The development of modern propaganda in Britain, 1854-1902
There has been a general historiographical concentration on the twentieth century in terms of modern propaganda, much due to the impact of the First World War. However, it is the premise of this thesis that while the First World War was a propagandistic watershed, the sixty years preceding it were of equal importance in terms of the formation of modern propaganda in Britain. 
 
 The aim of this thesis then is to address this gap by considering the nature, meaning and operation of propaganda in this period. In order to accomplish this, this thesis creates a set of criteria for identifying and distinguishing ‘modern’ propaganda, before demonstrating that what is generally conceived as modern, and characteristic of the twentieth century, in fact existed or was developing in the latter half of the nineteenth century. 
 
 This is achieved firstly by conducting a survey of the etymology and theory of propaganda in this period in order to demonstrate how contemporaries understood that phenomenon; secondly, by analysing the Crimean War as the progenitor of the development of a modern form of propaganda; thirdly, by considering how the vast political, social, economic and technological changes that took place in the period 1854-1902 created an environment in which modern propaganda not only could emerge, but had to; and fourthly, by examining the Boer War as the zenith of this process and an example of a modern propagandistic environment. 
 
 It will be argued that modern propaganda not only developed and existed in this period, but its study can open up a dialogue between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in terms of propaganda and thereby contribute to debates that still occupy historians of propaganda today, particularly the place of propaganda in democracy. If historians are to understand the propagandistic upheavals of the twentieth century, they must first look to where such propaganda came from, why it developed and what form these developments took in a world untainted by the memory of a World War.
One Big Thing: Britain, Its Empire, and Their Imperial Culture
O of the most interesting scholarly moves in British studies of the past decade or so has been the reemergence of the empire as a focus of historical and cultural interest. Indeed, I think the empire may be just the tonic needed to revitalize the intellectual arteries of the field—an elixir that many thought would be provided by the poststructuralist “linguistic turn” of the 1980s and 1990s. But even the most cursory acquaintance with the theoretical foundations of the linguistic turn was enough to reveal its conceptual weaknesses as a guide to historical practice. Indeed, its foremost deficit was precisely an inability to accommodate histories of empire. Its extreme idealism, for example, precluded reading empire as an economic or political system, let alone as a series of diverse encounters and associations. Still, poststructuralism did leave one valuable legacy; it encouraged a focus on culture, a focus that is very evident in the renewed interest in empire in British history. The imperial turn is unlikely to suffer the same fate as the linguistic turn. Empire, after all, has continually returned to Britain, particularly since HMS Windrush tied up at Southampton Dock in 1948. Immigration is, of course, integral to Britain’s past, tying its experiences to spheres beyond the nation itself. Of the different domains where Britain’s history can be located—the Isles themselves, Europe, the North Atlantic—the imperial dimension has claims to be the most significant. After all, from its beginning in the sixteenth century, the very idea of Britain was an imperial construction. Britain itself was a result of the process of English imperialism and competition against the weaker, but no less evident, imperialism of Scotland. From the later seventeenth century, therefore, it is a thoroughly rea-
The South African War, 1899-1902
The South African War rounded off the British conquest of Southern Africa. Only now, a hundred years later, are some of the more baleful legacies of the war being addressed. This new history is an up-to-date account of the military struggle in South Africa including the whole web of miscalculations and shattered illusions that surrounded it which spread far beyond the battlefields.