This chapter examines continuity and change in photographs of royal celebrations made by Dutch authorities during the long decolonisation of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia. It discusses the celebration of Queen Juliana in Dutch New Guinea (1948–62). It also presents evidence that, during the Dutch military actions (1945–50) that preceded Indonesia’s independence, royal celebrations were an important opportunity for Dutch soldiers to celebrate victories and claim territorial sovereignty for the Netherlands. Royal celebrations were also instrumental in the battle for civilian hearts and minds, particularly to demonstrate the benevolence of Dutch soldiers to Indonesians. This chapter reveals that Wilhelmina was not just a hero of the Second World War in the Netherlands, but also very much a soldiers’ queen in Indonesia during the dying days of the Dutch empire in Asia.

This chapter takes memoir, along with administrative and socio-political history, to disentangle what Carolyn Steedman describes as the 'fictions of engagement' that populate the mythic histories woven around popular understandings of Labour's past. By piecing together the forgotten aspects and interweaving Mary Bridges Adams's efforts with those of Margaret McMillan, it becomes possible to trace a different, less tidy story. McMillan constructed a restorative programme for the education of working-class children that stressed the training of the muscular system and stimulation of the senses before the development of the mind. In The Camp School, she writes most memorably of slum children she taught, using metaphors of cleanliness and empire to connect her education practice with the lives of the very poor. The open-air day school at Bostall Wood predates the camp schools McMillan set up at Deptford from 1911 to 1914.

Lawrence Huntington’s directorial career began earlier than that of the other figures discussed in this book. By 1940 he had already directed twelve ‘B’ movies, though they are mainly forgotten today. He directed a further five in the early 1940s before hitting his stride with Night Boat to Dublin (1946), an effective espionage thriller starring Robert Newton. His successful run, including Wanted for Murder (1946) and The Upturned Glass (1947), continued into the early 1950s before dissipating into co-features and television work. He directed a handful of films in the 1960s, including the Edgar Wallace adaptation Death Drums along the River (1966).

This chapter investigates the ways in which the capacity to manipulate space is linked with all social policy. It explores the ways the whole improving, helping, interventionist project of the twentieth-century state might be predicated on its capacity to define and manipulate the technologies of space. When Europeans wanted to discuss social reform, they located its discussion in languages of art and aesthetics. The chapter focuses on intersection of social policy and spatial reform: housing. An inability to generate political, architectural and capital reformulations, combined with a severe economic depression, led to a stall in meagre small-housing production. The chapter examines intersection in the architectural and stylistic policies of Munich City Council's housing activities before and after the First World War. During the war, housing construction stopped. The design solution can be contrasted with the large quantity of housing constructed by charitable organisations, and their attempts to reconfigure housing design.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to provide a critical understanding of health promotion ideas and practices unfolding in liberal democracies. It identifies and discusses the merits and the limitations of the most influential political science and sociological analyses seeking to critically address contemporary politics of health. The book seeks to provide a solid understanding of the wider political context of health promotion in England and Denmark. It examines obesity control in England and Denmark respectively. The book analyses how and why psychiatric patients in England and Denmark are urged to take charge of their mental illness with reference to the notion of rehabilitation. It summarizes and discusses the analytical findings regarding the governing of citizens through lifestyle and rehabilitation respectively.

Charles Maier’s chapter is a plea for global history. It uses the lens of political passion to present a transatlantic comparison and particularly emphasizes that the Atlantic World has never been as unified as some of the historiographies have us believe. Maier identifies four major fields that have given rise to conflict and political passion: religious authority, self-government, defining the (national) community, and the distribution of wealth and goods. However, as the analysis zooms in on Europe and the United States it becomes evident that these transnational themes may and should also be explored from a global perspective. European history has always had a global dimension, from colonialism to the divisions of the Cold War.