Settlement in the Empire between the Wars (Manchester, 1990), 2;
59. and idem, 'Migrants and Settlers', in Judith M.Brown and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol.4 The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999), 165-66.
60. Constantine, 'Migrants and Settlers', 166-67.
61. B.R.Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 83.
62. P.J.Marshall, 'Empire and Authority in the later Eighteenth Century', Journal of Imperialand Commonwealth History, 15 (1987), 105-22.
63. See also C.A.Bayly, 'Returning the British to South Asian History: The Limits of Colonial Hegemony', South Asia, 17 (1994), 1-25.
64. For South African constructions of multiple identities, see Saul Dubow, 'Colonial Nationalism, the Milner Kindergarten and the Rise of "South Africanism", 190210', History Workshop Journal, no.43 (1997), 53-85;
65. idem, 'lmagining the New South Africa in the Era of Reconstruction', in David Omissi and Andrew Thompson (eds.), The Impact of theSouth African War (Basingstoke, 2002), 76-98.
66. Also see Miles Fairburn, The Ideal Societyand its Enemies: The Foundation of Modern New Zealand Society, 1850-1900 (Auckland, 1989).
67. See Donal Lowry's chapter below. For examples of non-white loyalty to British values, see Bill Nasson, Abraham Esau 's War: A Black South African at War in the Cape, 1899-1902 (Cambridge, 1991);
68. and, for a West Indian example, Anne Spry Rush, 'Imperial Identity in Colonial Minds: Harold Moody and the League of Coloured Peoples, 1931-50', TwentiethCentury British History, 13 (2002), 356-83.
69. Mark C.McGowan, The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto,1887-1922 (Montreal and Kingston, 1999).
70. Robert A.Huttenback, Racism and Empire: White Settlers and Colored Immigrants in theBritish Self-Governing Colonies, 1830-1910 (Ithaca, NY, 1976).
71. Stephen Constantine makes some tantalising observations about labour markets and the export of skilled labour in 'Migrants and Setters', 170-72
72. which is expanded, in part, in his chapter below. So, too, does Jonathan Hyslop about white trade unionism in the British Empire.
73. See Jonathan Hyslop, 'The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself "White": White Labourism in Britain, Australia and South Africa before the First World War', Journal ofHistorical Sociology, 12 (1999), 398-421.
74. Also see Logie Barrow, 'White Solidarity in 1914', in Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of the BritishNational Identity, vol.1 History and Politics (London, 1989), 275-87.
75. Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa andBritain (London, 2001), and
76. idem, 'British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire', History Workshop Journal, no.54 (2002), 27-48.
77. See also Zoe Laidlaw, 'Networks, Patronage and Information in Colonial Governance: Britain, New South Wales and the Cape, 1826-1843', D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 2001.
78. Saul Dubow, 'The Commonwealth of Science: The British Association in South Africa, 1905-1929', in S.Dubow (ed.), Science and Society in Southern Africa (Manchester, 2000).
79. Andrew S. Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back: Imperialism 's Impact on Britain from theMid-Nineteenth Century to the Present Day (Longman, forthcoming), ch.1 entitled, The Empire and British Elites'. We would like to thank the author for showing us his work in progress on this intriguing subject.
80. For example, see Melanie Oppenheimer, "The Best P.M. for the Empire in War"?: Lady Helen Munro Ferguson and the Australian Red Cross Society', Australian Historical Studies, 33 (2002), 108-24.
81. Eliza Reidi, 'Women, Gender, and the Promotion of Empire: The Victoria League, 1901-1914', Historical Journal, 45 (2002), 569-99;
82. Elizabeth van Heyningen and Pat Merrett, "The healing touch": The Guild of Loyal Women of South Africa 1900-1912', unpublished paper (2002);
83. Katie Pickles, Female Imperialism and National Identity. Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (Manchester, 2002).
84. Also see Julia Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (London, 2000);
85. Angela Woollacott, To Try HerFortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity (Oxford, 2001);
86. There is a plethora of company histories but a relative dearth of studies of whole imperial networks. See, however, Gordon Pirie, Aviation and Empire (Manchester, forthcoming)
87. Meredith Hooper, Kangaroo Route (Sydney, 1985);
88. and David MacKenzie, Canada andInternational Civil Aviation, 1932-48 (Toronto, 1989).
89. On cables see Robert W.D.Boyce, 'lmperial Dreams and National Realities: Britain, Canada and the Struggle for a Pacific Telegraph Cable, 1879-1902', English Historical Review, 115 (2000), 39-70;
90. idem, 'Canada and the Pacific Cable Controversy, 1923-28: Forgotten Source of Imperial Alienation', Journal of lmperial and Commonwealth History, 26 (1998), 72-92.
