Free Trade Empire to Commonwealth of Nations: India,Britain and Imperial Preference, 1903–1932

This article examines the dialogue between British tariff reformers and Indian nationalists over the application of imperial trade preference in India from Joseph Chamberlain's 1903 Birmingham address to the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference. For both groups, this issue was a focal point to assess India's constitutional status and national participation within an emerging British Commonwealth and international system after the First World War. Specifically, it marked a comprehensive challenge to the orthodoxy of free trade and liberal empire seen increasingly as a determent to reconciling national prosperity and imperial unity. It is argued that prominent tariff reformers’ well-studied criticism of an ‘unpatriotic’ cosmopolitan free trade made them also sympathetic to longstanding Indian grievances that this fiscal policy exacerbated economic exploitation and racial discrimination. After 1919, Indian nationalists, including ‘historical economists’, utilized metropolitan advocacy for imperial preference to demand fiscal and political autonomy from Britain and national, as well as racial, equality in collective imperial decision. At the 1932 conference in Ottawa, India's voluntary and negotiated acceptance of preferential trade with Britain, beside the white self-governing Dominions, helped transform the British Commonwealth into an egalitarian organization recognizable after 1947.     

Catholic Relief and the Political Awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia, 1780–1830

Over the course of the eighteenth and early-to-mid-nineteenth centuries the Irish, who moved throughout the British Empire, helped to build the social, political and economic structures that would enable the success of countless colonial settlements. They were merchants, traders, fishers and labourers, and a significant proportion of them were Catholic. While many would go on to play pivotal roles in the development of Catholicism in the colonies, the Irish were not alone and often joined or were joined by other Catholic groups such as the French, Spanish and Scottish Highlanders. That the Irish achieved greater political and economic success, though, had a knock-on effect for the other Catholic groups could then use the foundation that the Irish established for their own progress and development. This article considers the place of Catholics on Britain’s expanding colonial landscapes by examining the political awakening of Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, two of Britain’s north Atlantic colonies, between 1780 and 1830. These two colonies, like many others, witnessed the growth of an Irish Catholic laity that was ambitious, pragmatic and adept at using the political structures available to reframe their legal status. The election of Laurence Kavanagh, a second-generation Irish Catholic merchant from a tiny fishing outpost on Cape Breton Island, to Nova Scotia’s legislative assembly in 1820, is offered as an example of how this process actually worked on the ground and opens up a broader discussion about the importance of minority populations like Catholics to Britain’s imperial programme.     

Between science and empire: the diplomatic struggle over Mesopotamian antiquities in Lisbon (1914–1926)

A powerful curiosity to discover the ancient world – reaching its peak in the nineteenth century – led to British, French, and German museums to enhance their collections with a great number of Mesopotamian antiquities. Most of these were the product of excavation work, which took years, followed by a shipping process fraught with hurdles and delays – much as when Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities were stranded in Portugal over the period 1914–26. In that case Portuguese officials seized the hoard of Babylonian and Assyrian items due to be sent to Germany at the beginning of the First World War by the German Oriental Society, which had carried out excavation works in Ottoman territories in the name of Kaiser II Wilhelm. The extensive British efforts and diplomatic exchanges aimed at bringing the pieces to London after the war, presents us with important clues regarding ownership disputes over antiquities, and the imperial struggle to acquire the cultural heritage of the near east. This study reveals that, under the existing legal framework, the items eventually taken to Berlin actually belonged to the Imperial Museum in Istanbul, and analyzes the discourse of ‘scientific concern’ constructed by British diplomacy.