Arguing About Empire

Towards the end of May 1898, we are told, readers of The Times were tempted with the offer of a ‘very handsome’ atlas. Its compilers recounted that ‘constant advances in exploration and the frequent changes resulting from political developments have made this task an exceedingly heavy one’ and declared it an essential purchase for anyone concerned with current affairs. Only a few months later, the savvy Times reader might have turned from his newspaper and, taking up his atlas, traced his finger up the course of the Ubangi river towards Fashoda, cursing Marchand’s impetuous Gallic expedition as it transgressed Britain’s ‘sphere of influence’. This symbolic confrontation inflamed national pride on both sides of the Channel, conjuring up grandiose imperial rhetoric. Sure enough, beyond Paris and London, the words of imperial leaders found their way from Parliament and the Assembly onto the pages of the popular press and into wider public discourse. Martin Thomas and Richard Toye have written a broadly conceived and ambitiously framed survey of exactly these sorts of moments over nearly a century. Rhetoric is defined here as ‘public speech, albeit speech that was often disseminated in written form after it had been delivered’ (p. 7). Indeed, it was not just the parliamentary performances and diplomatic posturing, but also the reports, rumours and press coverage that created a sense of competition between France and Britain. Yet one of the key arguments of the book is that much of this imperial rhetoric disguised the reality of ‘co-imperialism’, sometimes unconsciously, and that the reality of shared interests and common projects between the colonial powers was often not reflected in arguments among its elites. The book’s challenge is to chart and define the jostling visions which coloured Franco-British imperial rhetoric. This is achieved through an episodic narrative, analysing imperial moments which involved both Britain and France, and which generated significant public comment in both countries

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