Everyone suffered some pain when Burma lurched from past into present, and the prize was plucked from old sparring partners. Democracy is the most potent issue in modern Myanmar. Many Burmans and Western liberals regard democratisation as the prerequisite for development. The survival of the Methodist Church in Buddhist Upper Burma is little short of a miracle. There were only slightly fewer members in the Mandalay District in 2006 than there were in 1900. After 1966 it became impossible for the Church to proselytise, and it has survived only by retaining existing members. Missionary voices rarely challenged government policies either in colonial times or in Independent Burma. Maitrii Aung-Thwin defines Burma's past, present and future as a complicated potion of personalities, intellectual influences, culture and political forms. Charney is right to identify Buddhist monks as the custodians of 'Burmese tradition and the core of Burmese intellectual life'.

In mid-January 1848, Thomas Jones opened the letter from John Roberts informing him of his dismissal as a representative of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS). At Cherrapunji, George Inglis presented the extraordinary gift of a thousand oranges to Daniel Wilson. The late eighteenth-century British collectors in the Sylhet district, Lindsay and Thackeray, had made their fortunes out of the lime trade. The Company's commercial ascendancy in the region had been assured after the British victory over the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey in 1757. Thomas Jones sent a petition to the government of Bengal, against the nepotism of the Cherrapunji Court and incompatibility of the lime and orange interests of Harry and George Inglis with the dispensation of justice across the hills. In November 1848 the government ordered Scottish-born John Dunbar, the Commissioner of Dacca, to proceed to Cherrapunji to investigate the charges against Harry Inglis.

This chapter assesses the changing bedrock upon which officials’ sense of confidence in their ability to govern African societies rested. A desire for knowledge was not an inherent product of the colonial encounter, but the result of a particular metropolitan mentality. Officials from military backgrounds were more inclined to rely upon force and the use of prestige, and more at ease with their not knowing everything about those they governed, than civilian officials. For officials from civilian backgrounds, the process of collecting information about Africa meant that imperial authority increasingly rested on real power, rather than symbolic power. This underpinned the confidence that meant civilian officials accepted the post-1918 expansion of the imperial remit more readily. There were distinct limits as to how far experiences of the continent were able to re-shape officials’ attitudes towards imperial confidence.

The original intent of the East India Company (EIC) to prevent missionary work throughout India was clearly eroded by the amendment to the Charter in 1813. The Serampore missionaries were the benchmark of all Indian missions. In 1804 Carey wrote to John Ryland, one of the founding members of the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS), detailing the modus operandi of the Baptist mission. In early 1813, Krishna Chandra Pal and Gorachund, another native Christian, set off for the eastern region of British Bengal. In December 1813, after Pal's return to Serampore, Carey secured the services of a pundit to undertake the Khasi translation of the gospels, believing him to be 'the only one in that nation who could read and write'. Direct missionary intervention in the Khasi Hills, sustained primarily by the Serampore Baptists.

Edward Elgar's imperial works including The Pageant of Empire and The Crown of India were among the most regularly broadcast pieces of his through the 1920s and early 1930s. A particularly illuminating perspective on Elgar's contributions to the Pageant is gained from considering the musical context in which they were heard. The grand scale of the Wembley Pageant, portraying the expansion of the British Empire and showcasing thousands of actors and animals, was unprecedented. Kurt Koenigsberger argues that, with this vast spectacle at its core, the British Empire Exhibition 'marks the belated culmination of nineteenth-century exhibitionary practices'. Removed from their original context, the Pageant of Empire songs and the Empire March have been largely disregarded by commentators since the 1920s.

Before the 1970s, Anglo-American anthropology was in certain respects unwilling to confront the colonial genealogies of its own privileged categories and canonical works. However, French colonial administrators and ethnologists in the early twentieth century were frank and unapologetic about their mutual implication. This chapter explores the circular and mutually reinforcing dynamics between professional anthropology and new technologies of administration that emerged after World War I in France and West Africa. It analyses the way that ethnology and administration were entwined disciplines that produced knowledge of native societies as objects to be protected and transformed. Local administrators wrote fieldwork monographs that were formative for metropolitan science while new native policies concerned with protecting yet improving indigenous social institutions incorporated the methods and insights of professional ethnologists. Together they created a shared field of colonial ethnology which included practical science and scientific government.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows that there was a great deal of 'othering' by Europeans, not just of Africans and Asians, but of other Europeans. It demonstrates the British were objects of admiration, envy and competition in Germany and the Netherlands, and points to the Anglophobia that fueled much of France's imperialism. The book confirms that historians cannot think about modern British history and culture without thinking about the empire. It explains the case of modern Dutch imperialism, if one looks beyond outward appearances, the depth, scope and shape of pro-empire sentiment come into better view. The book shows how Germany's colonies shaped the metropole profoundly, manifested obviously at Volkerschauen, subtly in the sciences, and at unexpected moments such as a textile workers strike.

