Managing the British Empire

Managing the British Empire

Author: David Sunderland

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9780861932672

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The Crown Agents Office played a crucial role in colonial development. Acting in the United Kingdom as the commercial and financial agent for the crown colonies, the Agency supplied all non-locally manufactured stores required by colonial governments, issued their London loans, managed their UK investments, and supervised the construction of their railways, harbours and other public works. In addition, the Office supervised the award of colonial land and mineral concessions, monitored the colonial banking and currency system, and performed a personnel role, paying colonial service salaries and pensions, recruiting technical officers, and arranging the transport of officers, troops and Indian indentured labour. In this important book, the first in-depth investigation of the Agency, David Sunderland examines each of these services in turn, determining in each case whether the Crown Agents' performance benefited their clients, the UK economy or themselves. His book is thus both an account of a remarkable and unique organisation and a fascinating examination of the 'nuts and bolts' of nineteenth-century development. DAVID SUNDERLAND is a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester.


Administering the Empire, 1801-1968: A Guide to the Records of the Colonial Office in the National Archives of the UK

Administering the Empire, 1801-1968: A Guide to the Records of the Colonial Office in the National Archives of the UK

Author: Mandy Banton

Publisher: Institute of Historical Research

Published: 2015-07-17

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9781909646124

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This guide is an updated version of Mandy Banton's indispensable introduction to the records of British government departments responsible for the administration of colonial affairs, and now held in The National Archives of the United Kingdom. It covers the period from about 1801 to 1966. It has been planned as a user-friendly guide concentrating on the organisation of the records, the information they are likely to provide and how to use the contemporary finding aids. It also provides an outline of the expansion of the British empire during the period and discusses the organisation of colonial governments.


Taxation in Colonial America

Taxation in Colonial America

Author: Alvin Rabushka

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-12-16

Total Pages: 969

ISBN-13: 1400828708

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Taxation in Colonial America examines life in the thirteen original American colonies through the revealing lens of the taxes levied on and by the colonists. Spanning the turbulent years from the founding of the Jamestown settlement to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Alvin Rabushka provides the definitive history of taxation in the colonial era, and sets it against the backdrop of enormous economic, political, and social upheaval in the colonies and Europe. Rabushka shows how the colonists strove to minimize, avoid, and evade British and local taxation, and how they used tax incentives to foster settlement. He describes the systems of public finance they created to reduce taxation, and reveals how they gained control over taxes through elected representatives in colonial legislatures. Rabushka takes a comprehensive look at the external taxes imposed on the colonists by Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, as well as internal direct taxes like poll and income taxes. He examines indirect taxes like duties and tonnage fees, as well as county and town taxes, church and education taxes, bounties, and other charges. He links the types and amounts of taxes with the means of payment--be it gold coins, agricultural commodities, wampum, or furs--and he compares tax systems and burdens among the colonies and with Britain. This book brings the colonial period to life in all its rich complexity, and shows how colonial attitudes toward taxation offer a unique window into the causes of the revolution.


Singapore, Chinese Migration and the Making of the British Empire, 1819-67

Singapore, Chinese Migration and the Making of the British Empire, 1819-67

Author: Stan Neal

Publisher: Worlds of the East India Compa

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781783274239

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Discusses how Britain replicated the "Singapore model" - the use of imported "industrious" Chinese labour - to other parts of its empire, with varying degrees of success. The transformation of Singapore, founded by Stamford Raffles in 1819, from a trading post to a major centre for international trade was a huge commercial and colonial success for Britain. One key factor in all of this was the recruitment of Chinese migrant labour, which by the 1850s made up over half of the population. The transformation, however, was not limited to Singapore. As this book demonstrates, colonial administrators saw that the "model" of whathad been done in Singapore, especially the use of Chinese migrant labour, could be replicated elsewhere. This book examines the establishment of the "Singapore model" and its transference - to Assam in India, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), Mauritius, Australia and the West Indies. It examines the role of the key people who developed the model, including the Hong Kong merchant houses and their financial expertise, discusses central ideas which lay behind the model, notably free trade and the use of "industrious" Chinese rather than "lazy" natives, and assesses the varying outcomes of the different colonial experiments. The themes discussed - economic opportunities and globalisation; theneed to find labour without recourse to slavery, indentured labour or convict labour; migration, ethnicity and racism - all continue to have great significance at present, as does the idea that Singapore, still, is a model to be replicated more widely. STAN NEAL is Lecturer in Modern British Imperial History at Ulster University.


A Short History of British Colonial Policy

A Short History of British Colonial Policy

Author: Hugh Edward Egerton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1351348205

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This volume discusses a short history of British Colonial policy. With all its faults the book represents much reading and some thought. In writing what is, to some extent, a history of opinion, it has been impossible altogether to suppress my own individual opinions. I trust, however that I have not seemed to attach importance to them. In dealing with the later periods, I remembered Sir Walter Raleigh's remark on the fate which awaits the treatment of contemporary history; but obscurity may claim its compensations, and atleast I am not conscious of having written under the bias of personal or party prejudice.


The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820

The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820

Author: Eliga Gould

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-03-03

Total Pages: 1073

ISBN-13: 1108317812

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The first volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines how the United States emerged out of a series of colonial interactions, some involving indigenous empires and communities that were already present when the first Europeans reached the Americas, others the adventurers and settlers dispatched by Europe's imperial powers to secure their American claims, and still others men and women brought as slaves or indentured servants to the colonies that European settlers founded. Collecting the thoughts of dynamic scholars working in the fields of early American, Atlantic, and global history, the volume presents an unrivalled portrait of the human richness and global connectedness of early modern America. Essay topics include exploration and environment, conquest and commerce, enslavement and emigration, dispossession and endurance, empire and independence, new forms of law and new forms of worship, and the creation and destruction when the peoples of four continents met in the Americas.


Volume II: The Eighteenth Century

Volume II: The Eighteenth Century

Author: P. J. Marshall

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 1998-05-28

Total Pages: 1063

ISBN-13: 0191647357

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Volume II of the Oxford History of the British Empire examines the history of British worldwide expansion from the Glorious Revolution of 1689 to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a crucial phase in the creation of the modern British Empire. This is the age of General Wolfe, Clive of India, and Captain Cook. The international team of experts deploy the latest scholarly research to trace and analyse development and expansion over more than a century. They show how trade, warfare, and migration created an Empire, at first overwhelmingly in the Americas but later increasingly in Asia. Although the Empire was ruptured by the American Revolution, it survived and grew into the British Empire that was to dominate the world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. series blurb 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. It deals with the interaction of British and non-western societies from the Elizabethan era to the late twentieth century, aiming to provide a balanced treatment of the ruled as well as the rulers, and to take into account the significance of the Empire for the peoples of the British Isles. It explores economic and social trends as well as political.