¹ Fabianism and the Empire: A Manifesto by the Fabian Society (London, 1900), p. 1Google Scholar.

² The fluidity of the language of imperialism was also appreciated by Hobson, J. A., Imperialism: A Study (London, 1902), p. 1Google Scholar.

³ For an overview of the subject, see Koebner, R. and Schmidt, H. D., Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840–1960 (Cambridge, 1964), pp. xiii–xviGoogle Scholar. The authors claim to identify twelve changes in the meaning of the term between the 1840s and the 1960s.

⁴ Eastwood, D., “Robert Southey and the Meanings of Patriotism,” Journal of British Studies 31 (1992): 265–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cunningham, H., “The Language of Patriotism, 1750–1914,” History Workshop Journal 12 (1981): 8–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ For the proliferation of nationalist and social-imperialist extraparliamentary organizations, see Coetzee, F., For Party or Country? Nationalism and the Dilemmas of Popular Conservatism in Edwardian England (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; Semmel, B., Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperialist Thought, 1895–1914 (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Scally, R. J., The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition: The Politics of Social-Imperialism, 1900–1918 (Princeton, N.J., 1975)Google Scholar.

⁶ The way in which these organizations disseminated their propaganda is discussed at greater length in my doctoral thesis, Thompson, A. S., “Thinking Imperially? Imperial Pressure Groups and the Idea of Empire in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain” (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1994), chaps. 2, 3Google Scholar.

⁷ On the relationship between Radical pressure groups and the NLF, see Hamer, D. A., The Politics of Electoral Pressure: A Study in the History of Victorian Reform Agitations (Sussex, 1977), chap. 4Google Scholar; Auspos, P., “Radicalism, Pressure Groups, and Party Politics: From the National Education League to the National Liberal Federation,” Journal of British Studies 20 (1980): 184–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ For the view that the NLF was the organization of the Liberal party's rank and file, see Bernstein, G. L., Liberalism and Liberal Politics in Edwardian England (London, 1986), pp. 10, 23–24Google Scholar.

⁹ For the growing importance of the Radical movement within the parliamentary Liberal party, see Heyck, T. W., The Dimensions of British Radicalism: The Case of Ireland, 1874–95 (Urbana, Ill., 1974), pp. 6–11, 154–55Google Scholar. Between 1874 and 1885 about one-third of Liberals in the House of Commons could be identified as Radicals by the causes they supported. Between 1886 and 1895 the number had increased to more than 70 percent.

¹⁰ For a fuller discussion of the political alignment of the Fabians, see McBriar, A. M., Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918 (Cambridge, 1962), chaps. 9, 10, 11Google Scholar.

¹¹ Semmel, p. 66.

¹² Hobson went to South Africa in 1899 as a special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, and Robertson was sent to South Africa by the Morning Post in 1900 to report on the operation of martial law.

¹³ For the political milieu of the Rainbow Circle, see the introduction to Freeden, M., ed., Minutes of the Rainbow Circle, 1894–1924 (London, 1989)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ The comparison with Vietnam is made by Blake, Robert in The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher (London, 1979), p. 166Google Scholar. For the importance of the Boer War in terms of its impact on British society, see Price, R., An Imperial War and the British Working Class: Working Class Responses to the Boer War, 1899–1902 (Bristol, 1972)Google Scholar, who suggests that the Boer War was unique in scale and significance—a “little war” that involved the whole nation. Similar claims are made by Porter, B. in “The Edwardians and Their Empire,” in Edwardian England, ed. Read, D. (London, 1982), pp. 128–29Google Scholar, who regards the Boer War as a profoundly disturbing experience for most Britons who lived through it. A. P. Thornton considers the implications of the Boer War for the imperial idea in Britain in The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies: A Study in British Power (London, 1959), p. 109Google Scholar, arguing that after the war imperialism “suffered a contraction, a loss of moral content, from which it never completely recovered.” In their study, Imperialism, pp. 221, 248–49, Koebner and Schmidt (n. 3 above) identify the reversion of the word “imperialism” to the status of a partizan abuse at the beginning of the twentieth century with the Boer War.

¹⁵ Curzon's political activities after returning to England from India in 1905 are discussed most extensively by Gilmour, D. in Curzon (London, 1994), chaps. 22–25Google Scholar.

