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As the nineteenth century progressed, the story of British empire became increasingly self-justifying. The civilizing mission of empire was described in hundreds of books, magazines, and history books which, Kathryn Castle writes, extolled the “peace and civilization which it was the glory of British statesmen” to bring to the backward nations of the earth” (p. 12). Increasingly the British portrayed themselves as a uniquely robust people whose special virtues were distilled in the “conflict, romance and heroism of the British past” (p. 5).
Voluminous as this public discussion of British imperialism was, however, it generally stuck to an elaboration of glowing selfimage and lofty ideals, and failed to mention the material advantages that empire could bestow on Britons. This was the case even though the ease with which technologically advanced countries could defeat and exploit traditional societies and was relatively new and stunning in its implications. Suddenly, Eric Hobsbawm (1989) writes, poorer countries “were equally at the mercy of ships that came from abroad, bringing cargoes of goods, armed men and ideas against which they were powerless” (p. 20). But while the “visionary lure of untold wealth for the taking” may not have been admitted as a theme in imperial discourse, Robert Druce (1997) writes, there is evidence that it “was never far away from the public imagination” as imperial wealth is the crux of “recurrent plots of Victorian and Edwardian popular literature” (p. 190). The British public, thus, was required to manage a quite significant degree of duality in regard to empire: How could empire be both a high-minded mission to civilize the world and simultaneously an opportunity to loot poor countries?1