This chapter focuses on the multiple mobilities of prisoners of war captured by the British in the years 1793–1815. It refers to prisoners being held at contested imperial sites across a vast panorama of warfare, from the Cape of Good Hope to Jamaica, Ceylon, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, alongside detention centers, including prisons, prison ships, and parole towns in Britain. A combined analysis of these sites makes visible the scope and scale of war captivity and prisoner movements across the British imperial world. The chapter investigates how British administrators coped with influxes of prisoners, asks questions about legal status, subjecthood, and liberty during this revolutionary period, and argues for the inclusion of the experiences of non-combatants and civilians – groups ranging from whalers and free and enslaved people of color, to lascar seamen, independent travelers, women, and children – within theaters of war and histories of forced migration more broadly.

Spanning the years 1907 to 1909, this chapter deals mainly with two crucial imperial conferences. The first debated the constitutional meaning of “Dominion status” for a select few British colonies, while the second looked to the empire’s geostrategic survival in light of the German naval threat. At both conferences, British and colonial representatives responded to constitutional and security crises, hoping to forge a new imperial community in which the rights of membership hinged on contribution to collective security.