Revisiting the British World

Since the publication of Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis’ ground-breaking Rediscovering the British World, there has not been a collection of essays that looks at the history of the British World from an all-round thematic perspective. This edited collection defines the British World as a global community in which members identified themselves predominantly as British and considered the United Kingdom (UK) to be at its centre. The chapters in the volume focus upon diverse aspects of British identity and its interrelation with the history of Britain’s former settler-colonies and other regions of British settlement. Drawing upon new research from established scholars, early career researchers, and doctoral students, the edited collection aims to offer new voices and perspectives to the study of the British World. The book will appeal to both scholars and students of the history of the British World and British imperial history, as well as the national histories of Australia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and the UK.

'In this timely collection, new voices enliven and enlarge British World scholarship, nudging the field towards postcolonial concerns with critique and power while disassembling distinctions between transnational and nation-based modes of analysis.'—Philippa Mein Smith, University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand

'Revisiting the British World provides us with a series of essays that both challenge and expand our understanding of what it meant to be British, both in the United Kingdom and overseas, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Written by a mixture of established scholars, early career researchers, and doctoral students, the essays bring new voices and a fresh perspective to the field of British World Studies and show its continuing importance.'—Phillip Buckner, University of New Brunswick

'This edited collection, ranging widely in its conceptual and geographic scope, offers fresh perspectives on an important field. It not only revisits the British World, it enlarges it.'—Felicity Barnes, University of Auckland

'As the editors point out in their deftly context-setting, elegant, and insightful introductory and concluding remarks, the authors have used a range of different approaches to elucidate their subjects, from life-writing and critical discourse analysis to geopolitics, constitutional and political history, and through to the emerging fields of the history of celebrity and of humour. This fine collection is a resounding testimony to the continuing usefulness, fecundity, and depth of work on the significance of the British World moment.' —Carl Bridge, King's College London

'…reintroduces the British World as an idea to be historicized; a scale of inquiry; and a category of analysis in global, imperial, national, and transnational studies in history and political science...This collection will intrigue scholars interested in complicated histories of Britishness that happened outside of Britain and how the question of Britishness shaped developments in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Canada.'—Danielle Kinsey, Carleton University

'The unique selling point presented on the back cover is that such a collection is the first since Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis' Rediscovering the British World was published back in 2005...Each chapter opens a fresh vista that can be a starting point for further research, or, conversely, confirms theories about the British World generated elsewhere.' —John Griffiths, Massey University

'The well-researched chapters are broadly chronological in sequence, in that the first chapter concerns separatist impulses in colonial New South Wales from the 1820s and the last chapters deal with citizenship and the Cold War re-orientation of foreign policy among Tasman nations...this collection is engagingly written throughout.'—Marcus Harmes, University of Southern Queensland

Dr. Jatinder Mann is the Creator and Manager of the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand Studies Network. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Jatinder is the author of two books. The most recent is Redefining Citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand (2019). He is also sole editor of Citizenship in Transnational Perspective: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (2017).

Dr. Iain Johnston-White is a Tutor in History at the University of Oxford and an Education Advisor at the University of Groningen. His book publications include The British Commonwealth and Victory in the Second World War (2017) and an upcoming co-edited oral history of the Korean War.