Britain and Its Empire in the Shadow of Rome: The Reception of Rome in Socio-Political Debate from the 1850s to the 1920s 9781472540621

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To my parents Graham and Tricia Harris

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Acknowledgements My thanks go to the many people who have offered advice and given encouragement throughout the process of writing my doctoral thesis and rewriting it for publication. Foremost is Prof. Richard Alston who has read, reread and commented on my numerous drafts. Others who have contributed time and effort to the evolution of this book include Dr Zoe Laidlaw, Dr Phiroze Vasunia, Dr Lindsay Allen, Prof. Lorna Hardwick, Prof. Edith Hall and Prof. Margaret Malamud, the staff of the various libraries and archives I have visited, but most especially the staff at the Bodleian, Oxford, the British Library, St Pancras and the British Newspaper Archive, Colindale and, by no means last, Bloomsbury Publishers. Special thanks go to Dr Russell Wallis who has encouraged me in my efforts over many years and, finally, to Chris, Amanda, Luke and Daniel Butler.

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Introduction

The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change in the British Empire and Great Britain. Two factors were central to that change. First, the acquisition of new territories had, by 1900, given Britain control of approximately 400 million culturally and racially diverse people. The task of administering and maintaining order in this vast Empire required, in Philippa Levine’s words, ‘something more than merely muddling along’.1 Secondly, industrialization and urbanization changed the traditional basis of British society from rural to urban and heralded the birth of all that was modern. As Marshall Berman puts it, ‘the first thing’ noticeable in the nineteenth century: [i]s the highly developed, differentiated and dynamic new landscape in which modern experience takes place. This is a landscape of steam engines, automatic factories, railroads, vast new industrial zones; of teeming cities that have grown overnight, often with dreadful human consequences; of daily newspapers, telegraphs, telephones and other mass media, communicating on an ever wider scale; of increasingly strong national states and multinational aggregations of capital; of mass social movements fighting these modernizations from above with their own modes of modernization from below; of an ever-expanding world market embracing all, capable of the most spectacular growth, capable of appalling waste and devastation, capable of everything except solidity and stability.2

As the nineteenth century passed its midpoint, the reality of administering an expanding Empire whose subjects were becoming increasingly antipathetic to British rule and countering the gradually more strident demands of the working classes at home for political, economic and social reform, challenged the prevailing liberal ideology and the idea of progress. The much vaunted idea of progress had underpinned methods of administering both the so-called inferior peoples of the Empire, the non-white indigenous populations of the colonies and dependencies, and the lower classes of Britain itself (including the Celts of Scotland, Wales and Ireland). In this book I focus on three interconnected debates – Empire, Nation and City – that animated political life from the 1850s onwards as attempts

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were made to resolve the structural tensions of imperial society. In the face of these problems, optimism waned. It culminates in the 1920s in a politically, economically, socially and ideologically restructured Britain that was imbued with a conservative ideology and was in possession of an Empire that, so The Times reported in July 1920, was in partnership with Britain: For an Empire based on organized force or organized commerce the people of this country have substituted, in their own minds, the conception of a British commonwealth founded on the willing cooperation of free peoples. That they have done so is, in our opinion, no small vindication of our national repute for genius in government.3

My intention, though, is not to add a traditional history of the Empire or of Britain to the impressive array that already exists (and the bibliography is extensive) but rather to show that throughout the restructuring and the development of ‘new’ imperial and national ideologies, ancient Rome had a central part to play. This is something that modern historians have often downplayed and rarely is the significance of classical allusions in Victorian and Edwardian texts commented on, perhaps because references to and discussion of ancient history are in themselves straying into modernity. In a world that was so new, the anachronistic presence of Rome is a problem. As Michel de Certeau states, ‘Western history essentially begins with differentiation between the present and the past’.4 Yet, in the multifarious references to the ancient past in nineteenth and early twentieth-century texts, in explicit and extended discussion and in stray allusions in newspapers, in fiction, in political speeches, in technical treatises and, of course, in historical analyses, it is clear that intellectuals did look to the past for guidance and that ancient Rome did increasingly influence key debates.5 Moreover, looking in depth at the way Rome was utilized in these discourses reveals that it was mainly as a result of the fear that change engendered in the ruling elite that caused Rome to become a significant presence. Rome acted as a warning of decline and fall and as an example of how it could be avoided.6 The philosopher and economist, John Stuart Mill, discussing the Hegelian concept ‘Spirit of the Age’ in 1831, pointed out that engagement with the past was ‘essentially’ an idea ‘belonging to an age of change’: The ‘Spirit of the age’ is in some measure a novel expression. I do not believe that it is to be met with in any work exceeding fifty years in antiquity. The idea of comparing one’s own age with former ages, or with our notion of those which are yet to come, had occurred to philosophers; but it never before was itself the dominant idea of any age.7

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Change then was fundamental to how intellectuals viewed history and as they looked to Rome as a way of preventing or controlling it, Rome became part of the structure of thought, a stratum in the ‘Archaeology of Knowledge’ always present, even if not explicitly so.8 When the intelligentsia of the day sought the necessary perspective from which they could assess their own age in historical analogy or tried to think about how society and history in its generalities worked, it was to Rome that they turned. Over the past 40 years or so ancient historians and classicists have increasingly explored the reception of the ancient world in the nineteenth and twentieth century, recognizing that knowing how and why intellectuals engaged with the past adds to our understanding of the period. Much of this has been concerned with the reception of Rome. Literary texts across a range of disciplines have been scrutinized in order to show that intellectuals, in Christopher Stray’s words, looked ‘back to an authoritative and exemplary past’ in order ‘to make sense of the present’ and to direct future policy.9 Early contributors to the field of reception studies concentrated primarily on the use of Rome in the political arena but since the 1990s, research has been extended and scholars have explored not only the political but also the cultural hold of Rome in Britain and inquired with greater critical purchase into the function of the classical paradigm.10 This book builds on this scholarship, although it takes its lead from Norman Vance’s The Victorians and Ancient Rome (1997) and Richard Hingley’s Roman Officers and English Gentlemen (2000) comprehensive studies of Rome’s impact on a range of discourses rather than the more specialized studies that look at, for instance, how Rome was utilized in the discourse on British imperialism.11 In other words, I have taken a generic approach to the subject and explored foreign and domestic debates over an extended 70-year time period. It is this approach that reveals most clearly Rome’s emergence from its place in parliamentary debate in the early part of the nineteenth century with references to Rome ‘sparingly used and carefully considered’,12 to steadily become a potent political device wielded by those charged with the efficient running of Britain and the Empire and to support a gradually more conservative ideology. Citing ancient authors and ancient history in parliamentary debates during the early nineteenth century can largely be accounted for by the predominance of the Classics in the school curriculum. Stray in Classics Transformed (1998) charted in detail the value of a classical education to the Victorians pointing out that knowledge of the Classics gave an unspoken sense of belonging to an elite club that reinforced a class (and imperial) hierarchy. Effectively, the Classics allowed the educated to gain from others ‘ways of seeing the world, maintaining

