FRONT OF COVER: Final: 4.9.98

GENTLEMANLY CAPITALISM
AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM
The New Debate on Empire

Edited by
RAYMOND E. DUMETT

with an Afterword by
P. J. CAIN and A. G. HOPKINS

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GENTLEMANLY CAPITALISM
AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM
Raymond E. Dumett
[colophon]

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BACK OF COVER:
GENTLEMANLY CAPITALISM
AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM
The New Debate on Empire
The publication in 1993 of the two award-winning volumes of British Imperialism by P.[...] and A.G.Hopkins was a major event for historians of Britain, of imperialism, and of international economic history generally. The work provided the mature exposition of the authors theory of Gentlemanly Capitalism - a complex of economic, social and political power centred on the City of London (then the world s chief provider of international economic services) which, according to Cain and Hopkins, had a central role in shaping the course and the character of imperial Britain s development, at home and abroad, across the past three centuries.
By stressing the centrality of these financial and service activities, and of the gentlemanly elite who managed them, Cain and Hopkins offered a new interpretation of the rise and fall of empire, identifying novel elements in Britain s expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, emphasising her continuing dynamism in the twentieth, and suggesting a reappraisal of the process of decolonisation.
The idea of Gentlemanly Capitalism caught the attention not only of historians interested in the British and imperial past, but also of commentators preoccupied with the future, and stimulated vigorous argument in many different parts of the world. Historians have tested and developed the theory itself, using it to analyse the specific experience of different areas and periods; and have also explored its wider implications. The present volume, Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism, will therefore be assured of a wide welcome. Its specially-commissioned contributions are intended to provide an accessible guide to this developing debate; to illustrate the role of Gentlemanly Capitalism in a number of different international arenas, both inside and outside the formal Empire; and to stimulate further work on Britain s imperial past and its contemporary legacy.
An extended editorial Introduction establishes the general issues. Eight new studies then explore their implications in a variety of contexts at home and abroad - including work on Latin America, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, the United States, East Asia and Malaya. And in a substantial Afterword on The theory and practice of British imperialism, Cain and Hopkins themselves revisit their original concept in the light of these findings. The result is a book that will be necessary reading for all those who already know the two volumes of British Imperialism itself, and is also an admirable starting point for those coming fresh to the insights and controversies that it continues to inspire.
The Editor: RAYMOND E. DUMETT, who specializes in African (and particularly Ghanaian) economic and social history, is Associate Professor at Purdue University, Indiana.
The Contributors: Shigeru Akita; Peter J. Cain; Lance E. Davis; Barry Gough; E. H. H. Green; A G. Hopkins; Robert Kubicek; Maria Misra; Angela Redish; and Nicholas J. White.
[colophon] LONGMAN