The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (review)

Imperial topics now constitute the area of greatest interest in the field of British history, with a particular emphasis on the integration of domestic British history with its former empire. Only a few scattered bits of land about the world still belong to Britain, but they can cause trouble out of proportion to their size, as in the cases of the Falklands and Gibraltar. Since granting independence to India in 1947, Britain has ceased to rule sixty-four countries and approximately 500 million people. Having lost an empire, Britain has provided historians with a role—studying the former empire. Certainly one of the more contentious areas within imperial studies is the question of how influential the empire was upon Britain itself. Some maintain that every aspect of British life was, and is, permeated by its empire. Others argue that most of the population, other than perhaps taking some pride in an empire on which the sun never set, was little affected by it.

Thompson's extremely useful book takes a position halfway between these two points of view. He considers the various ways that the empire connects with Britain. His work is a summary one, a survey for scholars and students who want a penetrating overview of the subject. It is interdisciplinary in its approach, considering all aspects of the empire's influence at home. He writes about architecture, museums, language, food, literature, and street names, among other topics.

Thompson also deals in fine fashion with the economic and political aspects of the empire. He concludes that it did not provide that much "outdoor" relief for the aristocracy. From the professional middle class came the civil servants who ran the empire. Thompson argues that the lower middle class was likely to be the most favorably disposed toward empire among the population. He does not pay much attention to the argument that the working class reconciled itself to its lot partly because it felt compensated emotionally and perhaps financially as inhabiting a country that ruled so much of the world. He discusses the role of emigration to the white colonies of settlement (although the United States as a former part of the empire was also a significant destination.) He has fascinating documentation on how much money emigrants sent back home. Not only those who emigrated but those born in the empire continued until recently to regard Britain itself as "home." An excellent section discusses the interplay between domestic and imperial labor movements, such as the influence of Tom Mann's experiences in Australia. The book proceeds by topics and not by chronology, limiting the sense of change and development.

A central question is whether the empire "paid." Money was made; British investors were more interested in profits than necessarily in the empire per se. With exceptions, the government did not take actions that would particularly favor British businessmen and assure their profits. But an aura of authority and power certainly hovered about the British as they moved in imperial and nonimperial space. (It is appropriately not part of the scope of this study to consider the role of the "informal" empire in terms of investment or in other ways.) Thompson concludes that the empire did not cause any fundamental change in the British economy and that it did not decisively influence politics at home. He gives little credence to those who have argued that the experience of empire made domestic politics more sympathetic to authoritarian trends.

Although this study primarily concentrates on the period before the Suez crisis of 1956, when Britain still acted as if it had an empire, it does not neglect the years since. The profound irony of the situation today, making the title of this work particularly vivid, is that when Britain was a great imperial power, few of its imperial subjects lived in the home country. Now that the empire has virtually disintegrated, once imperial subjects are a...