Proconsuls at the Top

Abstract

Empire is frequently analysed under such contradictory concepts as trusteeship and exploitation or under such single rubrics as ideology, the diffusion of ideas and the transfer of technology, or, in more recent retrospect, race relations, gender and cultural imperialism. Other, secondary but popular, interpretations rest on the evidence of fiction, themes of adventure and ‘deeds of Empire’, brought to a peak in the writings of G. A. Henty and Rudyard Kipling, or else focusing on the underbelly of imperial life, as depicted by those less enthusiastic for empire but keener for good copy, like George Orwell and Somerset Maugham. Yet outside the pages of the colonial novel and, in a narrower circle, outside the coffee rooms of Pall Mall clubs or afternoon tea at homes in Taunton and Tunbridge Wells, interest in — even concern with — who the overseas civil servants were and what the work of those pillars of empire was diminished after the Great War and rapidly evaporated after the Second World War.