ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors had to exclude much of Thompson’s equally fascinating discussion of Liberal attitudes in the same article. The forthcoming General Election will turn, they are told, mainly on the popularity of Imperialism. If this be so, it is important that voters should make up their minds what Imperialism means. The chapter considers what contemporaries meant when they spoke of empire, how its meaning varied between different political groups in Britain, and whether it is possible to point to a prevailing vision of empire during the period between the launch of the Jameson Raid in December 1895 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. Many of these organizations were intent on constructing a national political agenda around the empire, and hence it was often in an extraparliamentary context that issues of imperial politics were most openly and vigorously debated.
