A comprehensive account of how British race patriotism shaped the defense partnership between Britain and the dominions before the Great War.

This is an important study that should be read by all interested in British imperial defense and grand strategy Knitting together the empire was a class of men, a body of opinion, a 'defence community of military, naval and colonial officials drawn together by a common belief that the empire was in such a poor state of defence as to present a standing temptation to an enemy. They also limited confidence in the ability of a post-1867 democracy to conduct an effective defence, foreign or imperial policy. The roots of these beliefs lay in their common experience in the empire, in war and in the several defence investigations and war scares that occurred between the Crimean War and the Balkan Crisis of 1878.

The history of globalisation is usually told as a history of shortening distances and acceleration of the flows of people, goods and ideas. Channelling Mobilities refines this picture by looking at a wide variety of mobile people passing through the region of the Suez Canal, a global shortcut opened in 1869. As an empirical contribution to global history, the book asks how the passage between Europe and Asia and Africa was perceived, staged and controlled from the opening of the Canal to the First World War, arguing that this period was neither an era of unhampered acceleration, nor one of hardening borders and increasing controls. Instead, it was characterised by the channelling of mobilities through the differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of movement. Telling the stories of tourists, troops, workers, pilgrims, stowaways, caravans, dhow skippers and others, the book reveals the complicated entanglements of empires, internationalist initiatives and private companies.