Dr Tom Crook
Reader in Modern British History, Oxford Brookes University
Following the loss of the American colonies in the 1780s, the British Empire began to shift away from a dependence on mercantile trade and the geography of the Atlantic and Caribbean towards a more complex formation stretching across the globe. Composed of territories of varying status and design – among them Crown dependencies, settler colonies, and protectorates – Britain’s ‘Second Empire’, as it is sometimes termed, was animated by ambitions that were as much moral and political as commercial and strategic, and driven by a novel sense of historic purpose and responsibility. Having first been colonised by the English in the sixteenth century, Ireland, too, remained part of Britain’s imperial jigsaw and in 1801 was incorporated into a formal constitutional union. The result was an empire of unprecedented scale: by 1914, it contained almost 500 million people – about a quarter of the global population – and roughly one-fifth of the world’s landmass.
The domestic – or ‘metropolitan’ – politics of the British Empire was, accordingly, extraordinarily complex. Different territories and aspects of empire posed different problems at different junctures, and any generalisations about elite and popular attitudes to empire should be treated with caution. For one thing, empire was a source of considerable anxiety and ambivalence, just as much as patriotic fervour and a sense of civilisational superiority. Following decades of condemnation, for example, the British slave trade and then slavery were abolished (in 1807 and 1833 respectively). Yet, right until the end, they remained entirely legitimate practices in the eyes of some, while for others their abolition was another sign of the essential goodness of Britain’s imperial mission. It is also clear that the politics of empire came in fits and starts. Public and parliamentary interest peaked during times of imperial crisis, such as the Indian Rebellion (1857–8), the Morant Bay uprising (1865), and the Second Boer War (1899–1902). By contrast, interest in the day-to-day running of empire was more muted, even among MPs.
The key exception was Ireland, which impinged on British politics and public opinion with more regularity and force, partly due to its geographic proximity, but also on account of the presence of Irish MPs and peers in Parliament, and the intensity of various crises, notably the humanitarian catastrophe of the Irish Famine (1845–9). Gladstone’s conversion to Irish Home Rule famously split the Liberal Party in 1886, prompting a breakaway group of Liberal Unionists to align with the Conservatives. This was a seminal moment in the history of British party politics, but the impact of Ireland on British politics was felt in more subtle ways, too. Crucially, support for Irish Home Rule inspired similar movements not only in Scotland and Wales but also in other parts of the empire, notably India, where the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 to agitate for more indigenous self-government.
This Routledge Historical Resource contains a wealth of materials to help you explore this demanding aspect of nineteenth-century British politics. The essays on ‘The British world and the politics of empire’ by Amanda Behm and ‘Britain, Ireland and the Irish question’ by Peter Gray provide excellent starting points. Useful general texts include Andrew Thompson’s Imperial Britain and Nick Pelling’s introductory overview of Anglo-Irish relations. In terms of primary sources, the works of Richard Cobden and Herbert Spencer shed light on the arguments of two prominent Victorian critics of empire, while the volumes on Ireland in the Age of Revolution and The History of the Irish Famine explore the Irish dimension.