The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900

335 Pages·2007·1.308 MB·English

by  Duncan Bell

The Idea of Greater Britain
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The Idea of
Greater Britain
Empire and the Future
of World Order, 1860–1900
Duncan Bell
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
princeton and oxford
Copyright © 2007 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
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All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bell, Duncan, 1976–
The idea of greater Britain : empire and the future
of world order, 1860-1900 /Duncan Bell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-691-12865-8 (hardcover : acid-free paper)
1. Great Britain—Colonies—History—19th century.
2. Imperialism—History—19th century. 3. National
characteristics, British. 4. Great Britain—Civilization—
19th century. I. Title.
DA16.B38 2007
909(cid:2).0971241081—dc22
2007002911
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Sabon
Printed on acid-free paper. ø
press.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 5 8 6 4 2
This book is dedicated to the memory
of my father, Charles Julian Bell,
and my grandfather, Alexander Bruce.
The old colonial system is gone. But in its place no clear
and reasoned system has been adopted. The wrong theory
is given up, but what is the right theory? There is only one
alternative. If the colonies are not, in the old phrase,
possessions of England, then they must be part of
England; and we must adopt this view in earnest.
—J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England:
Two Courses of Lectures (1883)
Holding, as we must, that any reasonable security for
good order and civilisation in the world implies the
growing application of the federation principle in
international politics, it will appear only natural that the
earlier steps in such a process should take the form of
unions of States most closely related by ties of common
blood, language, and institutions, and that a phase of
federated Britain or Anglo-Saxondom, Pan-Teutonism,
Pan-Slavism, and Pan-Latinism might supervene upon the
phase already reached. There is perhaps a suspicion of
excessive logic in such an order of events, but a broad
general view of history renders it plausible and desirable
enough. Christendom thus laid out in a few great federal
empires, each with a retinue of uncivilised dependencies,
seems to me the most legitimate development of present
tendencies and one which would offer the best hope of
permanent peace on an assured basis of inter-Imperialism.
—J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (1902)
The essence of empire is control. To control, whether
of oneself or of others, everyone must bring a philosophy.
—A. P. Thornton, Doctrines of Imperialism (1965)
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Chapter 1
Introduction: Building Greater Britain 1
The Boundaries of Imperial Discourse: Imagining
Greater Britain 3
Greater Britain and Imperial Federation: Variations
on a Theme 12
Empire and Ideology 20
Outline of the Book 25
Chapter 2
Global Competition and Democracy 31
Balances of Power:Global Threats and Imperial Responses 35
Democracy and the Moral Economy of Empire 40
Emigration and the Social Question 46
Radical Visions of Greater Britain 55
Chapter 3
Time, Space, Empire 63
“The Eternal Law”: Empire and the Vicissitudes of Distance 66
Nature in Flux, c. 1830–1870 74
Imperial Political Thought in the Age of Scientific
Utopianism, c. 1870–1900 81
Remaking the Global Political Imagination 89
Chapter 4
Empire, Nation, State 92
The Turn to Federalism 93
Statehood and Empire 98
J. R.Seeley and the “World-State” 108
Race and Nation 113
Chapter 5
The Politics of the Constitution 120
The Virtues of Vagueness 122
Imperial Patriotism and the Constitution 128
viii CONTENTS
Civic Imperialism 137
J. A.Froude and the “Commonwealth of Oceana” 143
Chapter 6
The Apostle of Unity 150
The Love of Humanity:Toward a New “Political Religion” 152
The Political Theology of Nationalist Cosmopolitanism 158
The Darkening of an English Mind 164
On the Necessity of Imperial Federation 168
The Ambiguities of Unity: India and Ireland 171
Chapter 7
The Prophet of Righteousness 179
Colonial Emancipation and the “Glorious Future”
of the Anglo-Saxon Race 181
Empire and Character 188
Religion and Liberty 193
India, Ireland, and the Necessity of Despotism 202
Chapter 8
From Ancient to Modern 207
The Functions of the Ancients 210
The End of Empire: Two Models 217
On Novelty 226
Back to the Future 229
Chapter 9
Envisioning America 231
The Model of the Future: America as Template 235
Size Matters: America as Competitor 238
Peace and Justice: The Benefits of Hegemony 247
Through a Glass, Darkly: America as Lesson 250
America, Empire, and Racial Unity 254
Chapter 10
Conclusion: Lineages of Greater Britain 260
Global Consciousness and the Imperial Imagination 260
Reverberations: Some Afterlives of Greater Britain 266
Select Bibliography 273
Index 313
Acknowledgments
Writing this bookwould have been impossible without a great deal of
support, and I would like to thank those who have facilitated and enriched
the process. Firstly, a number of institutions have aided me financially. The
Arts and Humanities Research Board funded the doctoral research on
which this book is based, while the Fulbright Commission supported a year
