The Business of Decolonization serves to deepen our understanding of the end of the British empire, too often approached as if it was a process shaped and experienced exclusively by nationalist and imperial politicians and policy-makers. It explores British companies' experience of, and involvement in, developments leading to the transfer of power in Ghana, the former colony of the Gold Coast. The book demonstrates that businessmen developed strategies to cope with political change, reveals the extent of their involvement in nationalist politics, and highlights the contrasting responses of different companies to political and constitutional developments in the colony. Drawing on an extensive range of company, business association, personal, and official papers, the book focuses primarily on company activity. However, it also investigates relations between British firms and the colonial state on the eve of Ghanaian independence, and examines the place of British business interests in British policy.

This book adopts a global approach to analysing Danish nationhood in the current context of a Europe paralysed by crises. Focusing on the global strands which have produced understandings of national selfhood as a consequence of a series of historical and contemporary global encounters, it calls for the production of narratives which better capture how European nations, including Denmark, are shaped by narratives that cannot be understood in (national) isolation, but are contingent on ideas about the nation's globality. In historical terms, this entails examining how colonialism shaped national self-perceptions; in a contemporary context, it requires looking at colonialism's unfinished business. The first chapters revisits colonialism throughout the Danish empire. In the second section, the book revisits Danish (post-1945) attempts to restage global interventions and military intervention since 2000, and considers how migration since 1965 has led to a profound questioning of relationships with the non-European world - and increasingly with Europe itself. Postcolonial Denmark situates Denmark at the centre of a number of current and ever more urgent challenges facing Europe. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, political science and cultural studies with interests in Europe, the Nordic region through a postcolonial, a whiteness and a decolonial inspired approach.

The present collection brings together a series of studies by Peter Marshall on British imperial expansion in the later 18th century. Some essays focus on the thirteen North American colonies, the West Indies, and British contact with China; those dealing specifically with India have appeared in the author's 'Trade and Conquest: Studies on the rise of British domination in India'. The majority, culminating in the four addresses on 'Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century' delivered as President of the Royal Historical Society, deal with the processes and dynamics of empire-building and aim to bring together the history of Asia and the Atlantic. The themes investigated include the pressures that induced Britain to pursue new imperial strategies from the mid-18th century, Britain's contrasting fortunes in India and North America, and the way in which the British adjusted their conceptions of empire from one based on freedom and the domination of the seas, to one which involved the exercise of autocratic rule over millions of people and great expanses of territory.

The process of familiarization with and adaptation to unfamiliar landscapes has been integral to colonization and settlement throughout human history.
This innovative and important volume presents the archaeological and anthropological foundations of the landscape learning process. Contributions apply the related fields of ethnography, cognitive psychology, and historical archaeology to the issues of individual exploration, development of trail systems, folk knowledge, social identity, and the role of the frontier in the growth of the modern world. A series of case studies examines the archaeological evidence for and interpretations of landscape learning from the movement of the first pre-modern humans into Europe, peoplings of the Old and New World at the end of the Ice Age, and colonization of the Pacific, to the English colonists at Jamestown. The final chapters summarize the implications of the landscape learning idea for our understanding of human history and set out a framework for future research.

From the 1850's until the 1880's, British Colonial administrators established wide-ranging legislation aimed at slowing the spread of venereal disease and the loss of soldier-power it brought about. The legislation, known as the Contagious Diseases (CD) ordinances and regulations, identified female prostitutes as the principal source of infection and required them to register officially and undergo regular examinations designed to detect venereal disease.
While most agree that the CD ordinances were put in place primarily to protect the health of British soldiers, a closer examination reveals that the laws were not just about the control of VD but also "a conscious instrument of colonial dominance".

From sugar to indentured labourers, tobacco to reggae music, Europe and North America have been relentlessly consuming the Caribbean and its assets for the past five hundred years. In this fascinating book, Mimi Sheller explores this troublesome history, investigating the complex mobilities of producers and consumers, of material and cultural commodities, including:
*foodstuffs and stimulants - sugar, fruit, coffee and rum
*human bodies - slaves, indentured labourers and service workers
*cultural and knowledge products - texts, music, scientific collections and ethnology
*entire 'natures' and landscapes consumed by tourists as tropical paradise.

Consuming the Caribbean demonstrates how colonial exploitation of the Caribbean led directly to contemporary forms of consumption of the region and its products. It calls into question innocent indulgence in the pleasures of
thoughtless consumption and calls for a global ethics of consumer responsibility.

This new Seminar Study surveys the history of U.S. territorial expansion from the end of the American Revolution until 1860.

