Imperial Matters
Sep. 16th, 2007 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elvumWhen I was up in Edinburgh, I purchased the most marvellous book from a second-hand book shop. "Round the Empire" by George R Parkin
As a book, it is absolutely fascinating, and probably reveals a great deal about the mentality of the British towards their Empire at the end of the 19th Century. (The book was published in 1893.) It is a book for British children, describing to them the Empire to which the author expects many of them to emigrate.
As the Right Hon. the Earl of Rosebery KG puts it in his preface, "it is on the character of each child that grows into manhood within British limits that the future of our Empire rests. If we and they are narrow and selfish, averse to labour, impatient of necessary burdens, factious and self-indulgent: if we see in publiuc affairs not our Empire but our country, not our country but our parish, and in our parish our house, the Empire is doomed. For its maintenance requires work and sacrifice and intelligence."
Since the copyright expired in 1992, no doubt casting Sir George's descendents into destitution as the royalties dried up, I have no compunction about posting some of the more interesting excerpts here, unexpurgated. But behind cut tags, for the benefit of those bored or offended by late-Victorian imperialism and the attitudes and language used to express it.
"The people of a great trading nation such as ours is should get rid of the idea that oceans divide.
"It is true that we cannot shorten space, but we can shorten time, and in point of time oceans now separate much less than they did fifty years ago. We cross the Atlantic with steamships in as many days as it once took weeks by sailing vessels. Many thousands of people cross every year to transact business or to spend a few weeks' holiday on either side. Britain and Australia are less than thirty days apart, and every week great steamships laden with goods and passengers start from one to the other.
"This is not all. The telegraph wire stretches under the sea as well as over the land, and puts remote parts of the world into almost instant touch with each other. You can send a message to Canada or Australia and get an answer in a few hours, or even in a few minutes. The morning or evening papers in Melbourne or Montreal have in them every day a great deal of the same news from all parts of the world which appears on the same day in English papers, so that all round the world British people are thinking of the same things at the same time. It is said that the sum of one thousand pounds is spent every day in paying for messages between Australia and Britain alone.
"Thus we see that in many ways it is a mistake to think in these days that oceans divide, any more than land does."
As a book, it is absolutely fascinating, and probably reveals a great deal about the mentality of the British towards their Empire at the end of the 19th Century. (The book was published in 1893.) It is a book for British children, describing to them the Empire to which the author expects many of them to emigrate.As the Right Hon. the Earl of Rosebery KG puts it in his preface, "it is on the character of each child that grows into manhood within British limits that the future of our Empire rests. If we and they are narrow and selfish, averse to labour, impatient of necessary burdens, factious and self-indulgent: if we see in publiuc affairs not our Empire but our country, not our country but our parish, and in our parish our house, the Empire is doomed. For its maintenance requires work and sacrifice and intelligence."
Since the copyright expired in 1992, no doubt casting Sir George's descendents into destitution as the royalties dried up, I have no compunction about posting some of the more interesting excerpts here, unexpurgated. But behind cut tags, for the benefit of those bored or offended by late-Victorian imperialism and the attitudes and language used to express it.
"The people of a great trading nation such as ours is should get rid of the idea that oceans divide.
"It is true that we cannot shorten space, but we can shorten time, and in point of time oceans now separate much less than they did fifty years ago. We cross the Atlantic with steamships in as many days as it once took weeks by sailing vessels. Many thousands of people cross every year to transact business or to spend a few weeks' holiday on either side. Britain and Australia are less than thirty days apart, and every week great steamships laden with goods and passengers start from one to the other.
"This is not all. The telegraph wire stretches under the sea as well as over the land, and puts remote parts of the world into almost instant touch with each other. You can send a message to Canada or Australia and get an answer in a few hours, or even in a few minutes. The morning or evening papers in Melbourne or Montreal have in them every day a great deal of the same news from all parts of the world which appears on the same day in English papers, so that all round the world British people are thinking of the same things at the same time. It is said that the sum of one thousand pounds is spent every day in paying for messages between Australia and Britain alone.
"Thus we see that in many ways it is a mistake to think in these days that oceans divide, any more than land does."
