Introduction

The hybrid origins of the new, post-war imperial history are reflected in its subject matter and the moments which it emphasises. The controversy over the Partition of Africa in the later nineteenth century is haunted by the spectre of economic imperialism and underdevelopment in the Third World. A new ethos of imperial service had been created and institutions such as Haileybury College and Fort William College in Calcutta or the Anglican Universities of Canada had been established to inculcate its values. Standard textbooks on imperial history end with the death of the old colonial system in 1783 and begin again in 1815, thus relegating overseas developments in the intervening period to the category of war-time aberration. The imperial dimension of the British state was equally important in Ireland where between 1780 and 1830 an attempt was made to modernise and purge the Protestant Ascendancy and assimilate the Catholic gentry to a Greater Britain.