Christopher Prior

Exporting empire: Africa, colonial officials and the construction of the British imperial state, c.1900?39

For Africans, rank and file colonial officials were the most visible manifestation of British imperial power. But in spite of their importance in administering such vast imperial territories, the attitudes of officials who served between the end of the nineteenth century and the Second World War, as well as what shaped such attitudes, have yet to be examined in any systematic way. In this original and revisionist work, Prior draws upon an enormous array of private and official papers to address some key questions about the colonial services. How did officials’ education and training affect the ways that they engaged with Africa? How did officials relate to one another? How did officials seek to understand Africa and Africans? How did they respond to infrastructural change? How did they deal with anti-colonial nationalism? This work will be of value to students and lecturers alike interested in British, imperial and African history.

An Empire Gone Bad: Agatha Christie, Anglocentrism and Decolonization

Abstract Recent scholarly accounts of early post-war society have emphasised the importance of positive and self-congratulatory narratives of decolonisation – whereby the end of empire was the inevitable result of a pro-active British beneficence – or have suggested that society was shielded from a sense of imperial decline. Such accounts are complicated by Agatha Christie’s immensely popular crime novels, which constructed a narrative of British decline rooted in a sense of departure from pre-war ideals of imperial masculinity, but whose Anglocentrism nevertheless offered up the potential for imperial renewal pending a ‘rediscovery’ of such characteristics.

Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire's Court

examples of evidence that capture the pauper voice are hard to come by. Nevertheless, the inventiveness of poor law historians is on display throughout. Jeremy Boulton, Romola Davenport and Leonard Scharwz examine ‘the nature and impact of the rise of institutional dying in Georgian London’ (60) by clever linkage of admission and discharge books and records detailing payments by overseers of the poor. This allows them to ‘reconstruct the “pathways” by which individuals came into contact with the local poor law’ (65). And Alannah Tomkins gives nothing less than a master-class on how historians should approach working-class autobiographies. She brilliantly contextualizes the mere handful of autobiographies that mention medical treatment in Old Poor Lawworkhouses and finds, perhaps surprisingly, that ‘accounts of pre-1834 houses were routinely neutral or upbeat’ (91). As a contribution to our understanding of the workhouse as a medical provider and of the changing nature of the poor laws, this collection of essays is essential reading. The very best chapters have a relevance that extends beyond the confines of poor law or medical history. Samantha Shave’s essay, for instance, has much to say about the construction of scandals and their role in shaping social policy, but all of the authors succeed in their task of illuminating a key aspect of poor law history. Throughout, the spatial dimension of the poor laws is, unsurprisingly, highlighted. Here the inclusion of chapters on the Irish experience (by Virginia Crossman) and on the workhouse in the British Caribbean (by Rita Pemberton) are especially useful in reminding us that the poor law could take significantly different forms beyond England and Wales. Of course, such differentiation across space – even within England andWales – poses a challenge when it comes to drawing general conclusions. But Steven King’s impressive ‘Afterword’ has much to say about this and a lot else besides. In summary,Medicine and the Workhouse is a lively, thought-provoking collection of essays that is recommended reading for all students of medical and poor law history.

Military Efficacy and the State of the Nation

This chapter considers middle-class attitudes towards Britain’s military ability during and after the South African War. It argues that an enduring belief in the ability of the ordinary soldier, combined with a powerful critique of Britain’s governmental and elite military handling of the conflict that transcended political boundaries, foreclosed the emergence of any belief that difficulties faced in fighting the war in South Africa were emblematic of a racial decline of the ordinary Briton. Drawing upon responses to the works of Frederick Maurice and Arnold White in particular, this chapter also argues that any difficulties felt to have been encountered in recruiting healthy soldiers to fight in South Africa were not seen by the public as representative of a broader decline in Britain’s military ability.

Health and Poverty in Urban England

This chapter concerns middle-class attitudes towards the urban poor. It considers whether the state of sections of the working classes was felt indicative of an inexorable threat that industrialized modernity posed to the collective health of the nation. It will argue that ulterior concerns, rooted primarily in debates about economic policy and the role of the state in public life, conspired to prevent worries about racial decline from becoming a prominent feature of English cultural life. Rather than a manifestation of a general malaise, forceful declarations about racial decline were instead a contingent outcome of certain national and local struggles, whereby the rhetoric of racial decline could be harnessed in a transitory fashion as a weapon for particular political purposes.

Moral Reform, Youth Movements, and Hooliganism

First, this chapter considers the efforts made by sections of the press to ‘clean up’ popular culture aimed at children by drawing upon the threat of moral decay. Such efforts failed to alter patterns of middle-class cultural consumption. Second, the chapter examines the Scouting Movement’s popularity, rooting this in a desire for the development of ‘good’ citizens rather than fears of military or patriotic inadequacy. Finally, the chapter assesses attitudes towards working-class ‘hooligans’, arguing that some historians have overstated fears about the threat they posed to Edwardian England. The hooligan threat receded in the early years of the twentieth century, partly due to the need of some commentators to construct an alternative narrative of street life in order to underpin anti-immigrant campaigns.