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An essential starting point for anyone wanting to learn about life in the largest empire in history, this two-volume work encapsulates the imperial experience from the 16th–21st centuries. From early sixteenth-century explorations to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, the British Empire controlled outposts on every continent, spreading its people and ideas across the globe and profiting mightily in the process. The present state of our world—from its increasing interconnectedness to its vast inequalities and from the successful democracies of North America to the troubled regimes of Africa and the Middle East—can be traced, in large part, to the way in which Great Britain expanded and ...
A key addition to our understanding of the Victorian-era British Empire, this book looks at the founders of the Colonial Society and the ideas that led them down the path to imperialism.
The Crown Agents Office played a crucial role in colonial development. Acting in the United Kingdom as the commercial and financial agent for the crown colonies, the Agency supplied all non-locally manufactured stores required by colonial governments, issued their London loans, managed their UK investments, and supervised the construction of their railways, harbours and other public works. In addition, the Office supervised the award of colonial land and mineral concessions, monitored the colonial banking and currency system, and performed a personnel role, paying colonial service salaries and pensions, recruiting technical officers, and arranging the transport of officers, troops and Indian indentured labour. In this important book, the first in-depth investigation of the Agency, David Sunderland examines each of these services in turn, determining in each case whether the Crown Agents' performance benefited their clients, the UK economy or themselves. His book is thus both an account of a remarkable and unique organisation and a fascinating examination of the 'nuts and bolts' of nineteenth-century development. DAVID SUNDERLAND is a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester.