This chapter introduces the book’s main research question, that is, the fact that rising inequality does not appear to benefit an egalitarian redistributive agenda. It shows how, in Great Britain, despite a sharp rise in income inequality, agreement with the claim that the government should redistribute income from the rich to the poor has decreased over time. In the United States, overall stability in mass support for redistribution hides a decline in the attitudinal gap between the high- and low-income respondents, despite expectations that this gap should increase with income inequality. How can this empirical evidence be reconciled with reasonable assumptions underpinning expectations of rising support for redistribution? Under what conditions can attitudes toward redistributive social policies change and act as a countervailing force to rising inequality? The remainder of the chapter lays out the book's answers to these questions and presents the empirical strategy. A central claim is that attitudes toward redistributive social policies are shaped by at least two motives, material self-interest and fairness reasoning, and that the relative importance of each is situational.

Chapter 8 traces the unexpected empirical patterns described in Chapter 1 to belief change and framing effects, themselves triggered by changes in how elites compete over redistributive issues. In line with the argument presented in Part 1, it also shows that belief change plays out differently depending on (1) which type of fairness beliefs is affected by partisan dynamics (proportionality or reciprocity) and (2) people’s position as net beneficiaries (or net contributors) of redistribution to policies, as proxied by their income level. In Great Britain, in particular, I find that framing effects tied to survey design further explain how belief change affects answers to the traditional redistribution question. In the United States, the decline in the size of the income gradient follows from the politicization of redistribution to policies (and reciprocity concerns) over redistribution from policies (and proportionality concerns). Against common expectations, the decline in the income gradient originates in growing support for redistribution among rich Democrats, not declining support among poor (often white) Republicans.

The Soviets deployed a performative politics of the market everywhere they went, but they used with particular insistence in Great Britain. The British economy had performed well in the postwar period, but its industry was losing out to competitors in continental Europe and Japan. This was something the Soviets liked to point out, and often. But Great Britain had a unique advantage: a still international currency with relatively deep captial markets. It is in this ambit that the British sought, in 1964, a competitive edge over its allies for Soviet business. In order to counter rising competition – and against strong American pressure – the British offered to liberalize parts of its national economy and to offer better and temporally longer finance for Soviet purchases of British industrial products. In doing so, they breached financing practices from the 1930s. The Soviets then used these new terms to pressure other European countries into better financial arrangements for their deal-making. The promotion of market practices of competition, the Soviets understood, could be achieved through financial competition in the absence of integrated global markets for industrial commodities. British financiers would be the bearers of the political transformation the Soviets sought and strove for in the world economy.

The union of England’s and Scotland’s parliaments was not just a political and economic project but also a narrative and rhetorical one. As a dissenter, tradesman, and newspaper proprietor, Defoe was uniquely positioned to write Great Britain into existence. This chapter reveals that whether he was addressing Scottish or English readers, and whether he was writing pamphlets, poetry, or articles for his Review, Defoe’s message regarding the Act of Union was remarkably consistent. Employing a rhetoric of common sense, he repeatedly argued that it was illogical to pit Scottish against English interests in the negotiation of a treaty that would transform both into Britons and render their interests identical. This argument boldly asked readers to imagine that they were already British, or to proleptically inhabit an as yet unrealized identity.

“Worlds of Color,” first published in Foreign Affairs in 1925, argues that the labor problem in Europe is only a facet of a much greater global labor problem, the “World Shadow” of colonial exploitation. It offers a comparative study of the Portuguese, Belgian, French, and British empires in Africa and their distinctive regimes of race relations, land ownership, and labor, paying particular attention to the fate of educated Africans in the various colonies. It scrutinizes the variety of colonial regimes and economic systems instituted by the British across Africa in their efforts to extract resources under different local conditions. The essay reflects on the proceedings of the 1923 Third Pan-African Congress and draws on impressions and information gained during Du Bois’s first visit to Africa. The essay was republished in Alain Locke’s landmark Harlem Renaissance anthology, The New Negro (1925).

Chapter 2 provides a brief historical background of Middle Eastern migration to the west and details how authoritarian-nationalist regimes in Libya, Syria, and Yemen pushed exiles and emigrants to the United States and Great Britain. By examining the state of diaspora mobilization from the 1960s to the eve of the Arab Spring in 2010, the author demonstrates anti-regime movements were small, atomized, and considered partisan by their conationals. Neither Libyan and Syrian exiles nor well-resourced white-collar professionals were able to forge public member-based associations or initiate large anti-regime protest events during this period. Yemeni movements, meanwhile, focused on supporting southern separation from the Yemeni state, rather than on the reform or liberalization of the Yemeni government.

The historic role of beliefs in magic and other occult traditions in politics has often been ignored, neglected or sidelined by historians, but the presence of such beliefs is nevertheless a troubling reality that the historian must confront. The introduction explores the methodological and historiographical problems thrown up by studying occult beliefs and politics together, and examines the ancient relationship between politics and occult traditions as well as the distinctive association of political magic with the island of Great Britain through the appealing mythological feature of Merlin, the magician and royal counsellor. Finally, the introduction outlines the scope and content of the book.

Religion, shared values, and history led American politicians to support the Zionist cause during the inter-war years. Presidents, politicians, and the American people supported the Zionist aspirations, although, it was only after the Second World War that the Americans became actively involved in Zionist affairs. During the inter-war years, the British government acted to fulfil the commitment it made in 1917 to help the Jews to establish a national home in Palestine. When the winds of war were blowing across Europe, the British began to back out of from the mandate and their commitments, and the Zionists turned to the United States for support. This marked a change in the Zionist attitude toward the United States – they wanted to see the United States extend its sponsorship of the Zionist enterprise. The ideological infrastructure for such a tutelage already existed; now the Zionists expected the Americans to act upon their ideology. During the war years, more promises were made than actions taken. However, when the war was over, and a new president, Harry S. Truman, occupied the White House, ideas inspired action, and President Truman acted to assist the Jews in attaining their goal of statehood.

Chapter 2 provides a brief historical background of Middle Eastern migration to the west and details how authoritarian-nationalist regimes in Libya, Syria, and Yemen pushed exiles and emigrants to the United States and Great Britain. By examining the state of diaspora mobilization from the 1960s to the eve of the Arab Spring in 2010, the author demonstrates anti-regime movements were small, atomized, and considered partisan by their conationals. Neither Libyan and Syrian exiles nor well-resourced white-collar professionals were able to forge public member-based associations or initiate large anti-regime protest events during this period. Yemeni movements, meanwhile, focused on supporting southern separation from the Yemeni state, rather than on the reform or liberalization of the Yemeni government.

This chapter asks what the Aborigines’ Protection Society and Thomas Hodgkin reveal to us about British humanitarianism and settler colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century. It also considers how, in the twenty-first century, we should read the chauvinism and paternalism of metropolitan advocates of indigenous rights, and how we can understand the importance, but limitations, of their interventions.

This chapter traces Dr Thomas Hodgkin’s engagement with British anti-slavery, the American Colonization Society, Liberia and the African American Emigration movement. Hodgkin was the leading advocate in Britain for the colony of Liberia, and became its British consul after independence in 1848. Hodgkin conceived of solutions to slavery within an unusually transnational framework. However, his championing of gradual emancipation for British slaves and plans to civilize West Africa by repatriating emancipated slaves from the New World, led him into unsavoury alliances and conflict with leading British and US abolitionists. Hodgkin’s correspondence with humanitarian opponents, doyens of British abolition, leading Liberians, African American Emigrationists, and the American Colonization Society, reveals deep divisions within anti-slavery which had ramifications for the campaigns for indigenous protection and civilization.

This introductory chapter examines the archive of Thomas Hodgkin and its value for understanding British humanitarianism and activism on behalf of indigenous peoples, and particularly the activities of the Aborigines’ Protection Society. It considers the history and historiography of humanitarianism and indigenous protection. It also explores scholarship on settler colonialism, imperial networks, critical indigenous studies and new imperial histories, before presenting the book’s argument.