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their solidarity, and of excluding outsiders’.13 However, the time devoted to classical study during the school day does not explain why Rome became more than rhetorical garnish in Parliament. Neither does it explain the transformation in the reception of the ancient world and the growing preference for the ideology of Imperial Rome over that of Greece and the Roman Republic both of which were regarded by Mill in the 1830s as ‘the best constituted commonwealths of antiquity’.14 What becomes clear is that between the 1850s and 1920s, the ancient world underwent a process of reinterpretation in order that Rome generally and Imperial Rome specifically could be made to support shifting imperial and national debates and to reinforce ‘new’ political ideologies – even political ideologies in conflict with each other. If by the late nineteenth-century Imperial Rome supported the debate on ‘new’ imperialism, from the early twentieth century, it could also support a national ideology becoming invaluable to ‘Little Englanders’. There is of course no simple explanation for Rome’s increasingly high profile in an English intellectual tradition; the very complexity of the ongoing and evolving debates on the Empire, the Nation and the City precludes any monolithic story.15 Yet understanding the way many intellectuals navigated between the present and the past, supplies us with clues.16 Future Conservative Prime Minister, A. J. Balfour, delivering a lecture on ‘The Pleasures of Reading’ in the 1890s shows that Victorians increasingly adopted a ‘presentist’ approach to Roman texts reading them more or less, as Peter Barry puts it, ‘exclusively in terms of the present’ and scrutinizing the past ‘for what [was] “germane” to themselves and rejecting the remainder’.17 Victorians, Balfour wrote, rather than ‘contemplating as it were from a distance the larger aspects of the human drama . . . may elect to move in familiar fellowship amid the scenes and actors of special periods’. Moreover, for Balfour, this ‘social circle . . . a circle perhaps narrowed and restricted through circumstances beyond our control’ could be enlarged ‘by making intimate acquaintances, perhaps even close friends, among a society long departed’ who could be ‘if it so pleases us, revive[d]’.18 In this way, Rome was remade and rewritten in accordance with a modern agenda. This propensity to actively engage with Rome to find solutions to modern problems continued into the twentieth century.19 The Romano-British historian, Francis Haverfield, friend and colleague of many influential thinkers and doers, believed Rome had much to offer twentieth-century Britain. Contributing to a debate on ‘Ancient Imperialism’ in 1910 along with, among others, the former Consul-general of Egypt and Earl of Cromer, Evelyn Baring, the archaeologist D. G. Hogarth and the classical scholar J. L. Strachan Davidson, Haverfield

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concentrated primarily on the Roman model of imperialism. ‘The chief work of [lecturers and teachers]’, he stated: is to widen the political imaginations of their audiences, and to make them realize that, quite apart from the personal factors of any moment, there are forces and tendencies not easily stated except in the abstract, but able, if ignored to take very concrete vengeance. I am not, be it observed, recommending the study of story on the ground that it aids us to form political prophecies or draw political analogies. It does that, no doubt. But its real value lies in helping us to realize the existence and the true character of various forces – it may be of geography or race feeling or religion or much else – with which we, like our predecessors, have to deal in our everyday politics.20

However, a ‘presentist’ critique alone cannot provide all the answers as to why Rome became the principal model for many of those actively involved in the running of Britain and the Empire, since not all overtly engaged with the past. Despite the lack of explicit references to Rome in the discourse on India, Richard Alston suggests, Rome was nevertheless a ‘core narrative’ that ‘lurk[ed] as part of the intellectual scaffolding of the time’.21 Likewise, close analysis of other discourses often reveal the experience of Rome consciously or unconsciously underlay intellectual thought. A ‘presentist’ critique also leaves open the question of the work that Rome does in each debate. Nonetheless what is without doubt is that many intellectuals from a wide range of disciplines and from across the political spectrum did implicitly or explicitly engage deeply with Rome and in that engagement there was seen to be the possibility of a remaking of the present and this issue lies at the heart of this book. When tracking modern debates, which were sometimes expressed in exclusively contemporary terms, I seek out the nucleus that was Rome, and assess the impact of that nucleus in the shaping of British imperial and domestic history. The three debates form the basis of the three chapters that make up this book with each chapter subdivided into comparable time periods: approximately 1850–80, 1880 to the end of the century (the period often termed ‘new’ imperialism) and from then to the end of the 1920s. Chapter one looks at the way rising unemployment and civil unrest in Britain and the desire to maintain a political hold over subject territories caused attitudes to ancient civilizations to shift. Adopting a systematic method of colonization used by Rome, so many argued, would help solve the problem of the unemployed and contain rebellious elements. Additionally, emulating Roman colonies that had acted as the

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guarantors of Roman political and military control rather than Greek colonies that established largely independent cities in new lands for limited political gain, would ensure the spread and preservation of British power. But, rebellions overseas, notably in India (1857) and Jamaica (1865), and growing concern over what was perceived as the culturally and racially degenerate effect of non-white subjects on Britons was to alter attitudes to Rome itself. As harsher methods of rule were judged, in J. S. Mill’s words, ‘warranted’, and with history recording that the Republic’s oriental subjects were responsible for introducing untold vices into Rome which contributed to the Republic’s fall, it was to Imperial Rome that the intelligentsia looked for guidance.22 The influential historian, J. R. Seeley, in The Expansion of England (1883), noted the growing appeal of Imperial Rome previously considered ‘unacceptable in political terms’ on account of its despotic nature.23 The Roman Empire, Seeley wrote, though ‘despotically governed’, was ‘the most interesting of all historical phenomena’ being progressive, creative and achieving ‘memorable results’.24 But with continued unrest in the Empire in the latter part of the nineteenth century; with the acquisition of further overseas territories in the 1870s and 80s (including Egypt in 1882), fuelling fears of the corrupting influence of foreigners; with the Empire under threat from the expansionist aims of other European nations; with realization that the cost of defending an Empire prevented addressing pressing domestic issues, by the start of the twentieth century there was a turn away from the Empire. The struggle to defeat the Boers in the Second Anglo-South African War (1899–1902) proved to anti-imperialists that the safety of the Empire was reliant on a ‘degenerate’ British population. Making matters worse was the prospect of a European conflict. If Britain’s forces were unable to defend the Empire, might they also struggle to defend the nation itself? Despite growing antipathy to the Empire and a corresponding rise in nationalism that, by its very nature, would seem to preclude alignment with an imperialistic regime, the Roman Empire remained an important reference point in the debate on the Empire. Acknowledging the nationalist mood, however, Rome’s Empire was represented by pro-imperialists in a way that mirrored a more inclusive and more intimate vision of Britain’s. Familial imagery suggested both Rome and Britain worked in partnership with their colonial possessions. In contrast, antiimperialists conjured up images of Rome (if to a lesser extent since those on the Left tended instead to produce ‘modernist’ interpretations of the political problems afflicting Britain) to show it was the possession of an Empire and Roman methods of administering it, particularly during the Republic, that could be blamed for its fall. In other words, Rome could be made to support a pro- or

