From Crime to Coercion: Policing Dissent in Abeokuta,Nigeria, 1900–1940

Indirect rule figured prominently in Nigeria’s colonial administration, but historians understand more about the abstract tenets of this administrative strategy than they do about its everyday implementation. This article investigates the early history of the Native Authority Police Force in the town of Abeokuta in order to trace a larger move towards coercive forms of administration in the early twentieth century. In this period the police in Abeokuta developed from a primarily civil force tasked with managing crime in the rapidly growing town, into a political implement of the colonial government. It became critical in preserving the authority of both the local traditional ruler and the colonial administration behind him. In Abeokuta, this transition was largely precipitated by the 1918 Adubi War and the period of increased surveillance that followed it. This created new responsibilities and powers for the police, expanding their role in Abeokuta’s administration and raising their stock in the colonial administrative hierarchy.     

Boserup revisited: Population and technology in tropical African agriculture, 1900–1940

The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Rediscovery of India and the East 1680–1880 by R. Schwab, translated by G. Patterson‐Black and V. Reinking with a Foreword by E.W. Said. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Pp.xxiv + 542. $22.50 paperback.

Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal by T. Raychaudhuri. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.xvii + 369, £12.00.

Colonial Dutch Studies. An Interdisciplinary Approach edited by Eric Nooter and Patricia U. Bonomi. New York and London: New York University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 141. $30.00.

The Economy of Colonial America by Edwin J. Perkins. Second edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 251. $30.00 ($13.00 paper).

Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience edited by Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.viii + 298. £22.50.

The British Navy and the Use of Naval Power in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Jeremy Black and Philip Woodfine. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988. Pp.xiv + 273; maps. £27.50.

The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom by Nicholas B. Dirks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.xxiv + 458. £35.00.

Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire by C.A. Bayly, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 230; maps, glossary and illus. £17.50.

Perfecting the World: The Life and Times of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, 1798–1866 by Amalie M. Kass and Edward H. Kass. Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988. Pp.xxx + 642; genealogy and illus. £24.50.

The Life of Charles Ledger (1818–1905): Alpacas and Quinine by Gabriele Gramiccia. London: Macmillan, 1988. Pp.xiv + 222. £30.00.

Benevolent Neutrality: Indian Government Policy and Labour Migration to British Guiana, 1854–1884 by Basdeo Mangru. London: Hansib Publishing, 1987. Pp.267; maps and illus. £12.95.

Sir Robert Falconer: A Biography by James G. Greenlee. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Pp.407. £26.50; $43.00 (hardback).

Francophone Sub‐Saharan Africa, 1880–1985 by Patrick Manning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.199; maps + figures, bibliographical essay. £25.00 (hardback); £8.95 (paperback).

Essays on African History: From the Slave Trade to Neocolonialism by Jean Suret Canale. Translated by C. Hurst. Preface by B. Davidson. Bibliography of works by Jean Suret Canale concerning Africa. London: C. Hurst and Co., 1988. Pp.232; index and bibliography. £25.00.

The Boer War and Military Reforms by Jay Stone and Erwin A. Schmidl. Lanham: University Press of America, 1988. Pp.xi + 345, maps. $22.75.

Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire: A Critical Study of British Imperial Fiction by Wendy R. Katz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.ix + 171. £22.50.

The Commonwealth Armies: Manpower and Organisation in Two World Wars by F.W. Perry. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Pp.vi + 250. £27.50.

Imperial Rearguard: Wars of Empire 1919–85 by Lawrence James. London: Brasseys, 1988. Pp. + 242, maps and illus. £19.95.

Colonial Development. Die Grundlegung moderner Entwicklungspolitik durch Grossbritannien, 1919–1949 by Herward Sieberg. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner Verlag, 1985. Pp.736. DM 78.

Appeasement and Germany's Last Bid for Colonies by A.J. Crazier. London: Macmillan in association with King's College, London, 1988. Pp.x + 349, maps. £33.00.

Australians, 1938 edited by Bill Gammage and Peter Spearritt, the fourth volume of Australians: A National Library, edited by Alan D. Gilbert and K.S. Inglis. Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987. Pp.xviii + 474. £350 (the set of 11 vols.).

Australians from 1939 edited by Ann Curthoys, A.W. Martin and Tim Rowse. Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987. Pp.xvii and 474, maps, tables and illus.

The Politics of Persuasion by Desmond Dinan. Lanham: University Press of America, 1988. Pp.xii + 307.

