Power Over Peoples

Power Over Peoples

Author: Daniel R. Headrick

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-03-25

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 0691154325

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In this work, Daniel Headrick traces the evolution of Western technologies and sheds light on the environmental and social factors that have brought victory in some cases and unforeseen defeat in others.


Money, Finance, and Empire, 1790-1960

Money, Finance, and Empire, 1790-1960

Author: R. F Holland

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-11-12

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1136284346

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Scholars have recently begun to pay renewed attention to the economics of empire, focusing in particular on the requirements of metropolitan Britain's economy and on the activities of imperial businesses. Within this broad field, financial questions, not least the subject of investment overseas or the 'export of capital', have long had a prominent place, and have been equally affected by the development of new appraoches. The consensus as to the volume and direction of Britain's overseas investments is being vigorously challenged. Technological advances have encouraged on a greatly enlarged scale the compilation and analysis of information about British investments and shareholdings abroad. The gradual easing of restrictions on business records has increased facilities for the study, especially, of imperial and colonial banking. Work on the financial policies of central governments is revealing much of interest to students of twentieth-century colonial rule and decolonization. This collection of essays brings together a selection of the latest research on these and other themes, and, for comparative purposes, includes examples of recent continental work.


Deforesting the Earth

Deforesting the Earth

Author: Michael Williams

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 716

ISBN-13: 0226899268

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Since humans first appeared on the earth, we've been cutting down trees for fuel and shelter. Indeed, the thinning, changing, and wholesale clearing of forests are among the most important ways humans have transformed the global environment. With the onset of industrialization and colonization the process has accelerated, as agriculture, metal smelting, trade, war, territorial expansion, and even cultural aversion to forests have all taken their toll. Michael Williams surveys ten thousand years of history to trace how, why, and when human-induced deforestation has shaped economies, societies, and landscapes around the world. Beginning with the return of the forests to Europe, North America, and the tropics after the Ice Ages, Williams traces the impact of human-set fires for gathering and hunting, land clearing for agriculture, and other activities from the Paleolithic through the classical world and the Middle Ages. He then continues the story from the 1500s to the early 1900s, focusing on forest clearing both within Europe and by European imperialists and industrialists abroad, in such places as the New World and India, China, Japan, and Latin America. Finally, he covers the present-day and alarming escalation of deforestation, with the ever-increasing human population placing a possibly unsupportable burden on the world's forests. Accessible and nonsensationalist, Deforesting the Earth provides the historical and geographical background we need for a deeper understanding of deforestation's tremendous impact on the environment and the people who inhabit it.


Informal Empire and the Rise of One World Culture

Informal Empire and the Rise of One World Culture

Author: G. Barton

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-05-27

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 113731592X

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Informal empire is a key mechanism of control that explains much of the configuration of the modern world. This book traces the broad outline of westernization through elite formations around the world in the modern era. It explains why the world is western and how formal empire describes only the tip of the iceberg of British and American power.


The Tentacles of Progress

The Tentacles of Progress

Author: Daniel R. Headrick

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1988-03-10

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0190281499

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This penetrating examination of a paradox of colonial rule shows how the massive transfers of technology--including equipment, techniques, and experts--from the European imperial powers to their colonies in Asia and Africa resulted not in industrialization but in underdevelopment. Examining the most important technologies--shipping and railways, telegraphs and wireless, urban water supply and sewage disposal, economic botany and plantation agriculture, irrigation, and mining and metallurgy--Headrick provides a new perspective on colonial economic history and reopens the debate on the roots of Asian and African underdevelopment.


The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century

The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century

Author: Andrew Porter

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2001-07-26

Total Pages: 800

ISBN-13: 0191647683

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The Oxford History of the British Empire is a major new assessment of the Empire in the light of recent scholarship and the progressive opening of historical records. From the founding of colonies in North America and the West Indies in the seventeenth century to the reversion of Hong Kong to China at the end of the twentieth, British imperialism was a catalyst for far-reaching change. The Oxford History of the British Empire as a comprehensive study helps us to understand the end of Empire in relation to its beginning, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as for the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history. Volume III of The Oxford History of the British Empire covers the long nineteenth century, from the achievement of American independence in the 1780s to the eve of world war in 1914. This was the period of Britain's greatest expansion as both empire-builder and dominant world power. The volume is divided into two parts. The first contains thematic chapters, some focusing on Britain, others on areas at the imperial periphery, exploring those fundamental dynamics of British expansion whcih made imperial influence and rule possible. They also examine the economic, cultural, and institutional frameworks whcih gave shape to Britain's overseas empire. Part 2 is devoted to the principal areas of imperial activity overseas, including both white settler and tropical colonies. Chapters examine how British interests and imperial rule shaped individual regions' nineteenth-century political and socio-economic history. Themes dealt with include the economics of empire, imperial institutions, defence, technology, imperial and colonial cultures, science and exploration. Attention is given not only to the formal empire, from Australasia and the West Indies to India and the African colonies, but also to China and Latin America, often regarded as central components of a British `informal empire'.


Taxing Colonial Africa

Taxing Colonial Africa

Author: Leigh A. Gardner

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-10-04

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0191637556

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How much did the British Empire cost, and how did Britain pay for it? Taxing Colonial Africa explores a source of funds much neglected in research on the financial structure of the Empire, namely revenue raised in the colonies themselves. Requiring colonies to be financially self-sufficient was one of a range of strategies the British government used to lower the cost of imperial expansion to its own Treasury. Focusing on British colonies in Africa, Leigh Gardner examines how their efforts to balance their budgets influenced their relationships with local political stakeholders as well as the imperial government. She finds that efforts to balance the budget shaped colonial public policy at every level, and that compromises made in the face of financial constraints shaped the political and economic institutions that were established by colonial administrations and inherited by the former colonies at independence. Using both quantitative data on public revenue and expenditure as well as archival records from archives in both the UK and the former colonies, Gardner follows the development of fiscal policies in British Africa from the beginning of colonial rule through the first years of independence. During the formative years of colonial administration, both the structure of taxation and the allocation of public spending reflected the two central goals of colonial rule: maintaining order as cheaply as possible and encouraging export production. Taxing Colonial Africa examines how the fiscal systems established before 1914 coped with the upheavals of subsequent decades, including the two World Wars, the Great Depression, and finally the transfer of power.