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History Notes The British Empire, 1800 - 1914 Notes

The British Empire Notes

Updated The British Empire Notes

The British Empire, 1800 - 1914 Notes

The British Empire, 1800 - 1914

Approximately 60 pages

Every aspect of the British Empire - its politics, its armies, its culture, its economy, its structure, and the seeds of its undoing - are covered in the period. As well as noting the development of individual colonies, these notes consider the domestic reaction, and the culture of imperialism from literature to the breakfast table. They also look in detail at how historians have explained and theorised imperialism generally, and Britain's rise in particular. Bullet-points are supplemented with m...

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British Empire

Contents

  • Quotes

    • Historiography

    • Expansion

    • Domestic pro-imperialism

    • Domestic anti-imperialism

    • Rule

  • Maps

    • The Empire in 1812

    • The Empire in 1842

    • The Empire in 1882

    • The Empire in 1900

    • The Empire in 1914

    • The Empire in 1921

  • Chronology

    • Domestic developments

    • Imperial acquisitions

    • Imperial events

  • Historiography

    • Definition

    • Informal empire

    • Overview

    • Imperial quiescence

    • Industry

    • Finance

    • Diplomacy

    • Technology

    • Domestics

    • Lenin

    • Hobson

    • Hildebrand

    • Robinson and Gallagher

    • Fieldhouse

    • Cain and Hopkins

    • Porter

  • Imperial expansion

    • Background

    • 1815 – 1850

    • 1850 – 1880

    • The Scramble for Africa

    • 1880 – 1914

    • The impact of the war

    • Informal empire

    • Men on the spot

  • Domestic reaction

    • Politics

    • Liberals and imperialism

    • Conservatives and imperialism

    • Economic pro-imperialism

    • Economic anti-imperialism

    • An imperial culture

    • An imperial lifestyle

    • Class

    • Exposure

    • International competition

    • Science and the empire

    • Humanitarianism

    • Racialism

    • Minority imperialism

    • The military

  • Rule

    • Oppression

    • Enlightenment

    • Collaboration

    • Administrators

    • Technology

Quotes

Historiography

  • ‘Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has taken shape’.

    • Vladimir Lenin.

  • Imperialism is ‘the objectless disposition on the part of a state to unlimited forcible expansion’.

    • Joseph Schumpeter.

  • ‘Foreign policy-makers have never operated in a vacuum’.

    • Andrew Porter.

  • ‘Behind this question lies the tacit assumption that once Europeans wanted to spread their influence, they could readily do so’.

    • Daniel R Headrick.

  • Empire was ‘omnipresent in the lives of ordinary people’.

    • Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose.

  • That ‘the empire had no everyday relevance’ for the British majority.

    • Frederick Madden.

Expansion

  • “Afghanistan must be ours or Russia’s”.

    • Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston.

  • “Spanish America is free, and if we do not mismanage our affairs badly, she is English”.

    • George Canning, 1824.

  • As “almost an empire, in all but name”.

    • Herman Merivale of the Colonial Office on commercial dominance of East Asia.

  • “I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.”

    • George Canning.

  • “[S]o much the better; there are several of her colonies which would suit us remarkably well”.

    • Palmerston on the prospect of war with Portugal in 1839.

  • “Why worry about the rind, if we can obtain the fruit?”

    • Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess of Kedleston on informal empire.

  • Of “carrying the glad tidings of ‘peace and good will toward men’ into the dark places of the earth which are now filled with cruelty”.

    • Macgregor Laird.

  • “I have added two provinces to Your Majesty’s dominions”.

    • Cecil Rhodes, 1895.

Domestic pro-imperialism

  • “The gold of South Africa and Australia flows to London; the Hindus and the Chinese grow tea for us, and our coffee, sugar, and spice plantations are all in the Indies.”

    • British economist, WS Jevans.

  • “We have the power in our hands, moral, physical, and mechanical; the first, based on the Bible, the second, upon the wonderful adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon race to all climates, situations, and circumstances… the third, bequeathed to us by the immortal Watt”.

    • Macgregor Laird.

  • “All our progress has been made under the union… Since the union and under equal laws, we have been wedded to the empire and made a progress second to none.”

    • The Belfast Chamber of Commerce to WE Gladstone.

  • “The sentiment of empire may be called innate in every Briton.”

    • William Ewart Gladstone.

  • That “a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong.”

    • Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston.

  • “There is neither extravagance nor impropriety in realising for a moment the splendour of the empire”.

    • The Westminster Review, 1870.

  • “We haven’t got quite the whole world yet – but we’re getting it by degrees”.

    • Popular music hall song.

  • That “the prosperity of London is intimately connected with the prosperity and greatness of the Empire of which it is the centre.”

    • Joseph Chamberlain rallying the City of London in the 1910 election campaign.

  • “A grave misfortune has fallen on civilisation”.

    • The Spectator on the death of General Charles Gordon.

  • “What our duty is at this critical moment is to maintain the Empire of Britain”.

    • Benjamin Disraeli’s last speech.

Domestic anti-imperialism

  • “[T]he home consumers have been burdened with the whole expense of maintaining and defending that empire”.

    • Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

  • The “mountain with the unrememberable name”.

    • William Ewart Gladstone on Mount Kilimanjaro.

  • “The bombardment of Alexandria, like all butchery is popular”.

    • Sir Charles Dilke MP.

  • The empire is “a millstone round our neck”.

    • Benjamin Disraeli.

  • The conquest of India was “a blunder as well as a crime”.

    • George Combe.

  • “Take your banner! Onward go! / Christian soldiers, seek your foe, / And the devil to refute, / Do not hesitate to shoot.”

    • Satirical hymn from Truth, 16th April 1891.

  • The Boer War is a “capitalist war”.

    • Keir Hardie.

Rule

  • The “Oriental generally acts, speaks, and thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European.

    • Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer.

  • “Here the brown and yellow men of Asia are added to the stream of humanity”.

    • A commentator on the British ports.

Maps

The Empire in 1812

The Empire in 1842

The Empire in 1882

The Empire in 1900

The Empire in 1914

The Empire in 1921

Chronology

Domestic developments

1776 – Adam Smith produces The Wealth of Nations

1839 – Start of the First Opium War; Portugal refuses to renew anti-slavery treaty

1846 – Repeal of the Corn Laws

1849 – Abolition of the Navigation Acts

1857 – Imperialist Palmerston wins a huge election victory

1862 – Gatling Gun invented; 3,000 people in the Indian and Colonial Offices combined

1865 – A steamship sails 8,500 miles from England to Mauritius without...

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