Following the First World War and in actions that challenged Britain’s reputation as a liberal democracy, various government departments implemented policies of mass repatriation from Britain of populations of colonial and friendly migrants and refugees.Many of those repatriated had played a significant part in the war effort and had given valuable service in the combat zones and on the home front: serving in the armed forces, in labour battalions and employed in key wartime industries, su...

Social clubs as they existed in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland were varied: they could be convivial, sporting, or scholarly, or they could be a significant and dynamic social force, committed to improvement and national regeneration as well as to sociability. The essays in this volume examine the complex history of clubs and societies in Scotland from 1700 to 1830. Contributors address attitudes toward associations, their meeting places and rituals, their links with the ...

Around 250,000 Belgian refugees who fled the German invasion spent the First World War in Britain – the largest refugee presence Britain has ever witnessed. Welcomed in a wave of humanitarian sympathy for ‘Poor Little Belgium’, within a few months Belgian exiles were pushed off the front pages of newspapers by the news of direct British involvement in the war. Following rapid repatriation at British government expense in late 1918 and 1919 Belgian refugees were soon lost from public memory...