Imperialism & Edward Wakefield, Imperial Reformer [15min]

By the late 1830s the word imperialism was becoming one of the more sensitive nouns in the British Empire. Imperialism means conquest followed by absolute rule and, to the British, it meant national confidence just as it had the Romans and the French. Since the 13th century, the British nomanklatura had fought the monarchy's claim that its rule was beyond question. But now the British were proclaiming the monarch's inalienable right to rule something approaching a quarter of the globe."This Sceptred Isle: Empire" is a narrative history of the British Empire from Ireland in the 12th century to the independence of India in the 20th, told in 90 programmes written by historian Christopher Lee and narrated by actor Juliet Stevenson. (You may listen again online to up to five most recent episodes of"Empire".)

Right into the second half of the 20th century the term imperialism was firmly in the British constitutional lexicon. Britain held Imperial Conferences, her highest military commander was Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Trade subsidies were known as Imperial Preferences. Imperial measures. Imperial gallons. Crown Imperial. Mint imperials. All as innocent but as meaningful as Members, Orders and Companions of the British Empire.

The paradox is that imperialism coincided with increased democracy that was to be extended to the colonies. They were no longer replicas of the shires as the founding fathers had expected. It was one thing to reform British voting systems and representation but harder to apply it to a constellation of colonies in which each settlement had separate demands.

Even getting information to and from the colonies was more complex as the Empire expanded and administrators attempted to coordinate policies. As Robert Peel observed, there was hardly any colonial decision that could not be taken at leisure. Yet what happened in Sydney was supposed to be as important as what happened in Cardiff or Bristol or London.

Consequently, changes in a more formalized colonial policy came mostly from the colonies themselves. The conditions in, say, Canada or New Zealand had to be understood in their contexts, not in legislation that best suited the English shire counties. Therefore, colonial planners and would-be reformers like Edward Wakefield were to have more influence on the management of Imperial policy than the unimaginative mandarins of an increasingly recognizable Whitehall colonial bureaucracy.