ABSTRACT
To write on imperial issues is immediately to enter a world of controversy. Conflicting views on the nature and purpose of the Empire have coloured all aspects of history which touch upon matters imperial. At the height of imperialist fervour the rival schools of thought were represented by propagandists of great ability and resource. If Joseph Chamberlain believed that ‘The days are for great Empires and not for little States’, 1 his contemporary, Keir Hardie, argued that the Empire was an obstacle to internationalism and a prop to the capitalist system. The state of affairs which the two politicians described was the same, even if interpretations, explanations and expectations differed. From the turn of the century to the dissolution of the remains of the Empire in the 1960s the rival claims of these opposed schools of thought were maintained and refined as, indeed, were many other less uncompromising views of the Empire and the imperial process.