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anti-imperialist/nationalistic agenda. Nor did the resurgence in nationalism in the interwar years do much to undermine Rome’s usefulness to pro-imperialists convinced that the Empire remained vital to British interests. Appealing to the workers of Britain on the grounds that the Empire was essential to economic recovery and national security, advocates of Empire carried on domesticating the Roman Empire in tandem with what Alison Light terms the ‘domestication of the imperial idea’ in Britain.25 It was Imperial Rome’s ability to justify the ‘new’ imperialism in the late nineteenth century and yet be reworked to validate the ‘gentler’ version of British imperialism in the twentieth and be ‘useful’ to anti-imperialists, that accounts for my decision to explore domestic as well as foreign debates. Deciding on the 1850s as a starting point (the decade when optimism in the imperial mission was high rather than the 1880s, the decade when arguably optimism started to wane) was determined by the fact that the possession of an Empire alone fails to explain the growing appeal of Rome at this time. With the Roman model rather than the Greek model becoming the favoured one for Britain’s Empire when fear of imperial decline was not a major concern was, as noted above, partly to do with attempting to resolve troubling domestic problems. It was the necessity to stabilize Britain, therefore, as much as to stabilize the Empire that encouraged a shift in attitude to the two ancient civilizations. Likewise, as we will see, there were indications of a change in attitude to Rome itself prior to the Indian Mutiny and the move to a more despotic form of rule overseas. What, for instance, caused expressions of support for Roman imperialism (even if not popularly held and challenged at the time) by the Oxford scholar, Richard Congreve, in 1855? In Congreve’s opinion, scholars mistakenly concentrated on the history of the Republic whereas, for him, it was the system of government in the imperial period with its checks and balances that both secured the Empire and, importantly, safeguarded Rome’s position within it.26 Again, the answer to this lies partly with what was happening in Britain. Chapters two and three, therefore, look in greater detail at what was occurring at home. Regardless of the rhetoric of Britain as ‘one nation, one people, one culture’, Britain in the 1850s was ‘raced as well as classed, constituted through those “others” within and without’.27 History taught that England began with the Saxon invasion and that modern Englishmen were descendants of the racially pure, racially superior Saxons or Teutons. In this reading the Celts of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, descendants of the ancient British tribes, were inferior to their English neighbours. Speaking at St James’s Hall in London in 1859, the historian, novelist and outspoken social commentator, the Reverend Charles

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Kingsley stated that ‘of all the races upon earth now, the English race is probably the finest’ and it showed ‘not the slightest sign whatsoever of exhaustion’. Comparably-speaking the race that most resembled the English, culturally if not racially, was ‘the old Roman’.28 However, with only the classically-educated English elite, the inheritors of Roman culture, knowledge of Greek, Latin and ancient history placed a metaphorical barrier between the elite and the lower orders.29 Effectively, the Celts and the working classes were Britain’s equivalent of the imperial ‘other’. Faced, though, with the task of administering increasingly antagonistic culturally and racially diverse peoples in British territories and fearing the imperial ambitions of other European powers that demanded a show of ‘Britishness’, a new origin myth emerged. Historians revisited British history and, supported by scientific theories of race, argued the Celts of England survived the Roman conquest and that Romano-Britons integrated with their Saxon invaders. But, although this mixed origin myth was more inclusive of the Celts and working classes (both essential to the imperial mission), certain Britons remained outsiders. First, to justify England’s authority in Ireland but also due to a greater aversion to the Irish generally, the Irish were judged less worthy Britons than the Scots and Welsh and, secondly, with evidence that the urban working class – in particular the urban poor – lacked the racial vigour of their countrybred ancestors, they too continued to be designated the ‘other’. Two factors were blamed for racial degeneration: immigration and the change in Britain from a rural to an urban society. Both factors, historians argued, had played a part in the downfall of the Roman Republic. Yet, if the experience of the Republic acted as an example of what the consequences might be for Britain, in contrast, the experience of Imperial Rome (at least the early period) appeared to offer hope. Augustan policies intended to rejuvenate the Roman race – restricting the influx of foreigners into Rome, promoting marriage and the ‘right’ kind of breeding and instilling in Roman society all the ‘rural’ virtues that had made Rome great – were commended. Confirmation of racial degeneration in Britain’s population came at the start of the twentieth century with, as Richard Soloway puts it, ‘the uninspiring performance of the armed forces in South Africa’.30 But, with historians continuing to enthuse about Augustan attempts to reverse degeneration in the Roman race and keep Rome for the Romans, similar strategies were adopted in Britain. Most agreed controlling immigration would help prevent imparting ‘foreign’ vices into the national population, although opinion was divided over the best way to restore racial vigour to working class urbanites and the urban poor. While for

