This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins with the romantic construction of chocolate, and attempts to understand the actual human endeavours, and systematic exploitation, which have made chocolate fantasies possible. It examines a different stage in the cocoa commodity chain: from the farming of cocoa beans, to the site of chocolate manufacture, to the marketing of the finished goods. The book tackles imperial histories of chocolate and how British firms, including Henry Isaac Rowntree, constructed their own romantic narratives of the 'discovery' and development of chocolate production. It is devoted to women's experiences of cocoa farming in British colonies and former colonies. The book explores the ways in which Rowntree created and reflected particular understandings of York and of empire, through media such as their in-house journal, Cocoa Works Magazine (CWM).

Ahmednagar became the most enduring and emblematic camp in India during the Great War, and also held the largest number of prisoners. Despite the tiny numbers of Germans in India compared with the larger communities in other parts of the Empire, internment camps would emerge there as part of an imperial system of incarceration. The largely integrated German communities of Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa faced official and unofficial Germanophobia which gripped the British Empire. Despite the violent nationalism created by the First World War, Christian brotherhood ultimately survived in India. Most male members of the German community in India in 1914 experienced internment, although its nature remained humane. The Foreigners Ordinances and the Trading with the Enemy laws dealt with German firms in India. Following the legislation against enemy businesses, the Basel Trading Company required its directors of German origin to resign and then face internment.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses through which the Barbadian authorities strove to regulate and control the sexual freedoms of poor white Barbadian women, whose perceived sexual and social unruliness distinguished them as a potential threat to white hegemony. It charts the gradual transformation of Sarah Hicks Williams, a young Northern-born woman and supporter of abolitionism into a staunch defender of Southern slavery. The book explores Barbadian women's property interests, though the focus is primarily on women as slaveholders. It explores the significance of property ownership in shaping gendered social relations in the South, how those social relations structured white women's access to and ownership of property, and in particular, white women's ownership of slaves as property.

In colonial and post-colonial studies Ireland is presented as a unique phenomenon, as it can be viewed, paradoxically, as both 'imperial' and 'colonial'. The book concentrates on the latter characteristic as the 'imperial' has received more attention than the 'colonial' in the recent historical studies in relation to Ireland and India exclusively. It illuminates the role of figures and organisations previously considered somewhat obscure in both Indian and Irish history. The book shows how effective League Against Imperialism (LAI) was as a means by which Indo-Irish connections were established and flourished in the inter-war period. It demonstrates how the Comintern policy of attempting to solicit broad-based support in the colonies by advocating tolerance towards the noncommunist Left and colonial nationalist movements, and its abandonment was followed by the LAI's rapid decline. The book reveals a significant amount about Indian Political Intelligence (IPI), an agency almost entirely overlooked in intelligence historiography.

Chapter six discuss the notion of 'the local' through the history of governance in colonial and post-colonial India. The authors focus on ability of liberal governance to adapt to local culture. They discuss Ilan Kapoor's integration of postcolonial theory with debates on development and use this to identify what could make the liberal peacebuilders more open towards the idea of greater inclusion of local voices. The authors suggest that emphasis should be put on socio-cultural sensitivity. This entails that the international interveners should familiarize themselves with the context as much as possible. They invite critical analysis of the main issues at stake, which would be aimed against relevant theoretical debates. The authors also call for attention to the distribution of resources that are usually limited in conflict settings. They conclude that as long as subjective norms and interests of the peacebuilders are harmonised with local culture and practices - not creating tensions - they can be legitimately promoted.

This chapter proposes a revision of our understanding of political discourse in late Elizabethan Ireland and public policy there more generally. Previously it has largely been contended that officials in Ireland at this time began to believe that the country was beyond ‘reform’ and that a harsh brand of military subjugation would have to be employed to create a tabula rasa on which an English society could be constructed. Converse to this the chapter argues that officials were actually deeply critical of Tudor policy in Ireland itself at this time. Accordingly they argued that what was needed was a more conciliatory approach to the governance of the country and reformation of the gross levels of militarisation and corruption which had become endemic there. These views were clearly laid out in a literature of complaint which emerged in the ‘reform’ treatises being written at this time. The chapter is primarily an exploration of this literature of complaint. It also examines the treatises attendant upon the inception of the Munster Plantation. Finally, it examines attitudes towards the problem posed by Ulster in the 1580s and early 1590s and queries what policies were promoted for the province in the years preceding the outbreak of the Nine Years War in 1594.

This chapter argues that, contrary to which some historians have argued, opposition to change was not an inherent feature of the colonial state. Indeed, officials wanted to alter a good deal about Africa. Officials’ attitudes to change were governed by a number of factors in addition to a simple analysis as to what they felt would be of benefit to Africans. In their endorsement or rejection of certain ideas and policies, officials were influenced by calculations as to the likely impact of these ideas and policies on their ability to improve their own lot. Furthermore, responses to change were also a contingent outcome of certain struggles for power and autonomy within the ranks. Officials’ faith in their own capacity for supervising and managing their localities meant they felt that if they were able to prevent the incursions of others into their district, they could work as the arbiters of stable development. Consequently, officials were not haunted by an inherent sense of conflict between stasis and change.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. The book considers the conditions that should be attached to the 'right to parent', and, in particular to, the arguments for parental licences, the monitoring of parents, and the provision of parenting support programmes. It also considers one area where parents exercise power over their children, namely informed consent decisions for children's research participation and medical treatment. The book argues that paternalism as a concept was not sufficient to account for the power exercised by parents. Paternalism is insufficient to account for the legitimacy of parents' power, as there are non-paternalistic forms of parental power. The book argues with the assumption that political philosophers can answer complex moral questions without giving very much consideration to the complexities of the questions raised. Such arguments about political philosophy do or should have generality of theoretical claims.

This chapter discusses a wide array of policy developments in mid-Elizabethan Ireland including drives to colonise parts of Ulster and Munster, to establish new systems of crown taxation, to extend the institutions of the English state into the more remote parts of Ireland and to spread the Protestant faith. In doing so it argues that there was a major expansion of the English state in Ireland at this time. This led to an increasing need to find new ways of financing the state apparatus there and the implementation of policies designed to bring more remote parts of the country under control, for instance by establishing colonies in north-east Ulster. It also argues that there was an intensifying of the drive to protestantise the country at this time, in large part owing to the excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570. Throughout the ‘reform’ treatises written at this time are examined in order to fully examine how these policies were being debated and promoted by officials in Ireland.

This chapter presents examples to illustrate what Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow have identified as the viewing of Africa as a 'land in amber' and a place of spiritual refreshment. Southern and eastern African landscapes were increasingly identified as arenas for hunting towards the end of the nineteenth century. The landscape of Africa was perceived as uncorrupted by the taint of human involvement. Henry Butler's ambivalent attitude to the change that he experienced within the space of a few months' travel was replicated in others' opinions of Africa, its landscapes and peoples. Links between hunting and imperial power are clearly much more complicated than a simple inverse proportional relationship, but the effects of exploration and empire had major and lasting consequences for the landscapes and fauna of southern Africa. Free from the hierarchies, restraints and social customs of Britain, the wide-open spaces of empire promised what was denied in Europe.