This chapter considers how fin-de-siecle imperial preoccupations, together with an escalating sense of decadence or imminent collapse in the face of rapid social change, related to the experience of the urban everyday and the formation of metropolitan identities. It draws out the connections between imperial aspirations and metropolitan realities in the realm of men's clothing and physical appearance. The chapter illustrates the ways in which the increased consumer activity and the enhanced visibility of sartorial practices characteristic of the period indicated deeper social, sexual and racial tensions. Though the identification of social origins through the quality of clothing was unproblematic, an assumed association between fashion and effeminacy raised particular problems for the communication of masculine values by sartorial means. The chapter suggests the enduring connotations of reticence and introversion that the undemonstrative clothing of the urban desk worker bequeathed to succeeding constructions of male fashionableness and English masculinity.

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on several dimensions of the intellectual and social dynamics by considering developments in metropolitan centres in tandem with those in specific African territories. Most imperial powers, however, were usually unable to control the content and function of Africans' ethnographic self-expression. The book also focuses on the 'internationalism' of the International Institute for African Languages and Cultures. It illustrates that German ethnographers positioned their African research in the interwar period as a way to help Germany to recover its empire and remain intellectually competitive with the other imperial power. The book considers relationships among colonial intelligence gathering, amateur ethnography, and disciplinary formation. It examines how 'ethnography, embedded in an administrative practice, was a legalist act'.

This chapter is an exploration of genteel female subjectivities as developed and expressed in their gardens. It examines the refined woman's occupation of, and influence over, the spaces of the garden, and considers ways in which the processes and products of gardening proved to be valuable elements of her performance. The complex gardens such homemakers were able to create have a groomed air which is rarely seen in the more exuberant tropical garden. For many women their gardens provided an opportunity to grow, or at least attempt to grow, cultivars of species familiar to them from gardens in Britain. Setting up and maintaining a kitchen garden always necessitates a deal of physical effort, the more so in the majority of colonial settings. Growing one's own fruit and vegetables also gave women the opportunity to bring added dvalue to their tables.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers, accordingly, how location mediated the study of natural history in Spain and its empire. It explores scientific practice in a range of different places, from the metropolitan natural history cabinet and botanical garden to the Andean sierra and the Amazonian jungle, discussing the advantages and constraints offered by different spaces. The book also studies the ambivalent position of Spanish American naturalists in the wider scientific project, highlighting differences between the metropolitan and colonial approaches to natural history. It focuses on the Atlantic to examine the practice of natural history in Spain's American colonies. The book also considers the imperial dynamics of Spain's engagement with natural history, examining how the Spanish authorities collected specimens for the Real Jardín Botanico and the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural.

Interethnic relationships in India characterised the history of Europeans from the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. The German religious communities which emerged in India during the nineteenth century point to the complex relationships which existed between the migrants from Europe and indigenous people. The perspectives of Christianity, orientalism and racism, which determine European views and actions in India, led to the development of a series of perceptions which the Germans in India, whether short-term visitors or longer term residents, perpetuated. Many travelogues devoted positive attention to the Indian landscape, although descriptions of cityscapes often contained negative language focusing upon poverty and disease. Heathen and heathenism became part of the everyday discourse of nineteenth-century missionaries. The discourse of the German missionaries in their numerous publications about India rejected and even ridiculed Hinduism and Islam.

Richard Barnfield's epyllic poetics is important, because it hints at literary and classical effects that we do not associate with English narrative poetry of the Elizabethan 1590s. Hellens Rape displays an allusive fluency in Greek material, and a well-developed reflection on the resources of the literary prequel and of the little epic as a genre. This chapter argues that this constellation of interests was there in the poetic culture of the early 1590s. It offers a new perspective on Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander and the development of the poetic tradition known as Elizabethan or 'Ovidian' epyllia. To understand this one needs to reappraise the impact of the Greek epyllion on this period's poetic activities, not least through the innovative and popular classicism of Thomas Watson. This is the exploration the author proposes in the chapter, taking Richard Barnfield's mid-1590s perspective on English poetics as our guide.

The Germans in India need contextualisation against both more general nineteenth-century emigration of Germans and the consequent development of German settlements throughout the world. The experiences of J. Maue point to the two areas of the history of the Germans in India which have left the largest footprints: the experiences of German missionaries; and interment during the First World War. Europeans from several countries played a role in its establishment with help from a variety of European states. While historians have devoted relatively little attention to the German missionaries in India, scholars and scientists have attracted significant consideration. Indra Sengupta has traced the development of the academic fascination of Germans with India back to the eighteenth century. Despite the growth of indology, many German scholars solely relied upon manuscripts in German libraries. Stefan Manz devoted particular attention to businessmen, industrialists and educators in his microstudy of the Germans in Glasgow.