Analyses the critical role played by the maritime gateway to Asia around the Cape of Good Hope in the development of the British Empire. Focusing on a region that connected the Atlantic and Indian oceans at the centre of a vital maritime chain linking Europe with Asia, the book re-examines and reappraises Britain's oceanic empire.

A wide-ranging new survey of the role of the sea in Britain's global presence in the 19th century. Mostly at peace, but sometimes at war, Britain grew as a maritime empire in the Victorian era. This collection looks at British sea-power as a strategic, moral and cultural force.

"Britain's seaborne tradition is used to throw light on the British themselves, the people with whom they came into contact and the British perception of empire. The oceans and their shores, rather than the mysterious interiors of continents, certainly dominated the English perception of the transoceanic world in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, climaxing in the fascination with the Pacific in the age of Captain Cook, and continuing into the nineteenth century, with Franklin in the Arctic and Ross in the Antarctic. The oceans offered much more than fascination. In England, from the late sixteenth century, maritime conflict and imperial strength were seen as important to national morale and reputation and without it there would have been no empire, or at least not in the form it actually took."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume examines the various ways in which islands (and groups of islands) contributed to the establishment, extension, and maintenance of the British Empire in the age of sail.

A comparative study of how the British managed the expansion of empire in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

Between the end of the Seven Years war in 1763, and the abolition of slavery within its Empire in 1833, Britain's maritime engagement with the wider world was transformed. The essays in this book explore different aspects of that transformation, and in so doing assess the significance and complexities of Britain's maritime world in this key period, which was characterized by the contradictory and competing forces of revolution and reaction, 'liberty' and imperialism, war and peace, enlightenment and enslavement. They were originally delivered as lectures in a series jointly sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research and by the Centre for Imperial and Maritime Studies at the National Maritime Museum.

A magisterial history of resistance to the rising of the British empire As the call for a new understanding of our national history grows louder, Britain’s Empire turns the received imperial story on its head. Richard Gott recounts the long-overlooked narrative of resisters, revolutionaries and revolters who stood up to the might of the Empire. In a story of almost continuous colonialist violence, Britain’s crimes unspool from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the Indian Mutiny, spanning the globe from Ireland to Australia. Capturing events from the perspective of the colonised, Gott unearths the all-but-forgotten stories excluded from mainstream histories.

The Ideological Origins of the British Empire presents a comprehensive history of British conceptions of empire for more than half a century. David Armitage traces the emergence of British imperial identity from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, using a full range of manuscript and printed sources. By linking the histories of England, Scotland and Ireland with the history of the British Empire, he demonstrates the importance of ideology as an essential linking between the processes of state-formation and empire-building. This book sheds light on major British political thinkers, from Sir Thomas Smith to David Hume, by providing fascinating accounts of the 'British problem' in the early modern period, of the relationship between Protestantism and empire, of theories of property, liberty and political economy in imperial perspective, and of the imperial contribution to the emergence of British 'identities' in the Atlantic world.

Britain's overseas Empire pre-eminently involved the sea. In a two-way process, ships carried travellers and explorers, trade goods, migrants to new lands, soldiers to fight wars and garrison colonies, and also ideas and plants that would find fertile minds and soils in other lands. These essays, deriving from a National Maritime Museum (London) conference, provide a wide-ranging and comprehensive picture of the activities of maritime empire. They discuss a variety of issues: maritime trades, among them the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Honduran mahogany for shipping to Britain, the movement of horses across the vast reaches of Asia and the Indian Ocean; the impact of new technologies as Empire expanded in the nineteenth century; the sailors who manned the ships, the settlers who moved overseas, and the major ports of the Imperial world; plus the role of the navy in hydrographic survey. Published in association with the National Maritime Museum. DAVID KILLINGRAY is Emeritus Professor of Modern History, Goldsmiths College London; MARGARETTE LINCOLN and NIGEL RIGBY are in the research department of the National Maritime Museum.

Blue-Water Empire is Robert Holland's magnificent narrative of Britain's military and cultural ties with the Mediterranean Sea, in the style of the epic naval histories of N. A. M. Rodger. Britain has been a major presence in the Mediterranean from the Battle of the Nile to the end of empire, as both a military and a colonising force on the islands and coastlines of the sea. Robert Holland traces the fascinating story of that presence, from its legacies in culture, language and law to the Mediterranean's own influence on Britain. Evoking the conflicts and contrasts between British and local societies caught up in dramatic events, as well as their mutual resilience under pressure, Blue Water Empire charts with vigour, flair and clarity the British experience in the Mediterranean in the age of empire. Reviews: 'An important corrective to current historical amnesia ... the definitive account of Anglo-Mediterranean history for years to come' Amanda Foreman, New Statesman 'A rich and readable account of the British in the Middle Sea ... As Holland's learned, lucid and enjoyable work makes clear, many British politicians saw the Mediterranean as the pre-eminent global strategic arena, representing the key to victory in Europe and Asia' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'This is an important subject, and it has never before been drawn together into a single coherent narrative ... Blue-Water Empire puts the land, not the sea, at the heart of the story' Literary Review 'Robert Holland's masterly history of the Mediterranean is a pleasure to read. Blue-Water Empire shows how Britain's mastery of the Middle Sea shaped the modern world, whilst reminding us how profoundly the Mediterranean has influenced the British' Simon Ball (author of The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean, 1935-1949) 'Lively and absorbing' Philip Mansel, Spectator About the author: Robert Holland is one of the world's leading historians of the Mediterranean and the author of Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954-59, and (with Diana Markides) The British and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1850-1960. He holds professorial positions at the Centre for Hellenic Studies in King's College London and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in the same University.