In the back-streets of post-colonial Britain, in Wolverhampton and Smethwick, the language of the colonial frontier could be heard again. The frontiers have functioned not only as sociological facts but also as symbolic systems. For, despite the apparent chaos of the sights which confront us, the historical times inscribed in the city are organised by powerful logistics. Indubitably, the post-colonial city is hybrid: but it is neither random nor indecipherable. The public vistas constructed in the heart of the capital, and in the heart of Britain's other cities, provide the visible legacy of Britain's imperial past. But in a deeper sense the imperial city also carries other legacies which cannot so readily be scrutinised by the naked eye. In design and organisation London, Birmingham, Glasgow all still signify the imperial past, a past memorialised in the built environment.

This chapter aims to put chocolate into its imperial context, and to recognise the position of British confectionery companies such as Rowntree within this context. It begins by studying the ways in which the early history of chocolate has been written in the west and the ideologies underpinning these narratives. Moving on from the academic and popular histories of chocolate, the chapter examines archival evidence and secondary literature to assess the nature of British firms' involvement in the purchasing of cocoa. The chapter explores the daily operations of the Rowntree-Fry-Cadbury buying agency in Nigeria and offers some insight into the experiences of staff employed by the British chocolate manufacturers. It turns to the ways in which cocoa farming itself has been represented. The chapter explains how has the history of cocoa production been told through assumptions about race, class, gender and sexuality.

Chapter 1 discusses the relationship between governance and conflict resolution in India and the EU. It finds a lot of similarities between the two entities especially in terms of their concern for democratic credentials and institutional design, increasingly based on neo-liberal principles. Both India and the EU give primacy to statebuilding in their conflict resolution strategies and emphasise the importance of development and bureaucracy in the process. The authors find that one of the main differences between the two entities is in the security measures they undertake. While the EU has a more relaxed approach to security policy, India puts emphasis on the use of hard security measures, seeing itself as a unitary sovereign actor rather than a quasi-federal entity (as with the EU). This is also one of the most common critiques of India's efforts in producing conflict resolution, along with the inefficiency of its governance and the corruption that surrounds it. The EU can be partly criticised for its selective approach to conditionalities in accession/association process which in some cases even resembles the colonial past of some of the most prominent members of the EU. The authors conclude that the two entities achieve a certain level of governmentality while their success in producing conflict resolution in a purer form of reconciliation and social justice is relatively limited.

Republican priests came in many guises, and the most common type was the ‘Sinn Féin priest’, not the ‘IRA priest’. For most the transformation did not entail a shift to a revolutionary outlook. Instead, it meant changing their political point of view from the demand for home rule to the philosophy of Sinn Féin. This philosophy was the most acceptable aspect of republicanism for the clergy, and many priests moved quickly to gain a stake in it. For many of them, investing in the building up of the republican political movement became a way of exercising control over young men who otherwise might espouse ‘wild’ notions of fighting the British forces. Many clerics contrasted the work of Sinn Féin favourably with the activities of the IRA. But many local IRA units remained inactive and the patterns of clerical involvement with these that had been established in 1919 continued. This chapter looks at the support for the political aspect of the republican movement and for those sections of the IRA that did not become active in the guerrilla struggle.

The Wesley high schools were extraordinarily successful during the early years of the twentieth century. The Colonial Government was investing heavily in education. It encouraged mission schools generally and it was particularly impressed by the Wesley high schools. The Wesleyan schools quickly became academic powerhouses, renowned for progressive teaching, firm discipline and high moral values. In 1911 Buddhist elders requested Rev. Edgar Bradford to start a Wesleyan Anglo-Vernacular School in Salin, a prosperous town south of Pakokku. Bradford obliged and a school was opened in 1912. Wesleyan education in Upper Burma reached its zenith in 1917 when 2,216 pupils had registered in thirty schools. The student disturbances of 1938–39 damaged several successful mission schools in Upper Burma and separated them from their surrounding communities. In 1944, the exiled Governor, Sir Reginald Dorman Smith, promised that Methodist mission schools would be returned to their former glory after the war.

The Arts and Crafts Movement had a lasting effect on British, European and American design, contributing to the great revival of the decorative arts that was evident across Europe from about 1890. The material outcome of the Arts and Crafts Movement, in design terms, was, moreover, less radical than some of its ideals. Liberty & Co. held many educative exhibitions, with accompanying catalogues, of historic and contemporary textiles, many of which highlighted English and Indian silks. Liberty loaned Thomas Wardle some of his exceptional examples of old Indian silks for the 1887 Royal Jubilee Exhibition, in Manchester. A display of Indian silks, dyed and printed by Wardle for Liberty, was shown at The Paris Universal Exposition of 1878. The Leek Embroidery Society became a notable one and Wardle was spurred on by the growing interest in Arts and Crafts embroideries to develop his dyeing of tasar yarn using natural dyes.

