This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. The book considers the conditions that should be attached to the 'right to parent', and, in particular to, the arguments for parental licences, the monitoring of parents, and the provision of parenting support programmes. It also considers one area where parents exercise power over their children, namely informed consent decisions for children's research participation and medical treatment. The book argues that paternalism as a concept was not sufficient to account for the power exercised by parents. Paternalism is insufficient to account for the legitimacy of parents' power, as there are non-paternalistic forms of parental power. The book argues with the assumption that political philosophers can answer complex moral questions without giving very much consideration to the complexities of the questions raised. Such arguments about political philosophy do or should have generality of theoretical claims.

This chapter discusses a wide array of policy developments in mid-Elizabethan Ireland including drives to colonise parts of Ulster and Munster, to establish new systems of crown taxation, to extend the institutions of the English state into the more remote parts of Ireland and to spread the Protestant faith. In doing so it argues that there was a major expansion of the English state in Ireland at this time. This led to an increasing need to find new ways of financing the state apparatus there and the implementation of policies designed to bring more remote parts of the country under control, for instance by establishing colonies in north-east Ulster. It also argues that there was an intensifying of the drive to protestantise the country at this time, in large part owing to the excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570. Throughout the ‘reform’ treatises written at this time are examined in order to fully examine how these policies were being debated and promoted by officials in Ireland.

This chapter presents examples to illustrate what Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow have identified as the viewing of Africa as a 'land in amber' and a place of spiritual refreshment. Southern and eastern African landscapes were increasingly identified as arenas for hunting towards the end of the nineteenth century. The landscape of Africa was perceived as uncorrupted by the taint of human involvement. Henry Butler's ambivalent attitude to the change that he experienced within the space of a few months' travel was replicated in others' opinions of Africa, its landscapes and peoples. Links between hunting and imperial power are clearly much more complicated than a simple inverse proportional relationship, but the effects of exploration and empire had major and lasting consequences for the landscapes and fauna of southern Africa. Free from the hierarchies, restraints and social customs of Britain, the wide-open spaces of empire promised what was denied in Europe.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. The book constructs an alternative narrative of empire from the local margins and assesses the centrality of imperial identity to those living in urban communities between 1870 and 1939. In examining the importance and relationship between local identity, civic elites and the working class, the book explores why men volunteered for imperial wars during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The civic platform alone, however, was insufficient in encouraging popular local patriotism as working-class communities were also developing their own urban identity. The Boer War came during a time in which working people began to carve out a civic identity through sporting teams and to take an intense interest in neighbourhood affairs. The appeal for local volunteers saw important synergies develop between civic pride and an imperial war that struck a chord in working-class communities.

This chapter provides an analysis of paternalism by exploring the way that the concept of paternalism has been utilised in the 'caretaker thesis' and the 'liberation thesis'. To understand the caretaker thesis, it is helpful to start with the general liberal argument concerning legitimate power. The chapter examines Onora O'Neill's Kantian defence of the caretaker thesis according to which the fundamental moral principle is the requirement to respect autonomy. O'Neill denies that there is a moral conflict when parents interfere with their children's liberty in acting paternalistically. According to the caretaker thesis, parental power makes up for the deficits in children's agency, and for that reason, children should be subjected to standard institutional paternalism. The chapter argues that children with the capacity for liberty of action are owed a right to liberty even when they are incompetent and/or cannot execute decisions.

Passenger fares on Imperial's single-class services clearly played a role in determining who flew, and how flying served and projected Empire. Imperial Airways kept statistical records fastidiously. Flight incident reports show men out numbering women on Imperial's long-haul flights, but the ratios were not static. British women passengers were generally given only vague identity if they were unmarried. Foreign royalty were among the most celebrated passengers in the publicity Imperial gave to celebrity passengers. The Indian air route had its share of notable passengers. The Vicereine flew back to India on Imperial after four months' home leave in 1933. Professionals with other paid careers also used Imperial Airways to move about. Surgeons, scientists and scholars were among the first converts to commercial air transport. People connected with Imperial Airways and those conducting aviation negotiations or doing airline business also travelled about the Empire by air.

Women were initially employed in the mid-nineteenth century to act as shipboard representatives for female emigrants, to aid them with seasickness and other intimate concerns. In the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand (USSCo.) there were limited opportunities for women to work at sea attending to female passengers. The USSCo. complex stitched communities together across shipboard and shore. On large passenger liners the providore department was usually the largest afloat, staffed by a team of stewards, stewardesses, cooks and other kitchen staff. The stewardesses of the Wairarapa could be honoured in photographs and monuments because they followed the predetermined script of appropriate femininity on board. In her work on American whaling men, Margaret Creighton has examined the ship as an institution of masculine indoctrination. The feminisation of ships has a long history in the West, first referenced in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1375.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on impetus for Empire aviation, and its geo-political, commercial and technical frameworks. British pilots were not the only ones to make private long-distance flights between the two world wars, but their accomplishments were seized on as signs of national strength. The influential and elite of Britain and Empire revelled in the heavenly perspectives which flying offered, and its sensations of power, speed and efficiency. Imperial Airways projected an idealised Britain to the Empire, and interpreted and refracted the Empire to Britons. The landing grounds used by British aircraft were safe islands in a foreign world. Leaving more traces of affection than fidelity, the reality and significance of flying imperially passed into memory after 1939.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that discrimination, even when experienced, was not a precondition for the ethnic consciousness felt by and ascribed to the Irish and Scots in New Zealand. It explores the aspects that insiders and outsiders perceived as distinctive of Scottish and Irish (Catholic and Protestant) ethnicities in New Zealand. The book examines the issue of language and accent of the Irish and Scots. It also examines the material tokens of Irish and Scottish ethnicity, traversing a range of elements including music, festivals, food and drink, and dress. The book acknowledges the existence and continuity of visible signs of ethnic affiliation, what has been termed a 'constellation of symbols, rituals, and rhetoric'. It also explores the extent to which Irish identity was conceptualised in political terms while Scottish identity was cultural.

This chapter traces the cultural and social history of mental illness in the settler imagination. It investigates the idea of Africa as a site of madness and considers the relationship between degeneracy and deviance. These themes were not incidental to settler culture but major recursive tropes. The European mentally ill in Kenya were certainly marginal but madness and transgression were not.

State attempts at the moral surveillance and regulation of settlers began, in fact, even before they departed from Britain. The opening of the colony to free settlement and commercial development demanded the end of the old system, and in 1823 a free market in the key staples of wheat and meat was introduced. In 1830, one of the most powerful, and invasive, mechanisms for the regulation of free settlers was created in the form of the Assignment Board. Publicans and innkeepers, individuals who had breached state regulations and ex-convicts were, for example, banned from receiving assigned servants. William Sorell's inability to create a coherent site for the delineation and regulation of 'respectable' formed one part of Anthony Fenn Kemp's complaints against him. Sorell's departure and George Arthur's arrival marked a key turning point in the relationship between the state and the regulation of colonial gender relations and sexual morality.