ABSTRACT
Ruling a colony was serious business and though, as we have seen, it has sometimes been fashionable to represent the British Empire as something inadvertently acquired, neither accident nor serendipity could get the job done once a territory became British. Consider the scope of the enterprise: by the start of the twentieth century, Britain administered 47 territories, of which a mere 12 were self-governing. As already noted, the population in this vast swathe of land numbered some 400 million, and the range of languages, religions and cultures was huge. Maintaining order in such a diverse array of regions and among such different peoples required something more than merely muddling along.
