This book focuses on British efforts to suppress the traffic in female slaves destined for Egyptian harems during the late-nineteenth century. It considers this campaign in relation to gender debates in England, and examines the ways in which the assumptions and dominant imperialist discourses of these abolitionists were challenged by the newly-established Muslim communities in England, as well as by English people who converted to or were sympathetic with Islam.

This book focuses on British efforts to suppress the traffic in female slaves destined for Egyptian harems during the late-nineteenth century. It considers this campaign in relation to gender debates in England, and examines the ways in which the assumptions and dominant imperialist discourses of these abolitionists were challenged by the newly-established Muslim communities in England, as well as by English people who converted to or were sympathetic with Islam. While previous scholars have treated antislavery activity in Egypt first and foremost as an extension of earlier efforts to abolish plantation slavery in the New World, this book considers it in terms of encounters with Islam during a period which it argues marked a new departure in Anglo-Muslim relations. This approach illuminates the role of Islam in the creation of English national identities within the global cultural system of the British Empire. This book would appeal to those with an interest in British imperial history; Islam; gender, feminism, and women’s studies; slavery and race; the formation of national identities; global processes; Orientalism; and Middle Eastern studies.

A study of the chief of the African eunuchs who guarded the sultan's harem in Istanbul under the Ottoman Empire.

This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the role played by law(s) in the British Empire. Using a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, the authors provide in-depth analyses which shine new light on the role of law in creating the people and places of the British Empire. Ranging from the United States, through Calcutta, across Australasia to the Gold Coast, these essays seek to investigate law’s central place in the British Empire, and the role of its agents in embedding British rule and culture in colonial territories. One of the first collections to provide a sustained engagement with the legal histories of the British Empire, in particular beyond the settler colonies, this work aims to encourage further scholarship and new approaches to the writing of the histories of that Empire. Legal Histories of the British Empire: Laws, Engagements and Legacies will be of value not only to legal scholars and graduate students, but of interest to all of those who want to know more about the laws in and of the British Empire.

This book explores the tensions underlying British imperialism in Cyprus. Much has been written about the British Empire’s construction outside Europe, yet there is little on the same themes in Britain’s tiny empire in ‘Europe’. This study follows Cyprus’ progress from a perceived imperial asset to an expendable backwater by explaining how the Union Jack came to fly over the island and why after thirty-five years the British wanted it lowered. Cyprus’ importance was always more imagined than real and was enmeshed within widely held cultural signifiers and myths. British Imperialism in Cyprus fills a gap in the existing literature on the early British period in Cyprus and challenges the received and monolithic view that British imperial policy was based primarily or exclusively on strategic-military considerations. The combination of archival research, cultural analysis and visual narrative that makes for an enjoyable read for academics and students of Imperial, British and European history.

Taking a broad, comparative approach to imperial experiences, this volume provides an authoritative survey of the latest research into the histories of modern empires. The focus is on the era of modern imperial history dating approximately from the early sixteenth century to the present. Such a periodization enables the volume to include the European experience of imperial expansion and settlement, important historical experiences outside the west such as those of Russia, Japan and China, the collapse of European empires attendant on decolonization in the post World War II period, and the contemporary example of North America. The companion is divided into three sections, 'Times', 'Spaces' and 'Themes' which allows chronological, geographical and thematical approaches to be successfully combined. In so doing this volume provides a unique research tool that will be invaluable to all students and scholars interested in the history of empires, imperialism and colonialism in the post-classical world.

Slavery casts a long shadow over American history; despite the cataclysmic changes of the Civil War and emancipation, the United States carried antebellum notions of slavery into its imperial expansion at the turn of the twentieth-century. African American, Chinese and other immigrant labourers were exploited in the name of domestic economic development, and overseas, local populations were made into colonial subjects of America. How did the U.S. deal with the paradox of presenting itself as a global power which abhorred slavery, while at the same time failing to deal with forced labour at home? Catherine Armstrong argues that this was done with rhetorical manoeuvres around the definition of slavery. Drawing primarily on representations of slavery in American print culture, this study charts how definitions and depictions of slavery both changed and stayed the same as the nation became a prominent actor on the world stage. In doing so, Armstrong challenges the idea that slavery is a merely historical problem, and shows its relevance in the contemporary world.