¹⁶ This was a recurring theme of India (the newspaper of the BCINC) during and after the Boer War. The purpose of the paper was to provide a continuous commentary on Indian affairs in the British press. Its paid circulation was quite small, but advanced proofs were sent to editors and nearly one thousand free copies were distributed to politicians and political associations.

¹⁷ Few records of the ISAA survive and most of those that do are printed. Its four successive chairmen were George Wyndham, Geoffrey Drage, Alfred Lyttelton, and Gilbert Parker. The ISAA organized public meetings in working men's clubs, distributed large amounts of political literature, and formed three branches in Manchester, Newcastle, and Scotland. Its general council and colonial parliamentary committee were overwhelmingly Conservative in complexion. See Thompson (n. 6 above), chaps. 2, 3.

¹⁸ Chamberlain's speech at the Royal Colonial Institute, March 31, 1897, quoted in Handcock, W. D., ed., English Historical Documents, 1874–1914 (London, 1977), p. 390Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Porter, A. N., The Origins of the South African War: Joseph Chamberlain and the Diplomacy of Imperialism (Manchester, 1980), p. 58Google Scholar.

²⁰ Chamberlain, J., Home Rule and the Irish Question (London, 1887)Google Scholar; Loughlin, J., “Joseph Chamberlain, English Nationalism and the Ulster Question,” History 77 (1992): 202–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Admittedly, there was no franchise grievance in Ulster, but there was the fear that under a Dublin parliament Ulster Protestants would be politically dispossessed. It was not until later, however, that the rest of the Unionist party committed themselves to defending the Union on such grounds.

²¹ There is an interesting parallel between the work of Milner as high commissioner in South Africa (January 1897–March 1905) and Wyndham as chief secretary for Ireland (November 1900–March 1905): both men saw themselves protecting minority British populations who looked to the British government for support.

²² George Wyndham to Alfred Milner, April 28, 1899, Milner Papers, dep. 209, fols. 123–26, Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

²³ Wyndham to Milner, May 18, 1899, Milner Papers, dep. 209, fols. 99–100, Bodleian.

²⁴ Real Causes of the War, and Some Reasons for the Final Settlement, speech by Mr. Drage M.P. at the Drill Hall, Derby, December 7, 1899, ISAA pamphlet, copy contained in the Geoffrey Drage Papers, Christ Church library, Oxford University.

²⁵ Resolution of Sir Gilbert Parker on land settlement in the Annual Report of the ISAA (Cambridge, 1905–1906)Google Scholar; resolution of Sir John Gilmour on land settlement in the Report of the AGM of ISAA (London, 1903)Google Scholar. The author consulted the reports in the library of the Royal Commonwealth Society in London. Since then, the archive of the Royal Commonwealth Society has been moved to Cambridge University Library.

²⁶ Milner to George Parkin, July 13, 1901, Milner Papers, dep. 180, fol. 64, Bodleian.

²⁷ Annual Report of ISAA (1903–4); ISAA pamphlet no. 9, South Africa: Orange River Colony Land Settlement Scheme for Country Settlements, n.d., Drage Papers, Christ Church Library, Oxford University.

²⁸ Such as the South African Colonisation Society and British Women's Emigration League. See the Annual Report of ISAA (1904–5).

²⁹ Cunningham, H., “The Conservative Party and Patriotism,” in Englishness: Politics and Political Culture, 1880–1920, ed. Colls, R. and Dodd, P. (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Ross McKibbin comments that “it is hard to escape the conclusion that a sense of being British was widely and positively felt in the working classes.” See McKibbin, R., “Why Was There No Marxism in Great Britain?” English Historical Review 391 (1984): 316Google Scholar.

³¹ See here Robbins, K., Nineteenth Century Britain: Integration and Diversity (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Mackenzie, J. M., “Essay and Reflection: On Scotland and the Empire,” International History Review 15 (1993): 714–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Colley, L., Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

³² Colley, L., “Britishness and Otherness,” Journal of British Studies 31 (1992): 311CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Colley, , Britons, pp. 1–9Google Scholar.

³³ See the effusion of Jubilee literature, including Stead, W. T., Her Majesty the Queen. Studies of the Sovereign and the Reign. A Memorial Volume of the Great Jubilee (London, 1897)Google Scholar; London Illustrated News, Her Majesty's Glorious Jubilee (London, 1897)Google Scholar; The Diamond Jubilee of Victoria (London, 1897)Google Scholar; All About the Diamond Jubilee (London, 1897)Google Scholar.

