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resentment in 1931 was also displayed through widespread support for the Japanese in the aftermath of the invasion of Manchuria. Japan’s strong-arm action appealed to those who felt betrayed as the British Legation oversaw the dismantling of the structure of informal empire in China. Ordinary Britons, as well as some of the most prominent treaty port figures, such as Woodhead, voiced such opinions. For one
This book collects eleven original essays in the cultural history of the British Empire since the eighteenth century. It is geographically capacious, taking in the United Kingdom, India, West Africa, Hong Kong, and Australia, as well as sites of informal British influence such as the Ottoman Empire and southern China.
The book considers the ways in which British culture circulated within what John Darwin has called the British “world system”. In this, the book builds on existing imperial scholarship while innovating in several ways: it focuses on the movement of ideas and cultural praxis, whereas Darwin has focused mostly on imperial structures —financial, demographic, and military. The book examines the transmission, reception, and adaptation of British culture in the Metropole, the empire and informal colonial spaces, whereas many recent scholars have considered British imperial influence on the Metropole alone. It examines Britain's Atlantic and Asian imperial experiences from the eighteenth to the twentieth century together.
Through focusing on political ideology, literary movements, material culture, marriage, and the construction of national identities, the essays demonstrate the salience of culture in making a “British World”.
This book is about the end of the British Empire in the Middle East. It offers new insights into how the relationship between Britain and the Gulf rulers that was nurtured at the height of the British Empire affected the structure of international society as it remains in place today. Over the last four decades, the Persian Gulf region has gone through oil shocks, wars and political changes; however, the basic entities of the southern Gulf states have remained largely in place. How did this resilient system come about for such seemingly contested societies? The eventual emergence of the smaller but prosperous members such as Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates was not at all evident until 1971. Until then, nine separate states had stood in parallel to each other under British influence. At various points, plans were discussed to amalgamate the nine into one, two, three or even four separate entities. What, then, drove the formation of the three new states we see today? Drawing on extensive multi-archival research in the British, American and Gulf archives, this book illuminates a series of negotiations between British diplomats and the Gulf rulers that inadvertently led the three states to take their current shape. The story addresses the crucial issue of self-determination versus ‘better together’, a dilemma pertinent not only to students and scholars of the British Empire or the Middle East but also to those interested in the transformation of the modern world more broadly.
passports. 19 In essence, Ra’s al-Khaimah wanted to be recognised as an independent state while maintaining some of the benefits of being part of Britain’s informal empire. There was no space for Britain to reconsider the termination of treaties or military withdrawal, but neither did it want to leave Ra’s al-Khaimah high and dry. 20 When Shaikh Saqr and his son requested on 28
state’s administration. Throughout this book I refer to the multiple overlapping imperial structures and networks that crisscrossed the globe as the empire world. The empire world encompassed not only ‘formal’ colonies directly ruled by colonial authorities but also outposts of ‘informal’ empire such as China and the spaces and pathways in between these sites through which people, goods, communications
delineation of Britishness across the old Dominions’ to examine regions of the empire where the English language was not necessarily a crucial determinant in defining ‘British’ culture. 13 Whether as migrants to settler colonies or outposts of informal empire, or short-term expatriates to the tropical colonies, Britons sought to recreate the institutions familiar from home: clubs, sport, educational systems
Scottish iron foundries began to produce elaborate, illustrated catalogues of such buildings from the 1850s and they became regular exhibitors at the international exhibitions of the period.43 We have already encountered a cast-iron durbar hall in Madras, and cast-iron churches, halls, homes and other buildings were also sold to buyers in both formal and informal empire.44 Such exports, advertised in the catalogues as including stores, warehouses, shops, schools, halls, even a theatre, continued until at least the 1890s. They seem to have been particularly popular in
country. This led to Iraq becoming part of Britain’s ‘informal’ empire. 10 However, the process was imposed on a highly politicised population. This encounter explains the main characteristics of the formal process undertaken to create the monarchy and of the constitutional form it produced. The parameters nevertheless changed after 1925 when the newly established authorities were faced with different
‘laissez-faire’ assumptions of informal empire slowly give way to a more custodial sense of international power and responsibility. Integral to this process was the assertion of literal or putative superiority, if only in print: be it spiritual in Turkey, political and military in the Peninsula, economic in China or intellectual and cultural in Persia. It should come as no surprise that public servants were such active contributors to this development in the emergence of ‘modern’ British identity.’ Notes 1 Horn, British Diplomatic Service, pp. 284–300; L. Mayer, Views in
British style of informal Empire, and ironically, given Curtis’s support for imperial federation, proved an essential stepping-stone in India’s progress toward independence. Britain increasingly clung to the Empire in the interwar era as a potential counterweight to its international rivals. Curtis’s ideas thus found resonance just as the Empire re-emerged as a political priority