ABSTRACT
Over the course of the nineteenth century, Britain added 10 million square miles and 400 million people to its colonial holdings. It would, by the end of the century, be the largest of the European empires, scattered across the globe in a bewildering variety of political and administrative forms. The diversity of this Empire was not only geographical and cultural, but also administrative. There was no one formula for rule or for take-over and, much like the Empire of the eighteenth century, there was perpetual debate about both the moral standing of colonialism and about the value of particular colonies.
