An Imperial People?

Week 2

Questions to prepare for seminar.

  • To what extent was late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain characterised by popular imperialism?
  • What insight on the place of Empire in British life emerges from analysis of Empire Marketing Board posters?
  • Did the importance of Empire to the British people decline or increase between 1900 and 1940?
  • Did working class people in Britain ‘benefit’ from Empire?

Core Reading

  • Mackenzie, J.M. (1999), ‘The Popular Culture of Empire in Britain’ in Brown, J.M. & Louis, Wm. R. (eds.); Low, A. (associate ed.) 1999, The Oxford history of the British Empire: Vol.4, The twentieth century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 212-231 (Digitised Source – via module link on Library website)
  • For Empire Marketing Board posters (via library link to Empire Online):

Further Reading

  • There are plenty of surveys of imperial history. For instance: B. Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism 1850-1983 (1984); P. Cain & A. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688-1914 and British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction 1914-90 (1993), W.R. Louis (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire (1999).
  • In recent years, there have been calls for a ‘New British History’ that recognises the imperial experience as integral to the life of the nation: P.J. Marshall, ‘Imperial Britain’, in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 23 (1995); Raphael Samuel, 'Empire Stories: The Imperial and the Domestic', in Island Stories (1998), pp. 74-100; Denis Judd, 'Britain: Land Beyond Hope and Glory?, History Today (April, 1999), 18-24. For an argument about the parallelism of a hierarchical British class system and the hierarchialism of Empire: David Cannadine, Ornamentalism (2001). For a review of the New Imperial History: Richard Price, ‘One Big Thing: Britain, Its Empire, and Imperial Culture’, Journal of British Studies, 45 (2006), 602-27.
  • On feelings of Britishness in other parts of the Empire: Saul Dubow, ‘How British was the British World? The Case of South Africa’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37 (2009), 1-27; Lynn Hollen Lees, ‘Being British in Malaya, 1890-1940’, Journal of British Studies, 48 (2009), 76-101; Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (2004); Robert Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas (2010)
  • On citizenship and Empire: Keith McClelland and Sonya Rose, ‘Citizenship and Empire’ in C. Hall and Sonya Rose (eds.), At Home with the Empire (2006), 275-97.
  • John Mackenzie has led the way in attempting to demonstrate the influence of imperialism within popular culture: John Mackenzie (ed.), Imperialism and Popular Culture (1981); John Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion (1984). See also: John Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society: British Youth Movements, 1883-1940 (1976); J.A. Mangan, The Cultural Bond: Sport, Empire and Society (1992). For commentary on this work dealing with popular imperialism: Bernard Porter, ‘Popular Imperialism: Broadening the Context’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39 (2011), 833-45
  • On Empire Day: Jim English, ‘Empire Day in Britain, 1904-1958’, Historical Journal (2006), 49, 247-76.
  • On imperialism within the labour movement: Henry Pelling, ‘British Labour and British Imperialism’, in Henry Pelling, Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (1979), pp. 82-100; Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918-1964 (Oxford, 1993);Sarathi Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914-1964 (London, 1975).
  • Questioning popular imperialism: Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain (2006)
  • On anti-imperialism: Sarah Britton, ‘”Come and See the Empire by the All Red Route”: Anti-Imperialism and Exhibitions in Interwar Britain’, History Workshop Journal, 69 (2010), 68-89.
  • For the marketing of Empire in interwar Britain: S. Constantine, Buy and Build: The Advertising Posters of the Empire Marketing Board (1986).
  • On the relationship to free trade economics and the pressure to introduce trade tariffs that would support the bonds of Empire: Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern Britain (2008).
  • For the turn-of-the-century vision of a nation which could embrace Empire - a ‘Greater Britain’: J.R. Seeley, The Expansion of England (1883). And see work on Joseph Chamberlain, the debate over tariff reform and the ‘crisis of conservatism’ of this era: E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism, 1880-1914 (1994); E.H.H. Green, ‘Radical Conservatism: the Electoral Genesis of Tariff Reform’, Historical Journal, 26 (1985); G. Searle, 'Critics of Edwardian Society: The Case of the Radical Right', in A. O'Day (ed.), The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability, 1900-1914 (1979).
  • For the importance of Empire in expanding women’s professional roles and influence, see Barbara Bush, ‘“Britain’s Conscience in Africa”: White Women, Race and Imperial Politics in Inter-War Britain’, in Claire Midgley (Ed.), Gender and Imperialism (Manchester, 1997).
  • On the economics of British imperialism and relationship to ‘gentlemanly capitalism’: Peter Cain and A. J. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914-1990 (1993) and British Imperialism, 1688-2000 (2002).
  • On the South African (Boer) War: Andrew Thompson and David Omissi (eds.), Impact of the South African War (esp Part II The British Impact) (2001) – ebook; Steve Attridge, Nationalism, Imperialism, and Identity in Late Victorian Culture: Civil and Military Worlds (2003);Paul Readman, ‘The Conservative Party, Patriotism, and British Politics: The Case of the General Election of 1900’, Journal of British Studies, 40 (2001), 107-45; and for an attempt to assess the impact of imperialism on the British working-class electorate at the start of the century: R. Price, An Imperial War and the British Working Class (1972). More generally: Andrew Thompson, ‘The Language of Imperialism and the Meaning of Empire: Imperial Discourse in British Politics, 1895-1914’, Journal of British Studies, 36 (1997), 147-77.
  • Looking forward to popular imperialism at the end of Empire: Stuart Ward (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (2001)