The British Empire and Victorian Britain

1. The British Empire and Victorian Britain \

2. Sam Alexander’s book cover 1880

3. Queen Victorian and her Indian servant Abdul Karim (the „Munshi”) • „I am so very fond of him. He is so good and gentle and understanding, and is a real comfort to me”

4. John Everett Millais: The Boyhood of Raleigh (1870)

5. Map of the British Empire 1888

6. The British Empire in 1939: • By 1914: 400 million inhabitants • (total population of the world: 1.800.000)

7. Colonial acquisitions and losses 1819 Singapore 1821 Gold Coast 1829 Western Australia 1842 Hong Kong 1846 North Borneo 1886 Burma 1895 Kenya 1899 Sudan The end: 1947 India 1960 Nigeria 1962 Jamaica 1963 Kenya, Malaysia 1965 Singapore 1970 Fiji 1980 Zimbabwe 1997 Hong Kong • 1949: Commonwealth

8. Structure of the Empire • Colonial administration • dominions – India – other dependencies • mandatory areas + informal empire (Egypt) • Colonial Office (1768-1782) • 1854: New Colonial Office + India Office • no general plan

9. „We seem, as it were, to have conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind” (J. Seeley) „The British were not an imperially minded people; they lacked both a theory of empire and the will to engender and implement one” (Max Beloff)

10. Thomas Jones Barker (1863): The Secret of England’s Greatness

11. Spiridone Roma: The East Offering Its Gifts to Britannia (1778)

12. Emigration • Empire: outlet for all sorts • 1815-1930: 10 million emigrants from the British Isles • 1830s: 10.000 per month

13. The dwindling of the world • Phineas Fogg in Jules Verne: 80 Days Around the World, 1873 • imperial networks of communication, commerce, transportation and travelling • globalisation • railways – Roman roads

14. Lansdowne Bridge

15. Empire Day (from 1898)

16. Empire day school tableau, with Britannia

17. Abolitionist medallion: ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ • 1807: slave trade abolished • 1814: 750.000 signatures • Josiah Wedgwood design • 1833: slavery abolished in the Empire

18. After 1857 • New sense of imperial mission • Disraeli (PM) “marketing” the Empire • the choice for England (Britain) • supremacy – duty

19. „There is a destiny now possible to us, the highest ever set before a nation... Will you youths of England make your country again a royal throne of kings, a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace and mistress of learning and of the Arts..? ... This is what England must do or perish; she must found colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most energetic and worthiest men; ...teaching these her colonists that ...their first aim is to advance the power of England by land and sea.” (John Ruskin, 1870)

20. „When the contrast between the influence of a Christian and a Heathen government is considered; when the knowledge of the wretchedness of the people forces us to reflect on the unspeakable blessings to millions that would follow the extension of British rule, it is not ambition but benevolence that dictates the desire for the whole country. Where the providence of God will lead, one state after another will be delivered into his stewardship” (Macleod Wylie, 1854)

21. Awareness of the Empire ‘And what should they know of England who only England know?’ (Kipling, „The English Flag”) Material presence of the Empire • Tea, coffee, sugar, silk, spices • Exotic plants introduced • British Museum: full of colonial loot (Elgin marbles, mummies, Sumerian winged bulls, Niniveh stone slabs) Architecture: ‘colonial style’

22. Colonial Office, London

23. Chennai (Madras) Museum

24. Royal pavilion, Brighton

25. the Royal Pavilion as an Indian hospital 1914-6

26. The Music Room

28. Curzon Hall, Dhaka

29. Palace of the Mysore maharajah

32. Pears soap ad

37. Great Exhibition (1851), Shakespeare exhibit

39. Presence of the Empire • Popular culture: displays, dioramas, museums, ethnographic collections, zoos • Music halls, popular theatre, songs (Britannia, 1885) • travel writing • Education: school textbooks: the creation of imperial heroes (heroic poetry)

40. Gilbert and Sullivan: Utopia, Ltd (1893) • King Paramount

41. David Livingstone • „These two pioneers of civilization – Christianity and commerce – should ever be inseparable”

42. Livingstone weak with fever

43. ‘I take a practical mining geologist from the School of Miners to tell us of the Mineral Resources of the country, then an economic botanist to give a full report on the vegatable productions – everything which may be useful in commerce. An artist to give the scenery, a naval officer to tell of the capacity of the river communications and a moral agent to lay the foundation for knowing that aim fully. All this machinery has for its ostensible object the development of African trade and the promotion of civilization’ (David Livingstone, 1858)

44. Livingstone • Utopian, messianic vision of a Christian Africa • trade route • New expedition: the source of the Nile

45. Stanley finds Livingstone

46. Stanley finds Livingstone

47. ‘Mr Livingstone, I presume!’ • * * * * * • "Mr. Baldwin, I presume!" • Chinua Achebe’s greeting to James Baldwin upon meeting him "in the jungles of Florida in 1988...“ (Chinua Achebe, Hopes and Impediments)

48. General Charles Gordon – Gordon Pasha

49. „Gordon’s last stand”

50. General Gordon • Myth: lonely hero abandoned by the government • Retribution: battle of Omdurman • Maxim guns • Winston Churchill as reporter