Major accessions to repositories in 2003 relating to imperial and commonwealth history

The World Upside Down: Cross‐Cultural Contact and Conflict in Sixteenth‐Century Peru by Susan Elizabeth Ramirez. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp.xvi + 234, maps, figures and tables. £30.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–8047–2416–4.

The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama by Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xxi + 400, maps. £35 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–47072–2.

Empires of the Monsoon: A History of the Indian Ocean and its Invaders by Richard Hall. London: HarperCollins, 1996. Pp.xxv + 575, maps, illustrations. £20.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–00–215971–6.

John Stuart and the Struggle for Empire on the Southern Frontier by. Russell Snapp. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Pp.238, eight halftone illustrations, maps. £40.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–8071–2024–3.

Political Partisanship in the American Middle Colonies, 1700–1776 by Benjamin H. Newcomb. Baton Route and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1995. Pp.xiv + 258, tables. $37.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–8071–1875–3.

Forming American Politics: Ideals. Interests, and Institutions in Colonial New York and Pennsylvania by Alan Tully. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1994. Pp.xvi + 556. $45.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–8018–4831–8.

The Devious Dr Franklin, Colonial Agent: Benjamin Franklin's Years in London by David T. Morgan. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1996. Pp.xi + 273. $34.95 (hardback). ISBN 0–86554–525–1.

Sir Charles Grey, First Earl Grey: Royal Soldier, Family Patriarch by Paul David Nelson. London: Associated University Presses, and Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. Pp.253. £29.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–8386–3673‐X.

Malta, Britain, and the European Powers, 1793–1815 by Desmond Gregory. London: Associated University Presses, and Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. Pp.353. £39.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–8386–3590–3.

The Business of Abolishing the Slave Trade 1783–1807 by Judith Jennings. London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1997. Pp.xii + 157. £29.50 (hardback); £15.00 (paperback). ISBN 0–7146–4697–0; 0–7146–4235–5.

Romanticism, Race and Imperial Culture, 1780–1834 edited by Alan Richardson and Sonia Hofkosh. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. Pp.vii + 352. £33.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–253–33212–5.

Aryans and British India by Thomas R. Trautmann. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1997. Pp.xiv + 260, illustrations, maps. £24.95; $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–520–20546–4.

Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 by Matthew H. Edney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Pp.xx + 458, illustrations, maps, tables. £27.95 (hardback). ISBN 0–226–18487–0.

Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War by Howard Jones. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp.xiii + 300. £14.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–8032–7597–8.

The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia 1788–1996 by Mark McKenna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xiv + 334. £40.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–57258–4.

Transformationen der europäischen Expansion vom16. bis zum 20. Jah hundert edited by Andreas Eckert and Jürgen Müller. Loccumer Protokolle 26/96. Loccum: Evangelische Akademie, 1997. Pp.iv + 212. DEM 12.00 (paperback). ISBN 3–8172–2696–9.

De Stille Macht: Het Europese Binnenlands Bestuur op Java en Madoera, 1808–1942 by H.W. van den Doel. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 1995. Pp.578, photographs, illustrations. No price indicated. ISBN 90–351–1405–1.

The Afrikaners: An Historical Interpretation by G.H.L. Le May. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Pp.viii + 279. £20.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–631–18204–7.

The Jameson Raid: A Centennial Retrospective. Consultant academic editor: Jane Carruthers. Johannesburg: The Brenthurst Press, 1996. Pp.xvi + 264, 184 illustrations. No price indicated. Presentation De Luxe, ISBN 0–909079–54–4, and Standard, ISBN 0–909079–53–6.

Capital and Labour on the Rhodesian Railway System, 1888–1947 by Jon Lunn. London and Oxford: Macmillan in association with St Antony's College, 1997. Pp.xi + 194, maps. £35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–333–653–173.

Imperialism, Academe and Nationalism: Britain and University Education for Africans 1860–1960 by Apollos O. Nwauwa. London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1997. Pp.xx + 245. £37.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–7146–4668–7.

The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class and Conflict by Dagmar Kift, translated by Roy Kift. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp.244. £35 00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–47472–8.

Nationalism and Independence: Selected Irish Papers by Nicholas Mansergh, edited by Diana Mansergh. Cork: Cork University Press, 1997. Pp.xvii + 264. £45.00 (hardback); £14.95 (paperback). ISBN 1–85918–105–8; 1–85918–106–6.

British Documents on the End of Empire, Series A, Volume I: Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice 1925–1945 edited by S.R. Ashton and S.E. Stockwell. London: HMSO, 1996.

Part I, Metropolitan Reorganisation, Defence and International Relations, Political Change and Constitutional Reform. Pp.cvii + 403. £70.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–11–290 544–4.

Part II, Economic Policy, Social Policies and Colonial Research. Pp.xxi + 403. £70.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–11–290551‐X.

A Country of Limitations: Canada and the World in 1939 edited by Norman Hillmer, Robert Bothwell, Roger Sarty, and Claude Beauregard. Ottawa: Canadian Committee for the History of the Second World War, 1996. Pp.295. No price indicated (paperback). ISBN 0–660–59970–8.

Attlee by Robert Pearce. London and New York: Longman, 1997. Pp.vii + 206. £39.99 (hardback); £12.99 (paperback). ISBN 0–582–25691–7; 0–582–256690–9.

Business, Government, and the End of Empire: Malaya, 1942–1957 by Nicholas J. White. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.xxii + 331, tables, figures, maps, illustrations. £25.00 (hardback). ISBN 983–56–0008–2.

Hong Kong: The Road to 1997 by Roger Buckley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xviii + 232, map. £35.00 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–521–47008–0; 0–521–46979–1.

