By Bernard Porter
The British empire used to be an enormous firm. To foreigners it roughly outlined Britain within the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its repercussions within the wider global are nonetheless with us this day. One may anticipate this to were mirrored in her society and tradition. this is often the 1st e-book to ascertain this assumption seriously opposed to the wider history of up to date British society. Bernard Porter, a number one imperial historian, argues that the empire had a much decrease profile in Britain than it did in another country. He argues that even though Britain was once an imperial country during this interval, she used to be by no means a real imperial society.
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Additional resources for The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain
Sample text
The best—that is, most useful—deWnition is probably one that retains the notion of ‘control’ (imperium), which in the British case seems manifest. The plumed helmets and red coats were part of it. So were the great naval displays (‘Reviews’) and military parades of the time. In most colonies power was represented architecturally by government buildings that dwarfed those around them,30 and although the same could not be said of the heart of the empire—India and the colonies were run from rather shabby London oYces until they were given a great new palace in 1868—the 13 empire and society formal centres of power could be picked out easily.
Aimed to keep the reading of diVerent economic classes completely separate’;42 and they were educated, again quite deliberately, as species apart. Even the images they were subjected to diVered. ) It is important to grasp this: that Britain was a truly multi-cultural society in this period, albeit with the cultures in this instance being mainly predicated on class. Secondly, and more crucially: their interests varied, and accordingly many of their feelings. The sheer diversity of the British social scene in the nineteenth century is remarkable, and probably more signiWcant for our purposes than the conXicts and antipathies.
This of course is controversial territory, especially since the philosophy known as ‘post-modernism’ began questioning the certainties inherent in the whole Western ‘enlightenment’ project. None of us can be so sure of those certainties today. ) They may be no more ‘true’ than 11 empire and society other outlooks. But they could be more general than is sometimes assumed, less characteristically Western; and so less necessary to be identiWed with imperialism, or even carried by it. It goes without saying—or should do—that most of the other shards and fragments that have been excavated and pieced together, as we shall see, to indicate an imperial culture in Britain’s case—which include racism, patriotism, militarism, masculinism, adventure stories, the study of geography, and so on—can exist equally independently.