91. K.S.Inglis, 'London Calling: The Empire of the Air Waves', Working Papers in AustralianStudies, no.118, was a keynote address at the 1st British World Conference at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, 1998.
92. Quotation cited in R.G.Casey, Double or Quit (Melbourne, 1949), 104.
93. lan McGibbon, The Path to Gallipoli: Defending New Zealand, 1840-1915 (Wellington, 1991), 106-24;
94. Carman Miller, Painting the Map Red: Canada and the South African War,1899-1902 (Montreal and Kingston, 1993);
95. and Craig Wilcox, Australia's Boer War: TheWar in South Africa 1899-1902 (Melbourne, 2002).
96. Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia (Melbourne, 1999), 116;
97. Central Statistics Office, Fighting with Figures: A Statistical Digest ofthe Second World War (London, 1995);
98. F.W.Perry, The Commonwealth Armies: Manpower and Organisation in Two World Wars (Manchester, 1988);
99. David Dilks, Great Britain, the Commonwealth and the Wider World,1939-45 (Hull, 1998);
100. Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford, 1989).
101. Cited in R.G.Casey, Friends and Neighbors (East Lansing, MI, 1955), 16.
102. Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement (London, 1969);
103. David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, An Ocean Apart (London, 1988);
104. David Lowe, 'Percy Spender and the American Century', The Trevor Reese Memorial Lecture 2002 (London, 2002), 31-33.
105. Robert Bickers, 'Shanghailanders: The Formation and Identity of the British Settler Community in Shanghai 1843-1937', Past & Present, no.159 (1998), 161-211.
106. For a recent examination of the Australian case, see Carl Bridge and Bernard Attard (eds.), Between Empire and Nation: Australia 's External Relations from Federation to the SecondWorld War (Melbourne, 2000).
107. For the Irish case, see Donal Lowry, 'New Ireland, Old Empire and the Outside World, 1922-49: The Strange Evolution of a "Dictionary" Republic', in John M.Regan and Mike Cronin (eds.), Ireland: The Politics of Independence,1922-49 (London, 2000), 164-216.
108. John Darwin, 'A Third British Empire? The Dominion Idea in Imperial Politics', in Brown and Louis (eds.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol.4, 64-87, esp. 85-86.
109. Calculated from relevant tables in Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, and in B.R.Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Africa and Asia (London, 1982);
110. and idem, TheAmericas and Australasia (London, 1983).
111. Randall Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain: The Institutional Originsof a Multicultural Nation (Oxford, 2000), 40.
112. Hansen, Citizenship, 53. Hansen refutes Paul's and Spencer's notion that the 1948 Act was the beginning of the racialisation of British immigration policy. He shows that it was not until 1962 with the introduction of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which introduced limited entry, that racialisation truly began.
113. Hansen, Citizenship, chs. 2-4;
114. Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Post-War Era (Ithaca NY, 1997);
115. lan R.G.Spencer, British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multicultural Britain (London, 1997).
116. Menzies's radio broadcast as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, 4 Sept. 1939
117. and Neville Meaney's chapter below. Menzies was still using the term 'British world' in 1959
118. see Stuart Ward, 'Sentiment and Self-interest: The Imperial Ideal in Anglo-Australian Commercial Culture', Australian Historical Studies, 32 (2001), 98.
119. For an account, see W.David Mclntyre, British Decolonization, 1946-1997 (New York, 1998), 103-18.
120. Kosmas Tsokhas misuses the term de-dominionisation in his, 'Dedominionization: The Anglo-Australian Experience, 1939-1945', Historical Journal, 37 (1994), 861
121. For a better understanding see Jim Davidson, The De-dominionisation of Australia', Meanjin, 38 (1979), 139-53.
122. Stuart Ward, Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal (Melbourne, 2001);
123. David Goldsworthy, Losing the Blanket: Australia and the End ofBritain'sEmpire (Melbourne, 2002);
124. Daily Telegraph, 8 Feb. 2003.
125. Menzies to Macmillan, 15 Jan. 1962
126. cited in Goldsworthy, Losing the Blanket, 111;
127. Menzies's speech, Commonwealth [of Australia] Parliamentary Debates, 16 Oct. 1962;
128. Wayne Reynolds, Australia's Bid for the Atomic Bomb (Melbourne, 2000);
129. Robert Holland, The Pursuit of Greatness: Britain and the World Role, 1900-1970 (London, 1991), 180;
130. Mclntyre, British Decolonization, 122.