ABSTRACT
In particular, Gladstone's brief spell as Extraordinary High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands in the late 1850s offers an excellent but neglected perspective on his maturing view of the British Empire; and, more generally, of empire, nationalism and the public law of Europe. This chapter concerns two questions. Firstly, in what ways did the Ionian geo-political situation reveal the working assumptions of mid-Victorian British imperialism. Secondly, to what degree did the Ionian appointment offer a hands-on prelude to Gladstone's later and increasingly liberal view of nationalism as expressed during and after the defining Midlothian Campaign of 1879. The Ionian Islands lie off the extreme western coast of mainland Greece. Modern Ionian history begins in 1797 when revolutionary France deemed the Islands to be a key strategic base in the eastern Mediterranean. In working through the Ionian question Gladstone tested the waters that he would return to so often later in his political life.
