For historians of the formerly colonized world, those of Asia and Africa especially, the impact of empire has been central to their scholarly concerns. In Britain, on the other hand, as Bernard Porter himself points out, this has not necessarily been the case – as witnessed by the fact that study of the empire has been for the most part conducted by a limited number of specialists. In the 1980s, and most notably in the work of Edward Said, the question of empire’s effects on Europe, and European culture and scholarship, began to be raised forcefully and persistently by academics. It is not without some irony then, that one of the most respected of British Empire historians, Bernard Porter, should turn to the questions raised by Edward Said and colonial studies more generally in order to argue that nineteenth and twentieth century British society was much less affected by empire than in many cases it is assumed to be.
Absent-Minded Imperialists brings together a wide variety of British cultural artifacts, from school textbooks and newspapers, to films, musical compositions, festivals, and architecture, in order to understand whether they, and therefore Britain itself, were influenced by the empire. Along the way, Porter pays close attention to how these different texts, performances, and monuments might have affected their multiple audiences. Porter is also careful to place these various artifacts within a larger context, attempting to understand how reflective they were of print, audio, or visual culture more generally, and to think about the multiple influences that might have had a hand in creating them. Porter assembles this great body of evidence in order to argue that the vast majority of British people were unaware of the British Empire (absent-mindedness does not capture this exactly), and that of the remainder, many were critical of the empire, or imperial policy.
Lending texture to Porter’s account are the two principle themes around which his argument is organized: chronology and class. So while Porter argues that “Britain had never been a convincing imperial society” (P. 282), he is also committed to thinking through the variety of responses evoked by empire both across society and across time. The book itself is divided into thirteen chapters. The first seven of these chapters, along with providing an overall introduction to his argument, are roughly devoted to examining the influence of imperialism in nineteenth century Britain up to the period of the 1880s. These seven chapters are further divided to pay special attention to different classes of British society – a decision that Porter justifies by virtue of their separate schooling systems, levels of literacy, and access to the British political system. Chapters eight through eleven take up the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the early half of the twentieth. Here, Porter argues that imperialism became more prevalent – appearing more often in textbooks or finding expression in propaganda societies for example – though he would caution against overstating the influence of imperialism on society at home even in this period, arguing instead that popular enthusiasm around imperial subjects, the Boer war for example, were often fleeting at best. In his last two chapters, Porter recapitulates the arguments of the book and begins to consider at least one question that hovers along the margins of Absent-Minded Imperialists, namely, whether practices pioneered in the colonies made their way back to Britain.
One of the arguments presented in this book is that throughout most of the nineteenth century and perhaps even later, one would be more likely to find imperialists at the higher end of the class hierarchy. It was, Porter argues, these men and women who were more likely to be involved in imperial decision-making and administration. This argument, as well as the larger argument of the book about the minimal influence that the empire had on British culture and politics, rests upon Porter’s definition of imperialism and the methods he uses to locate it. Implicitly, the two questions that Porter pursues most persistently are first whether British men, women, and children were aware of the empire, and second whether they looked upon that empire favorably. His answer to these questions is that the vast majority of British people were unaware of, or unconcerned with ‘their’ empire. They were, Porter seeks to demonstrate, much more concerned with other issues (such as those of labor, or even European politics and rivalries). Among those who had some knowledge of the British empire and could be considered imperialists, Porter is quick to point out that their imperialism might well have had domestic sources (for example, the paternalism that upper classes traditionally exhibited towards their own working classes being turned outwards towards the colonies – an argument resembling that presented by David Cannadine in Ornamentalism^[1]). Porter argues much the same for the middle classes: “All the traffic went the other way: the empire, or perceptions of it, may have been affected by middle-class ideas, but not vice versa” (P. 114). In other words, empire did not weigh heavily in British minds, or in the list of British concerns or priorities, even at the height of the empire.
The strength of this book lies in Porter’s considerable knowledge of British Empire and society accumulated over a career of thought and research. There are delightful pages here – where Porter exposes us to his encyclopedic knowledge of empire studies (as for example, in his lists of novels, British films, American films, architectural monuments, etc., which might be of interest to any student of the empire, and could well be the grounds for analyses contrary to Porter’s own). Equally admirable is the extent to which Porter is able to communicate the changing priorities and valences of domestic British politics (though his analysis of class leaves something to be desired), and how changing British values come together with imperial thought over a very long period of time. One of the most interesting aspects of this story told over the long nineteenth century – an aspect that Porter does not single out especially – is of course that British society seems to have become more imperialistic (even if slightly and fleetingly so), even as it became more democratic.
Readers will be struck by the sheer difficulty (impossibility?) of the task that this author has assigned himself – how does a historian access the “true” thoughts and opinions of a whole society. This difficulty is marked in the text by an analysis that is ensnared (and often bogged down) by caveats, cautions, and the possibilities of different readings. On occasion, Porter too hastily shuts the door on some of these other readings – as when he dismisses the idea that colonial themes are present in novels like Jane Eyre (P. 140). Porter himself seems to prefer more literal readings of texts – whether they be works of literature or those more conventionally considered part of the historical archive. And here, Porter’s insistence on a strict definition of imperialism, as the will to dominate over others held by a self-conscious agent, combined with his often literal reading of primary source material, runs the risk of obscuring the complexity of the historical past. One such example is Wilfred Scawen Blunt, whom Porter cites in passing as an anti-imperialist poet (Pp. 248, 250). This, of course, using Porter’s definition of imperialism might well be true. But Blunt’s trip to India and his fantasy of creating an Islamic university there that would unite Muslim thought across British India and inaugurate a religious reformation (a fantasy, despite his own belief otherwise, that was not really shared by many South Asian Muslims) was peculiarly imperial, in that he believed creating such an institution would preserve the loyalty of Indian Muslims to the Raj and would grant the British the opportunity to instigate this religious reformation. This, even though Blunt was certainly a critic of specific imperial policies – especially those of the British in Egypt. Pinning down different literature or individuals as either for or against imperialism, which is certainly important and instructive, should not blind us to the very complex imaginings made possible by the imperial project (especially as in the case of Blunt, when these could result in policy).
These methodological questions are linked to the larger purposes of this study. Porter himself admits in his preface that “empire probably affected nearly everyone materially” (P. xv). His contention though is that these effects were indirect. By direct affects, those that Porter himself is concerned with, he means “the impact of empire or imperialism, that is, on the way people thought and behaved, and the latters’ effect on the empire” (P. xv). Here, Porter seems especially concerned to rescue at least some portions of the British population from being tarnished by the brush of imperialism. He believes that “it is ridiculous… to characterize whole nations in such terms: as either being one thing or the other. Empires are more complicated than this. One whole country does not rule another whole country…. Britain was made up of imperialists and subjects, just like the colonies were” (P. xii). It seems though, that Porter has lost sight of something very central to nineteenth century European empire. The assumption was precisely what Porter tries to remove from the equation: that one whole country could rule another. In fact, this, as Porter himself reveals, could be the ground for anti-imperialism. For if working class opposition to empire was premised on the fact that empire did not seem to benefit them (P. 222), the presumption of course was that empire should benefit them, and that it should benefit all of Britain. The fact that they were unconvinced does not make Britain less imperial (by a broader definition of that term), but is reflective of their inability, unlike today’s historians and scholars, to see the direct and indirect affects of empire and to question the presumptions that underlay discussions of empire.