As the previous chapter has demonstrated there were many sections of society into which the ideals of the duellists barely penetrated. Nevertheless honour culture was particularly entrenched within those very groups of gentlemen who were most likely to be tasked with service abroad, that is to say within the military and the political and administrative elite. Honour culture had an important role to play in the mentality of those administering His Majesty's colonial possessions, sustaining the homogeneity of a class over great distances and yet at the same time posing, as we shall see, constant threats to good governance. It was, of course, in the Americas that honour culture was most successfully implanted, but unfortunately, justice to the rich history of American duelling cannot be done here. Since revolution and independence came early within our period, I shall not pursue the American duel with vigour. Instead I have chosen to focus upon the remaining North American possession, Canada, and to compare duelling there with honour culture in an area of British dominion that was only later to become part of the empire, that is to say, those parts of India that were as yet still under the aegis of the East India Company.

Naturally, honourable conduct in each location was influenced by dynamics sometimes peculiar to the local situation; small gentlemanly societies picked up nuances of their own. Differences between Canadian society and that of the British in India are easy to observe. However, the empire was inter connected and facets of behaviour were sufficiently uniform that, as aforementioned, the different gentlemanly societies in each location nevertheless formed a single cultural whole. As we shall see, men, and their disputes and reputations, moved between communities: a Canadian barrister became a judge in Sierra Leone; a quarrel between Indian administrators resulted in a duel in London; a dispute at Portsmouth was played out before the garrison at Gibraltar; and so on. The language of honour that was spoken in such disputes served along with a common heritage of law, of history and of fealty to unite men in very varied situations.