European colonial empires and Victorian imperial exceptionalism

Book section : Chapter

This chapter explores how British political writers compared their own nation’s empire with other contemporary European colonial projects. It argues that, throughout the Victorian era, most comparisons with the transoceanic empires of the major Continental states strongly emphasised the distinctive, and superior, character of British imperial expansion and rule. Writers buttressed their assertions of British exceptionalism with a battery of arguments about history, national character, policy, and commercial arrangements, and above all with claims about the proper role of the state in imperial expansion and government. By the ‘high imperial’ era of the 1880s and 1890s, contemporaries had begun to identify a generic ‘Continental’ model of overseas empire-building, which threw the British equivalent into even sharper relief. Without seeking to make grand claims for the influence or prevalence of these comparisons, the chapter concludes that there is an obvious need to integrate the European colonial empires into the history of Victorian imperial thought and politics.

Authors: Middleton, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Host title: The Force of Comparison: A New Perspective on Modern European History and the Contemporary World
• Pages: 164-190
• Chapter number: 6
• Series: New German Historical Perspectives
• Series number: 11
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2019-09-01
• Edition: 1st
• DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv1850gn8.10
• EISBN: 9781789203363
• ISBN: 9781789203356
• Language: English
• Subtype: Chapter