ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth and for most of the twentieth centuries, Britain’s dominant image abroad was of a globe-straddling behemoth, seeking to impose its will everywhere, and frequently coming into conflict with them – the other nations of the world, some of them with imperial ambitions of their own – along the way. The ‘after-image’ of empire had grown to full size. For whatever reason or combination of reasons, this became the dominant ‘after-image’ of the British empire once it had come to an end (formally); the next and latest of its successive materialisations over the centuries. A final reason for acknowledging the downside of British imperialism is that so many of its contemporaries did. This is an aspect that hardly ever appears in any of the empire’s more popular ‘after-images’: the extent and passion of the debate that invariably surrounded both the empire and the broader question of ‘imperialism’ in Britain, from the American War of Independence.
