Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850–1914
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 2/11/2010
EAN 9780521898898, ISBN10: 0521898897
Hardcover, 314 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Focusing on the great population movement of British emigrants before 1914, this book provides a perspective on the relationship between empire and globalisation. It shows how distinct structures of economic opportunity developed around the people who settled across a wider British World through the co-ethnic networks they created. Yet these networks could also limit and distort economic growth. The powerful appeal of ethnic identification often made trade and investment with racial 'outsiders' less appealing, thereby skewing economic activities toward communities perceived to be 'British'. By highlighting the importance of these networks to migration, finance and trade, this book contributes to debates about globalisation in the past and present. It reveals how the networks upon which the era of modern globalisation was built quickly turned in on themselves after 1918, converting racial, ethnic and class tensions into protectionism, nationalism and xenophobia. Avoiding such an outcome is a challenge faced today.
Introduction
1. Reconfiguring empire
the British world
2. Networks and the British world
3. Overseas migration
4. Markets and consumer cultures
5. Information and investment
Conclusion.
'This is a brilliant and highly original study of what the authors describe as 'imperial globalisation'. Drawing upon a huge range of literature, Thompson and Magee explore the social networks, business connections, migrational habits and shared material culture that bound together British communities at home and overseas in the long nineteenth century. In this pathbreaking book, they bring new conceptual rigour as well as empirical depth to the emerging history of the 'British World'. An outstanding achievement.' John Darwin, Nuffield College, University of Oxford