The book explores the concept of 'manifest destiny' and key themes such as 'Indian' removal and the US government land sales policy. The author also looks at 'foreign'expansion such as the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and the war with Mexico in the 1840s and 'internal' expansion as American settlers moved west. Finally, the book addresses the most recent historiographical trends in the subject and asks how Americans have dealt with the expansionist legacy

The Portuguese appear to have been the first European visitors to encounter East Africa, with the arrival of a lone traveller, Pero da Covilham, in c.1491. Covilham left no account of his experiences, so Vasco da Gama had little idea of what to expect when he led his first voyage to the region in 1497. The account of this expedition paints a vivid portrait of the first contacts between Portugal and the coastal peoples of East Africa. This account, together with a wealth of carefully selected documents comprise this volume of writings which detail Portugal's relationship with East Africa from the late fifteenth century through to the seventeenth century. As these documents demonstrate, the best Portuguese writers had a deep interest in the African peoples and carefully observed the way their societies worked. The Portuguese in East Africa lived alongside their African subjects and the independent chiefs and to a large extent adopted their life style, technology, business practices, and even their beliefs and customs. This collection of contemporary writings from the period brings to life this extraordinary relationship.

The process of familiarization with and adaptation to unfamiliar landscapes has been integral to colonization and settlement throughout human history.
This innovative and important volume presents the archaeological and anthropological foundations of the landscape learning process. Contributions apply the related fields of ethnography, cognitive psychology, and historical archaeology to the issues of individual exploration, development of trail systems, folk knowledge, social identity, and the role of the frontier in the growth of the modern world. A series of case studies examines the archaeological evidence for and interpretations of landscape learning from the movement of the first pre-modern humans into Europe, peoplings of the Old and New World at the end of the Ice Age, and colonization of the Pacific, to the English colonists at Jamestown. The final chapters summarize the implications of the landscape learning idea for our understanding of human history and set out a framework for future research.

Series Information:
Central Asia Research Forum

An analysis of the socio-economic changes brought about by colonial rule in a frontier area of Bengal, Jalpaiguri. Challenging long established debates focused around the powers of dominant groups over a settled peasantry, this book broadens our perspective on the 18th century, promoting a deeper understanding of the change-over from the pre-colonial to the colonial era.

"Mestizo: a person of mixed blood; specifically, a person of mixed European and American Indian ancestry."
Serge Gruzinski, the renowned historian of Latin America, offers a brilliant, original critique of colonization and globalization in "The Mestizo Mind." Looking at the 15th century colonization of Latin America, Gruzinski documents the melange that resulted: colonized mating with colonizers; Indians joining the Catholic Church and colonial government; and Amerindian visualizations of Jesus and Perseus. These physical and cultural encounters created a new culture, a new individual, and a phenomenon we now call globalization. Revealing globalization's early origins, Gruzinski then fast forwards to the contemporary melange seen in the films of Peter Greenaway and Wong Kar-Wai to argue that over 500 years of intermingling has produced the mestizo mind, a state of mixed thinking that we all possess.
A masterful alchemy of history, anthropology, philosophy and visual analysis, "The Mestizo Mind" definitively conceptualizes the clash of civilizations in the style of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak and Anne McClintock.

Contents:
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Chapter I. Ideology and Education in Puerto Rico, 1493-1898
Chapter II. The Ideology of US Policy Makers
Chapter III. The Hampton-Tuskegee-Carlisle Model of Education
Chapter IV. Textbooks Used, 1898-1908
Chapter V. Two Master Historians: John Bach McMaster and Salvador Brau
Chapter VI. Conclusions
Bibliography

This book examines the various factors that have influenced the growth and development process of contemporary Africa. After discussing and weighing the schools of thought that have attempted to explain the paradox of Africa's reduced growth and development in the midst of abundant resources, this volume comes up with comprehensive and detailed suggestions and recommendations to address this painful experience. This book consistently states that the average Africans, forming the overwhelming majority of the African population, are the least, if at all, to be blamed for the paradox; but rather the African leadership and its external cronies are to be fully blamed. Contemporary Africa's Growth and Development seeks a solution to the African growth and development puzzle in proper allocation and oversight of resources, vision, perseverance, courage, corruption-free and good governance, as well as concrete, provable, solid, and genuine unity.

"Betts is to be commended on his careful and insightful elucidation of the complex and novel sets of dilemnas now facing the British people at a time of superficial calm masking serious divisions."--"Albion"
The erosion of British sovereignty, national identity and culture, the subversion of its history and traditions, and the demoralization of its institutions and public services, are a source of increasing unease to many. The process began, Betts argues, with the end of the colonial empires. Since the beginning of the last decade, concern about the consequences has been heightened by global instability. The demise of the Communist empire, the rise of national independence movements, and the eruption of long standing and bitter ethno-national conflicts have resulted in a mass migration of economic refugees and asylum seekers to Britain and other Western nations.
In Britain, public attitudes are ambivalent. In part this is a consequence of the promotion of the myth of the multiracial Commonwealth, the regional devolution of the United Kingdom, and the transition from a European Economic Union into a politically federalized European super-state. Britain's national interests have become secondary to those of the United Nations and an inchoate and unwilling international community. Influenced by an outmoded UN Convention on Refugees and the lack of a consistent immigration policy and failure of those immigration controls that do exist, gradual but major political, social, and cultural shifts have occurred without the express consent of the majority of the British electorate. Virtually all public debate by the government and by politicians on these issues has been taboo, effectively silenced by fear of being accused of xenophobia, discrimination, and racism. The result is cynicism and disenchantment with the political process as a whole.
Betts's objective is to promote responsible and informed discussion of these issues. In the absence of this, he warns, we risk the twilight of a harmonious British society, diminished pride in British institutions and national identity, and competing and conflicting separatist ethnic, racial, and cultural claims. "Twilight of Britain" will be of interest to general readers, those interested in modern Britain and Europe, as well as sociologists, political scientists, and philosophers.
G. Gordon Betts was educated in the Universities of Cambridge, Birmingham, Greenwich, and Kent at Canterbury. He is a chartered chemical engineer, having spent his professional career with a major British oil company in the petrochemical industry.