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some the answer lay with eugenics and encouraging the middle classes (but not the urban working classes) to breed, for others, not convinced by the eugenic argument, providing a healthy environment would solve the problem. With the second option having the advantage of rejuvenating the present generation rather than future generations, the environmental argument won out. However, the rise in English nationalism at the start of the century, partly caused by worries over racial degeneration, ran counter to the idea of a united Britain. Nonetheless with the Empire still requiring a show of ‘togetherness’ from the ruling race and with the likelihood of a war with Britain’s erstwhile Teutonic ancestors on the cards, belief in the new mixed origin myth persisted. Nor did the resurgence of English nationalism after the Great War do much undercut belief in it, although a new type of Englishman emerged – an inward-looking Englishman more in tune with the nation rather than the Empire. But, if this new Englishman was a home-loving, community-minded, virtuous individual who preferred the country to the town, so too did the Romans. What emerged during the interwar years was a more homogeneous Britain (although the Irish largely remained as outsiders) less divided along the lines of race and class. Moreover, the Romans, culturally aligned to the English elite in the 1850s, had become by the 1920s the racial ancestors of (nearly) all Britons but specifically modern Englishmen. As the Egyptologist Arthur Weigall put it, ‘the Cockney of to-day is as much Roman as he is anything else’.31 The loss of racial vigour was not the only negative consequence of the transformation in Britain from a rural to an urban/industrial society. Physical degeneration in the urban masses, so many feared, was equally likely to affect Britain’s standing as a global power. Chapter three therefore tracks the debate on the City as the deleterious effects of industrialization and urbanization reversed perceptions of the town and country.32 In the early part of the nineteenth century, cities along with ‘organized stable commerce’ and ‘the rule of law’ represented to J. S. Mill, a civilized society.33 To be civilized was, as Robert Young states, to be ‘a citizen of a city . . . as opposed to the savage (wild man) outside or the more distant barbarian’ in the Empire.34 However, as the city gradually became in the words of, Josiah Strong, an American clergyman and passionate believer in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, ‘a serious menace to our civilization’,35 it was the wide open spaces of the Empire or the countryside that became ‘“the natural”, the wholesome and the safe – the ideal against which all other forms of settlement were judged’.36 Underlying this change in perceptions of the city was fear that a physically degenerate urban working class was not only prone to revolutionary tendencies

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but putting in jeopardy the very thing the upper and middle classes wanted to maintain at all cost – economic prosperity. Strong warned that New York was likely to become like London, a place populated by: the social dynamite: here toughs, gamblers, thieves, robbers, lawless and desperate men of all sorts, congregate: men who are ready on any pretext to raise riots for the purpose of destruction and plunder; here gather foreigners and wage-workers; here skepticism and irreligion abound; here inequality is the greatest and most obvious, and the contrast between opulence and penury the most striking; here is suffering the sorest.37

In line with efforts to improve conditions for urbanites living and working in overcrowded and unhealthy cities, historians cited the failures of the late Republic and successes of Imperial Rome in urban planning. Whereas in the early to mid-nineteenth century classical architecture had inspired the elite to construct modern civic buildings and restore their homes in a neoclassical style to display their power and status, increasingly Roman ideas of urban reform and town planning met a more universal need.38 But, with little evidence by the end of the nineteenth century that urban (and social) reform had reinvigorated a physically degenerate workforce on whom the nation depended militarily as well as economically, other solutions were sought.39 Historians, on the one hand, overtly compared the physical condition of the Roman Republican masses to the physical condition of modern working-class urbanites while, on the other, they praised Augustus’ urban renewal and backto-the-land (be it the Italian countryside or the colonies) programmes which had restored the masses to health. With worry though over the depopulation of the countryside making emigration a less attractive option for Britain and with industrial cities essential if the nation was to equal and surpass the manufacturing output of other industrialized nations, urgent attention was given to urban and suburban reform. Offering hope were the ideas of the Garden City Movement. The planned city movement wished to see the creation of small urban centres built along the lines of Romano-British towns and through which Roman civilized values could be spread.40 Francis Haverfield, who believed that after the trials and tribulations of the previous century Britain was more dependent ‘on the Roman world’ than ever before, recommended in Ancient Town-Planning (1913) the study of Roman town plans which emphasized ‘the need for definite rules and principles’.41 However, interest in Roman town planning subsided in the post-war years. Rather than a style that reflected Roman order and which characterized modern European cities, the breeding ground of post-war

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revolutionaries, preferred instead were towns constructed in a uniquely English village style. Nonetheless, Romano-British towns reimagined as the forerunners to garden cities could be made to support a counter-type of Roman urbanism, a small town urbanism that rejected the industrial life. As the culture and spirit of the rural community came to be seen as the place in which Englishmen were created, Rome was reworked to support the reformulation of national ideals. The three chapters then take as their basis three specific debates that reified as a result of fear – fear of decline and fall. However, as what was happening in Britain impacted on the imperial discourse and vice versa and, as no one debate can adequately explain the change in attitude to ancient civilizations or Imperial Rome’s increasingly high profile in an English intellectual tradition, none of the chapters can be independent of the others. The first two chapters focus on wellestablished debates but the debate on the city was a relatively new debate as all the ramifications of the industrialized age were felt. A study of the function of Rome within what came to be a town versus country debate around the late nineteenth century, offers a new angle by which it is possible to understand why the city came to take on a distinctive form in Britain. All three chapters though meet at the core of the book, that is, the exploration of the impact (and the very real impact) of ancient Rome in sociopolitical debates that aimed to find solutions to a multitude of modern ‘crises’. As the historian, H. P. Judson remarked in his review of Oxford’s Camden Professor of Ancient History, Henry Pelham’s, recently published Outlines of Roman History for the Classical Review in 1894, although ‘[w]e talk of our modern science, of our new thinking in philosophy and religion, of the achievements of our nineteenth century democracy’, yet, ‘everywhere, in state and church and scholarly life, we are always under the shadow of Rome’. Far from being an abstract idea discussed within sterile academia, sociopolitical debates were infused with notions of Rome and Rome became a foundational element having an impact in and of itself. A final word needs to be said on my chosen methodology. Throughout I have concentrated on influential opinion-formers of the period, those wielding political power or those esteemed by contemporaries in their particular fields of expertise. It is through analysis of their writings; as we learn how Rome was perceived and how these perceptions were transmitted to a wider audience; as we see what periods and aspects of Rome were portrayed positively and negatively and as we look at why perceptions and representations of Rome changed over time in relation to the contemporary situation, that it becomes clear that Rome was part of ‘the intellectual infra-structure’ not just in imperial discourse but also in national debates of the time.42

