…a Sunderland lustre ware mug

The mug celebrates the establishment of Peace between the English and French, and shows the fleur-de-lys on one side, and the Union flag on the other, with a dove of peace carrying an olive branch from the English side to the French.

 

It may date from the first Treaty of Paris, in 1814, and the exile of the Emperor Napoleon to the Isle of Elba. If so, it was somewhat premature, since the following year Napoleon escaped from Elba, raised an army, and was famously defeated by the Duke of Wellington, among others, at the Battle of Waterloo.

Peace, of course, has reigned between our nations ever since.

 

…an inherited Victorian adventure book by G.A. Henty

Henty (1832-1902) was a prolific English writer of derring-do novels, some 122 in total. (Wikipedia)

A Roving Commission is a fictionalised account, published in 1900, of the successful black slave revolt against the French in Haiti a century earlier.

For further information on the revolt see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution
 

It is something of an understatement to say that the fervent imperialism of this and other Henty novels does not sit well today. 

In the final sentence he gives his assessment of the current state of the country:

“Fetish worship and human sacrifices are carried out in secret, and the fairest island in the western seas lies sunk in the lowest degradation – a proof of the utter incapacity of the negro race to evolve, or even maintain, civilisation, without the example and the curb of a white population among them.”

Sacre Bleu!!