in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. Colleagues
in the Centre of International Studies, and in the Faculty of History, Uni-
versity of Cambridge, have helped to create intellectually vibrant environ-
ments in which to work, as well as offering excellent advice at key points.
I would also like to thank the support staff (in particular Wendy Cooke)
for all their help over the last five years. Jesus College provided a com-
fortable home for the early stages of the project. Finally, it is a great honor
to have been elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ’s College.
The college provides a beautiful environment in which to work, and I would
like to thank the late Master (Malcolm Bowie), the current Master (Frank
Kelly), the Fellows, and the staff, for their kind and generous welcome.
In my own experience academic research is a highly social activity, an-
chored in regular interaction with teachers and friends (often one and the
same), and without them this project would probably never have started,
let alone reached some sort of conclusion. I would especially like to thank
Charles Jones, for his patient and erudite supervision of an ever mutating
project, and Istvan Hont, for his brilliant scholarly guidance as well as for
his steadfast support. My movement back and forth between interna-
tional relations and the fresh pastures of intellectual history has been
made much easier by both of them. Alan Bell, Peter Mandler, and Marc
Stears have read all (or most) of the manuscript, and I am very grateful
for their probing commentaries as well as their admirable endurance.
Casper Sylvest has read it two or three times; his counsel has been con-
sistently illuminating, and his own work on liberal internationalism has
helped me to formulate and refine many of my own arguments. At the last
minute Ged Martin provided pellucid comments on several chapters.
Peter Cain has helped in navigating the choppy waters of Victorian im-
perialism. My doctoral thesis examiners, Richard Tuck and David Can-
nadine, offered some very useful suggestions for improving the text, and
their kind assistance and subsequent encouragement is much appreciated.
Michael Freeden, Quentin Skinner, and Gareth Stedman Jones, have all
offered inspiration, as well as tremendously helpful advice, for my work
on the history of political thought, and this project owes much to their
own scholarly endeavours. I would also like to thank the following for
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
their constructive comments on one (or more) chapters: David Armitage,
Jens Bartelson, Michael Bentley, Antoinette Burton, Linda Colley, Stephen
Constantine, Daniel Deudney, Heather Ellis, Zeev Emmerich, James Ep-
stein, Sarah Fine, Matthew Grimley, Ian Hall, Joel Isaac, Stuart Jones,
Duncan Kelly, Oswyn Murray, Karuna Mantena, Jeanne Morefield, Je-
remy Morris, Maria Neophytou, Karen O’Brien, Jon Parry, Susan Peder-
sen, Jennifer Pitts, Simon Potter, David Reynolds, Julia Stapleton, John
Thompson, David Worsley, and Brian Young. Finally, various friends and
colleagues provided excellent advice, and I would like to thank them
also: Tarak Barkawi, Mike Boyle, William Burke-White, John Burrow,
Stefan Collini, Susanna di Feliciantonio, Inbali Iserles, Zaheer Kazmi,
Martin O’Neill, Emma Rothschild, Andrea Sangiovanni, Mette Eilstrup-
Sangiovanni, and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira. None of the above can be
held responsible for any remaining scholarly infelicities. It has been a plea-
sure to work with Ian Malcolm, a brilliant editor.
I have benefited greatly from the comments and questions of audiences
at seminars and conferences, including those at the British Academy; In-
stitute for Historical Research; Cambridge; Oxford; Warwick; Pomona
College; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia, Sheffield Hal-
lam; the International Studies Association annual conventions in Hon-
olulu (2005) and San Diego (2006), as well as the American Political Sci-
ence Association annual convention in Washington, D.C. (2005). Various
portions of the book have appeared in print, sometimes in rather different
forms. Elements of chapter 4 can be found in “The Victorian Idea of a
Global State” in Duncan Bell (ed.), Victorian Visions of Global Order:Em-
pire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought
(Cambridge University Press, 2007). Some of the material from chapter 6
was published in “Unity and Difference: J. R. Seeley and the Political The-
ology of International Relations,” Review of International Studies, 31/3
(2005). A version of chapter 3 appeared as, “Dissolving Distance: Empire,
Space, and Technology in British Political Thought, 1860–1900,” in The
Journal of Modern History, 77/3 (2005), while a version of chapter 8, en-
titled, “From Ancient to Modern in Victorian Imperial Thought,” ap-
peared in TheHistorical Journal, 49/3 (2006). I would like to thank the
editors and publishers (the University of Chicago Press and Cambridge
University Press) for their kind permission to reprint this material.
Finally, for their exceptional support, I would like to extend my warm-
est thanks to my friends, especially Jude Browne; my partner, Sarah Fine;
and my wonderful family, particularly Dorothy and Alex Bell, and Helen
Bruce. This book is dedicated to the memory of my father and grand-
father.