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socialism. This chapter will examine the role of music in the reform culture of middle-class liberals such as Haweis and John Pyke Hullah. 5 Common to the two organisations examined here in detail, London’s South Place Chapel and Melbourne’s Australian Church, was both an eschewal of orthodoxy, dogma and creed replaced by openness and inclusiveness in outlook, and a vibrant musical culture. Thus we look at
spate of discoveries of counterfeit or adulterated milk and milk products. 3 Solely in terms of the importance that has been historically attached to it, therefore, the subject deserves to be examined in its own right. More importantly, it presents us with an opportunity to examine middle-class notions of health, hygiene, food and, through it, the closely related questions of
This book situates women at the centre of the practices and policies of British imperialism. Rebutting interpretations that have marginalised women in the empire, the book demonstrates that women were crucial to establishing and sustaining the British Raj in India from the 'High Noon' of imperialism in the late nineteenth century through to Indian independence in 1947. Using three separate modes of engagement with imperialism: domesticity, violence and race, it demonstrates the varied ways in which British women, particularly the wives of imperial officials, created a role for themselves. From the late nineteenth century, Anglo-Indians constructed an idea of family and marriage that was, both literally and metaphorically, the foundation for British imperialism in India. Although imperial marriage was very modern in its emphasis on companionship and partnership, it also incorporated more traditional ideas about husbands, wives and families. The politicized imperial home stood in sharp contrast to the ideal of middle-class British domesticity that had developed from the late-eighteenth century onwards in the metropole. Relationships with Indian servants, created and maintained primarily by women, were a complex mixture of intimacy and trust counterbalanced by feelings of fear and suspicion. For Anglo-Indians, the Mutiny served as a constant reminder of the tenuous nature of imperialism in India. The relationship between Anglo-Indian and Indian women was complex coloured by expectations about femininity and women's role in the empire. Indian men may have derided Anglo-Indian women as 'brainless memsahibs', but the British government similarly scorned their contribution to empire.
The Victorian private solider was a despised figure. Yet in the first sixteen months of the Great War two and a half million men from the UK and many more from the empire, flocked to the colours without any form of legal compulsion. This book is the result of reflection on one of the most extraordinary mass movements in history: the surge of volunteers into the British army during the first sixteen months of the Great War. The notion that compulsory service in arms was repugnant to British tradition was mistaken. The nation's general state of mind, system of values and set of attitudes derived largely from the upper middle class, which had emerged and become dominant during the nineteenth century. The book examines the phenomenon of 1914 and the views held by people of that class, since it was under their leadership that the country went to war. It discusses the general theoretical notions of the nature of war of two nineteenth-century thinkers: Karl von Clausewitz and Charles Darwin. By 1914 patriotism and imperialism were interdependent. The early Victorians directed their abundant political energies chiefly towards free trade and parliamentary reform. It was the Germans' own policy which jolted the British into unity, for the Cabinet and the nation were far from unanimously in favour of war until the Germans attacked Belgium. Upper-class intellectual culture was founded on the tradition of 'liberal education' at the greater public schools and at Oxford and Cambridge.
The question of cattle has been ignored not just by scholars working on agrarian conditions, but also by historians of medicine in India. This book is the first full-length monograph that examines the history of colonial medicine in India from the perspective of veterinary health. It not only fills this gap, but also provides fresh perspectives and insights that might challenge existing arguments. The book explores a range of themes such as famines, urbanisation, middle-class attitudes, caste formations etc. One of the most striking features of veterinary administration was its preoccupation with the health of horses and military animals until the end of the nineteenth century. Examining veterinary records, it becomes evident that colonial officials were much less imbued with the 'white man's burden' when it came to preserving indigenous cattle stock. The book shows that the question of finances could influence areas such as laboratory research, as is evident in the operations of the Imperial Bacteriological Laboratory. In its account on famines and cattle mortality, it highlights the meagreness and ineffectiveness of relief measures. The book then examines the question of caste identities, especially that of the Chamars (popularly known as leatherworkers). It also explores the process whereby stereotypes regarding caste groups were formed, inspecting how they came to be crystallised over time. A central concern of the book is to study the nature, priorities, and guiding principles of the colonial state. Finally, the book adopts a long-term perspective, choosing to study a rather long chronological period.
The debate about the Empire dealt in idealism and morality, and both sides employed the language of feeling, and frequently argued their case in dramatic terms. This book opposes two sides of the Empire, first, as it was presented to the public in Britain, and second, as it was experienced or imagined by its subjects abroad. British imperialism was nurtured by such upper middle-class institutions as the public schools, the wardrooms and officers' messes, and the conservative press. The attitudes of 1916 can best be recovered through a reconstruction of a poetics of popular imperialism. The case-study of Rhodesia demonstrates the almost instant application of myth and sign to a contemporary imperial crisis. Rudyard Kipling was acknowledged throughout the English-speaking world not only as a wonderful teller of stories but as the 'singer of Greater Britain', or, as 'the Laureate of Empire'. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the Empire gained a beachhead in the classroom, particularly in the coupling of geography and history. The Island Story underlined that stories of heroic soldiers and 'fights for the flag' were easier for teachers to present to children than lessons in morality, or abstractions about liberty and responsible government. The Education Act of 1870 had created a need for standard readers in schools; readers designed to teach boys and girls to be useful citizens. The Indian Mutiny was the supreme test of the imperial conscience, a measure of the morality of the 'master-nation'.
's intended audience. It was the ordinary readers of the Evening Standard to whom his work was primarily directed. Who were they? According to Low, ‘The Evening Standard … was a West End sale among the middle-classes. The Tory clubman's evening paper.’ 55 A. J. P. Taylor, in his biography of Low's employer, described Evening Standard readers as ‘the well-to-do of London and the suburbs’. 56 He added: ‘newsvendors, it is said, have always known that
suburb’ (1907), both in the UK, and Ahuzat Bayit (1909), as well as some physical similarities, has led researchers to seek a connection between the two, and to term Ahuzat Bayit a ‘garden neighbourhood’. At first, the garden city movement was a social-anarchist one, whose objective was to extend the suburban standard of housing, until then the province of the middle class, to the
The Crimean war, as we have seen, was used as evidence of the aristocracy’s ‘unfitness’ to rule the army. The middle classes increasingly claimed the right to a voice in its administration, and the system of purchase once more came under attack. It was the ranks which were the chief focus of middle-class agitation. The daily life of the common soldier was examined in a
's conversion to imperialism and have instead questioned the effectiveness of propaganda and the volunteers' motivation for enlisting. 2 This chapter, while investigating this historiographical discourse, explores the issue of working-class and middle-class patriotism during the war from a rather different perspective. It is argued here that both standard accounts of war enthusiasm fail to focus