Lawson (history, U. of Alberta) examines the profound effect that the conquest of Quebec had on British policies and imperial thought in the years leading to the signing of the Quebec Act in 1774. He reinterprets the standard accounts of the conquest of Quebec in 1760, challenging prevailing ideas about political traditions and philosophical assumptions in mid-18th-century Britain. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Toleration and State Institutions explores the rise of more charitable British policy toward Catholics in Ireland and in Quebec during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Applying a historical institutionalist approach, Karen Stanbridge demonstrates that "Catholic relief" arose more gradually, and encountered less opposition, than is generally maintained. Her careful analysis shows that the growth of toleration among political lites, and the concerns of administrators wishing to secure the allegiance of Catholic subjects, were only two of many factors leading to the development of policy kinder to Catholics. Toleration and State Institutions sheds new light on the official treatment (and mistreatment) of minorities at home during the height of British expansion abroad, offering a fascinating example of the divisions and rapprochements that characterize the relationship between state and society.

Imperial Apocalypse describes the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War One. Drawing material from nine different archives and hundreds of published sources, this study ties together state failure, military violence, and decolonization in a single story. Joshua Sanborn excavates the individual lives of soldiers, doctors, nurses, politicians, and civilians caught up in the global conflict along the way, creating a narrative that is both humane and conceptually rich. The volume opens by laying out the theoretical relationship between state failure, social collapse, and decolonization, and then moves chronologically from the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 through the fierce battles and massive human dislocations of 1914-16 to the final collapse of the empire in the midst of revolution in 1917-18. Imperial Apocalypse is the first major study which treats the demise of the Russian Empire as part of the twentieth-century phenomenon of modern decolonization, and provides a readable account of military activity and political change throughout this turbulent period of war and revolution. Sanborn argues that the sudden rise of groups seeking national self-determination in the borderlands of the empire was the consequence of state failure, not its cause. At the same time, he shows how the destruction of state institutions and the spread of violence from the front to the rear led to a collapse of traditional social bonds and the emergence of a new, more dangerous, and more militant political atmosphere.

Since the 1860s, hundreds of thousands of school-aged Australians have undergone military and youth development training in various army cadet programs. This is the first book to tell the cadet story across both time and space in a single narrative, presenting a general history of the army cadet movement in Australia from 1866 to 2006.

How the legacy of monarchical empires shaped Britain, France, Spain, and the United States as they became liberal entities Historians view the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a turning point when imperial monarchies collapsed and modern nations emerged. Treating this pivotal moment as a bridge rather than a break, The Imperial Nation offers a sweeping examination of four of these modern powers—Great Britain, France, Spain, and the United States—and asks how, after the great revolutionary cycle in Europe and America, the history of monarchical empires shaped these new nations. Josep Fradera explores this transition, paying particular attention to the relations between imperial centers and their sovereign territories and the constant and changing distinctions placed between citizens and subjects. Fradera argues that the essential struggle that lasted from the Seven Years’ War to the twentieth century was over the governance of dispersed and varied peoples: each empire tried to ensure domination through subordinate representation or by denying any representation at all. The most common approach echoed Napoleon’s “special laws,” which allowed France to reinstate slavery in its Caribbean possessions. The Spanish and Portuguese constitutions adopted “specialness” in the 1830s; the United States used comparable guidelines to distinguish between states, territories, and Indian reservations; and the British similarly ruled their dominions and colonies. In all these empires, the mix of indigenous peoples, European-origin populations, slaves and indentured workers, immigrants, and unassimilated social groups led to unequal and hierarchical political relations. Fradera considers not only political and constitutional transformations but also their social underpinnings. Presenting a fresh perspective on the ways in which nations descended and evolved from and throughout empires, The Imperial Nation highlights the ramifications of this entangled history for the subjects who lived in its shadows.

The Imperial Security State explores an important but under-explored dimension of British imperialism - its information system and the close links between military knowledge and the maintenance of empire. James Hevia's innovative study focuses on route books and military reports produced by the British Indian Army military intelligence between 1880 and 1940. He shows that together these formed a renewable and authoritative archive that was used to train intelligence officers, to inform civilian policy makers and to provide vital information to commanders as they approached the battlefield. The strategic, geographical, political and ethnographical knowledge that was gathered not only framed imperial strategies towards colonized areas to the east but also produced the very object of intervention: Asia itself. Finally, the book addresses the long-term impact of the security regime, revealing how elements of British colonial knowledge have continued to influence contemporary tactics of counterinsurgency in twenty-first-century Iraq and Afghanistan.

British India, as a result of history, geopolitics and its unique status within the Empire, controlled a chain of overseas agencies that stretched from southern Persia to eastern Africa. This book examines how, as the relative importance of British interests steadily eclipsed those of India throughout the region, Indian sub-imperial impulses clashed with the relentlessly advancing metropole. The nature of the struggle over political control between Britain and Indian reveals differences in perception and approach during a period of profound change in Anglo-Indian relations.

The notion of 'empire' has been at the forefront of world politics for over a century. Bernard Porter's landmark work traces the critical response to the British imperial project in the years leading up to World War I. Imperial adventures, including the intervention in Egypt and the Anglo-Boer War, together with the jingoistic clamour that surrounded them, attracted powerful hostility as well as support. "Criticism of Empire" is the subject of Porter's stimulating book. Long regarded as the classic account, the author has now added a substantial new Introduction. He demonstrates the power and influence of major critics such as J.A. Hobson - the acknowledged creator of the 'capitalist theory' of imperialism - E.D. Morel and Mary Kingsley and of organisations like the Congo Reform Association. With themes which are also highly relevant to the present day discourse on the American 'empire', this book will prove essential reading for all students of imperial and international history.

Drawing upon the experiences of Scottish and Irish Catholics in Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Newfoundland, and Trinidad, Empire and Emancipation sheds important new light on the complex relationship between Catholicism and the British Empire.