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The British Empire and Victorian Britain. . Sam Alexander’s book cover 1880. 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”. Map of the British Empire 1888.
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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”
Colonial acquisitions 1819 Singapore 1821 Gold Coast 1829 Western Australia 1842 Hong Kong 1846 North Borneo 1886 Burma 1895 Kenya 1899 Sudan
„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)
Thomas Jones Barker (1863): The Secret of England’s Greatness
Emigration • Empire: outlet for all sorts • 1815-1930: 10 million emigrants from the British Isles • 1830s: 10.000 per month
Ford Madox Brown: Last of England (1852)
The dwindling of the world • Phineas Fogg (80 Days Around the World, 1873)
Abolitionist medallion: ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ • 1807: slave trade abolished • 1814: 750.000 signatures • 1833: slavery abolished in the Empire
„And what should they know of England who only England know?” (Rudyard Kipling, „The English Flag”) English vs British identity Victorian England: imperial vision, responsibility
„There is a destiny now possible to us, the highest ever set befor a nation to be accepted or refused. 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, faithful guardian of timetried principles? ... 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; seizing every piece of fruitful wasteground she can set her feet on, and there teaching these her colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and their first aim is to advance the power of England by land and sea.” (John Ruskin, 1870)
„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)
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’
Presence of the Empire • Popular culture • Displays, dioramas, museums, ethnographic collections, zoos • Music halls, songs (Britannia, 1885) • Theatre melodrama • School textbooks: the creation of imperial heroes
Gilbert and Sullivan: HMS Pinafore (1878) He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman! For he might have been a Roosian, A French, or Turk, or Proosian, Or perhaps Itali-an! But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman! He remains an Englishman! For in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman! He remains an Englishman!
„These two pioneers of civilization – Christianity and commerce – should ever be inseparable” (David Livingstone)
„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 reposrt 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)
