For over two decades, Manchester Studies in Imperialism has been a trailblazer in the realm of imperial history. Positioned firmly at the forefront, this series has illuminated the annals of history and transformed our understanding of empire.
Pioneering perspectives
The Studies in Imperialism series has embarked on a transformative journey, reshaping not only British history but also the vast landscape of imperial histories. It has boldly expanded boundaries, delving into uncharted territories, and shining a light on subjects that were once overlooked. More importantly, it has masterfully unveiled the intricate and inseparable relationships between these domains.
A treasury of knowledge
Within the pages of Manchester Studies in Imperialism lies a treasure trove of scholarly exploration. It unveils the rich tapestry of cultural encounters between colonisers and the colonised, shedding light on the intricate web of power that flows through the production and organisation of colonial knowledge. It unravels the complex construction of identity, both at the heart and on the peripheries of empire.
2025 Manchester Studies in Imperialism
Though it has received less attention than migration to the United Kingdom after the Second World War, rates of migration from the United Kingdom were significant in this period, outpacing immigration until late into the twentieth century. While some Britons moved to destinations outside of the Commonwealth, such as the United States and, later, Europe, the majority moved to the settler colonies of the ‘old’ Commonwealth: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia. These nations offered subsidies and incentives to British and other European migrants as they sought to increase their supply of skilled workers and increase their white populations. Despite the increasing political separation between Britain and the former Dominions and the development of domestic rather than imperial national cultures and identities, until the late twentieth century these countries continued to recruit and subsidise British migration. This migration reflects the long legacy of imperial and settler colonial racial ideologies not only in the formation of these immigration policies, but also in often implicit beliefs about identity and belonging, about who is a desirable migrant and what kind of migration is unremarkable.
The transformation of the tight-knit interwar British Commonwealth of Nations in the post-war world into a loose international association was a major element of British decolonisation. This chapter reconceptualises this changing nature of the Commonwealth emphasising discontinuity and distinguishing two separate entities: an Empire-Commonwealth, and a post-colonial Commonwealth. The chapter charts the loose practices of coordination of the Empire-Commonwealth, before arguing that the dramatic transformation of global institutions, power and culture after 1945 then reshaped the Commonwealth, leaving a post-colonial Commonwealth shorn the attributes of a supra-national political entity (however informal) which characterised its interwar predecessor.
This chapter examines the evolution of the disputes in the Falklands and Gibraltar – two territories that punched well above their weight in Thatcher’s Britain – within the broader context of the unravelling of Greater Britain in the wake of empire. It focuses on a number of crises in the early 1980s –particularly the British Nationality Act of 1981, the Falklands War and the decision to close the Royal Naval Dockyard in Gibraltar. This was a time of uncertainty in both British Overseas Territories – a time of transition, hopeful expectations and worrying disappointments – and these events provoked an emotional rollercoaster in both territories, thrusting Gibraltarians and Falkland Islanders in all directions. At the heart of this was the evolving nature of these communities’ bond with Britain, which had until then been the solid bedrock of their national identification. The chapter argues that it is only by examining the disputes side by side that we can appreciate how some of the key forces driving the local responses to these international events transcended the territories themselves. Looking at these two cases together through the transnational prism of Greater Britain can help us better understand their disproportionate reverberations in Thatcher’s Britain.
The chapter analyses the ways in which individuals and networks of Scots, Irish and Welsh became increasingly involved in the English East India Company after the 1690s. While Scotland and Ireland faced restrictions in contact with the Atlantic colonies until 1707 and 1780 respectively, this hemisphere of the British Empire was always more open than its equivalent in Asia. The monopoly of the various iterations of the English East India Company restricted access to Asia, a situation compounded in the case of Scots by the failure of the Company of Scotland by 1700. The realities of this regulatory framework meant that London ultimately became much more central to Scottish, Welsh, and Irish participation in Asia than was the case in the Atlantic empire. Understanding how the East India Company was accessed involves appreciating how expatriates from provincial backgrounds located in London started to connect networks in their place of origin with the corporation’s directors. This process evolved slowly. Welsh and Irish networks held an initial advantage over those from Scotland as the city played a more significant role in these societies for the purposes of professional training. However, by the 1740s an increasing number of Scots merchant, financiers, professionals and artisans based in London were sponsoring the Asia careers of associates from Scotland. This was not just conventional patronage but can be understood as the brokering of ‘human capital’. This mode of investment constituted a form of provincial ‘gentry capitalism’, which complemented the City of London ‘gentlemanly capitalist’ economy.
The chapter explores the processes by which Scots, Irish and Welsh began to appear as shareholders and directors of the East India Company. The analysis initially considers the relatively marginal Irish, Scots and Welsh presence among the shareholders and directors. It is noticeable that metropolitan provincials tended to secure positions on the directorate after returning from successful careers in Asia. This trajectory of accessing London via the empire explains the careers of a number of important directors. It encompassed figures as diverse as the Irish and Welsh military officers Sweny Toone and William Jones, the Irish free merchant Robert Gregory, the Scots Company civil servant Charles Grant, the free merchant David Scott and the East Indiaman commander William Fullerton-Elphinstone. Despite these similar pathways to involvement at the apex of the Company, the number of Scots acquired directorships was noticeably higher. This had major implications for the sponsorship of clients into the employment in Asia. The chapter conceives of such patronage was a form of ‘brokering human capital’, with local networks connecting to the metropole through the directors. The reconstruction of almost two thousand instances of patronage demonstrates that a conspicuous climate of favouritism towards networks, families and individuals from the director’s place or region of origin. With more directors with Scottish backgrounds able to undertake this function of mobilising human wealth, substantially greater numbers of Scots found their way into the elite sectors of employment compared to the Welsh or Irish.
