This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the spatial dynamics of power with respect to the contested regulation of sexuality. It explains, most metropolitan purity movements were English rather than British, and 'English' was generally invoked in purity rhetoric and used to describe 'national' activist organisations. The book explores the power of geographical imagination for activism and criticism to bring a new dimension to histories of empire and sexuality. It contributes to broader postcolonial projects, particularly those concerned with an analysis of imperial power, a critique of Eurocentric ways of seeing and the development of a postcolonial geography. The book presents free-standing exploration of spatial politics and of the spatiality of imperialism, which explores Josephine Butler's claim that geographical perspectives may open up new fields of understanding and political action.

With conflict between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs reaching unprecedented levels in the mid-1940s, British leaders felt compelled to move towards decolonization. Punjab had played an outsized role in Indian affairs since the nineteenth century, even though it was one of the British raj's last acquisitions. The Muslim League exerted relatively little influence in the province until the 1940s. The history of the demand for a separate Muslim state is too complex to address fully here, but it is important to note that Muslim League statements never specified where Pakistan's boundaries would fall. British efforts to map South Asia were limited by British perceptions of the land under their control. The Survey's maps did not capture the diversity of relationships, within and across these boundaries that would be disrupted by partition. As a result, Survey maps were useful only up to a point.

This chapter deals with instances where Indian and Irish left-wing radicals interacted, resulting in increased cause for concern on the part of the British authorities. It is important to note that during 1920 certain British Conservative politicians were consumed by anti-Bolshevik intentions. The thought of communist intervention in India either directly or in the form of support for internal unrest was a major concern for the British authorities in the 1920s. M. N. Roy was a staunch communist during the period in question, a stance which culminated in his support of the allied war effort during the Second World War. In June of 1920 Roddy Connolly had been involved in the outbreak of the Irish Civil War on the anti-Treaty side. In September 1921, with Comintern backing, Connolly would transform the Socialist Party of Ireland (SPI) into the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI), purging it of its more moderate members.

Pilots, politicians and propagandists all publicised the possibility and desirability of imperial flying. British newspapers and magazines, several radio broadcasts, and vigorous book publishing for children and adults contributed accounts about imperial aviation and flying experiences. The encyclopaedic Air Annual of the British Empire represented specialised serial publishing about Empire aviation most voluminously. The world air route maps published periodically in The Times and in Aeroplane and Flight, as well as in aeronautical books, transmitted a powerful message about tenancy of the sky and about imperial communications. In the early 1930s the market for books about British aviation appeared inexhaustible. The BBC's Radio Times billed the programme as a sound-panorama of the development of flight since the Middle Ages. Empire air transport reappeared on the National Service in 1938 as part of a series of four radio programmes entitled 'Lines on the Map'.

Many silk manufacturers and design theorists who were consistent in their thinking and who wanted to make beautiful things in an ethical manner followed the ethics of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The worldwide expansion of silk manufacturing did prevent raw silk prices from falling, although ominously the centre of the European raw silk market moved from London to Lyons. The terms of the treaty regarding the silk trades allowed French silk goods into England free of charge while English silk goods were to be subject to a duty in France not exceeding 30 per cent ad valorem. In England silk was classed as 'small manufactures' compared to the thriving cotton and woollen industries. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, English silk manufacturing saw its highest achievements and its most serious problems; by the last quarter of the nineteenth century it was an industry in decline.

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'.