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.

David Lambert is Professor of History at the University of Warwick Peter Merriman is Professor of Geography at Aberystwyth University

1 Empire and mobility: an introductionDavid Lambert and Peter Merriman2 Military print culture, knowledge and terrain: knowledge mobility and eighteenth-century military colonialismHuw J. Davies3 A contested vision of empire: anonymity, authority, and mobility in the reception of William MacintoshsTravels in Europe, Asia, and Africa (1782)Innes M. Keighren4 The art of travel in the name of science: mobility and erasure in the art of Flinderss Australian voyage, 18013Sarah Thomas5 On their own element: nineteenth-century seamens missions and merchant seamens mobilityJustine Atkinson6 Easy chair geography: the fabrication of an immobile culture of nineteenth-century explorationNatalie Cox7 Consorting with others: vagrancy laws and unauthorised mobility across colonial borders in New Zealand from 1877 to 1900Catharine Coleborne8 Trekking around Upper Burma: Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffes exploration of the frontier districts, 1903Nuala C. Johnson9 Reading the skies, writing mobility: on the road with a colonial meteorologistMartin Mahony10 Grounded: the limits of British imperial aeromobilityLiz Millward11 Afterword: westward the course of empire takes its wayTim CresswellIndex