This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers some questions in relation to the ways in which the aesthetics of national identities promoted the idea of nation that encompassed the doctrine of popular freedom and liberty from external constraint. It provides a discrete investigation into these issues with particular reference to the interaction of indigenous cultural identity and empire, and how this impacted on the making of 'Britishness' in all its complexities. The book examines the politics of land-ownership as played out within the arena of the oppositional forces of the Irish Catholics and the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy. It reviews to the construction of a modern British imperial identity as seen in the 1903 durbar exhibition of Indian art. The book presents the discussion of cultural identities and the aesthetics of Britishness in the twentieth century.

The complex mixtures of myths, legends and biblical elements helped rival chroniclers to fashion tales of origins that Shakespeare would revisit, exploring alternatives of cultural and family hybridity. French and English medieval monarchs were one large family, divided by common sources, territories and ancestors. Chroniclers and poets supported their respective claims with millenarian or messianic themes, mythological epics and popular legends, often using the same ones. Gautier (Walter) Map for the Plantagenets, the monk Hélinand de Froidmont for the Capetians, tell the story of the Mesnie Hellequin, an incarnation of the Celtic god Herne from whom the kings of France and England inherited their power to heal scrofula. British history since time immemorial was one of repeated conquests and usurpations. Pressed to justify frequent dynastic changes, English chroniclers often urged their kings to emulate the French monarchs, St Louis or Charles V the Wise.

Arriving in South Asia on 8 July 1947, less than six weeks before the 15 August deadline for Britain's withdrawal, Cyril Radcliffe set to work clarifying the outlines of his task. Soon after his arrival, he met with the Congress and League nominees who would serve with him as boundary commissioners. Mountbatten leapt into damage-control mode, emphasizing that the boundary commission was independent and would interpret the mandate to consider 'other factors' on its own. Like most of the maps presented to the commission, Congress's maps emphasized the distribution of population. Based on census figures, creatively interpreted, as well as certain elements of infrastructure, they argued that all of central Punjab and even areas of western Punjab should go to India. Sikh map uses blocks of colour to differentiate Muslim from Hindu/Sikh majority areas. The Muslim League submission concentrated on showing Muslim majority areas.

This chapter examines the range of national traits associated with the Irish and the Scots who settled in New Zealand. National characteristics are assigned to the Irish and the Scots, often emanating from visitors to Ireland and Scotland. The national characteristic of frugality served as a way to connect all Scots, regardless of origin, gender, and class, and seemingly suggested a Scottish ability to succeed financially. If clannishness was at times more likely to be associated with Highland origins, thriftiness, the most frequently cited national characteristic of the Scots, was linked to the entire Scottish national group. Superstition was a charge associated with the Irish but was restricted to an Irish Catholic national character. Comments from those outside the Scottish ethnic group convey recognition of a strong networking element to Scottish migration and settlement throughout New Zealand. The Irish ethnic press also engaged in good-natured banter about Scottish fiscal prudency.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is about parents, power, and children and, in particular, the legitimacy of parents' power over their children. It talks about the prevailing or dominant approach to the analysis of parental power. The book proposes an alternative, pluralist view of paternalism. It shows that even paternalism properly understood is of limited application when we evaluate parental power. The book addresses a number of ethical questions through practical reason and practical judgement. It looks at an example of how political philosophers tend to approach moral conflicts. The book argues for an approach influenced in part by John Rawls's account of reasonableness and Thomas Nagel's account of 'public justification in a context of actual disagreement'.

After losing sight of the Welsh mountains and Ireland, Thomas and Ann Jones headed for the Cape of Good Hope and on across the Indian Ocean to the Bay of Bengal. As days became weeks, John Roberts plotted the Jamaica in its imaginary course to Calcutta. Lieutenant-General Hay Macdowall, who had gone down with the Lady Jane Dundas, had been returning to England in the aftermath of rebellion and disaffection in the Madras Presidency. The burial registers at St John's Church in Calcutta had numerous entries for passengers and crew who had sickened and died by the end of their voyage. In a sense, the India they had constructed was unspecific, not anchored to the detail of this particular time or that particular place. At another level, however, the Thomas Jones's voyage of discovery became an expedition that confirmed and validated the real India.

This chapter explores the material tokens of ethnic identity for the Irish and the Scots in New Zealand that they or the others perceived as Irish or Scottish. Scottish music and dancing were also connected with formal societies such as the Caledonian Society. Irish music took a prominent role in various festivals in New Zealand. Dress and music were linked in Andrew Kinross' poem for the second annual gathering of the Highland Society of Southland. If migrants from Scotland and Northern Ireland were seen to share the festivity of Halloween, New Year was the festive occasion which set Scots apart from their fellow migrants. The connection of food with the celebration of important festivals and events has been identified by Mary C. Waters in her study of the descent group in the United States.

J.J. Kelso shared with his fellow child rescuers the belief that all contact between the child and its parents should be brought to an end. However, increasingly, this orthodoxy came to be challenged both from poor law officials and the institutions, which had always created a greater space for parents to continue to take some responsibility for their children. Kelso insisted that his Children's Aid Societies followed a similar practice of Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC), aiming to preserve the home wherever possible. Ontario's first response to Kelso's agitation was the 1888 Children's Protection Act, which required local authorities to assume maintenance costs of wards and facilitated the use of foster care. By the early years of the twentieth century local authorities were setting standards in child care which voluntary societies struggled to meet.

General Ne Win was ruthlessly radical in 1962. Civil society in Upper Burma was a shambles. People in Monywa detested local politicians. They were interested only in pleasing 'big men' in Rangoon. The Revolutionary Council alienated Buddhist leaders when it tried to impose its own moral code. The press had been relatively free under U Nu, but after 1962 newspapers were heavily censored. Burmanisation was a euphemism for xenophobia. The 300,000 ethnic Chinese in Burma fared little better. They were compromised by the activities of the Burmese and Chinese Communist Parties. The Working People's Daily reported that 9,986 foreigners had left Burma during the first six months of 1964. On 19 May 1964 Reed went to the bank and discovered that all Methodist assets had been frozen. By April 1964 Bishop was the last 'front- line' Methodist missionary in Upper Burma and the last European of any sort in Monywa.

The repercussions of scandal in the Welsh mission had personal ramifications for Thomas Jones and political ones for British authority in the Khasi hills. Jeffrey Cox has suggested that while both European and Indian women are often absent from missionary histories, in reality 'missionary' usually meant a married couple. Ann Jones and Mary Lewis played similar yet at times contradictory roles as missionary wives and as missionaries themselves. The public role of Ann Jones and Mary Lewis as missionary wives was seen as properly restricted to efforts in female education. The Welsh missionaries had initiated a programme of native education for the Khasis, but Cherrapunji also offered its salubrious location as the setting for an educational institution for the children of Europeans. The propriety of marriage was tightly circumscribed among the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, as with other Nonconformist denominations in Britain.