(Ebook) Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain by Theodore Koditschek ISBN 9780521767910, 0521767911

(Ebook) Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain by Theodore Koditschek ISBN 9780521767910, 0521767911

This book examines the ways in which imperial agendas informed the writing of history in nineteenth-century Britain and how historical writing transformed imperial agendas. Using the published writings and personal papers of Walter Scott, J. A. Froude, James Mill, Rammohun Roy, T. B. Macaulay, E. A. Freeman, W. E. Gladstone, and J. R. Seeley among others, Theodore Koditschek sheds new light on the role of the historical imagination in the establishment and legitimation of liberal imperialism. He shows how both imperialists and the imperialized were drawn to reflect back on Empire's past as a result of the need to construct a modern, multi-national British imperial identity for a more economically expansive and enlightened present. By tracing the imperial lives and historical works of these pivotal figures, Theodore Koditschek illuminates the ways in which discourse altered practice, and vice versa, as well as how the history of Empire was continuously written and re-written.