The chapter explores the growing participation of Scots, Irish and Welsh in the East India Company’s medical sector. Despite access to similar educational opportunities either in Dublin, Edinburgh and London, Scots significantly outnumbered the other two national groups, both in overall and in per capita terms. With around 20 percent of all such posts throughout the eighteenth century, the acquisition by Scots of medical posts expanded to between 35 percent and 45 percent in the 1790s to 1810s. The chapter explores how patterns of professional mobility and phases of education in the provinces, in London and in Asia enabled surgeons to enhance their human capital. They sought to ‘realise’ this form of wealth through publication strategies and the maintenance of links with institutions such as Trinity College Dublin, Marischal College, Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh. In this way, imperial service in Asia shaped the timing and tone of medical enlightenment in the metropolitan provinces.
The chapter surveys the timing and nature of Irish, Scottish and Welsh involvement in the English East India Company’s elite commercial, administrative and merchant shipping sectors. Personnel in these areas of the corporation were never especially numerous, with only 3,393 civil servants securely identified between 1690 and 1813. In this context of elite but limited opportunities, the movement of Irish, Scots and Welsh into corporate employment developed slowly. In both the civil service and among the merchant marine officers of the Company’s fleet, metropolitan provincial numbers remained insignificant until the 1740s and 1750s. During the 1690s and early 1700s, London-based expatriates from Wales were able to sponsor clients into the civil service at a greater per capita rate than their Irish or Scottish equivalents. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the number of Scots in both the administrative and merchant marine branches had significantly outpaced that of the other two metropolitan provincial groups. The quality of the Company’s archives makes it possible to reconstruct the educational and career backgrounds of many of those joining the Company’s upper echelons. Previously unknown regional patterns, including the prominence of individuals from South Wales, Leinster and east-central Scotland demonstrate the way in which regional connections to London were projected outwards into the eastern half of the empire. In this context Edinburgh and Dublin assume a new importance as key ‘sub-metropoles’, providing investment networks and educational infrastructure that shaped patterns of participation in the Company’s civil service and merchant marine.
The conclusion reflects on the wider lessons to be drawn from the example of Irish, Scottish and Welsh involvement in the English East India Company from c.1690 to c.1820. The emphasis is placed on how these societies, despite forming part of the British Empire’s ‘metropolitan core’, can be seen as exemplars of ‘comparatively disadvantaged’, ‘poor’ Europe. They provide evidence of how areas lacking large reserves of monetary capital sought to exploit early modern globalisation and expansion. In this way their example can contribute to wider debates on the nature of European expansion and colonialism and the basis of proto-globalisation.
The commercial activities of traders operating on their own private account under licence from the English East India Company was one of the most dynamic sectors of the emerging colonial economy. While there is some understanding of the prominence of Scots in this ‘country trade’ after 1750, the role of other metropolitan provincials is far less well understood. This chapter surveys and compares trends in Irish, Scottish and Welsh involvement in the private trade sector. As in the civil service, military and medical areas, diversity and divergence marked out the profile of the three national groups. Scots were disproportionately present in the key free merchant and free mariner levels of the country trade. By the early nineteenth century they formed a substantial minority percentage of the overall British and Irish free-trading community. By comparison the Welsh and more especially Irish involvement remained relatively underdeveloped, an outcome that impaired Irish society’s capacity to fully exploit one whole hemisphere of the empire. The chapter considers the tendency for the Welsh and Irish to appear in greater numbers in the administrative and legal services that developed in the main presidency settlements. Also analysed are the international remittance networks that stretched across the whole of Asia and back to Europe. These ephemeral but vitally important connections demonstrate the eclectic, transnational nature of the country trade but also the ongoing importance of kinship, regional and national identities.
The book is a comparative analysis of Scotland, Ireland and Wales’s participation in the English East India Company between c.1690 and c.1820. It explains the increasing involvement of individuals and networks from these societies in the London-based corporation which controlled contact between the early modern British and Irish Isles and one hemisphere of world trade. Scottish, Irish, and Welsh evidence is used to consider wider questions on the origins, nature and consequences of the early modern phase of globalisation, sometimes referred to as ‘proto-globalisation’. The book contributes to such debates by analysing how these supposedly ‘poorer’ regions of Europe relied on migration as an investment strategy to profit from empire in Asia. Using social network theory and concepts of human capital it examines why the Scots, Irish and Welsh developed markedly different profiles in the Company’s service. Chapters on the administrative elite, army officers and soldiers, the medical corps and private traders demonstrate consistent Scottish over-representation, uneven Irish involvement and consistent Welsh under-representation. Taken together they explore a previously underappreciated cycle of human capital that involved departure to Asia, the creation of colonial profits, and the return back of people and their fortunes to Britain and Ireland. By reconceptualising the origins and the consequences of involvement in the Company, the study will be of interest to historians of early modern Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Britain, the East India Company and the early phases of British imperialism in Asia.