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The interdisciplinary nature of the book was inevitable due to crossspecialization and the cross-fertilization of ideas between politicians, historians, scientists, economists, social reformers and others. Ancient histories of the time are naturally a rich source of evidence and there can be no doubt that the reception of Rome changed between the 1850s and 1900s when comparing the historian and headmaster of Rugby, Thomas Arnold’s, negative portrayal of Imperial Rome and its first Emperor to that of Pelham’s.43 Translations of ancient texts and commentaries on ancient authors (and classical scholars were by no means the only intellectuals who produced such works) also provide valuable evidence. As well as transmitting knowledge of the ancient world to a wider audience, they disclose much about contemporary society.44 Which ancient authors rose in popularity and which went out of fashion was in itself dependent on circumstances. As an example, appreciation for Lucretius as ‘a champion of scientific rationalism’ rose in line with scientific advancement in Britain while Ovid, ‘a degenerate in a degenerate age’ and offensive to Victorian sensibilities, was kept off centre stage.45 Others, such as Virgil, were adaptable to fit both an imperial or national ideology. If the Aeneid was frequently cited in the debate on imperialism, the back-to-the-landers preferred Virgil’s pastoral works. With a plethora of Roman texts to choose from, the cognoscenti could be and were selective in their appropriation of ancient texts and this is reflected in the book. Histories of Britain and the Empire are equally revealing. Although not overtly concerned with ancient history, the comparisons and contrasts drawn between the ancient and modern reveals a great deal about both. As Eric Hobsbawm points out, ‘all historians, whatever else their objectives’, legitimate actions by contributing ‘consciously or not, to the creation, dismantling and restructuring of images of the past which belong not only to the world of specialist investigation but to the public sphere of man as a political being’.46 Yet knowing that perceptions of Roman history changed, knowing which ancient authors went in and out of fashion and noting the comparisons drawn between the ancient and modern is one thing, understanding why is another. For this it is necessary to look at the work Rome was made to do in each debate. The usefulness of the ancient world to politicians debating contemporary issues is well documented. Lord Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone and Robert Lowe were just a few who famously cited from Latin texts in parliament. Some politicians also actively and deeply engaged with the ancient world and produced scholarly accounts or translations of ancient texts. Gladstone, for instance, proved to be equally adept at translating Horace as he was in delivering speeches in parliament. Seeley acknowledged the debt historians and politicians

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owed each other. ‘Politics’, he stated, ‘are vulgar when they are not liberalized by history, and history fades into mere literature when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics’.47 Haverfield and the historian, Liberal politician and onetime Ambassador to the United States, James Bryce, also recognized the value of history to politics. On 15 February 1915, Haverfield wrote to Bryce asking him to deliver a lecture at the annual meeting of the Roman Society on the Roman and Russian Empires. Such a lecture, he believed, ‘would show everyone that Roman history is not without its present-day importance’.48 Hence there was a conscious decision to invoke Rome in debates and, in this way, as Kathryn Castle states, history ‘became a partner in the controlling ideology of the age’.49 The importance of scientific tracts to the book is evident from the way scientific ‘proof ’ of a racial hierarchy that justified the control of non-white imperial peoples and allowed elite Englishmen to maintain a race and class hierarchy in Britain, was legitimated by Rome. Regardless of growing calls for a more specialized school curriculum that should, if anything, have lessened the tendency to look to the ancient past, scientists contributing to the construction of the ‘other’ in the Empire and at home (and latterly to the construction of a new origin myth), were reliant on translations of ancient texts and modern accounts of Roman and ancient British history. In short, the Classics and Roman history stood behind (sometimes some way behind) the concept of the ‘other’.50 For instance, the President of the Ethnological Society John Crawfurd and the philologist, Headmaster of Marlborough College and from 1895 Dean of Canterbury, Frederic William Farrar, both referred to the work of Roman historians in their studies of race.51 Historians were equally indebted to scientists. In one instance, accusations of inadequacy in the face of scientific advancement from the anatomist and ethnologist Robert Knox who maintained historians and other intellectuals ‘attached no special meaning to the term’ race ‘for reasons best known to themselves’, caused historians to acknowledge the value of science.52 H. C. Coote in The Romans of Britain (1878) and H. M. Scarth in Early Britain, Roman Britain (1882) both incorporated scientific theories into their accounts of Roman Britain to support the idea that the Romans were the biological ancestors of modern Britons. The power of the press as an opinion-former (and by the interwar years newspapers had become, according to Mark Hampton, ‘arguably the most important medium of political communication and cultural influence’53) influenced my decision to include newspapers and journals. Parliamentary debates, speeches and meetings were reported in the press, editorials commented on issues of the day, letters were written to editors, book releases were

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announced and advertisements frequently promoted the Empire. Reflecting the trend, often references to Rome were included in reports, editorials, letters and advertisements. For instance, The Times reporting on a meeting of civil engineers in 1900 commented that a ‘highly and interesting part of the address was historical, and comprised an account of the waterworks of ancient Rome’ drawn from Frontinus’ On Aqueducts.54 A letter from ‘Geo. B.’ to The Times in 1896 complaining at the harm done to plane-trees in St James’s Park argued that a similar occurrence in Rome would have seen ‘all the people from the Forum’ rushing to ‘avert by bountiful libations of water the direful consequences to the State the sign presaged’,55 while an advertisement for Selfridge & Co. in 1925 claimed ‘efficient businesses’ like governments were ‘controlled autocratically’. Whether good ‘as it was in Rome in the time of Augustus Caesar’ or bad ‘as in the days of Nero . . . undoubtedly the system allows government to do its work most efficiently and with the least expenditure of energy’.56 The cross-class appeal of the press was another factor. Editor of the Birmingham Daily Post, J. Thackray Bunce, observed that by 1893 newspapers and journals were: in every house, in every hand, amongst all classes – from the castle to the cottage, from the club to the village reading-room; in the factories of towns, in the country tap-rooms, wherever, indeed, men come together for business or pleasure, there, in one or other of its varieties, you find the newspaper.57

Additionally, newspapers employed novelists, social commentators and others influential in sociopolitical debates. Rudyard Kipling, friend of among others the wealthy South African businessman and politician, Cecil Rhodes; High Commissioner of South Africa, Viscount Milner; the hero of Mafeking, Robert Baden-Powell and the interwar Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin (Kipling’s cousin), was employed as a journalist in India and Africa. An admirer of Horace, Kipling had clear conceptions of the role Rome played in the creation of modern England that he famously incorporated into Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906).58 Likewise John Buchan, appointed by Baldwin as Governor-general of Canada in 1935 and equally at home writing the adventures stories of John Hannay as he was in composing biographies of Julius Caesar (1932) and Augustus (1937), worked as a correspondent for The Times and Daily News during the First World War. Deciding to extend the conceptual and methodological scope of the book to include fiction with its own literary and intellectual history was based on three factors. First, as Edward Said points out, the novel was fundamental in

