Horticulture, like natural history, developed in an ad hoc fashion, seeking, collecting, cataloguing and improving specimens for British consumption. Combining a civilising bent with absolute faith in the idea of technological progress, the culture of exotics as explained in the gardening press was intent on adapting alien stock to British conditions. The search for plants for British gardens was not confined to the British empire proper, although formal imperialism certainly facilitated their extraction and transplantation. The mainstay of British and Continental European botanical imperialism in the nineteenth century was the Americas. In the last third of the nineteenth century it became common for horticultural writers to praise British flora over exotic introductions. Cultivating exotics in British gardens was a way of familiarising unknown tropical landscapes which, for most people, would remain otherwise distant, hazy places palpable only through travellers' representations.

To a public servant, Punjab was an exciting and challenging place to be during the period 1881-1921. Even a fairly cursory examination of the doings of the Punjab Commission would reveal that many talented Irishmen had important roles to play in the first seventy years of British rule in Punjab. There were less significant contributions by Irishmen to the history of the area such as King's delineation and surveying of the Durand Line and Robert Warburton's peacekeeping on the Khyber Pass. With regard to India's internal politics at a crucial time of transition, all the Irishmen were prominent and the actions of some, particularly Michel O'Dwyer, were to have profound effects on Indian and Punjabi history. Irishmen made contributions to varied aspects of culture and society in Punjab, from Bruce's authorship of a Baluchi dictionary to Max Macauliffe's work on the sacred books of the Sikhs.

This chapter focuses on various attempts by successive Italian governments to articulate the imperial identities of antiquity together with the contemporary imperial pretensions of the modern Italian kingdom in the reworked landscapes of central Rome. It argues that ideas of empire and romanità (the Roman Spirit) were crucial and continuing elements of Italian efforts to frame a new and national identity from the late nineteenth century. These ideas inevitably found expression in the urban fabric of the Eternal City. In a heated parliamentary debate of 1881 concerning the funding of national architectural projects in Rome, future Prime Minister Francesco Crispi directly challenged those deputies sceptical of the 'ostentation' and expense of national, monumental building. He claimed that 'Governments and institutions must not only concern themselves with the well-being of nations but also have the obligation to perpetuate themselves in marble and monuments'.

This chapter examines the coverage given to the durbar in some Scottish newspapers. It includes The Scotsman, the Edinburgh paper which regarded itself as the Scottish equivalent of The Times, and the Dundee Courier, the Dundee Advertiser and the Dundee Evening Telegraph, together with the coverage in The Times itself. The correspondent of The Times, the distinguished Lovat Fraser who wrote extensively about India, produced At Delhi: An Account of the Delhi Durbar of 1903, which was published in Bombay by The Times of India. The 1911 durbar was targeted much more precisely at the Indian nationalist movement and perhaps also at the public in Britain and the Empire with a possible spin-off into the international arena. It may be argued that the Assemblage and the durbars had a considerable influence on all imperial ceremonials.

The history of Thomas Wardle's company highlights factors common to many of the small firms that made up the English silk industry. He became the spokesman for the English silk industry and earned a reputation as one of the most expert dyers and printers in England. Some of his greatest achievements include a greater understanding and use of India's wild silks and the revival of the Kashmir silk industry, alongside the production of beautiful textiles. There were innumerable historical connections between England and India through the textile trades, which were open to creative enterprise and initiative. When Indian tasar thread was tested as a sewing silk in England it was given a full trial by manufacturers, one of whom described it as 'simply perfection' and a 'serious influence on the China and Canton trade'.

In 1895, New Zealand settler Edward Reeves boarded a Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand (USSCo.) steamer for a month-long excursion around islands in the western Pacific. In addition to the more circumscribed trade routes, the USSCo. was a key player in the long-distance mail routes. The USSCo. recognised that participation in the mail lines furthered a number of interests over and above improved regional and global communications. Trade and tourism both stood to benefit from the addition of regular connections across the Pacific to North America. The land bridge across North America with its two trans-shipment ports meant that the transpacific routes were not competitive in the transport of migrants and general freight. As steamer operations exercised regional port rivalries for political and economic influence, there were also concurrent tensions about the relationship between colonial maritime developments and overarching imperial concerns.

