Examining responses to migration and settlement in Britain from the Irish Famine up to Brexit, The Discourse of Repatriation looks at how concepts of removal evolved in this period, and the varied protagonists who have articulated these ideas in different contexts. Analysing the relationship between discourse and action, Renshaw explores how ideas and language originating on the peripheries of debate on migration and belonging can permeate the mainstream and transform both discussion and policy. The book sheds light both on how the migrant ‘other’ has been viewed in Britain, historically and contemporaneously, and more broadly how the relationship between state, press, and populace has developed from the early Victorian period onwards. It identifies key junctures where the concept of the removal of ‘othered’ groups has crossed over from the rhetorical to the actual, and considers why this was the case. Based on extensive original archival research, the book reassesses modern British history through the lens of the most polarised attitudes to immigration and demographic change. This book will be of use to readers with an interest in migration, diaspora, the development of populism and political extremes, and more broadly the history of modern Britain.

Between the end of the Second World War and the early twenty-first century, Britain became multicultural. This vivid book tells that remarkable story. Kieran Connell, an historian of Irish and German heritage who grew up in Balsall Heath, inner-city Birmingham, takes readers into multicultural communities across Britain at key moments in their development. Journeying far beyond London, Multicultural Britain explores the messy contradictions of the country’s transition into today’s diverse society. It reveals the ordinary people who have forged Britain’s multiculturalism; skewers public leaders, from Enoch Powell to Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher, who have too often weaponised race for their own political ends; and shines a light on the shifting nature of British racism, revealing its enduring day-to-day impact on ethnic-minority groups. Between postcolonial reckonings and immigration anxieties, how people live together in Brexit Britain remains an urgent question for our time. Connell’s fresh, thought-provoking book unveils British multiculturalism not as a problematic idea, but as a rich and complex lived reality.

This book is a study of the complex relationship between Britain and Europe from the Second World War to the present day. Drawing on first-hand experience of British and European politics, the author highlights not only the dramatically shifting power play between London and Brussels but also the EU’s own struggle to come to terms with its federal mission. He traces the important constitutional events that have fashioned the EU, of which the Brexit process is an outstanding example. The author proposes a number of constitutional reforms which, if carried through, would form the basis of a new entente between the EU and the UK. Both polities will profit from stronger democratic government of a federal type. The author advocates spanning the divide between NATO and the EU. He proposes installing a new class of affiliate EU membership, which may be useful for the whole European neighbourhood, including the UK. Featuring the history, present and future of Britain’s relationship with the European Union, the book will be of worldwide interest to students and practitioners of European integration, as well as diplomats and journalists. It is the first comprehensive manifesto for the future of Europe and Britain since Brexit.

The relations of Great Britain and its Dominions significantly influenced the development of the British Empire in the late 19th and the first third of the 20th century. The mutual attitude to the constitutional issues that Dominion and British leaders have continually discussed at Colonial and Imperial Conferences respectively was one of the main aspects forming the links between the mother country and the autonomous overseas territories. This volume therefore focuses on the key period when the importance of the Dominions not only increased within the Empire itself, but also in the sphere of the international relations, and the Dominions gained the opportunity to influence the forming of the Imperial foreign policy. During the first third of the 20th century, the British Empire gradually transformed into the British Commonwealth of Nations, in which the importance of Dominions excelled. The work is based on the study of unreleased sources from British archives, a large number of published documents and extensive relevant literature.

This book seeks to understand the complex ways in which the Foreign Office adapted to the rise of identity politics in Britain as it administered British foreign policy during the Cold War and the end of the British Empire. After the Second World War, cultural changes in British society forced a reconsideration of erstwhile diplomatic archetypes, as restricting recruitment to white, heterosexual, upper- or middle-class men gradually became less socially acceptable and less politically expedient. After the advent of the tripartite school system and then mass university education, the Foreign Office had to consider recruiting candidates who were qualified but had not been ‘socialized’ in the public schools and Oxbridge. Similarly, the passage of the 1948 Nationality Act technically meant nonwhites were eligible to join. The rise of the gay rights movement and postwar women’s liberation both generated further, unique dilemmas for Foreign Office recruiters. Diplomatic Identity in Postwar Britain seeks to destabilize concepts like 'talent', 'merit', 'equality' and 'representation', arguing that these were contested ideas that were subject to political and cultural renegotiation and revision throughout the period in question.

