• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1162 0

enormous, too. The distinctive character of the British Empire – unlike its Russian or Austro-Hungarian counterparts – was its immense geographical spread, from tiny atolls to entire continents. This was partly because its perpetrators lived on an island: it is striking that the age of imperialism begins only after Queen Mary had lost Calais, the last English possession in France, in 1558. Thereafter, the European concern of most British governments was merely to see that no individual power became strong enough to menace British possessions overseas. That the English had seawater in their veins tended to make overseas adventures more attractive than they might have seemed: when you are surrounded by sea, any journey anywhere involves travelling by water – the difference between visiting Norway and visiting New Zealand is merely one of degree.

There is no completely reliable estimate of how many people left Britain for a new life overseas during the years of empire, but most of them never returned, and by 1900 a majority of English-speakers were living outside Europe. The British diaspora created a network of family connections stretching from a grey, damp island in the North Atlantic to dusty sheep stations in Australia, rough-and-ready mining towns in Africa and snowy wildernesses in Canada. So while at any one time the imperial life was being lived only by a minority of the population, the colonial experience was familiar to many more. The awareness of ‘abroad’ lives on in the fact that more than three-quarters of the British population hold passports. In the United States – great immigrant nation that it is – the figure is less than a third.

When the British went to live in the lands they conquered they were confronted immediately with the question of what it was that made them distinct from the people among whom they lived. The number who asked the difficult question ‘What’s so special about us?’ must have been small. Indeed, when you read the popular literature of the period its most offensive characteristic is the assumption of racial superiority over ‘brutes’ and ‘savages’. As Cecil Rhodes put it, ‘We are the finest race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.’ As the empire matured, a peculiar illogicality seized the British: we rule more of the world than any other nation, therefore we must be superior to any other nation. In fact, of course, it was technological advance and entrepreneurial flair which gave birth to the empire. But a belief in some moral pre-eminence offered reassurance to the anxious imperialist. For the majority of empire officials – district officers and magistrates, policemen, teachers, farmers and engineers – the role was perhaps justification itself. Yet it was a role in an alien land, and the customs and conventions of Hove or Huddersfield were absent. So the daily business of living in a British community – even a community of one or two, out in the bush – required the invention of a set of norms, of things which were done at certain times of the day, and things which were definitely not done at any time. These communities were obliged to define what being British meant. In the bungalows and clubs, the sundowners on the verandah and the suet puddings at the dinner table, they were acting out a version of what life was like at home. But it was a not-quite-perfect representation.

Creating and running this enormous enterprise required a certain type of individual, which gave Britain its idiosyncratic public-school system, designed to produce not intellectuals but ‘sound chaps’ – capable, dependable, resourceful. They were to be oblivious to discomfort and able to inspire respect, for through them was the reality of the British Empire to be made clear. Parents understood the job of the school. In Tom Brown’s School Days, Squire Brown knew what he wanted from the education his son was to receive at Rugby. ‘What is he sent to school for?’ he asks. ‘If only he’ll turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian,