ABSTRACT
It has been argued in recent years that, from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, although the idea of a ‘civilising mission’ gave Britain its excuse for holding on to its African and Asian empire, after the Indian Rebellion it was drained of any serious moral purpose. This chapter disagrees: British imperialists were willing to admit that attitudes to conquered territories had been selfish in the past but argued strongly that British character had now developed to the point where the wellbeing of the conquered was at the forefront of policy. There is no doubt that this was the settled conviction of most of those who ran the empire. This is demonstrated by using a wide range of contemporary writings, from J. S. Mill’s essays on liberty and representative government through to those of a variety of officials in Africa and India. Some imperialists took the view that their subjects were backward only in terms of civilisation and could eventually achieve what their masters had achieved. Others, however, believed that some of their subjects might never progress to the point where they could be trusted with constitutional government as Britain knew it and thus crossed the line that divided an often arrogant assumption of moral superiority from a more basic racist set of attitudes. The chapter ends by showing how pro-consular figures like Curzon saw the imperial frontier and the civilising mission as the key means of refining and improving British moral character.
