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

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Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850-1914 ReviewEmpire and Globalisation shows 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. I think this book represents the new big thing in imperial history. Some reviewers have already compared the authors to the other two pairs of historians to have significantly influenced imperial history - Robinson and Gallagher, and Cain and Hopkins. Empire and Globalisation is valuable for a number of reasons, as I explain below, but it's probably also more modest in its achievement than some previous path-breaking works on the British Empire. 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 three scholarly trends that are already well developed in their own right. The value of this book is to bring these fields of study together and to suggest new ways of thinking about how the British Empire worked as a global system of networks.
The first scholarly contribution evident in this book is the prominence given by Cain and Hopkins (British Imperialism, 1688-2000) to the role of finance and commerce in driving imperial expansion. As Cain and Hopkins argue, British financiers, in the search for investments overseas, pressed their friends and acquaintances in Westminster to safeguard trade and commerce by establishing imperial rule. The so-called "white empire" played an important part in this drive for profitable investment, and its role in the British Empire comes through strongly in Empire and Globalisation. Thompson and Magee thus draw upon and complement the work of Cain and Hopkins, in particular by showing that British trade and 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 countries, 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 influence upon this book, which complements the first, is the recent body of work now known as the "British World" initiative, 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. British World scholarship sees the phenomenon of mass migration from the British Isles as leading to a general unity among the English-speaking peoples, less heroic perhaps than Churchill presumed, but real and historically meaningful nonetheless. Empire and Globalisation, by investigating the connections and networks within the English-speaking world, has helped to outline a field of historical enquiry that transcends national borders and encompasses all realms of human experience.
The final subfield of history evident in this book is the growing literature on globalization. It was once assumed that globalization began, say, in 1945, as a uniquely American-led phenomenon that accelerated throughout the post-war era. It is now understood that globalization finds its origins in earlier periods. Historians have linked it to the rise of modern capitalism in the eighteenth century. Some have even posited such notions as "proto-globalization," in which the integration of markets and the exchange of ideas in pre-modern eras helped to set in motion the wheels of global integration. Thompson and Magee rightfully trace the processes of globalization into the nineteenth century, associating it in particular with mass migration, the development of capitalism, the diffusion of technology, and the spread of ideas, above all between peoples sharing a common language and cultural and ethnic identity. It is arguably the case that such "globalization" as occurred in the nineteenth century was most pronounced in the advanced, industrialized, comparatively rich, English-speaking countries of the world.
The real value of this book is to bring these three fields of study together in unique and innovative ways, while managing to keep the presentation of material both short and accessible. For this reason, as I stated in the title of the review, Empire and Globalisation is probably the best entry into the study of empire and globalization. It is a first-rate guide for undergraduates. It establishes importance concepts on globalization as they apply to the British Empire. Above all, perhaps, it charts the way for much research that will undoubtedly follow in its wake.Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850-1914 Overview

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