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the nineteenth century to ‘the formation of imperial attitudes, references, and experiences’.59 Frequently the Empire figured, if only as part of the scenery, in nineteenth-century novels thereby transforming conquest into something ‘more acceptable to the European sensibility . . . than the shattering experience’ for the defeated.60 The principal characters in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1812–14) and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) made their fortunes in the colonies. George Eliot had characters escaping to the colonies in times of adversity. In Middlemarch (1871–2), Ladislaw developed a ‘new interest’ in the colonies following his disgrace and alienation from society while Rex’s reaction to Gwendolen’s rejection of his marriage proposal in Daniel Deronda (1876) was to emigrate to Canada.61 Secondly, the popularity of fiction makes it a source that cannot be ignored. For Brian Street, it was the ‘“ethnographic novel”, estranged in time and space from the claustrophobic Victorian drawing-room’ that proved particularly popular. Henry Rider Haggard’s adventure stories enabled ‘[f]or the first time information on other cultures, expressed in vivid, exciting tales’ to be ‘available to the mass public of England’.62 National concerns were also explored in fictional narratives. Thomas Hardy’s anxiety at the ruination of the countryside is apparent in Jude the Obscure (1895), while Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens and William Morris all exposed the atrocious working and living conditions of urbanites. Without exception these novelists displayed a familiarity with the ancient world and, like scientists, increased their status by citing from ancient texts. Thirdly, with popular writers, such as Dickens, Disraeli, Rider Haggard and Charles Kingsley, deeply involved in debates of the day, deconstructing the fictional narratives of those contributing to these debates provides supporting evidence, possibly more illuminating evidence, of attitudes. Effectively, the gap between author and idea made possible through the use of imaginary characters lessened the strictures imposed on authors by convention or political allegiance in public debate. The importance of race to Disraeli, for example, is clear in Tancred as Sidonia expressed views that surely reflected Disraeli’s own. Is it what you call civilisation that makes England flourish? Is it the universal development of the faculties of man that has rendered an island, almost unknown to the ancients, the arbiter of the world? Clearly not. It is her inhabitants that have done this; it is an affair of race. A Saxon race, protected by an insular position, has stamped its diligent and methodic character on the century . . . All is race; there is no other truth.63

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Equally, Coningsby’s speech in the same novel displays Disraeli’s admiration for the many achievements of Imperial Rome: Look at the great centuries of the Roman Empire! You had two hundred millions of human beings governed by a jurisprudence so philosophical that we have been obliged to adopt its laws, and live in perpetual peace. The means of communication, of which we now make such a boast, were far more vast and extensive in those days. What were the Great Western and the London and Birmingham to the Appian and Flaminian roads? After two thousand five hundred years, parts of these are still used . . . As for free trade, there never was a really unshackled commerce except in the days when the whole of the Mediterranean coast belonged to one power. What a chatter there is now about the towns, and how their development is cited as the peculiarity of the age, and the great security for public improvement. Why, the Roman Empire was the empire of great cities. Man was then essentially municipal.64

The novel, and for Andrew Sanders the historical novel in particular, had a vital role to play in producing ‘modern’ history. Historical novelists who ‘could see character moulded by specific historical circumstances’ could ‘influence, and be influenced by, a particular turn of events’ and, in this way, history was rendered ‘immediate to the modern age’.65 Over a 70-year period, Rome became entrenched in intellectual thought and a significant force in sociopolitical debates primarily as a result of the fear of decline and fall. Rome’s power lay in its paradoxes, in its ability to act as both a warning of decline and as a way to avoid it; its ability to fit a liberal ideology and yet be made to support an increasingly conservative ideology and its ability to be manipulated to support an imperialist or a nationalist agenda. But, Rome was not an empty symbol. The process of reinterpretation that intellectuals assiduously undertook between the 1850s and 1920s in order that Rome could be made to accommodate alternate views, support imperial and national debates and reinforce ‘new’ political ideologies in the Empire and at home supports this.66 Seeing and understanding what contemporary tensions and fears changed attitudes to the ancient world can only add to our understanding of the midnineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Ancient Rome and the Debate on the British Empire

The ‘civilizing’ mission The nineteenth century was a century of territorial expansion for Britain. Adding to territories acquired during the Napoleonic Wars, for instance, Ceylon, Trinidad and Mauritius, in the 1820s, Britain seized control of areas in the North East of Burma.1 During the 1840s, when as Edith Hall puts it, the ‘imperial acquisition of the planet shifted up a gear’, Britain annexed Hong Kong, Sind and the Punjab among others.2 Lord Dalhousie, Governor General of India from 1848–56, acquired further Indian states for Britain during the 1850s, and Nigeria and the Gold Coast became British colonies in 1861 and 1874, respectively. Fiji was added to the Empire in 1874, the Transvaal in 1877, Egypt in 1882 and Kenya in 1886. By the 1920s, Britain had at least some control over close to 25 per cent of the world.3 The control of subject peoples provided a political and philosophical challenge to Britain’s elite who, with the passing of 1832 Reform Act, were prepared to countenance an extended (if limited) democracy at home and, yet, deny political rights to indigenous peoples in the dependencies. Justification for this lay with the belief that first, the dependencies were not capable of self-rule and, secondly, the civilizing mission that aimed to raise ‘dependent’ peoples from their lowly state. The concept of civilization had been a powerful influence on imperial ideology in the eighteenth century and Westerners were convinced of their suitability to take on the mantle of ‘civilizer’. As the historian and political philosopher Adam Ferguson put it in 1767, the ‘genius of political wisdom and civil arts appears to have chosen his seats in particular tracts of the earth, and to have selected his favourites in particular races of men’.4 In effect, Westerners had bifurcated the world into civilized and uncivilized and Englishmen placed themselves at the apex of Western civilization. Ferguson, himself a Scotsman, acknowledged that it

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was Englishmen who had ‘carried the authority of government of law to a point of perfection’.5 Ideas of the progressive nature of civilization gathered force in the nineteenth century. Politician, historian and author of the Lays of Ancient Rome (1842) and the hugely popular five-volume History of England (the first two volumes published in 1848), Thomas Babington Macaulay, believed England’s history was ‘emphatically the history of progress’. Proof of this lay with the transformation over a 700-year period of a ‘wretched and degraded race’ into ‘the greatest and most highly civilised people that ever the world saw’. During this time, Englishmen had ‘carried the science of healing, the means of locomotion and correspondence, every mechanical art, every manufacture, every thing that promotes the convenience of life, to a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical’.6 Therefore, in Macaulay’s opinion as he famously expressed it in his Minute on Indian Education (1835), educating the indigenous population of India to be ‘English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’ would ensure their progression and ultimately fit India and presumably other dependencies for self-government.7 An additional benefit that arose out of British rule was the protection of ‘lesser’ races from exploitation by local rulers. The British naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks, encapsulated the paternalistic attitude that pervaded the consciousness of those intent on controlling, and so the argument went bettering, the lives of subject peoples living under British ‘protection’. Following his expedition to Niger in 1799, Banks wrote to the President of the Board of Trade, Lord Liverpool, stating that: in a very few years a trading company might be established under immediate control of the Government, who could take upon themselves the whole expense of the measure, would govern the Negroes far more mildly and make them far more happy than they are now under the tyranny of their arbitrary princes.8