This chapter constructs a contextualizing framework for the improvement that was made to the park, examining its social, historical and cultural significance against the backdrop of important political change. The Phoenix Park lies to the north-west of the centre of Dublin, standing, in the nineteenth century, between the city and the countryside beyond. By the mid-century the Phoenix Park had been transformed into an attractive landscaped space with public areas and private, though now visible, official residences. This transformation included a clear definition of the perimeter of the park, which was punctuated with new entrance gates and lodges. The works in the Phoenix Park can be set in the context of the turbulent English-Irish relations during the opening years of the nineteenth century. The chapter focuses on the expression of colonial authority exercised through a metropolitan system of government and how this, in turn, found expression in the urban landscape.

Across the continent of Africa, a web of laws silenced African speech. The country is ruled by a criminal code that makes for intellectual terrorism unsurpassed anywhere else in West Africa. For an African, writing a book, asserting his view of the world in a form that Europe had claimed as its own was in itself a political act. In George Padmore's view, the nineteenth-century 'scramble' for Africa was being re-enacted in Ethiopia and in South Africa, a self-governing dominion that wanted control over nearby British protectorates. In a book published in Britain, no restrictive colonial laws would limit Padmore's ability to subvert British rule. Far from preparing Africans to take their place as equals in the modern industrial world, the British were exploiting African labour and resources to maintain their own position in the international capitalist system.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book considers the places and peoples on the margins of British empire, in Wales and in India. It also tackles the micro-historical question of the role of the marginal individual in determining the limits of freedom within the social and political systems in which they operate. The book explores the particular brand of Welsh Nonconformity that had been forged through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did give a distinct institutional and ideological temper to the Welsh as missionaries. It begins with initials scratched in a Welsh barn at Llifi or Mill. The last Welsh missionaries in the north-east packed their bags in the 1960s, but the legacy of a century and a quarter of evangelisation in the hills has left an indelible mark.

This chapter focuses on the role of the Sudan Intelligence Report (SIR) and Sudan Notes and Records (SNR) as media for ethnographic writing and documentation. The administration of the Sudan in 1899 was governed by the legal fact that the Sudan was an Egyptian colony, but Egypt itself was under British occupation. The Wellcome Research Laboratories reports were infrequent and ended in 1911. In the 1930s Sudan service recruits were sent to Oxford to attend the Tropical African Services Course set up for Colonial Office recruits. Religion in the Sudan was a political issue. The fact that the origins of The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan lay in administrative reports does not detract from its place in the development of Sudanese ethnography. Willis's 'The cult of Deng' was a travesty of ethnography, but indirectly it helped to stimulate the further professionalization of anthropological research and reporting in the Sudan.

This chapter examines the operational structure of hospitals, including jurisdictional oversight, management, and operations of these organizations. While the ecclesiastical powers continually attempted to maintain a supervisory or proprietary role over the hospitals, the lay or semi-lay leaders who were attached to each individual institution had a great deal of power over day-to-day issues. Properties controlled by hospitals were not insignificant, and control over these assets would have been a major interest of the church leaders, the city and the communities. In addition to the major responsibility of caring for poor and ill patients and community members, hospital administrators also managed the resources and income accumulated by the hospital. In addition to the canons, confraternities, consortia, and other lay and semi-religious groups also took part in the administration of hospitals.

This chapter considers what motivated young men to become colonial officials. Historians have tended to argue that a desire for adventure and a sense of imperial duty, partly instilled by public schooling, were most important in convincing young men to work in Africa. However, the low standing in which work as a colonial official was held explains why, until the Colonial and Foreign Office seriously addressed this issue and raised the esteem in which the work was held by young university graduates, London was forced to recruit those who were not felt ideal for the work.

By the beginning of 1919, the Irish Parliamentary Party had all but vanished from the political stage and Sinn Féin had taken over as the main political force in Ireland. The swing from home rule politics to republicanism also occurred among the clergy, although a substantial and influential section remained critical of the republican party. Conservative priests continued to press for solutions that fell short of an independent republic, and emphasised the importance of striving for ‘attainable goals’. The chapter examines this group of priests and analyses how their attitudes developed under the pressure of political reality. It also assesses the impact that these priests had on general clerical opinion.