Empire and mobility in the long nineteenth century

Mobility was central to imperialism from the human movements entailed in exploration travel and migration to the information communications and commodity flows vital to trade science governance and military power. While historians have written on exploration commerce imperial transport and communications networks and the movements of slaves soldiers and scientists few have reflected upon the social cultural economic and political significance of mobile practices subjects and infrastructures that underpin imperial networks or examined the qualities of movement valued by imperial powers and agents at different times. This collection explores the intersection of debates on imperial relations colonialism and empire with emerging work on mobility. In doing this it traces how the movements of people representations and commodities helped to constitute the British empire from the late-eighteenth century through to the Second World War.