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The case study examines the career of British politician and imperial official John Pope Hennessy. Using this example, the author seeks to elucidate the concept of an imperial biography, which he defines as biographies of socially and geographically mobile elites within an empire. He also discusses the historiography of British imperialism, the alternate example of British colonial statesman Edward John Eyre, and the use of network analysis in the study of colonialism and imperialism.

The present article revisits the history of the Boy Scouts to illustrate the centrality of youth in attempts to stabilize Anglo-American imperial hierarchies. Moving beyond the default narrative that depicts scouting as an institution devoted to masculinizing boys, it foregrounds the ways in which the valorization of boyhood facilitated the desire of men to embody a younger, more innocent version of themselves. Critical of works that have created a false polarity by either reducing youths to objects of adult design or positioning them as subversive actors, this article demonstrates how boyhood became a powerful intergenerational and interimperial force on both sides of the Atlantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the cyclical trajectory of the British coal miner from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Within less than one generation, the miner turned from doomed industrial proletarian to self-assured embodiment of the future back to doomed proletarian. The renaissance of King Coal in the 1970s proved short-lived, and yet it needs to be taken seriously if one is to understand the nature of the coal strike of 1984/85 and the rundown of the industry that followed. Indeed, the figure of the miner offers a lens for reconfiguring our understanding of the 1970s and British contemporary history more generally, as the article seeks to demonstrate both empirically and conceptually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By focusing on consumer classifications, this article argues that surveillance can only be adequately understood by including the history of its methods in the analysis. It demonstrates that these methods - through their own logic and history - formed the basis and set the tone for observing consumer-citizens. In Britain, the history of consumer classifications is closely related to the national Census, with class having served as the primary discriminating factor for most of the twentieth century. However, from 1979 to 1981, classifications underwent a key shift away from class towards neighborhood, which also had a long history in British social research. This (renewed) spatial turn took place when changes in information technology coincided with neoliberal politics, leading to private company-based research and the focus on small units instead of society as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the introduction of fingerprinting in British sub-Saharan Africa between 1900 and 1960, this article demonstrates how this region became an important site of experimentation in the use of biometric methods for maintaining a racial hierarchy. Focusing on British Kenya, the article shows that many Africans experienced race-based fingerprinting as a threat to their personal honor and dignity. African opposition to this practice caused political conflict not only in Kenya, but also in the British metropole, and was a significant factor behind the emergence of the Kenyan nationalist movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the formation of the Teddy Boy youth subculture in postwar Great Britain. The creation of counterculture group identity through fashion is described, the influence of late 19th-century working-class fashion on the subculture is identified, and social change wrought by the subculture is examined. Information is offered on the role of suburbanization in increasing occupation of public spaces such as movie theaters, streets, and theater halls by young people in the 1950s as well as the adoption of coolness into youth culture.

The article discusses the creation and eventual economic disintegration of the sterling area, which focused on Great Britain and former and current British colonies and which stabilized the international monetary system after World War II. Topics include the relation of the sterling area to the Bretton Woods foreign exchange system, the influence of the area on international trade in relation to British exports, and the impact of a 1967 devaluation of the sterling on the sterling area. The relation of the sterling area to monetary integration is noted.

Harold Macmillan's “Wind of Change" speech of February 1960 is widely regarded as a defining moment in the history of British decolonisation. Indeed the words themselves have become shorthand for the sweeping changes that transformed the political and ideological landscape of the post-imperial world. What is less understood is the complex reaction of white British settler communities to Macmillan's message. This essay explores the rhetorical afterlife of the “wind of change" as a means of gauging the settler-colonial dimensions of decolonisation. By tracing its ambivalent usage among settler communities in South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, and further afield in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it is argued that the wind of change acquired distinctive settler connotations as a synonym for the dissolution of white Commonwealth solidarity. The wind of change challenged long held assumptions that had governed the political, social and cultural networks of “Greater Britain", and confronted its constituent communities with unprecedented dilemmas of self-definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay examines the ways in which white British settlers in Africa reacted to the speech "Wind of Change," given by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. The author explains how the speech can be used in order to analyze settlers' relationship to the decolonization of Great Britain's African empire.

The article discusses European governments' surveillance of anti-colonial activists in the early twentieth century, focusing on trust relationships. It examines police informants, police authorities, and spies. The author discusses France, Germany, and Great Britain, particularly focusing on the threat of Indochinese anti-colonialism in France and Indian anti-colonialism in Great Britain. Several organizations that monitored anti-colonialists are examined, including the French Service de Contrôle et d'Assistance des Indigènes (CAI).

The article presents information about perspectives on social civility in 18th century Great Britain. The role of emotions research in discussions of British civility norms is discussed. Particular attention is paid to British attempts to transfer conceptions of civilized life to colonies in India. Descriptions are given of the political aspects of the emotionality ascribed to colonized nations in the British Empire by their colonizers. Further comments are made concerning the perception of emotional differences and the use of this perception to judge the social development of a colonized nation.