³⁴ Thornton (n. 14 above), p. 106.

³⁵ The Fabian Society was not a large organization, and its peak membership in this period was 2,700 in 1913. The Fabian strategy was not therefore to mobilize mass support. Rather the Society exerted influence through its publications, through the work of its members in local government, and through the relationships the Webbs cultivated with officials, journalists, and politicians at their “political salon” in Grovesnor Road. See McBriar (n. 10 above), chaps. 8–9.

³⁶ Fabianism and the Empire (n. 1 above), p. 98.

³⁷ Minutes of members' meetings, February 23, 1900, Fabian Society Papers C39, Nuffield College Library, Oxford University; Fabian News (February 1900), Fabian Society Papers, Nuffield College.

³⁸ Extract from Daily Chronicle, in the minutes of the Fabian Society members' meeting, February 23, 1900, Fabian Society Papers C39, Nuffield College.

³⁹ Semmel (n. 5 above), chap. 3; Scally, , The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition, esp. pp. 26–27Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ The Liberal League was formed by Liberal Imperialists in February 1902. Its predecessor was the Imperial Liberal Council, which was formed in April 1900. The Transvaal Committee was an offshoot of the Liberal Forwards and monitored the activities of the Colonial Office in an attempt to rouse public opinion against going to war with the Transvaal.

⁴¹ Fabianism and the Empire, p. 7.

⁴² Semmel, esp. pp. 29–31. For a fuller discussion of the legacy of Darwinism for theories of war and human aggression, see Crook, P., Darwinism, War and History: The Debate over the Biology of War from the “Origin of Species” to the First World War (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ Fabianism and the Empire, p. 50.

⁴⁴ McBriar (n. 10 above), chap. 4. Given the importance Fabians attached to the environment, they were inclined to support the Lamarckian view that habit produced modifications of structure in organisms and that these modifications were inherited by progeny. Crook, p. 73.

⁴⁵ Minutes of the Fabian Society members' meeting, March 10, 1899, Fabian Society Papers C39, Nuffield College. Paul was a leader writer for the Daily News.

⁴⁶ “Strange Case of the Fabian Society,” New Age, December 16, 1899Google Scholar, in minutes of the Fabian Society members' meeting, December 12, 1899, Fabian Society Papers C39, Nuffleld College.

⁴⁷ Amery, L. S., My Political Life: England before the Storm, 1896–1914 (London, 1953), 1:223Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Quoted in Hewison, H. H., Hedge of Wild Almonds: South Africa and the Quaker Conscience, 1890–1910 (Portsmouth, 1989), p. 122Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Minutes of the Fabian Society executive committee, October 20, 1899, Fabian Society Papers C7, Nuffield College.

⁵⁰ Minutes of the Fabian Society executive committee, October 27, 1899, Fabian Society Papers C7, Nuffield College.

⁵¹ The Society approached the publishers on a number of occasions between 1901 and 1903 and offered to buy back the remaining stock at a reduced price. See Minutes of the Fabian Society executive committee, May 10, 1901, October 28, 1902, and June 12, 1903, Fabian Society Papers C8, Nuffield College.

⁵² Matthew, H. C. G., The Liberal Imperialists: The Ideas and Politics of a Post-Gladstonian Elite (London, 1973), p. 89Google Scholar.

⁵³ Tract no. 108 (November 1901), Fabian Society Papers, Nuffield College.

⁵⁴ Watson, R. Spence, The National Liberal Federation, from Its Commencement to the General Election (London, 1907), pp. 242–44Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 254.

⁵⁶ Speech by Campbell-Bannerman, June 14, 1901, quoted in Spender, J. A., The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London, 1923), pp. 335–36Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Robertson, J. M., Wrecking the Empire (London, 1901)Google Scholar. Robertson was a Liberal M.P. between 1906 and 1918. He visited South Africa in 1900, having been commissioned by the Morning Leader to report on the workings of martial law. His contributions were published under the pseudonym “Scrutator.”

⁵⁸ Spence Watson, p. 289. Birrell was chief secretary for Ireland, January 1907–July 1916.