At first, pilots set height and speed records unintentionally, but later they had to pursue them deliberately. Two such record-setting flying events in the British Empire caught the public imagination in the 1930s. One event was the first flight over Mount Everest. The second event was an air race from Britain to Australia. The organisation of the air 'assault' on Everest, and its execution, eclipsed the ponderous fourth British Everest overland climbing expedition that set out in 1933. The England-Australia air race over 11,000 miles in October 1934 was held in conjunction with celebrations to mark the centenary of the founding of the Australian state of Victoria and its capital, Melbourne. Organised in London by the Royal Aero Club, the race was a logistical triumph, not least because of the international diplomacy involved in securing rights of over-flying and landing.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the ways in which the ideas informed the attempts to construct a hierarchical and gendered social order in the new settlements of Van Diemen's Land. It also explores the ways in which a host of tensions began systematically to rework the relationships between state and society during the 1810s and early 1820s as growing numbers of free settlers began to arrive. The book examines the ways in which the family form was reconceived during the 1820s and 1830s as a mechanism of discipline and authority. It also examines the ways in which the gendered practices and ideas played themselves out on a bigger, particularly as a series of liberal and humanitarian critiques of the Australian colonies began to be more fully developed during the 1830s and 1840s.

In addressing the issue of informed consent, this chapter examines the legitimacy of the exercise of parents' power over their children. It begins with the legal status of minors and, in particular, the legal rights of minors to make informed consent decisions. The chapter investigates some important legal, policy, and service issues concerning informed consent. The discussion of legal, policy, and service issues, empirical findings about children's competence, professional judgements of competence, and the impact of parenting on children's competence, indicate where conceptual clarification is greatly needed. The chapter also examines empirical evidence relating to children's informed consent. It explores a number of central conceptual issues and addresses a number of ethical questions concerning children's informed consent. The chapter focuses on children's competence in joint decision making. It also focuses on the concepts of competence and voluntariness.

This chapter explores the effect of the specific material interests of soap manufacturers, their consumers, and the general political climate of the period on the representation of black people. The advertisements during the period of conquest and occupation cannot be regarded as representing a coherent ideological position on colonial policy by soap companies. It highlights the shifting attitudes to Africa by merchants and traders during this period. It is during the period of 'pacification and elaboration of systems of administration', that conglomeration began to affect the soap trade, with Lever Brothers in particular acquiring a number of smaller firms. Soap companies were one of the key groups to exploit the image of Africans in their advertising during the late nineteenth century. Their expanding industry was dependent on the newly exported vegetable oils from West Africa.

In the poetic collection Hesperides, Robert Herrick includes the brief verse 'To his booke', in which he addresses his own literary creation. Apsyrtus is the younger brother of the classical sorceress and infanticide Medea. Although he plays a relatively minor part in Medea's story, Apsyrtus is also foregrounded in one of William Shakespeare's only direct references to Medea's myth, in 2 Henry VI. In the essay 'Why did Medea kill her brother Apsyrtus?' Jan N. Bremmer surveys ancient versions of Medea's fratricide. He shows how the tale gradually evolved from the third century BCE version of Apollonius Rhodius to the much more common classical story, referenced by Euripides, and subsequently by Ovid and Seneca. Unsurprisingly, the fratricide directly contravened early modern as well as classical thinking about women's obedience and, particularly, about the 'ideal' relationship between brothers and sisters.

According to the translated text in this chapter, the unnamed magistra was born into a ministerial family belonging to the archbishops of Salzburg. She belonged to one of the most important Benedictine communities in the south-east of the German kingdom: the double monastery of monks and nuns at Admont in the march of Styria (today a part of Austria). During the twelfth century, the male community played an active role in reform circles, and many Admont monks were sent to other Benedictine houses across the south-east of the German kingdom to improve monastic practices in other communities. The chapter offers its readers a deeply personal account of the anonymous nun's life, written by another Admont nun who seems to have known her quite well.