ABSTRACT
The main theme below is the role of British imperial education in the creation of ‘appropriate’ racial images. A major purpose of this education was to inculcate in the children of the British Empire appropriate attitudes of dominance and deference. There was an education in imperial schools to shape the ruled into patterns of proper subservience and ‘legitimate’ inferiority, and one in turn to develop in the rulers convictions about the certain benevolence and ‘legitimate’ superiority of their rule. Imperial education was very much about establishing the presence and absence of confidence in those controlling and those controlled. Once colonial territories were established this process began in classrooms, and arguably more effectively on playing fields. Here imperial confidence, and lack of it, was as often as not a matter of purposeful image construction.