⁵⁹ For an earlier use of the word “imperialism” to discredit the foreign policy of the Disraeli government, see the account of Robert Lowe's writings in Koebner and Schmidt (n. 3 above), pp. 148–50. Birrell, like Lowe, sought to evoke the association of the word “imperialism” with foreign—particularly French—despotism.

⁶⁰ Cunningham, H., “The Language of Patriotism,” in Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, Vol. 1: History and Politics, ed. Samuel, R. (London, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Robertson, J. M., Patriotism and the Empire (London, 1899), p. 138Google Scholar.

⁶² Robertson, J. M., The Future of Liberalism (Bradford, 1895), p. 29Google Scholar.

⁶³ There was a brief revival of the moral crusade with the outcry over the concentration camps in 1901, but in debates over Chinese indentured labor it was the economic rather than humanitarian dimension to Liberal propaganda that proved most damaging. This was recognized by the ISAA, which became very frustrated by these misrepresentations.

⁶⁴ Hobson (n. 2 above), pp. 18–19.

⁶⁵ Ibid., pp. 35–42.

⁶⁶ Ibid., pp. 51–66.

⁶⁷ The IAPC merged with the International Arbitration and Peace Association in 1899. Robert Spence Watson was its president and G. H. Perris its secretary. Perns was a journalist and leading spokesman of the peace movement. Its most influential members included John Clifford, Sydney Olivier, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson.

⁶⁸ Empire, Trade and Armaments. An Exposure, IAPC Pamphlet (London, 1896), prefaceGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁹ Ibid., pt. 3.

⁷⁰ Watson, Spence, The National Liberal Federation (n. 54 above), p. 292Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Robertson, , Wrecking the Empire (n. 57 above), p. xxxviGoogle Scholar.

⁷² Radicals felt imperial expansion to be aggressive for a variety of reasons, including its ready resort to overwhelming military force, the bellicose mentality that fed it, and its alleged tendency to provoke rival foreign powers. For a sustained assault on the meaning of “Imperialism,” see Hobhouse, L. T., Democracy and Reaction (London, 1904), pp. 28–56Google Scholar. Hobhouse felt that “the promise of Imperialism”—a wider and nobler sense of national responsibility—had been destroyed by the policy or “performance of Imperialism”—the hard assertion of racial supremacy and material force. Britain, he argued, had consistently deviated from the Liberal principles of empire, and imperialism had therefore come to mean the lust for rather than love of empire. As a result, Hobhouse found it difficult to put a positive construction on either word.

⁷³ Porter, B., Critics of Empire: British Radical Attitudes to Colonisation in Africa, 1895–1914 (New York, 1968), pp. 84, 94Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ For such promises, see Speech Delivered on Behalf of the ISAA by Mr George Wyndham. Edinburgh, March 9, 1898, copy contained in the Milner Papers, dep. 337, fol. 11, Bodleian. Wyndham spoke of the idea underlying the “new imperialism” as “more homes for the young of this crowded island.” For the effect of the failure to honor these pledges, see Russell, A. K., Liberal Landslide: The General Election of 1906 (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 196–97Google Scholar. Also see Birrell's speech at the 1904 NLF annual meeting, quoted in Spence Watson, p. 102.

⁷⁵ Russell, pp. 106–7.

⁷⁶ Our Imperial Responsibilities to the Transvaal. An Address by Gilbert Parker to the Junior Constitutional Club, Picadilly, March 23, 1904, ISAA pamphlet no. 11. In 1906 the ISAA organized a South African Products Exhibition in London to demonstrate the value of the region to the British economy.

⁷⁷ Spence Watson, p. 238.

⁷⁸ Westbourne Park Record (January 1899), quoted in Watts, M. R., “John Clifford and Radical Nonconformity, 1836–1923” (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1967), p. 290Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Clifford, J., God's Greater Britain. Letters and Addresses by John Clifford (London, 1899), p. 11Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 177.

⁸¹ Watts, p. 3.

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⁸³ Clifford, J., Brotherhood and the War in South Africa (London, 1900), p. 24Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Lee, F., Fabianism and Colonialism: The Life and Thought of Lord Sydney Olivier (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Letter from Sydney Olivier to Edward Pease, October 16, 1899, contained in Minutes of the Fabian Society executive committee, Fabian Society Papers C7, Nuffield College.

