This chapter explores the ways in which slave-trade suppression in the Atlantic Ocean was represented in material culture, and the legacy of this commemoration for historical writing and public memory in the subsequent 200 years. In some instances, the physical objects, generally inscribed and wall-mounted tablets in churches, clearly list and record the activities and successes of the navy's operations against the slave trade off the coast of West Africa. There are several examples in the National Maritime Museum, which has one of the largest collections of material relating to the British involvement in the slave trade in the world. The Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth was perhaps the only museum in the country that dedicated a special exhibition to the suppression of the transatlantic trade. Following early work by Suzanne Miers, historians of slave-trade suppression have taken a greater interest in the imperial context and implications of naval suppression.

This chapter shows that the foundlings did have a large impact on the communities they were sent to for nursing, both on the demographic record and on the local consciousness. The technique of family reconstitution relies on the linkage of baptisms, marriages and burials to create family groups whose demographic behaviour can be studied at various levels of aggregation. Despite the variable quality of the parish registers used, the family reconstitutions of Epsom, Chertsey, Ackworth and Hemsworth have shown the benefits of linking the topic of abandonment and nursing to local demography. The chapter examines two particular topics: firstly, the seasonal patterns and causes of death among infants in the case-study parishes compared with foundlings' patterns of mortality. Secondly, the impact which the foundlings had on the parishes, both in terms of mortality and more widely.

In Great Britain, between the wars there was little ambiguity as to who was at the top of the social hierarchy, though the distinctions do blur for those of lower rank. Social enactments serve to express and legitimate the distinctions and the status roles, behaviours, and social functions that are constituting and constitutive of social identity. For upper-middle-class and upper-class men and women in the 1920s, play rather than work came to represent their sphere of social action. As the middle classes took on more and more charity and welfare work, the upper classes, particularly the women among them, seemed more involved in purely symbolic media displays. For the upper classes of Great Britain, certain types of social behaviour tended to reinforce and legitimate their unique status and its social value within and across class boundaries and in specific historically constraining contexts.

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.