This is a collection of twelve interdisciplinary essays from international scholars concerned with examining the British experience of Empire since the eighteenth century. It considers themes such as national identity, modernity, culture, social class, diplomacy, consumerism, gender, postcolonialism, and perceptions of Britain's place in the world.

Preface and Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors List of illustrations Introduction; Martin Farr and Xavier Guégan PART I: ESTABLISHING THE EMPIRE 1. The Roots of Empire: Early Modern Travel Collections and International Politics in the Long Eighteenth Century; Matthew Day 2. Divine Imperialism: the British in Palestine, 1753-1842; Michael Talbot 3. Model City: Fact and Fiction in Early-Twentieth Century Khartoum; Henrika Kuklick PART II: EXPERIENCING THE EMPIRE 4. A Governor's Wife in the Making: Elizabeth Macquarie's Voyage from England to Australia in 1809; Jane McDermid 5. Against 'the Usual Restraints Imposed upon their Sex': Conflictive Gender Representations in Nineteenth-Century Orients; Xavier Guégan 6. Empire Travel Guides and the Imperial Mind-Set from the Mid-Nineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Centuries; John M. MacKenzie PART III: EXPERIENCING OTHER EMPIRES 7. 'The Feelings of An Officer': John Stedman In Suriname; Kerry Sinanan 8. British Communities and Foreign Intervention in Nineteenth Century South America: the Rio De La Plata in the 1840s; David Rock 9. 'The Bible Dream': Official Travel in Morocco, c1845 to 1935'; John Fisher PART IV: EXPERIENCING A POST-COLONIAL WORLD 10. Oriental Expressions: British Visions of Arabia from a Colonial to a Post-Colonial World; James Canton 11. Ghost Hunting: Amateur Film and Travel at the End of Empire; Anna Bocking-Welch 12. 'In Countries so Unciviliz'd as Those?': the Language of Incivility and the British Experience of the World; Marc Alexander and Andrew Struan Index