This chapter tackles two of the themes that are at the heart of this book. First, it argues that the radicalisation of Afro-Asian demands at the UN – most visibly in the response to minority rule in Rhodesia, Portuguese Africa, South Africa, and South West Africa – not only distanced the ‘fire brigade’ states further from the anti-colonial cause, it forced them to seek out new policy avenues, and new ways of expressing their identities in a changing international system. Second, this chapter shows how the growing strength of the international anti-apartheid movement, combined with the rise of the counter-culture and the tensions that spread throughout Europe and North America in the late 1960s, drew individuals, politicians, and local pressure groups into global conversations and measures for a global reaction. The result, described here in the response to the 1970 South African rugby tour of Britain and Ireland, was a further shift in the location of political and popular action.

The Canton System, which regulated China's trade with the West from the mid-1700s until the Opium War (1839-1842), has often been held up as an example of everything that was wrong with Qing China and its relations with the outside world, and of the fundamental incompatibility of "East" and "West". This view has recently been challenged by several studies which have shown that the Canton System worked remarkably well until the abolition of the East India Company's monopolies in the early 1800s, and that the Canton System was not necessarily a cultural clash waiting to erupt.This chapter, based on accounts by Britons who visited or resided in pre-war Canton, argues that China was a site of encounter and affinity as much as one of conflict and difference. Though exposure to Chinese people and customs often reinforced British attitudes of superiority, many Britons in Canton also found much that was familiar. That which seemed unusual or strange could often be explained by way of comparison and contrast – either with the British historical past or with other societies and cultures. For many Britons travellers and residents in Canton, their time in China enabled them to try to understand China and to consider the nature of Britishness in a world in which ideas about trade, politics, and diplomacy were being questioned and challenged.

This chapter focuses on the manner in which balloons underwent popularization and commodification. In the 1780s, ballooning "fixed the attention of all the savants, and became the unique object of conversation in all assemblies." Ballooning clearly dominated the headlines of popular science. Many balloonists depended on support from a larger public. While aeronauts and merchants commercialized balloons in new ways, they also integrated them into the existing superstructure of popularized science. Balloons drew the attention of the general public, savants, the press, the court, and the police. It is possible, however, that the very ubiquity of balloons also served to bring their utility into question. While balloons were undoubtedly entertaining and marketable, many commentators doubted their usefulness to society. Balloons had great potential for commerce as a means of transporting goods.

Popular science gripped the imagination of people all over Europe in the eighteenth century and individuals peppered their conversations with facts, allusions, references, and analogies to scientific discoveries and debates. Many people in general, and women in particular, actively enrolled in popular science courses. Illustrations of the complex set of attitudes towards women attending popular science courses appear within the plethora of comments popularizers make regarding their presence in the audience. The geography of popular science changed and shifted alongside the growing public interest in appropriating natural philosophy. Public lecture courses emerged as a commodity in eighteenth-century France. These courses provided a great number of people with a broad access to science. Examining the locations for the dissemination of enlightened science within the emerging public sphere allows us to trace the changing topography of scientific appropriation over the course of the eighteenth century.

This chapter considers the how the lord lieutenancies covered the costs of the tasks they were entrusted with carrying out. It begins by looking at the overall burden of wartime taxation on the counties, primarily in the form of the lay subsidy, and considering the decline in the yield of the subsidy during the war years. More detailed case studies are then made of the yield of both national and local taxation in Cheshire, Kent and Norfolk, showing that local taxes added significantly to the burden of national taxes. It them discusses local financial management, looking at the procedures put in place in the counties to raise taxes, handle money and account for spending, arguing that the lieutenancies’ financial practices, although rudimentary and informal, tended to work reasonably effectively.

At the end of his long career as engineer with the Scottish Fishery Board, during which he travelled widely in the Highlands, Joseph Mitchell noted the transformation which had occurred in the pattern of landownership in the region since 1820s. The majority of British landowners had to contend with a more difficult economic environment by the 1820s. By the 1850s, the pattern of landownership in the western Highlands and Islands had been revolutionised. Historians of the British landed classes argue that it was exceedingly difficult for landowners to reduce absolute debt levels even through the imposition of strict measures of economy. The expansion of landed debt which occurred in the later eighteenth century Highlands was simply a regional variant of a British phenomenon.