The Absent-Minded Imperialists by Bernard Porter

The Absent-Minded Imperialists by Bernard Porter

The British empire was a huge enterprise. To foreigners it more or less defined Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its repercussions in the wider world are still with us today. It also had a great impact on Britain herself: for example, on her economy, security, population, and eating habits. One might expect this to have been reflected in her society and culture. Indeed, this has now become the conventional wisdom: that Britain was steeped in imperialism domestically, which affected (or infected) almost everything Britons thought, felt, and did. This is the first book to examine this assumption critically against the broader background of contemporary British society. Bernard Porter, a leading imperial historian, argues that the empire had a far lower profile in Britain than it did abroad. Many Britons could hardly have been aware of it for most of the nineteenth century and only a small number was in any way committed to it. Between these extremes opinions differed widely over what was even meant by the empire. This depended largely on class, and even when people were aware of the empire, it had no appreciable impact on their thinking about anything else. Indeed, the influence far more often went the other way, with perceptions of the empire being affected (or distorted) by more powerful domestic discourses. Although Britain was an imperial nation in this period, she was never a genuine imperial society. As well as showing how this was possible, Porter also discusses the implications of this attitude for Britain and her empire, and for the relationship between culture and imperialism more generally, bringing his study up to date by including the case of the present-day USA.

..[a] spirited and wide-ranging polemic ... an important book in every respect ... highly readable, and perfectly pitched to win friends and provoke enemies. * Stuart Ward, History Workshop Journal *
...an important book on empires. * Manan Ahmed, South Asia News *

Bernard Porter, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, took his degrees at Cambridge University, becoming a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, before moving on to a Lectureship at Hull, a Chair at Newcastle and Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Yale and Sydney. His books include Empire and Superempire (a comparison between British and American 'imperialisms'), The Absent-Minded Imperialists and The Lion's Share. He mainly lives in Sweden.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780199299591
ISBN 10	0199299595
Title	The Absent-Minded Imperialists
Author	Bernard Porter
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	2006-07-27
Number of pages	504
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.