As Volunteers on the run began to form flying columns from the spring of 1920 onwards and as the British government started to deploy Black and Tans and Auxiliaries to aid the hard-pressed RIC, violence escalated in certain parts of the country. For priests in areas where local Volunteers remained impervious to this process of radicalisation, things remained much the same. But in regions where Volunteers became guerrilla fighters, priests were faced with a dilemma. Most distanced themselves from the fighting men and condemned violence: until the end of 1920 condemnations rose as the levels of violence increased. This chapter examines priests who threw their lot in with the radicals and gave support to the IRA campaign. Some of these provided material aid by giving shelter, concealing arms or by informing on the enemy. Others gave spiritual aid by ministering to men on the run. The chapter offers an assessment of the political significance of these acts of spiritual assistance.

This chapter explores the pursuit of the natural sciences on the imperial periphery. Naturalists working on the margins of the Spanish Empire recited a litany of woes. They depicted themselves as beleaguered and isolated scholars, battling valiantly against apathy, inertia and outright hostility. The image of the self-taught scholar arises with some regularity in depictions of Spanish American savants. If Alexander von Humboldt's comments typified the European reaction to meeting a self-taught Spanish American savant, then Francisco Jose de Caldas' response to the same encounter indicates the creole naturalist's desire for guidance, reassurance and recognition. European savants admired their colonial colleagues for their ingenuity and determination, whilst creoles looked to Europe for acceptance, instruction and vindication. The bleak depictions of untutored, marginalised and solitary savants propagated by creoles and sometimes uncritically accepted by their European biographers thus require some degree of moderation, and may have been primarily psychological in nature.

Ireland and India in the late 1920s were tempestuous imperial appendages, both still in the Empire, while aggressively pulling on their reins. Indian Political Intelligence (IPI) was under the impression that the students were 'particularly anxious to revive the Indian Irish Independence League (IIIL), which ceased to function soon after the outbreak of war in 1939'. The many similarities between both Ireland and India's nationalist struggles were acknowledged formally in 1932 with the formation of the IIIL by Vithalbhai Javerbhai Patel (V. J. Patel), Indulal KanayalalI Yajnik, Mary Woods, Maud Gonne MacBride and Charlotte Despard. Throughout his time in Dublin Patel was encouraging the Irish population to take up the boycotting of British goods that was proving so successful in India. Margaret Cousins became the first non-Indian member of the Indian Women's University at Poona.

Flying for pleasure and adventure over long distances in the British Empire was part of the individualisation of imperial travel. British-manufactured light aircraft played their part in the late imperial movement. Typical of the young, moneyed and leisured aerial adventurers, Sir Robert Clayton flew his Moth to Egypt in 1932 to take part in an official desert survey. Whether for moral support, company or security, many people embarking on private adventure flights did so with a partner. Partnered flying across the Empire attracted less attention in the 1920s and 1930s than did long-distance journeys flown solo. Amy Johnson was the first, but neither the only nor the last woman to soar solo between the extremities of the British Empire. As in Johnson's case, the clamour surrounding Jean Batten was astonishing. Both women's heroic reception contrasted with the chill which Lorres Bonney felt after her epic flight.

This chapter discusses the experience of peacebuilding in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya. The authors analyze the potential of the Indian democratic governance in dealing with conflict in this part of the country. Their findings come as a result of the fieldwork undertaken in Khasi, Garo and Jaintia Hills which aimed at scrutinizing the claims on the 'peacefulness' of this state. The chapter finds the main fault line in peacebuilding in Meghalaya in the lack of consideration of various patterns of ethnicity issues, and in putting too strong emphasis on underdevelopment and political economy. The authors claim that a comprehensive, long-term approach is needed to successfully rehabilitate former insurgents which should be followed by adjusted development policies, replacing short-term monetary compensations which only foster insurgency.

This chapter examines some aspects of the socio-economic experiences of white colonial women in Barbados during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. White women in Barbadian slave plantation society were social agents whose active participation in the Barbadian economy made them significant actors. Barbadian property deeds of the plantation era are replete with examples of property transactions carried out by single, married, and widowed women. Several factors contributed to the emergence of white female property owners and entrepreneurs in Barbados. Most white women on Barbados in the early days of settlement arrived as indentured servants. The alienation of married women from property rights was rooted in and reinforced by the prevailing ideology of female economic dependence on men. Inheritance laws dictated the extent and terms under which women owned and controlled property.