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underlines. 4 But much of the most vicious invective during the early nineteenth century was reserved for the Colonial Office: that ‘Augean precinct’ and poisonous ‘pest-house’, which incarnated and oversaw a ‘corrupt colonial system’, came to be widely understood as the most ‘rotten and ruinous’ department of all. 5 Founded in 1801, and lodged into a cramped building at the far end of Downing Street
Imperial power, both formal and informal, and research in the natural sciences were closely dependent in the nineteenth century. This book examines a portion of the mass-produced juvenile literature, focusing on the cluster of ideas connected with Britain's role in the maintenance of order and the spread of civilization. It discusses the political economy of Western ecological systems, and the consequences of their extension to the colonial periphery, particularly in forms of forest conservation. Progress and consumerism were major constituents of the consensus that helped stabilise the late Victorian society, but consumerism only works if it can deliver the goods. From 1842 onwards, almost all major episodes of coordinated popular resistance to colonial rule in India were preceded by phases of vigorous resistance to colonial forest control. By the late 1840s, a limited number of professional positions were available for geologists in British imperial service, but imperial geology had a longer pedigree. Modern imperialism or 'municipal imperialism' offers a broader framework for understanding the origins, long duration and persistent support for overseas expansion which transcended the rise and fall of cabinets or international realignments in the 1800s. Although medical scientists began to discern and control the microbiological causes of tropical ills after the mid-nineteenth century, the claims for climatic causation did not undergo a corresponding decline. Arthur Pearson's Pearson's Magazine was patriotic, militaristic and devoted to royalty. The book explores how science emerged as an important feature of the development policies of the Colonial Office (CO) of the colonial empire.
guided by rough concepts of utility’. 3 This chapter examines the response of the metropolitan government to the challenges posed by the British Empire, and specifically to New South Wales and the Cape Colony, between 1815 and 1836. In this discussion, the networks of personal connection which emanated from the Colonial Office emerge as critical for imperial governance. Tracing the
To me a colony is as turtle-soup to an alderman – daily fare and hardly palatable. (James Stephen, February 1842) 1 James Stephen’s weariness was understandable. Every day Stephen and his staff at the Colonial Office faced an
with the senior staff in the Colonial Office. Mitchell, a Peninsular veteran, was a protégé of Sir George Murray (colonial secretary, 1828–30) and also communicated copiously and unofficially with permanent under-secretary Robert Hay. Ambitious and self-centred, Mitchell was quick to find fault with his peers and superiors in the colony, and as quick to report them, unofficially
communications between governors and the Colonial Office took the form of despatches which met certain formal requirements as to style and content. By the late 1820s, each colony’s despatches were numbered and classified under different subject headings, and regulation of the style and content of despatches increased through the 1830s, especially under the influence of James Stephen from
In a break with previous policy, the Colonial Office announced in 1943 that it would promote industrial development in Britain’s colonies. Manufacturing ventures were now deemed essential to raise living standards and address the politically dangerous issue of colonial unemployment. Officials became occupied with the question of what constituted acceptable modes of intervention by metropolitan and colonial governments to facilitate economic diversification. The challenge was to reconcile the need for demonstration of a more constructive
During the 1940s the scientists engaged by the Colonial Office were generally able to undertake projects of fundamental research in the chemistry of tropical products along lines of their own choosing. The notion that scientific researchers required the freedom to select their own research problems was a principle upheld by the CPRC and also officials at the Colonial Office concerned with the operation of the CDW Acts. By the early 1950s, however, officials at the Colonial Office were concerned that the work overseen by the CPRC was not
In 1941 the Colonial Office made a commitment to fund scientific research into the chemistry of sugar. If sugar cane could be used to make plastics, building materials, drugs and other synthetic products, then it was hoped the British West Indies would find themselves in the fortunate position of being producers of a lucrative raw material for the chemical industry rather than a low-value foodstuff. This was a vision that endowed laboratory research with the power to transform the economic and social life of the British West Indies. But how
grant-in-aid to do so. Thus, British policy rendered Cyprus economically unviable. The purchase plan True to its word, the Gladstone government made swift changes. In May 1880, Charles Dilke, the under-secretary at the Foreign Office, announced Cyprus’s future transfer to the Colonial Office, 1 where stringency was the norm. Gladstone also announced sweeping changes to local