The New Imperialism

Abstract

The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in imperial expansion. This contrasts with the earlier period when colonies had been regarded as an unjustified expense, and formal political control was seen as an irrelevance when the commercial benefits could be enjoyed anyway in an epoch of free trade. In 1852, Benjamin Disraeli had described colonies as ‘millstones around our neck’. Twenty years later, he publicly endorsed a policy of imperial expansion in the Crystal Palace speech.