1. Direction and Purpose in British Imperial Policy, 1783–1801
- Author
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D. L. Mackay
- Subjects
History ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Imperial unit system ,Empire ,Historiography ,Colonialism ,Independence ,Management ,Vietnam War ,British Empire ,Economic history ,Dominion ,media_common - Abstract
Since the publication in 1952 of the first volume of V. T. Harlow's The Founding of the Second British Empire 1763–1793, the debate on the nature and concept of empire in the twenty years after the American war of independence has focused on the questions of motivation and direction in imperial expansion. Harlow himself established the terms of the debate. The hiatus which traditional historiography had established in colonial affairs as a consequence of American independence, was swept away to be replaced with a set of themes appropriate to an empire which was undergoing continuous change after the Seven Years War. Two of these diemes in particular have caught the imagination of historians. As trouble and disenchantment spread in the colonies across the Atlantic, there was a marked swing in imperial direction towards die east – to Asia and the Pacific – where the second empire was to have its core. But the change was not only one of direction. The new empire reflected a revulsion against colonization and a clear preference for trade over dominion.
- Published
- 1974
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