Air empire is a fresh study of civil aviation as a tool of late British imperialism. The first pioneering flights across the British empire in 1919-20 were flag-waving adventures that recreated an era of plucky British maritime exploration and conquest. Britain’s development of international air routes and services was approved, organised and celebrated largely in London; there was some resistance in and beyond the subordinate colonies and dominions. Negotiating the financing and geopolitics of regular commercial air service delayed its inception until the 1930s. Technological, managerial and logistical problems also meant that Britain was slow into the air and slow in the air. Propaganda concealed underperformance and criticism. The study uses archival sources, biographies, industry magazines and newspapers to chronicle the disputed progress toward air empire. The rhetoric behind imperial air service offers a glimpse of late imperial hopes, fears, attitudes and style. Empire air service had emotional appeal and symbolic value, but disappointed in practice.

This remarkable book pictures the growth of British civil air transport from its inception in 1910 through to the formation of Imperial Airways in 1934 and then the beginnings of British Overseas Airways Corporation. The author shows the impetus given to aircraft production by the First World War, and presents a careful account of the operational and financial fortunes of each of the four principal British airlines which began operations shortly thereafter. The fight against official apathy and lack of foresight on the part of the government, the campaign for subsidies and the struggle with foreign competition are interestingly presented. The development of the chosen-instrument concept in Great Britain is interestingly covered and the use of subsidies in this connection justified in order to place civil aviation on a firm financial base for the establishment of a great British airline to serve the Empire. The result was Imperial Airways, which soon found itself in the awkward position of being expected to be both a successful commercial company and the chosen instrument of imperial policy. The final emergence of British Overseas Airways was the result, and its organization marks the close of the period covered in this volume. Included in the book are comprehensive statistical appendices and a complete bibliography.

"Britain's seaborne tradition is used to throw light on the British themselves, the people with whom they came into contact and the British perception of empire. The oceans and their shores, rather than the mysterious interiors of continents, certainly dominated the English perception of the transoceanic world in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, climaxing in the fascination with the Pacific in the age of Captain Cook, and continuing into the nineteenth century, with Franklin in the Arctic and Ross in the Antarctic. The oceans offered much more than fascination. In England, from the late sixteenth century, maritime conflict and imperial strength were seen as important to national morale and reputation and without it there would have been no empire, or at least not in the form it actually took."--BOOK JACKET.

The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature.

Restoring and maintaining peace within war-torn societies is a relatively new task for the United Nations. This book examines the options for the UN in the use of force to secure peace, and the extent to which peacekeeping can be effectively extended to coerce warring factions. A combination of internationally distinguished academics and new scholars at the forefront of research are represented, making an important contribution to the debate about the role of international military operations in the maintenance of international peace and security.