The place of drink: Temperance and the public, 1856–1914

Discussions of the place of drink in Britain between 1856 and 1914 were centrally concerned with alcohol as a public problem. Temperance organizations like the United Kingdom Alliance largely abandoned their attempts to reform individuals and instead demanded the prohibition of drink sales. This new concern for the public sphere of politics and public opinion was matched by a new sensitivity to the social contexts of drinking, the role of the drink trade and rituals of conviviality. Temperance documents thus allow us to glimpse two new senses of the public: a wider public sphere, in which the Alliance sought to organize public opinion through lectures, the press and the preparation of moral statistics; and a space of social interaction governed by rational behaviour and ideals of citizenship. It is also possible to construct a contrasting, 'customary', sense of public space based upon drink as a form of gift exchange which symbolized strong bonds of reciprocity. In striving to replace these ties with more abstract and political senses of citizenship and democratic rights, temperance workers played a part in the remaking of understandings of public space as a mirror image of the public sphere.     

‘Layered Networks’: Imperial Philanthropy in Birmingham and Sydney, 1860–1914

Traditionally, histories of philanthropy have adopted a nationalist focus. Influenced by new imperial history, this article seeks to move beyond national borders by placing metropolitan and colonial philanthropic practices in a single frame of analysis. This approach facilitates not only a comparison of philanthropic activities in two specific sites, Birmingham and Sydney, but a broader analysis of how philanthropic practices in both sites were shaped by ideas in constant flow between Britain, its colonies and the wider world. Evidence from various charities in Birmingham and Sydney reveal the existence of ‘layered networks’ spanning the local, national, imperial and global. As such, this article aims to extend the work of transnational/cross-border histories and geographical networks, by retaining a sense of the local.     

Empire Day in Africa: Patriotic Colonial Childhood,Imperial Spectacle and Nationalism in Nigeria, 1905–60

Anyone born or raised in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, after 1960 would remember Children’s Day, observed every 27 May. However, few knew that it started as Empire Day in the first decade of the twentieth century—fewer are aware that it was a significant symbol of imperial domination, decolonised from the late 1950s to align with postcolonial ideals of self-determination and nation-building. African historical research has examined the sites and symbols (such as western biomedicine and education, police and prison, and indirect rule) through which British imperialism established and maintained itself in Africa. However, little is known about Empire Day, an invented tradition of ritualistic yearly veneration of the glory of the British Empire, which was first celebrated in Britain in 1904 and was immediately introduced to the African colonies. In this article, I examine the story of Empire Day as a significant colonial spectacle and performance of imperial authority in Nigeria, and how it assumed new meanings and functions among diverse groups of Nigerian children and adults. Empire Day, more than any other commemoration, placed children at the centre of imperialism and recognised them as a vital element in the sustenance of an imagined citizenship of the British Empire.     

Transnational Mobilization and Cultural Representation: Political Transfer in an Age of Proto-Globalization,Democratization and Nationalism 1848–1914

Political transfer boomed in Europe, the Atlantic world and beyond in the second half of the nineteenth century. Drawing on a variety of empirical examples, this article addresses three core dimensions of political transfer: the changing structural conditions for transfer; the transfer agents and their strategies; and the means they could employ drawing upon new forms of collective networking across borders, diffusing information, and visualizing political ideas, policies and practices to enhance the legitimacy of political transfer. It is argued that research on political transfer has great potential for reconceptualizing European history in the second half of the nineteenth century as overlapping and connected history.

Résumé: Les transferts politiques ont pris une importance mondiale dans la second moitie du dix-neuvième siècle. En se fondant sur une multitude d'exemples précis cet article se penche sur trois dimensions fondamentales du transfert politique: les changements des conditions structurales des transferts, les agents de transfert et leur stratégie et les moyens qu'ils emploient en utilisant de nouveaux réseaux internationaux, diffusant l'information et représentant les idées, les pratiques et les politiques pour augmenter la légitimité du transfert politique. Cet article met en évidence l'importance de la recherche sur les transferts politiques pour une nouvelle conception de l'histoire européenne comme une histoire d'échanges et de rapports.     

‘Martial Races’ and ‘Imperial Subjects’: Violence and Governance in Colonial India, 1857–1914

This essay explores the specificity of colonial violence in India. Although imperial and military historians are familiar with several instances of such violence—notably the rebellion in 1857 and the 1919 massacre at the Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar—there is a broader, and arguably more significant, history that has largely escaped attention. In contrast to metropolitan European states, where sovereignty derived, at least in principle, from a covenant between subjects and government, the sovereign power of the colonial state was always predicated on the violent subjugation of ‘the natives’. However, while violence was integral to colonialism, such violence was never a purely metropolitan agency: most of those recruited to serve in the colonial military were, themselves, Indian. Exploring the history of the imperial military in South Asia after 1857, the paper outlines the complex and rather ambiguous relationship between the colonial state and its ‘native armies’.

résumé ?Cet article se penche sur la spécificité de la violence coloniale. Malgré des exemples familiers—comme la grande révolte de 1857 en Inde ou le massacre de Jallianwalla Bagh à Amritsar en 1919—il y a une histoire plus large et plus importante qui a échappée à l'attention des historiens. Contrairement aux états européens ou la souveraineté dérivait en principe du moins d'un contrat social entre les acteurs sociaux, le pouvoir souverain de l'état colonial restait fondé sur la subjugation violente des indigènes.     

Abolition and Imperial Law, 1790–1820

Historians have represented the movement for the abolition of the slave trade as a turning point in international law, either characterising the formation of mixed commissions to adjudicate slave ship captures as elements of early human rights law or interpreting the treaty regime supporting the ban on the slave trade as marking a decisive shift towards positivism in international law. A closer look at the legal history of abolition suggests that such perspectives omit an important dimension: the ties between abolition and imperial legal consolidation. In exploring such ties, the article first examines prize law and its direct and indirect influence on calls for intra-imperial regulation of the slave trade, especially its effective criminalisation. Across the empire, efforts to ban the slave trade reflected and reinforced pressures to strengthen imperial legal authority by regulating and restricting planter legal prerogatives.