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 commonwealth as history

The Imperial Dream: The British Commonwealth and Empire 1775–1969 by Edward Grierson. London: Collins, 1972. Pp. 320. £2.50. It is a pity that no one has troubled to read the proofs; the bibliography is peppered with spelling mistakes.

Commonwealth: A History of the British Commonwealth of Nations by H. Duncan Hall, with an introduction by Sir Robert Menzies. London, New York, Cincinnati, Toronto, Melbourne: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1971. Pp. xxxvi+1015, maps, illustrations. £10.00.     

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 appropriation of the Phoenicians in British imperial ideology

The Phoenicians played ambivalent roles in Western historical imagination. One such role was as a valued predecessor and prototype for the industrial and maritime enterprise of nineteenth‐century imperial Britain. Explicit parallels were drawn in historical representations and more popular culture. It was widely believed that the Phoenicians had been present in Britain, especially in Cornwall, despite a lack of convincing historical evidence, and much importance was placed on supposed archaeological evidence. Ideological tensions arose from the need to reconcile ancient and modern Britain, and from the Semitic origin of the Phoenicians. This example shows the power of archaeological objects to provide material support for national and imperial constructions of the past.     

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.     

Ireland in the imperial imagination: British nationalism and the Anglo-Irish Treaty

ABSTRACT

The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921 was a watershed moment in modern Irish history. In addition to copper-fastening the partition of the island, the agreement catalysed the bifurcation of revolutionary Sinn Féin and set in train the processes that culminated, ultimately, in the outbreak of a bitter Civil War the following June. The events that led to the Treaty and the debates on it in Dáil Éireann have received extensive treatment from historians. However, scholars have paid far less attention to the impact of the Treaty on British politics; in particular, they have neglected to explore how the concession of limited Irish self-government impacted Britain’s national self-image at a time of crucial imperial adjustment following the Great War. This article will examine the range of arguments proffered for and against the Treaty in the House of Commons and the House of Lords and suggest that Parliamentary opposition to the settlement was underpinned by a sense of imperial-national feeling, one guided by an attitude of conscious superiority to non-British elements that can be understood productively as a form of British nationalism.     

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.     

The Queen’s Dolls’ House within the British Empire Exhibition: encapsulating the British imperial world

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, designed by Edwin Landseer Lutyens and unveiled to the public in 1924 at the British Empire Exhibition. The Dolls’ House epitomised the characteristics of Britain as a nation and an empire through its English exterior and British world objects within. Marginalised in academic discourses and regarded as a plaything, this article brings the Dolls’ House back to discourses of British material and visual culture as well as Lutyens scholarship. To this end, it analyses how the design and contents of the House encapsulated the British imperial world and materialised Britain’s position in the postwar world.     

Claiming the high ground: theories of imperial authority and the British hill stations in India

By the 1880s, imperial government's practice of ‘retreating’ to the Indian hill stations for much of the year was well established. Despite the strength of this new tradition, such a relocation of colonial administration never lacked its critics. This paper examines the expanding administrative use of the hill stations from the early nineteenth century through the 1880s. As the nineteenth century ‘scientific’ framework for British control of India was formed, conflicting strategies and practices for maintaining imperial control required mediation and contrasting frameworks for defining duty and loyalty between government and subject vied for dominance. The significance of Utilitarian thought, changing appraisals of climate and constructions of race are evaluated in an analysis of the imperial hill stations.