The organized study of history began in Britain when the Empire was at its height. Belief in the destiny of imperial England profoundly shaped the imagination of the first generation of professional historians. But with the Empire ended, do these mental habits still haunt historical explanation? Drawing on postcolonial theory in a lively mix of historical and theoretical chapters, The Expansion of England explores the history of the British Empire and the practice of historical enquiry itself. There are essays on Asia, Australasia, the West Indies, South Africa and Britain. Examining the sexual, racial and ethnic identities shaping the experiences of English men and women in the nineteenth century, the authors argue that habits of thought forged in the Empire still give meaning to English identities today.

John Rees, soldier and freedom fighter, was a shadowy figure who surfaced during two crucial nineteenth-century revolts and then disappeared from history. For the first time, author John Humphries reveals the fate of the man, first mentioned as a member of the New Orleans Greys, who fought for Texan Independence at the Alamo and narrowly escaped execution at the Goliad Mission. Later, Rees was one of the main agitators in the doomed Welsh Chartist movement. Twenty-two men died during the Chartist attack upon the Westgate Hotel when a detachment from the 45th Regiment of Foot, hidden behind the hotel's shuttered windows, discharged their muskets into the crowd. For waging war against the monarch, thirteen of the Chartist leaders were indicted for high treason in the last great show trial in British legal history, while Rees escaped back to the American West. Rees' spectacular journey from the bloodied sands of Texas to the last armed uprising on British soil is only one of the stories told in this book.

Surgeon, Archdruid, Chartist, William Price established the first co-operative society and was involved in a crown court trial that led to the passing of the Cremation Act of 1902. The full story of one of the most colourful characters in Welsh history.

Essays on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ways of looking at landscape, in theory and practice.

In 1890, more than 100,000 Welsh-born immigrants resided in the United States. A majority of them were skilled laborers from the coal mines of Wales who had been recruited by American mining companies. Readily accepted by American society, Welsh immigrants experienced a unique process of acculturation. In the first history of this exceptional community, Ronald Lewis explores how Welsh immigrants made a significant contribution to the development of the American coal industry and how their rapid and successful assimilation affected Welsh American culture. Lewis describes how Welsh immigrants brought their national churches, fraternal orders and societies, love of literature and music, and, most important, their own language. Yet unlike eastern and southern Europeans and the Irish, the Welsh--even with their "foreign" ways--encountered no apparent hostility from the Americans. Often within a single generation, Welsh cultural institutions would begin to fade and a new "Welsh American" identity developed. True to the perspective of the Welsh themselves, Lewis's analysis adopts a transnational view of immigration, examining the maintenance of Welsh coal-mining culture in the United States and in Wales. By focusing on Welsh coal miners, Welsh Americans illuminates how Americanization occurred among a distinct group of skilled immigrants and demonstrates the diversity of the labor migrations to a rapidly industrializing America.