Who Ran the British Empire 1830-1850
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10068575 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Helen Taft Manning (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1965 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 88-121 |
| Publication date | 1965-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of British Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1086/385512 |
| OpenAlex | W2145792791 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 8 |
Patterns of historical writing are notoriously difficult to change. Much of what is still being written about colonial administration in the nineteenth-century British Empire rests on the partisan and even malicious writings of critics of the Government in England in the 1830s and '40s who had never seen the colonial correspondence and were unfamiliar with existing conditions in the distant colonies. The impression conveyed in most textbooks is that the Colonial Office after 1815 was a well-established bureaucracy concerned with the policies of the mother country in the overseas possessions, and that those policies changed very slowly and only under pressure. Initially Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Charles Buller were responsible for this Colonial Office legend, but it was soon accepted by most of the people who had business to transact there. Annoyed by the fact that the measures proposed by the Wakefield group did not meet with instant acceptance, Wakefield and Buller attacked the Permanent Under-Secretary, James Stephen, as the power behind the throne in 14 Downing Street and assumed that his ideas of right and wrong were being imposed willy-nilly on the unfortunate colonists and would-be colonists. The picture of Stephen as all-powerful in shaping imperial policy was probably strengthened by the publication in 1885 of Henry Taylor's Autobiography . Taylor was one of Stephen's warmest admirers and had served with him longer than anyone else; when he stated that for a quarter of a century Stephen “more than any one man virtually governed the British Empire,” historians were naturally inclined to give credence to his words
Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Biography · British Empire · Bureaucracy · Colonialism · Economic history · Empire · Government (linguistics · Legend · Literature · Midnight · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Quarter (Canadian coin · Scots · Swift · Throne · Australian History and Society · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy
On Institutional Translation in a Fictional Context
Forging Oriental Development Studies
British Attitudes to the Colonies, ca. 1820-1850
The Habit of Deference
Confederation rejected
Two cheers for Lord Glenelg
Government and Politics in the Gambia, 1816–1866
James Stephen and colonial policy
James Fitzjames Stephen and the Landscape of Victorian Political Thought
From Sect to Church
The Colonial Policy of the Whig Ministers, 1830–37
The colonial policy of Lord John Russell's administration
The Colonial Office, 1782–1854
The Attempt to Establish a National System of Education in New South Wales, 1830-1850
The colonial office in the thirties
Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies
Colonial Crises Before the Cabinet, 1829-1835
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.18 |
| Citation span | 1969 - 2025 (57) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |