Chapter 5 turns to westward labor migration from the EU’s newly acceded Central and East European (CEE) states to the EU15 from 2004. Despite the EU’s promise full social inclusion, the migration followed an exclusionary cycle. Focusing on Britain, the chapter shows how migrants’ EU-mandated free entry and social rights provoked a welfare nationalist backlash that was amplified by the tabloid press and reflected in opinion polls and in growing support for the populist, anti-immigrant United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Relying on government documents, the chapter shows how Britain’s social security bureaucracy progressively rescinded CEE labor migrants’ social rights while the government adopted exclusionary migration reforms, culminating in the 2016 Brexit vote that ended CEE migrants’ entry rights. The Brexit Settlement Scheme preserved residence rights for some on ethnically and economically discriminatory bases. Comparative case studies of CEE migration to Germany, Sweden, and Italy show that each followed the British model ‘part of the way,’ adopting more selective exclusionary policies that discriminated the poorer, younger and less-skilled. The conclusion explains why the EU failed in the effort to extend its egalitarian, inclusionary, European citizenship project eastward.

Summarizes the industrial policies of Britain since World War II, especially how Britain failed because it lacked an economic theory of what industrial policy was for, and had weak institutions for implementing such policies.

This chapter explores the topic of Roman military families’ mobility in the late first through third centuries CE by discussing a case study of British families abroad. It surveys the evidence for families that came from Roman Britain and settled on the continent. In doing so, the author assesses and compares various types of evidence (literary, epigraphic, and archaeological) to discuss the case of British military families on the move, families that had been present in the Roman Empire but not accounted for in the modern scholarly literature. The sources analyzed include literary texts, inscriptions, military diplomas and personal dress accessories that the members of such families took with them as part of personal possessions during their travels. Since most sources available to trace such families come from the Roman military context, the focus lies on emigrant soldiers’ families. The first section relies heavily on the historical texts and epigraphic material while the second part is devoted to the discussion of the potential and limitations of material culture in our search for migrant communities. The chapter provides a case to support the view that British military families traveled far and wide in the empire.

This chapter explores contexts for Goldsmith’s career as a playwright, such as competition between Covent Garden and Drury Lane theatres that were factors in the moderate success of The Good Natur’d Man in 1768 and the surprise runaway hit that was She Stoops to Conquer five years later. These plays are considered in the light of how the Seven Years’ War, which greatly expanded the British empire, challenged conceptions of Britishness at home and abroad. Goldsmith’s comedies respond to the perceived effeminization of culture in the 1770s, associated with the possibility corrupting influence of luxury and commerce as a result of imperial expansion. This influence was manifested in new kinds of fashionable sociability such as the masquerade with its uppity women, and the phenomenon of the male ‘macaroni’. Goldsmith also tests the conventions of the comedy of manners in how he deploys minor characters in The Good Natur’d Man and the cross-class appeal of Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer.

At the end of 1939, the newly established 18th Infantry Brigade consisted of four battalions: 2/9 Battalion, 2/20 Battalion, 2/11 Battalion and 2/12 Battalion. As part of the 9th Infantry Division, the brigade was scheduled to depart Australia in May 1940 to join the British campaigns in the Middle East. In honour of this impending deployment, the 18th Brigade participated in a parade through the streets of Sydney, minus one battalion because the 2/11 Battalion had been detached to leave early for action in the Middle East.1 With the impending reorganisation of Australian brigades from four to three battalions, the 2/11 Battalion would not return to the 18th Brigade for the duration of the war. The 2/11 Battalion would, however, join the 19th Brigade in North Africa to participate in more than a dozen battles and campaigns across North Africa, the Middle East and the SWPA.

The chapter analyses the significance of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in public awareness, and the stages of formalized Holocaust memory which have followed. These include the introduction of compulsory Holocaust education in schools in the 1990s and the institution of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2001, followed more recently by the reopening of the Imperial War Museum Holocaust galleries and plans for a UK Holocaust Memorial. Memory of the catastrophic genocide has remained hard to reconcile with that of the emphasis on wartime triumph which characterizes national recall in Britain, and this incompatibility continues to influence public conceptions of the Holocaust. Yet popular works of fiction and film, such as the television drama The Windermere Children (2020) about the post-war rehabilitation of child camp survivors in the Lake District, can have the effect of turning self-congratulation into self-reflection by urging that past generosity be repeated in the present, despite Britain’s departure from the European Union. The emphasis on Holocaust literacy could offset the tendency to mythologize Britain’s role in winning the Second World War in winning the Second World War.

