Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Imagining Great Britain: Union, Empire, and the burden of history, 1800–1830
- 2 Imagining a British India: history and the reconstruction of Empire
- 3 Imagining a Greater Britain: the Macaulays and the liberal romance of Empire
- 4 Re-imagining a Greater Britain: J. A. Froude: counter-romance and controversy
- 5 Greater Britain and the “lesser breeds”: liberalism, race, and evolutionary history
- 6 Indian liberals and Greater Britain: the search for union through history
- Epilogue: From liberal imperialism to Conservative Unionism: losing the thread of progress in history
- Index
- References
4 - Re-imagining a Greater Britain: J. A. Froude: counter-romance and controversy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 April 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Imagining Great Britain: Union, Empire, and the burden of history, 1800–1830
- 2 Imagining a British India: history and the reconstruction of Empire
- 3 Imagining a Greater Britain: the Macaulays and the liberal romance of Empire
- 4 Re-imagining a Greater Britain: J. A. Froude: counter-romance and controversy
- 5 Greater Britain and the “lesser breeds”: liberalism, race, and evolutionary history
- 6 Indian liberals and Greater Britain: the search for union through history
- Epilogue: From liberal imperialism to Conservative Unionism: losing the thread of progress in history
- Index
- References
Summary
He [Macaulay] was the creation and representative of his age … launched into life when the fever of revolution was recommencing. Once more the enthusiastic and hopeful part of the world was beginning to believe that an extension of political power to the masses of the people was a panacea for all the woes which afflicted society … The commercial organization was in its most wholesome condition when every individual was pursuing his own interests in an enlightened manner. The same principle was extended to every province of human activity. The interest of the community was said to be identical with the interest of the individual … A better state of society might be anticipated from the unshackled efforts of every single person to improve his own condition than had ever been arrived at under the paternal authority of the best kings or aristocracies.
J. A. Froude, “Lord Macaulay,” Fraser's Magazine, NS, 13 (June, 1876), 675–94, quotes at 679, 681When James Anthony Froude published this retrospective on Macaulay, he wrote in confidence that the spirit of the age had changed. Society no longer automatically acceded to individual self-interest when its collective survival was deemed to be at stake. The cants of liberty and progress were no longer allowed to pass without question. “What kind of liberty,” people now asked, “liberty to the good, or liberty to the fool and knave? The liberty of anarchy, or the liberty of wisdom and self-restraint?”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical ImaginationNineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain, pp. 151 - 205Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” Fraser's Magazine, 40 (December, 1849), 670–9Google Scholar
Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question (London, 1853)
(ed.), Carlyle, the Nigger Question; Mill, the Negro Question (New York, 1971), 1–37, quote on 12
Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London, 1834–81, 2 vols. (New York, 1892
My Relations with Carlyle (London, 1903)
, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge, 1981), 231–85Google Scholar
, “England's Forgotten Worthies,” in Short Studies on Great Subjects, I (New York, 1894), 358–405Google Scholar
, Victorian People: A Reassessment of Persons and Themes, 1851–67 (Chicago, 1955), 52–86Google Scholar
, A Liberal State at War: English Politics and Economics during the Crimean War (London, 1967)Google Scholar
, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge, 1972), 124–230Google Scholar
, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit: 1850–1980 (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar
, The Mutiny in the Bengal Army: A Historical Narrative by One who has Served (London, 1858)Google Scholar
, “The Indian Mutiny in the Mid-Victorian Press,” Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History, 7 (1991), 3–11Google Scholar
, “The Unspeakable Limits of Rape: Colonial Violence and Counter-Insurgency,” Genders, 10 (1991), 25–46Google Scholar
, Martial Races: The Military, Race, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester, 1994), 18–51Google Scholar
, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 (Ithaca, 1988), 199–296Google Scholar
and (eds.), Negotiating India in the Nineteenth-Century Media (London, 2000), 110–34
, Writing under the Raj: Gender, Race, and Rape in the British Colonial Imagination (New Brunswick, 1999), 109–65Google Scholar
, “‘Satan Let Loose upon Earth’: The Kanpur Massacres of 1857,” Past and Present, 128 (1990), 92–116Google Scholar
, “Review of Froude's History of England,” Edinburgh Review, 219 (July, 1858), 206–52, quotes on 210 and 242Google Scholar
, “The Edinburgh Review and Mr. Froude's History,” Fraser's Magazine, 58 (September, 1858), 359–78, quotes on 375, 376–7, and 377Google Scholar
Edinburgh Review, 220 (October, 1858), 586–94.
, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven, 2006)Google Scholar
: Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley: 1849–1869 (New York, 1978), 219–20, 252, 259Google Scholar
A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, 1869–78 (London, 1994), 55, 70, 76, 194, 211, 242, 329, 521
The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, Fifteenth Earl of Derby, between 1878 and 1893 (Oxford, 2003), 128, 268, 321, 328, 379, 414–15, 471–2, 526, 863–4.
, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938 (Baltimore, 1992), 263–309; DF, II: 314–16Google Scholar
“The Colonies Once More,” Fraser's Magazine, NS, 2 (January, 1870), 267–87
, England's Mission: The Imperial Idea in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli, 1868–1880 (London, 1973), 92–142CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “James Anthony Froude and Ireland: A Historiographical Controversy of the Nineteenth Century,” in (ed.), Historical Studies (Dublin, 1971), 171–91Google Scholar
, The Crusade of the Period: And Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (New York, 1878), 17Google Scholar
, A Memoir of the Right Hon. William Edward Hartpole Lecky, by his Wife (London, 1909)Google Scholar
(ed.), A Victorian Historian: Private Letters of W. E. H. Lecky, 1859–1878 (London, 1947)
, Progress and Pessimism: Religion, Politics, and History in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harvard, 1985), 64–123Google Scholar
, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 2 vols. [1865] (London, 1913)Google Scholar
History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, 2 vols. [1869] (New York, 1879)
Religious Tendencies of the Age (London, 1860
The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 1st edn. (London, 1861)
, “Mr. Froude's English in Ireland,” Macmillan's Magazine, 27 (1873), 246–63, quotes on 246–7Google Scholar
Macmillan's Magazine, 30 (1874), 166–84
, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848–c.1910 (Cambridge, 1989), 155–221Google Scholar
, “Leaves from a South African Journal,” in Short Studies on Great Subjects, III (New York, 1893), 343–400, especially 350, 357, 363Google Scholar
, The Life of John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal, 2 vols. (London, 1888), II: 313–448Google Scholar
and (eds.), Australia's Empire (Oxford, 2008)
, The Colony of Victoria: Its History, Commerce and Gold Mining; its Social and Political Institutions (London, 1864)Google Scholar
, Half a Century of Australasian Progress: A Personal Retrospect (London, 1889); Dictionary of National Biography, 22 vols. (London and New York, 1908–9), XX: 1265–6Google Scholar
, Mid-Victorian Imperialists: British Gentlemen and the Empire of the Mind (London, 2003), 53–63.Google Scholar
, Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2001), 225Google Scholar
, Colour, Class, and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Leicester, 1978)Google Scholar
, Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (New York, 1968)Google Scholar
, , and (eds.), Race Struggles (Champaign-Urbana, 2009), 48–72
, “The Early Idea of the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics and of Pangenesis,” Transactions of American Philosophical Society, NS, 35.2 (Philadelphia, 1946)Google Scholar
, The Caribbean Confederation: A Plan for the Union of the Fifteen British West Indian Colonies (London, 1888), 40–76Google Scholar