Raising savages to manhood would then, in John Ruskin’s estimation, redeem them from ‘despairing into peace’.9 Hence, the civilizing mission that produced what J. A. Mangan terms a ‘mental myopia’, eased the conscience of those who acknowledged that British rule over others was at variance with a liberal philosophy at home.10 Bound up in the ‘civilizational argument’ was the reception of ancient civilizations. From an early age, future imperial administrators were imbued with knowledge of the Classics and the possession of an Empire was conducive to the study of ancient empires.11 Archaeologist Edward Falkener pointed out in

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1851 the value of the study of the ancient past to those in authority, or intending to become so: The study of futurity is speculative, the present is wrapped up in that which is to come; and it is the past only which is complete. We are now in a state of progression, the future is shrouded in uncertainty and we gain knowledge and experience only from the past.12

In line with Britain’s liberal philosophy, it was Classical Greece and the Roman Republic that appealed to intellectuals. While Greece attracted liberal thinkers, the Whig interpretation of Roman history romanticized the Senate and extolled the Republican virtues of liberty and patriotism.13 It was the ‘fittest men’, John Stuart Mill wrote in 1831, ‘the educated gentlemen of the country (for such the free citizens of Athens, and in its best times, of Rome, essentially were)’ who enabled these ancient civilizations to exercise world power.14 Proof of this was evidenced in Athens as ‘the affairs of that little commonwealth were successively managed’ to such an extent that Athens became ‘the source of light and civilization to the world’, while in Rome ‘the same fact’ was ‘certainly demonstrated, by the steady unintermitted progress of that community from the smallest beginnings to the highest prosperity and power’.15 In other words, for Mill, the fittest of Romans, the men who had gained and successfully administered an Empire, were Republicans. The eighteenth-century playwright George Lillo’s (1693– 1739) Christian Hero, which was republished in 1810, shows the high esteem in which the Republic was held in the early nineteenth century. Degenerate Rome! By godlike Brutus freed From Caesar and his temporary chain Your own ingratitude renew’d those bonds Beneath whose galling weight you justly perished.16

Fascination with the Classics and ancient history ensured references to Roman history were not infrequent in contemporary debates and comparisons with the Roman Republic were especially common in discussion on the British Empire.17 Not only had the Republic built up an Empire but also, as a writer for London’s Monthly Review explained it, their mixed constitution resembled Britain’s. It is certain, that a thorough acquaintance with the Roman government must afford the most useful information to the subjects of a free State, and more especially to our own: for there is undoubtedly a very strong

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resemblance between the general forms of each; both being of a mixed nature, compounded of royalty, aristocracy, and democracy. . . .18

In particular, it was during discussions on India that Rome most often figured. As a letter from ‘Vetus’ to The Times put it, ‘we have erected on the Ganges a mighty Empire, eminent above the sovereignties of the East, in the same degree as was the Roman empire in comparison with those of the ancient world’.19 Indeed, the Liberal statesman, Earl Granville, speaking in the House of Lords, equated the power of men employed as ‘collectors’ by the East India Company to that of ‘the pro-consula [sic] of ancient Rome’.20 But India was not the exception. In 1850, Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, in defending Don Pacifico, a British subject living overseas and seeking recompense from the Greek authorities for damage to his property during a riot, famously compared the rights of British citizens to those of Roman citizens. As Roman citizens ‘could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject’, Palmerston declared in parliament, ‘in whatever land he may be shall feel confident that the watchful eye and strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong’.21 Extending the franchise to the middle class in the 1832 Reform Act had made little difference to this parliamentary tradition. The bourgeoisie, aiming for acceptance into the upper echelons of society and recognizing knowledge of Greek and Latin was essential to upward mobility, ensured the Classics not only retained their prestigious place on the curriculum but also in intellectual discourse on the Empire, an Empire in which the British elite took immense pride.22 Part of this pride arose from the purportedly homogeneous nature of the Empire although, in reality, a hierarchy existed that was based on the level of civilization that each constituent member of the Empire was judged to have reached. Naturally Britain, in particular England, stood at its zenith, the largely white self-governing colonies lay below, while the dependencies inhabited by non-white peoples deemed uncivilized and barbaric were at its nadir. Nonetheless, in the opening decades of the nineteenth century, optimism was high that socalled inferior subjects could with Britain’s guidance progress to a civilized state.23 Along with British institutions, men of letters believed this mission to civilize had been inherited from the Romans during the Roman occupation of Britain and, largely, it was historians who promoted this idea. As James Eccleston wrote in An Introduction to English Antiquities (1847), it was the Romans who ‘substituted the regular forms of civilisation for [the] rude arrangements of barbarous life, and introduced personal security, arts, letters, and elegance into the wild retreats of the uncultivated Briton’.24 Accordingly, Eccleston came

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to the conclusion that Britain ‘improved’ and it was as a consequence of this improvement that ‘we find . . . several glowing panegyrics pronounced upon its happy state by the orators of the Roman empire’.25 Evidence would appear to have been derived from translations of Tacitus’ Agricola (such as the classical scholar Alfred J. Church’s) as it was Agricola who: gave private encouragement and public aid to the building of temples, courts of justice and dwelling-houses, praising the energetic, and reproving the indolent . . . He likewise provided a liberal education for the sons of the chiefs, and showed such a preference for the natural powers of the Britons over the industry of the Gauls that they who lately disdained the tongue of Rome now coveted its eloquence. (Agr. 21)26