Chapter 26 explores the role of the English language and the culture of Britain on Goethe’s development. The influences began in his childhood, and became particularly significant in his twenties, owing not least to his friendship with Herder and their shared enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Ossian. The chapter also emphasises the importance of visitors from Britain in furthering Goethe’s knowledge of a country to which he never travelled himself, and examines his relationship with contemporary British writers, above all Byron and Carlyle. It closes with an overview of the reception of Goethe in Britain.

Three themes permeate most discussions of Australia’s relationship with Europe. The first is that relations are marked by extreme asymmetry. On one side there stands a large and economically powerful group of states, increasingly organised within the European Union (EU); on the other, a middling power that belongs to no regional bloc and possesses limited international clout. The second is that Australia’s relations with Europe are largely driven by trade issues, especially issues in the agricultural sector. And the third is that Australia’s close bilateral links with Britain are still a central feature of its European policy.

The Conclusion delves into the strategic and legal legacies of the Seven Years’ War. It ties the Seven Years’ War and the unresolved tensions around maritime neutrality to the outbreak of Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-Spanish hostilities during the American War of Independence. It does so by examining the peace treaty of 1763 wherein no new significant arrangements were made about neutral rights between the Spanish and the British. The argument is made that the ambiguity of existing treaties left both governments room to continue negotiations whilst the Rule of the War of 1756 would provide an understanding of how British prize courts would treat neutral ships in future conflicts. The chapter examines the legacy of the Court of Prize Appeal and the thinking behind the rule. It discusses how the court and the rule were used in subsequent conflicts through the Napoleonic Wars and the role that individual judges took in making the rule a critical or underplayed element of British maritime strategic thinking. The rule loomed large in British maritime law for many wars after Hardwicke created it and it is, perhaps, one of the best illustrations of the link between law, sea power, and strategic thinking.

To write of the British Commonwealth is to write of things but half-expressed, of intangibles which so often make up the realities of life. At many points the forces and attitudes which operate are not easily susceptible to analysis. The responses are those which cannot be exactly measured. Such a view invites, and usually receives, criticism, especially from those without the Commonwealth. It is dismissed as nonsense or self-deception. No doubt there is not a little of both in the easy phrases of public pronouncement, but even when hedged about by qualification—the existence of material and security gains, divergences between member states and even between groups within a single member state—something remains which cannot be defined satisfactorily in constitutional, procedural, or material terms. The substance of the Commonwealth today is a blending of historical experience, sentiment, material interest and national advantage; and combined with these is the belief that voluntary association on a basis of freedom of decision represents a positive contribution to the defence of the dignity of the individual and to the creation of a more stable international society.

This chapter investigates Caroline Watson’s understudied theatrical subjects which testify to her technical mastery and ambitious agenda as a printmaker and provide a lens for examining how gender, printmaking hierarchies, and patronage impacted her exceptional career as a female stipple engraver. Her prints of female Shakespearean characters, Garrick Speaking the Ode and Sarah Siddons as Euphrasia, after Robert Edge Pine, from the early 1780s, and her two large plates for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery in the 1790s affiliated her with Shakespeare and the most significant artistic enterprise of the late eighteenth century. In terms of scale, narrative complexity, and narrative scope, Watson’s theatrical prints demonstrate her extraordinary skill as a stipple engraver and challenge gender and printmaking hierarchies. Appointed Engraver to the Queen in 1785, Watson signed her prints, publishing a number under her own name, and supported herself comfortably through her printmaking. Despite her professional achievement and technical prowess, her extended independent career was circumscribed by hierarchies of gender that paralleled artistic hierarchies.

Women’s labour and contributions to the print publishing industry are all too frequently hidden in plain sight beneath the names of their male relatives. Between 1740 and 1800, at least twelve women in London independently managed businesses that published or retailed prints: Elizabeth Bartlet Bakewell, Ann Harper Bryer, Elizabeth Lyfe D’Achery, Mary Salmon Darly, Elizabeth Griffin, Hannah Humphrey, Dorothy Clapham Mercier, Hester Griffin Jackson Pulley, Mary Brown Ryland, Mary Baker Overton Sayer, Susanna Sledge, and Susanna Parker Vivares. This chapter surveys their careers, which stand as a representative sample for a much larger total number. Ranging from the renowned to the completely unknown, these women form a disparate group in terms of their origins, means of entry into the field, aesthetic interests, political beliefs, duration and scale of their firms, and widely varying levels of success. Reconstructing their histories demonstrates women’s ongoing contributions to the business of publishing and selling prints in eighteenth-century London.