⁸⁶ MacDonald, R., What I Saw in South Africa (London, 1902), p. 53Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Ibid., p. 52.

⁸⁸ Robertson, J. M., The Meaning of Liberalism (London, 1912), p. 128Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ At this time the BCINC was a small group of retired members of the Indian Civil Service, most of whom were considered to have “gone native” whilst in India and had therefore been passed over for promotion. However, in February 1906, William Wedderburn, the chairman of the BCINC, reorganized its parliamentary committee and persuaded 155 Liberal M.P.s to declare their sympathy with the cause of Indian reform. Of these 155 M.P.s only between thirty and forty were prepared to walk into the lobby against the government, but this was sufficient to worry the secretary of state for India, John Morley, particularly during the deportations of 1907–8.

⁹⁰ “Wanted: A Judicial Enquiry,” India (July 1897): 241Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Stephen Howe comments on the implications of Victorian and Edwardian attitudes to empire for subsequent anticolonialist thinking. He shows how the limited, conditional, and restricted criticism of empire in an earlier period hampered the Left in building a coherent and consistent campaign for disengagement from empire in the years after 1918. See Howe, S., Anti-colonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918–1964 (Oxford, 1993), p. 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁹³ For the vehemence with which Liberal Imperialists were attacked by Radical Liberals, see Hobson (n. 2 above), pp. 151–52.

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⁹⁵ The official membership of the Navy League was recorded at 12,000 members in 1901, 20,000 members in 1908, and 127,000 members in 1914. Coetzee (n. 5 above), pp. 25, 138; Navy (September 1914).

⁹⁶ Pike, Marshall, “Are Our Wage-Earners Imperialists?” Navy (April 1914): 139Google Scholar.

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⁹⁹ Navy League Journal (February 1907).

¹⁰⁰ Navy League Journal (November 1905): 279Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983), pp. 13–16Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E. J., Nations and Nationalism since 1870: Programme, Myth and Reality (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 9–13Google Scholar.

¹⁰² For example, see Jones, G. Stedman on the Chartist movement and working-class consciousness, “Rethinking Chartism,” in The Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Eastwood (n. 4 above), pp. 265–66.

¹⁰⁴ Anderson, p. 19.

¹⁰⁵ “Envoy to the Colonies,” Navy League Journal (February 1904)Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ Navy League Journal (May 1904): 142Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ Navy (January 1912): 22Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ The Objects of the Navy League, not dated, copy contained in the Patrick Hannon Papers, House of Lords Record Office, London.

¹⁰⁹ Navy (January 1914): 1Google Scholar.

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¹¹⁴ See here the response of Lord Curzon discussed in Mehrotra, S. R., India and the Commonwealth, 1885–1929 (London, 1965), pp. 243–44Google Scholar. Curzon's complaint about the marginalization of India in Edwardian imperial discourse can also be explored in Curzon, G. N., The Place of India in the Empire: Address Delivered before the Philosophical Institute of Edinburgh, October 19th, 1909 (London, 1909)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ While I have sketched the main lines along which this vision was developed, there is little doubt that different social groups managed to inflect imperialism with further meanings. Empire may have been used by the lower middle class to counter status anxieties, see Price, R., “Society, Status and Jingoism: The Social Roots of Lower Middle-Class Patriotism, 1870–1900,” in The Lower Middle Class in Britain 1870–1914, ed. Crossick, G. (London, 1977)Google Scholar. For ardent imperialists anxious about the consequences of a terminal decline in Christian belief, such as Cecil Rhodes, imperialism could become a sort of surrogate faith. The call for universal military training from the “Diehards”—those politically active peers from the landed classes—was made with a view to lowering class barriers and dampening social antagonisms as well as protecting the empire, see Phillips, G., The Diehards: Aristocratic Society and Politics in Edwardian England (London, 1979)Google Scholar. Finally, one might consider the extent to which the imperial business community was particularly susceptible to moralizing empire through the idea of a civilizing mission, thereby downplaying the other purposes their capital served (such as Patrick Hannon and Alan Burgoyne of the Navy League and Lord Lovat of the ISAA). This accretion of meanings helps to explain why empire was picked up with varying degrees of enthusiasm by different groups. Conservative propaganda usually resisted these accretions: the fear was that they would confuse the main vision of empire.

¹¹⁶ Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion: 1688–1914 (London, 1993), chap. 1Google Scholar.