The establishment of ‘new police’ forces in early Victorian England has long attracted historical enquiry and debate, albeit with a general focus on London and the urban-industrial communities of the Midlands and the North. This original study contributes to the debate by examining the nature and process of police reform, the changing relationship between the police and the public, and their impact on crime in Cambridge, a medium-sized county town with a rural hinterland. It argues that the experience of Cambridge was unique, for the Corporation shared co-jurisdiction of policing arrangements with the University, and this fractious relationship, as well as political rivalries between Liberals and Tories, impeded the reform process, although the force was certified efficient in 1856. Case studies of the careers of individual policemen and of the crimes and criminals they encountered shed additional light on the darker side of life in early Victorian Cambridge and present a different and more nuanced picture of provincial police reform during a seminal period in police history than either the traditional Whig or early revisionist Marxist interpretations implied. As such, it will support undergraduate courses in local, social, and criminal justice history during the Victorian period.

Analyzing the period after 1945 when uprisings against colonial rule broke out across the world, Age of Emergency (Oxford University Press), focuses on how violence was experienced in the lives of ordinary people in imperial Britain. Using various historical records including letters, television, newspapers, novels, and more, Linstrum uncovers the violent torture, executions, and gruesome punishments the community faced. Throughout his writing, Linstrum demonstrates the significance of war beyond the fight between soldiers, and the ways in which war encroaches on all aspects of life.

Sakade challenges the narrative that the focus of British manufacturing went "from Empire to Europe" and argues rather that, following the Second World War, the key relationship was in fact trans-Atlantic. There is a commonly accepted belief that, during the twentieth century, British manufacturing declined irreparably, that Britain lost its industrial hegemony. But this is too simplistic. In fact, in the decades after 1945, Britain staked out a new role for itself as a key participant in a US-led process of globalisation. Far from becoming merely a European player, the UK actually managed to preserve a key share in a global market, and the British defence industry was, to a large extent, successfully rehabilitated. Sakade returns to the original scholarly parameters of the decline controversy, and especially questions around post-war decline in the fields of high technology and the national defence industrial base. Using the case of the strategically critical military and civil aircraft industry, he argues that British industry remained relatively robust. A valuable read for historians of British aviation and more widely of 20th century British Industry.

The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) revolutionized warfare at sea, on land, and in the air. This little-known naval aviation organization introduced and operationalized aircraft carrier strike, aerial anti-submarine warfare, strategic bombing, and the air defence of the British Isles more than 20 years before the outbreak of the Second World War. Traditionally marginalized in a literature dominated by the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force, the RNAS and its innovative practitioners, nevertheless, shaped the fundamentals of air power and contributed significantly to the Allied victory in the First World War. The Development of British Naval Aviation utilizes archival documents and newly published research to resurrect the legacy of the RNAS and demonstrate its central role in Britain’s war effort.

In recent decades, there has been a growing recognition of the significance of the supernatural in a Victorian context. Studies of nineteenth-century spiritualism, occultism, magic, and folklore have highlighted that Victorian England was ridden with spectres and learned magicians. Despite this growing body of scholarship, little historiographical work has addressed the Devil. This book demonstrates the significance of the Devil in a Victorian context, emphasising his pervasiveness and diversity. Drawing on a rich array of primary material, including theological and folkloric works, fiction, newspapers and periodicals, and broadsides and other ephemera, it uses the diabolic to explore the Victorians' complex and ambivalent relationship with the supernatural. Both the Devil and hell were theologically contested during the nineteenth century, with an increasing number of both clergymen and laypeople being discomfited by the thought of eternal hellfire. Nevertheless, the Devil continued to play a role in the majority of English denominations, as well as in folklore, spiritualism, occultism, popular culture, literature, and theatre. The Devil and the Victorians will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth-century English cultural and religious history, as well as the darker side of the supernatural.