Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850 - 1914

by Gary B. Magee, Andrew S. Thompson

Focusing on the great population movement of British emigrants before 1914, this book provides a perspective on the relationship between empire and globalisation. It shows how distinct structures of economic opportunity developed around the people who settled across a wider British World through the co-ethnic networks they created. Yet these networks could also limit and distort economic growth. The powerful appeal of ethnic identification often made trade and investment with racial 'outsiders' less appealing, thereby skewing economic activities toward communities perceived to be 'British'.

By highlighting the importance of these networks to migration, finance and trade, this book contributes to debates about globalisation in the past and present. It reveals how the networks upon which the era of modern globalisation was built quickly turned in on themselves after 1918, converting racial, ethnic and class tensions into protectionism, nationalism and xenophobia. Avoiding such an outcome is a challenge faced today.

Genres: World History

314 pages, Hardcover

First published February 10, 2006

Reviews

[Dropbear123 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

Very academic book about how networks of people from Britain and the dominions / settler colonies led to an first wave of globalisation between 1850-1914. Short at 244 pages, with the first 60 pages or so covering academic theories about social networks. Also there is a lot of footnotes. The main theme of this book is that British emigrants followed people who had went before them in choosing where to go, which led to many choosing going to Canada, the USA (despite it no longer being a colony), South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. They then passed on information back to the UK that led to these areas being further favoured in terms of emigration, investment, trade etc because people favour what they know and what is similar to home in terms of laws, values and culture. This caused an early of wave of what the authors call 'imperial globalisation' and a mindset of the 'British World' where people in say Canada or Australia still identified closely with Britain which lasted till WWI (and probably quite a bit longer). Basically the British diaspora in the colonies and the people still in Britain were still closely connected and exchanged information which benefited both groups, strengthened ties between them, and helped the empire.

A lot of this is presented as informal, based on personal ties, family ties, business ties etc. The British government's role in this is mainly providing stability through military might. There isn't much in the way of specific government policy trying to encourage emigration or to encourage investment in the colonies.

I picked this book up because it was cheap for an academic book, rather than specific interest in this topic. As the book is academic in a category I don't know a lot about I might have missed some of the nuances of the book.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors see the British Empire as lacking a strong political direction, and instead being a series of strong, global, networks. These networks operated economically in the way British consumers were linked together by cultural consumption- by specifically buying imperial goods, reading imperial advertisements, etc. Migration between Britain and other parts of the world was key in constructing these networks, as "it was, above all, personal connections and social networks that embedded economic activity within cultural contexts" (15).

Together, migration of goods, people and capital thus created the British Empire in the minds of subjects even when direct political imperatives were lacking. The British bloc which emerged became an advocated of an integrated, globalizing world, until the First World War led to a xenophobic turn.

My main criticism is that British protectionism before 1914 was not addressed. As I am mostly interested in the relationship between labor and globalization, I would have liked to have seen more analysis of the ways in which workers called upon the Empire to aid them and the conflicts which emerged with proponents of a global economy.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book represents the new big thing in imperial history. Some historians have compared the authors to the other two pairs of historians to have significantly influenced imperial history - Robinson and Gallagher, and Cain and Hopkins - but Empire and Globalisation is probably more modest in its achievement. In the first place, it's relatively short at 244 pages, and it reads almost like an extended essay. More importantly, it draws chiefly upon two scholarly trends that are already well developed in their own right. The first is the prominence given by Cain and Hopkins to the role of finance and commerce in driving imperial expansion. Thompson and Magee contribute to this scholarship by showing that British overseas investment tended to prefer destinations with familiar cultures, customs, laws, and political traditions - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and even in the United States. The British preference for other parts of the "white empire" arose partly because investors held many connections there - family, business, and personal -, and partly because investors could be confident that those colonies, because they were predominantly "British" in habit and outlook, could be trusted to do business in ways acceptable and familiar to investors in London. The second contribution, which complements the first, is that Empire and Globalisation draws upon the recent body of work now known as the "British World," a scholarly project that sees the predominantly white, English-speaking countries (including the United States) as a transnational culture group, politically divided yet broadly united by shared bonds of race, language, culture, economy, and political tradition. Thompson and Magee show how transnational networks of people, goods, ideas, and capital integrated the British World and thereby shaped the phase of globalization that occurred between 1850 and 1914. Thompson and Magee thus bring together these two subfields of imperial history in unique and innovative ways, and by so doing their short book charts the way for much research that will undoubtedly follow in its wake.