Hong Kong: An Appointment with China by Steve Tsang. London: I.B. Tauris. Pp.xiii + 274. £10.95 (paperback). ISBN 1–86064–311–6.     

The slow death and strange rebirths of imperial history

The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume V, Historiography edited by Robin W. Winks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp.xxxiv + 731. £35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–19–820566‐X.     

关于中华帝国晚期心态史的探索

Some elements of Puritanism in Chinese tradition are obviously different from the well-known intellectual phenomenon in the West; in the Neo-Confucian ambit the key question concerns “order-disorder,” “harmony-disharmony” in society and inside one’s personality, rather than “sin” and “purity” in personal morality. Yet we also find that chastity is involved in the contrast between the two concepts of purity and pollution and the idea of “obscene” (meaning “inauspicious,” “ill-omened,” “profane”) allows us to uncover a darker side to sexual representation. Death seems another source of active or passive pollution: this effect occurs after contaminational contact with human or animal remains. Thus death is the source of “desecration,” or of “contamination,” especially when it is the consequence of violence. This means that in Chinese culture, a sense of impurity seems to be driven by the horror of death and the fear of being overwhelmed by the passion of love; respectively, thanatos and eros. Other topics may also be associated, such as mental insanity referring to what is different, abnormal, strange, and socially subversive. The clean-unclean distinction originally responded to a basic visceral feeling—horror and repulsion/disgust—that is typically associated with hygienic worries and matter that is perceived as repugnant and inedible. But these basic ideas seem to have been symbolically extended to cope with the subconscious and metaphysical spheres: the horror of death and the fear of being overwhelmed by passion, the mysteries which lie behind these emotions, and the attempt to sublimate such fears into an impulse to transcend the red dust of our limited existence.     

Writing imperial history in the age of high nationalism: imperial historians on the fringes of the Habsburg monarchy

For a long time, the late period of the Habsburg Monarchy has been characterized as a battlefield of nation-building elites who employed historical scholarship (among other means) to promote nationalistic ideas. More recent studies, however, have examined and called attention to the powerful structures which held this monarchy together. In the age of historicism, the Habsburg Monarchy also needed a plausible historical narrative on which it could base claims of the legitimacy of its rule. This narrative was created first and foremost by Viennese historians. Yet there were historians in the Habsburg Monarchy’s regional centres who made significant contributions to the development of concepts of an imperial history, too. In this article, the author examines their efforts. Until around 1900, supranationalism and regionalism were the dominant concepts in the historical writings of the authors in the Military Frontier and Bukovina and also in the works of the renowned Prague historian Anton Gindely. Loyal to Vienna, some Hungarian historians reassessed national history in order to reconcile it with the imperial past. Transnational history was also a method of demonstrating the congruity of national and imperial interests. In the age of high nationalism, historians thus contributed to both national and imperial cohesion.     

Studies in British imperial history. Essays in honour of A.P. Thornton

This article examines the disputes amongst Irish Presbyterians about the teaching of moral philosophy by Professor John Ferrie in the college department of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in the early nineteenth century and the substantive philosophical and theological issues that were raised. These issues have largely been ignored by Irish historians, but a discussion of them is of general relevance to historians of ideas as they illuminate a series of broader questions about the definition and development of Scottish philosophy. These are represented in the move from two philosophers who had strong connections with Irish Presbyterianism—Francis Hutcheson, the early eighteenth-century moral sense philosopher and theological moderate from County Down, and James McCosh, nineteenth-century exponent of modified Common Sense philosophy at Queen's College Belfast and a committed evangelical. In particular, this article addresses three important themes—the definition and character of ‘the Scottish philosophy’, the relationship between evangelicalism and Common Sense philosophy, and the process of development and adaptation that occurred in eighteenth-century Scottish thought during the first half of the nineteenth century.     

The Commonwealth and the Oath of Allegiance Crisis: A Study in Inter-War Commonwealth Relations

Recent historical treatment of Anglo-Irish relations in the 1930s has overlooked the complex nature of the legal disagreements between the two countries during that period. This article provides an account of some of the fundamental points of legal disagreement between the countries. It explains how differences of opinion as to the structure of intra-commonwealth constitutional relations led to conflict between the British government and that of the Irish Free State, with particular reference to the oath of allegiance crisis. It considers how other commonwealth countries saw these points of conflict. It concludes with a re-appraisal of the roles of Lord Hailsham and de Valera in Anglo-Irish relations, as examples of differing attitudes towards the commonwealth relationship.     

Russian imperial expansion in context and by contrast

Although Russia has not generally been acknowledged as an imperial state, it does qualify by virtue of having unilaterally acquired and exploited the lands of other peoples. Its imperialism was, however, significantly different from that of the colonial powers of Western Europe in a number of respects. These differences, which served to disguise the imperial nature of Russian expansion, also generated distinctive consequences.     

Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya

Public monuments in colonial Nairobi were visual links to the British empire, and served as a means of asserting imperial power. During this period, colonial memories and identities were inscribed into Nairobi’s landscape by the dominant group, the elite of the European population. However, at the moment of Kenya’s achievement of independence from colonial rule, such identities and assertions of power were challenged as statues were removed from the city. This paper examines the forces behind the decolonisation of Nairobi’s monumental landscape and how this landscape visualised the changing political and cultural contexts of the city. Comparisons are made with the removal of statues from Sudan, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to situate the Kenyan experience. Through a comparative examination of the decolonisation of Nairobi’s monumental landscape, this paper illustrates how the removal of public monuments from the city was exploited by both the coloniser and the colonised.