This collection fills the need for a resource that adequately conceptualizes the place of non-European histories in the larger narrative of world history. These essays were selected with special emphasis on their comparative outlook. The chapters range from the British Empire (India, Egypt, Palestine) to Indonesia, French colonialism (Brittany and Algeria), South Africa, Fiji, and Japanese imperialism. Within the chapters, key concepts such as gender, land and law, and regimes of knowledge are considered.

This book is an in-depth study of the importnace of the Empire-Commonwealth in the two decades after WWII for Britain's self-image as a great power. By studying a wide range of debates on general and specific imperial problems, the book highlights the "official mind" of decolonization - and of late imperialism.

Colonialist Photography is an absorbing collection of essays and photographs exploring the relationship between photography and European and American colonialism. Packed with over a hundred images, these captivating pictures range from the first experiments with photography as a documentary medium, up to the decolonisation of many regions after the Second World War.
With thirteen essays, Colonialist Photography considers:
* how photographs tended to support the cultural and political rhetoric of racial and geographic difference between the West and its colonies
* the range of images from 'scientific' categorizing and recording methods, to 'commercial' pictures for collection and display, such as postcards and magazine advertisements
* how photographers contributed to cultural, social, and political ideas of race by highlighting racial distinction in their work.

"Natural Hierarchies" adopts a highly original approach to trace the emergence and development of social rank in our present-day world. The author draws upon traditional methods used in the social sciences, detailed accounts of historical events in Europe, the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, and mainland America, to illustrate how meanings of race and caste have been transformed mainly through political struggles, and particularly in the context of colonialism.

This new and highly provocative analysis looks at ideas of hierarchy in the light of the latest historical, anthropological, and sociological evidence to generate understanding of present struggles in race and ethnic relations. It is a well-reasoned account that illuminates the strong historical links between the idea of hierarchy and concepts of race and caste.

When he was elected President in 1845, James K. Polk was only 49 years old-at that time the youngest president ever to be elected. He faced a conflicted nation on the verge of tremendous territorial expansion. James K. Polk's four years in office marked the greatest period of territorial acquisition in the history of the country-what New York journalist John O'Sullivan termed as the 'Manifest Destiny' of the United States to expand across the continent. By the end of Polk's presidency in 1849, U.S. possessions included the California, Oregon, and New Mexico territories. In addition, Texas had become part of the Union. This book analyzes Polk's political career and his role in each of these territorial expansions. James K. Polk: A Clear and Unquestionable Destiny shows that they were far more complex than the moral crusade that had been labeled 'Manifest Destiny.' Southern planters wanted to protect their 'peculiar institution' of slavery by adding new territories from which slave states would be carved. Commercial interests feared that war with England over any of these territories would adversely impact upon the nation's trade. Although the Oregon boundary dispute was settled with little friction, the Mexican War erupted after the annexation of Texas. This fascinating biography of our eleventh president and his successful efforts for expansion of U.S. territory will be of interest to students studying United States history, foreign policy, and the massive territorial expansion in the 1840s known as Manifest Destiny.

Offering a fresh look at the ways in which neoliberalism has claimed to cure the Balkan region of its ethnic particularities under the pretext of Europeanization, this book shows how the reconfiguration of the economic, political, and cultural landscape of the region has resulted in its functioning as Europe's neocolony. The contributors to this volume engage in postcolonial analysis of the Balkans' past and present coloniality by way of interrogating race, racism, trauma, film, and global capitalism. They challenge the idea of a United Europe that rests on the assumption that the European Union's 'newness' represents both a clean slate and the right to shift ownership of its colonial histories to former colonial subjects and their national histories. Taken as a whole, the volume seeks to transform Europe's colonial amnesia into postcolonial awareness and to speak from within the Balkans as a site of Europe's neocolony. As it critically interrogates a neocolonial reconfiguration of the Balkans as a massive social overhaul, which includes at once global integration and local social disintegration, this book will be of interest to those studying the region, as well as postcolonialism in general. This book was originally published as a special issue of Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

A study of the first three decades of British rule in Hong Kong, focusing on the troubled and controversial process of establishing a British colony at Hong Kong and on the reception of British rule by people in the region.

Drawing from a range of materials, including religious texts, women's literature, field interviews, historical archives, critical theories, and rap music, this book offers important critiques of the way religious and feminist knowledge is constructed. This text looks at white feminist theology and its misunderstanding of Native North American women, Chinese footbinding, and veiling by Muslim women, as well as the Jewish emancipation in France, the symbolic dissection of black women by rap and sermons, and the potential to rewrite and reclaim religious stories. This important reassessment of religious studies offers new visions for the development of anti-colonialist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist discourses of liberation.