EMPIRE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY / 160 9
through those 'ties of kindred, of religion, of history, and of language,' as Chamberlain puts it, that bound them to other historically British citizens, however privileged. Intensified competition with the empire-building powers of continental Europe after the Franco-Prussian War also played an important role, as did the mounting stridency of other nationalist movements abroad. In the last quarter of the century, the patriotic fervor celebrating the achievements of the British nation as a whole increased dramatically? a phenomenon undoubtedly assisted by the growth both in the size of the reading public (literacy was practically universal in Britain by 1900, thanks to the progressive extension of elementary education) and in the number of flag-waving newspapers, periodicals, and books available for it to consume.
The citizens of Great Britain were thus welded into a more cohesive whole. But few of them were ready to accept the peoples of the colonies (and especially indigenous nonwhite populations) as truly 'British,' despite the inclusive rhetoric of empire (the 'one imperial whole' that Alfred, Lord Tennyson salutes in his poem on the opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886). Of course, there were exceptions: recounting his experiences on a visit to Britain for that same exhibition, the Indian T. N. Mukharji remembers that on one occasion in London, 'somebody called me a foreigner. 'He is no foreigner!' cried several voices, 'He is a British subject as you and I.' ' To J. A. Hobson, the author of the influential Imperialism: A Study (1902), the importance of this casual affirmation of shared subjecthood was negligible, given that 'not five per cent of the population of our Empire are possessed of any appreciable portion of the political and civil liberties which are the basis of British civilisation.' Writing after Britain's imperial confidence had been severely damaged by the unanticipated length and difficulty of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 in South Africa, Hobson in his meticulous analysis aimed not only to cast serious doubt on imperialism's putative financial benefit to Britain but also to demonstrate the overall falsity of the empire's claim to support the extension of self-government in its territories. In exposing the repeated misrepresentations and self- servingjustifications at the heart of the British Empire, Hobson joined voices with others around the globe, such as the West Indian intellectual J.J. Thomas, and entered a tradition of anti- imperial critique that was to grow exponentially in the twentieth century.
It is instructive to consider the following discussions of Britain's relationship with other parts of the world, and its understanding of its own identity, in the context of a number of other selections. The popularity of Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859) testifies to the Victorians' fascination with what they saw as the exotic appeal of distant cultures; Tennyson's poem 'Locksley Hall' (1842) also reflects on 'yonder shining Orient.' Matthew Arnold's prose writings frequently address the issue of national character, while John Henry Newman sets forth an ideal of English manliness in his 'definition of a gentleman' in Discourse 8 of The Idea of a University (1852). Versions of this ideal from the apex of Great Britain's period of national pride appear in two highly popular poems, W. E. Henley's 'Invictus' (1888) and Kipling's 'If' (1910); Kipling's other poems and his novella The Man Who Would Be King (1888) are also essential reading for those interested in the intensification of imperial enthusiasm at the end of Victoria's reign. At the same time we should heed the warning of the postcolonial critic Gayatri Spivak against limiting any investigation of empire and national identity only to those writings that seem overtly concerned with the topic. 'It should not be possible to read nineteenth-century British literature,' she insists at the beginning of an analysis of Charlotte Bronte's
Jane Eyre (1847), 'without remembering that imperialism, understood as England's social mission, was a crucial part of the cultural representation of England to the English.' In other words, images, explanations, and justifications of this massive enterprise were continually created and reflected throughout the pages of a wide range of Victorian texts.
For additional texts on the subject of empire, see 'Victorian Imperialism' at Norton Literature Online.
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THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
The historian, essayist, and parliamentarian Macaulay (1800?1859) served as a member of the supreme council of the East India Company from 1834 to 1838, and in that capacity he oversaw major educational and legal reforms. His 'Minute,' or official memorandum, was written to rebut those council members who believed that Indian students should continue to be educated in Sanskrit and Persian as well as in English; Macaulay's party carried the argument.
From Minute on Indian Education
We now come to the gist of the matter. We have a fund to be employed as Government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country. The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it?
All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary or scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them.
What, then, shall that language be? One half of the Committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic1 and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be, which language is the best worth knowing?
I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.?But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.
It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But, when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of
1. Actually Persian, the language (written in Arabic script) of the Mogul dynasty that had ruled much of India since the 16th century.
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