King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan by Mary C. Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.xxii + 289; maps and photographs. £25.00.

Collusion Across the Jordan by Avi Shlaim. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Pp.x + 676; maps. £35.00.

The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War: An Alliance Study by Jeffrey Grey. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 244; maps and illus. £29.95.

The Oxford Book of Canadian Political Anecdotes edited by Jack McLeod. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Pp.xiii + 273. £17.50.

Mastering Australian History by Ronald W. Laidlaw. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1988. Pp.vi + 477; illus. £5.95 (paperback).

British Review of New Zealand Studies edited by Ged Martin and Guy M. Robinson. No. I, July 1988.     

The husbandry,perception and ‘improvement’ of turkeys in Britain, 1500–1900

The introduction of the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) to Britain is documented during the first half of the 16th century. These birds initially featured on the tables of the powerful and served as living garden ornaments or pets. Shifting human perceptions, driven in part by the ‘ethic of improvement’, affected turkey husbandry methods and animal-human relationships as well as the bird’s symbolic role. This transition was complicated; the turkey remained a palimpsest of attributes throughout 1500–1900, with different associations assuming prominence over time.     

An Irish revolutionary in Britain: Sean McLoughlin and the British socialist movement, 1920–22

Sean McLoughlin was a significant figure during many of the tumultuous events that rocked Ireland throughout the 1916–23 period. He played a leading role in the Easter Rising of 1916 and was prominent in both the republican and socialist movements in the years that followed. But McLoughlin was also an activist in the British socialist movement, where he was noted both as an outstanding public speaker and an advanced thinker. This article examines McLoughlin's activities within the British socialist movement and looks both at his impact and the contribution to the development of socialist thinking he made whilst there.     

Book-hunters and Book-huntresses: Gender and Cultures of Antiquarian Book Collecting in Britain,c. 1880–1900

The late-nineteenth century saw private book collecting gain a renewed respectability and cultural cachet as a leisure pursuit for the upper- and middle classes. This paper examines representations of collectors in the literature belonging to a new genre of writing which emerged for the ‘book-hunter’: a late-Victorian variant of the book-collecting passion which could encompass aesthetes and antiquarians as well as aspiring amateurs of more moderate means. It will show how, during the 1880s and 1890s, this particular type of collecting practice was used rhetorically in a range of printed material to venerate ‘gentlemanly’ book-buying, in contrast to feminine forms of engagement with old books in particular. In spite of women's comparative lack of advantage in the market for antiquarian editions, however, I argue that such a critique would not have been articulated so forcefully had women not been taking a determined interest in rare books. Evidence from central London booksellers during this period suggests that a variety of women were making antiquarian collections of their own. Male bibliophiles who denigrated female book-buyers in the periodical press were attempting to partially invent a homosocial tradition of collecting in order to distance their own pursuit from what they saw as the more emasculating elements of modern consumerism. This was a response not just to developments in contemporary print culture, but also to the growing appreciation of second-hand goods of all kinds among affluent female consumers with aesthetic and literary tastes shaped independently of male judgments.     

Mediating culture in the Italian literary field 1940s–50s

This introduction lays out the scholarly and methodological context in which to situate the contributions to this special issue. By combining a rigorous scrutiny of hitherto untapped archival sources with a re-examined application of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture within the field of periodical studies and publishing history in Italy (1940s–50s), the studies illuminate the complex ways in which journals, periodical editors and the connected publishing houses negotiate cultural practice in a literary field increasingly dominated by the polarization of political discourse.     

Debating federal Europe in the British Parliament,c. 1940–49

Federalism, or the fear of it, worked as a catalyst in the British pre-referendum debate on Brexit in June 2016. In this paper, we focus on the pre-European integration context and ask what kind of an alternative federalism was seen to afford in British politics during and after the Second World War. We limit our discussion to parliamentary debates, which have only rarely been used as primary sources for studying European integration history. The British Parliament was one of the key political arenas for debates on foreign policy, not just in terms of informing the party lines but also guiding the public discussion. In the early part of the 1940s, the British federalist movement was able to generate political debate on the issue and gain the attention of many leading politicians. We argue that the approach to the use of the concept was politically charged but remained open to various context-based interpretations, which did not eventually lead to any concrete proposals. During the latter part of the 1940s, the majority of British MPs were open to different ways of creating unity in Europe. The emphasis on national sovereignty, however, continued. As a result ‘federalism’, attached to structures for unity, gave way to more pragmatic political solutions.