'This is a brilliant and highly original study of what the authors describe as 'imperial globalisation'. Drawing upon a huge range of literature, Thompson and Magee explore the social networks, business connections, migrational habits and shared material culture that bound together British communities at home and overseas in the long nineteenth century. In this pathbreaking book, they bring new conceptual rigour as well as empirical depth to the emerging history of the 'British World'. An outstanding achievement.' John Darwin, Nuffield College, University of Oxford