The predominant narrative of both new and old histories of the Khasi mission is the pre-eminence of Ann Jones as founding missionary and bringer of the book. The prime architect of the Christianisation of the hill tribes, the de novo 'father' of Khasi literature in his role as the man who put the Khasi language into written form using Welsh orthography. Many missionary and other published accounts tend to skip over the role of indigenous informants in the process of translation. With no knowledge of Bengali script, Jones employed the Roman alphabet when recording Khasi words. Thomas Jones went to the Khasi Hills with the express aim of educating the Khasis. The importance of education for the Welsh was stressed by generations of their leaders and preachers.

The missionary Thomas Jones II, the local magistrate Harry Inglis, the civil servant's wife Emma Shadwell, and the soldier F.T. Pollok, projected their constructions of Britishness, Welshness, gender or indigeneity onto the canvas of the Khasi Hills. Hugh Roberts and John Roberts visited the grieving Gwenllian Jones at Nongsawlia, but found her hardened against the mission she blamed for her husband's demise. In the aftermath of the Jones versus Inglis affair of the 1840s, Harry Inglis preferred charges against judge Stainforth for borrowing money from a European in his jurisdiction, contrary to civil service regulations. On 27 September 1853, A.J.M. Mills, officiating judge of the Sudder Court, tabled his report to the government of Bengal on the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. The landscape of the hills was a wild canvas on which the clear lines of masterful authority and manly power were delineated.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book draws on a consistent set of themes that influenced urban life between 1870 and 1939, in addressing the impact of imperialism on popular culture. It presents a consistent thematic analysis of three urban communities from the south, midlands and north of England through examining popular responses to empire. The book explores the local and imperial nexus and whether imperial wars in the far reaches of the Empire were translated into tangible localised issues. It examines the role of volunteerism and patriotism through two important conflicts, the Boer War and the First World War. The book also explores the complexities of propagating an imperial message through schooling and national institutions or events such as Empire Day, public radio broadcasts and the 1924 Wembley Exhibition of Empire.

Support for the IRA took place as far away from the limelight as possible. Nevertheless republican priests had to account for themselves often enough, to their bishop or religious superior for example, or, if they were curates, to their parish priest. This was also true for priests who publicly supported Sinn Féin. The current chapter examines the interaction between these priests and their social surroundings, ecclesiastical and lay. Bishops, religious superiors and parish priests had agendas of their own that determined their responses. It was important to the bishops not to alienate the republican camp, but they also had to respond to the criticisms of scandalised conservatives, while ensuring that lines of communication with the government in Dublin Castle remained open. Moreover, they were concerned for the Irish church’s reputation abroad, especially in the Vatican. Religious superiors wanted to avoid internal conflict within their communities, and parish priests often simply wished to keep trouble away from their church doors. How did these ecclesiastical authorities respond to the activities of republican priests? Which forms of support were acceptable to them and which were not? And how did the priests in question defend their actions to their superiors?

From 1844 onwards, growing numbers of colonists began to put pressure on London to abolish the convict system and to grant colonial self-government. Colonial opposition to convict transportation was waged in the language of extreme moral outrage. Abolitionists deployed a highly charged, sensationalising and explicitly sexualised discourse of bodily excess, corporeal degradation and moral devastation. The abolitionist focus upon 'unnatural' crimes undoubtedly served a range of mobilising and propagandising purposes. The campaign for the abolition of transportation had thus become linked increasingly to the movement for colonial self-government. As the antithesis of self-government, sodomy figured both as a powerful condemnation of tyranny and as a symbol of man's potential for 'savagery'. Sexual acts such as sodomy and bestiality were considered 'unspeakable' by the nineteenth century. Given that the 1832 Reform Act had systematically reconstituted claims to political power around notions of masculine independence and morality.

The late eighteenth century witnessed a growing engagement with natural history in Spain and its American colonies. This engagement was supported financially and institutionally by the Spanish Crown, which orchestrated scientific expeditions, patronised aspiring naturalists and founded museums and botanical gardens. For the Spanish Government, natural history offered a new and enticing source of national glory and material wealth. The collection, classification and exhibition of natural objects had an important figurative value for the ability to amass specimens from across the globe symbolised both the extension of Spain's empire and the effectiveness of its bureaucracy. From the metropolitan centre, the enterprise of natural history collection and classification represented an exercise in economic rejuvenation and imperial posturing. Imperial implosion severed important ties with Europe, disrupting commerce and scholarly networks.

This chapter explores the foundation of various individual hospitals. It considers the physical location of the facilities, the identity of the founders, and the motivation of those founders, along with a discussion of the communal context and jurisdictional structures under which they originally operated. There is a plethora of notarial documentation from cities in the Lombard region that gives evidence for the foundation of hospitals in the area. While hospitals were located throughout the medieval city, early charters suggest that a common feature of many was their location near the gates of the city, and often along major roads. The frequent reference to roads and gates in the documentation of hospital foundations has led some scholars to conclude that the primary purpose of the hospital was simply as a hostel for poorer pilgrims and travellers.

The formation of the British Navy League in 1895 reflected public anxieties about the state of the navy and the stability of the Empire. With a mission to convert the public to navalism, the Navy League targeted the fears of newly enfranchised working men from working-class families. Naval scares awakened the British public to the possibility that British naval supremacy might be illusory and fuelled British anxieties, about the instability of imperial control. In addition to portraying the sea as Britain's imperial highway and the navy as the bulwark of home and empire, navalist discourse propagated images of naval men as rugged but respectable models of imperial manhood. Naval manhood was not only gauged by professionalism, intellect and morality but by an attention to familial responsibilities and domestic life. The navy's heightened profile within society also provided naval men with opportunities to reject older portrayals of 'Jack Tar'.

This chapter seeks to understand why participants value the Do-it-Yourself (DIY) ethic and how this ethic provides DIY punk with 'relative' autonomy from both large- and small-scale punk commerce. It emphasises that DIY punk is 'relatively' autonomous because it is neither entirely void of commerce nor completely autonomous. In line with DIY punk's relatively autonomous status, the chapter aims to explain why DIY activities should be seen as a form of cultural resistance. Although DIY punk exists on a global scale, the chapter considers only the contemporary subcultural movement in Britain. The anti-capitalist element to the cultural resistance is reflected by the punk slogan 'Punk Belongs to the Punx, Not Businessmen'. DIY punk reflects anti-large-scale commerce sentiments and views it as a form of cultural resistance that is fundamentally counter-hegemonic. In 1976, punk was a newly emerging music culture that went largely unreported by the mainstream media.