Introduction

There is an abundance of literature, encompassing many disciplines, on the rise and expansion of "new imperialism" in Britain and Western Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.(!) Although the history of the growth and decline of the British empire is widely known, no attempt has hitherto been made to present a systematic investigation of the discussion and analysis of the empire by British economists over the period 1860 to 1914. This neglect is somewhat surprising, for during these years not only did the British empire experience its most rapid growth, but economics itself underwent numerous changes and modifications.(2) This study is primarily concerned with what the economists wrote on a range of economic and non-economic aspects of the British empire, and the reasons for their conclusions. Moreover, an attempt will be made to correct the view, sometimes encountered, that mainstream British economists after 1860 were antipathetic to the concept of empire.(3)

The study will demonstrate that authors such as W S Jevons and Alfred Marshall did not, as Donald 0 Wagner asserted in 1932, "completely pass over" imperial problems.(4) In addition to these specific aims, the study has four subsidiary concerns: firstly, to compare and contrast the economists' views on empire with those of their classical predecessors; secondly, to note the relationship of the economics of the empire to the core of economic theory;(5) thirdly, to establish whether the economists had anything to contribute to imperial discussion ~ economists; and finally, to establish whether the economists' economic analysis of the empire reveals anything about the changing nature of the economics profession over the period 1860-1914.