As the Romans had civilized the ancient Britons, who at one time had lived in ‘miserable huts’ and supplemented their crude diet ‘by the practice of . . . cannibalism’, so Britons would provide a similar service for the indigenous populations of their overseas empire.27 John Bright, co-founder of the AntiCorn Law League and no imperialist himself, drew attention to Rome’s civilizing mission in 1853 in a Commons debate on India. ‘The nations [Rome] conquered’, Bright argued, ‘were impressed so indelibly with the intellectual characters of their masters, that, after fourteen centuries of decadence, the traces of civilization are still distinguishable. Why should we not act a similar part in India?’28 Effectively, the Roman occupation of Britain gave weight to theories of cultural progression; Britons had progressed from savagery to civilization during the Roman occupation by learning, as Ovid was translated, ‘the noble arts [which] civilized one’s way of life, lifting it above savagery’ (Epistulae ex Ponto, 2.9.48).29 Ideas that peace would follow conquest were also drawn from ancient Rome. As Romanization of the Empire’s provinces had secured the Pax Romana (a modern conception constructed out of various Roman ‘peaces’ notably the Augustan) equally, the spread of civilization under the auspices of the British government would secure the Pax Britannica.30 However, although Rome provided an exemplar that made people think the imperial dream was possible and Britons (or more specifically Englishmen) assumed the role once played by the Romans during the years of occupation, Britons regarded themselves as morally superior to their ancient predecessors on the grounds that the Romans conquered for conquest’s sake whereas Britain’s motive was non-militaristic. As the historian Sir Edward Creasy argued it, ‘the heart of England’ had not ‘the old Roman thirst for military excitement and glory, or to learn to love conquest for the mere sake of conquering. . . . It is as civilizers,

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not as conquerors, that we spread the gains of our best glory throughout the world’.31 Equally intent on claiming a higher moral motive underlay Britain’s acquisition of foreign land was an editorial in The Times. India, it suggested, was the ‘obvious parallel’ to a Roman province but any comparison was ‘very much on the side of our own subjects. We assert with confidence that never was a conquered race more fairly, justly, and humanely treated by the conquering race than the people of our Indian possessions are by ourselves’.32 This ‘inherited’ mission though produced tensions among administrators. Opinion was divided among members of the Committee on Public Instruction charged with formulating a comprehensive policy for educating natives. In particular, educational policy in India had caused division with Orientalists, following the lead of the philologist William Jones (1746–94), advising that policies were required that respected Indian culture and beliefs and encouraged instruction in Sanskrit while Anglicists argued the opposite.33 According to the politician and leader of the anti-slavery movement, William Wilberforce, progress could only be achieved through ‘the gradual introduction and establishment of our own principles and opinions; of our laws, institutions, and manners; above all, as the source of every improvement, of our religion, and consequently of our morals’.34 Macaulay, a member of the Supreme Council for India, agreed claiming Orientalists themselves could not ‘deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia’.35 For Macaulay, such a library would house the ancient writings of Greece and Rome and it was knowledge of them that had assisted England on her road to greatness: Had our ancestors acted as the Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto acted; had they neglected the language of Cicero and Tacitus; had they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own island; had they printed nothing and taught nothing at the universities but Chronicles in Anglo-Saxon, and Romances in Norman-French, would England have been what she now is?36

In Macaulay’s opinion, a thorough grounding in Western culture that included knowledge of ancient languages was clearly needed for those intending to transmit ‘civilization’ to native peoples. By 1854, examiners of candidates intent on a career in the Indian Civil Service, allocated 750 marks to Greek and Latin, double the number of marks allocated for knowledge of Modern, Far Eastern or Asian languages.37 Education though was by no means the only source of tension. Advocates and opponents of Empire were also divided over the economic advantages (or not)

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of the possession of foreign territories to Britain itself. Outspoken critics of Empire, such as Richard Cobden, an Anti-Corn Law Leaguer and associate of John Bright’s, built on the work of the political economist Adam Smith. Not only had Smith argued in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) that free trade was the way forward, but he had also stressed it was the means by which ‘lower’ states would progress to civilization which, in turn, would enhance the lives of indigenous peoples.38 Since free trade would better supply the needs of Britain, for Cobden, the Empire was an unnecessary financial burden.39 Speaking in Manchester on 15 January 1846, Cobden stated that free trade would remove the: desire and the motive for large and mighty empires; for gigantic armies and great navies – for those materials which are used for the destruction of life and the desolation of the rewards of labour – will die away; I believe that such things will cease to be necessary, or to be used, when man becomes one family, and freely exchanges the fruits of his labour with his brother man.40

Pro-imperialists disagreed claiming the possession of colonies and the space they provided for Britain’s unemployed population was sufficient reason to see the Empire as economically beneficial to Britain. By the 1840s, pro-imperialists were gaining the upper hand not least as political benefits had been added to the economic. With the threat of social unrest in Britain escalating as the increasingly vociferous working classes struggled with the deleterious effects of industrialization and fought for political, economic and social equality, the estimation of colonies shot up. Memories of the French revolution, stirred up by the publication of Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution in 1837, had added to fears.41 In April 1843 Charles Buller, subsequently Chief Commissioner of the Poor Law, warned the Commons of the danger Britain’s dangerous elements posed to the nation’s stability: We know well what effects physical distress and moral neglect have combined to produce in the temper of the masses, and how terrible is the risk to which we are exposed from this settled, though happily as yet undisciplined disaffection.42

Buller drew attention to the ‘civil strife’, that had ‘prompted the Greeks and Phoenicians to colonize’.43 Even Cobden was not averse to the retention of colonies on the basis that they ‘might be made as conducive to the interests of the mother country as to the emigrants themselves’.44 A policy of systematic emigration, it was suggested, had the potential to ward off unrest and, therefore, maintain economic prosperity and social cohesion.

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As Buller’s ‘undisciplined disaffection’ attained a semblance of discipline with the working classes organized into groups such as the Chartists, the seeming advantages of possessing colonies grew. The Times had reported on the Chartist Demonstration in Manchester in September 1838 for ‘universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, vote by Ballot, no property qualification . . . and every other means calculated to promote interests of the idle’, claiming England was in precisely the same condition as Rome before the Empire’s fall and France before the ‘bloody revolution’. They considered it their duty to put the nation on guard ‘lest . . . similar causes’ produced ‘similar effects’.45 The events of 1848 in Europe recalled for any who doubted it the revolutionary potential of the lower orders and, significantly, in 1848 and 1849, a flood of tracts appeared and speeches were made which supported the idea of systematic colonization.46 The author of Emigration: Its Advantages to Great Britain and her Colonies (1848), P. L. MacDaugall, believed emigration was ‘the only effectual remedy for the social ills which afflict this country’47 while the Conservative politician Walter Francis Montagu-Douglas-Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7th of Queensberry, called for assistance to emigrants ‘on a scale more extended and systematic than the present’.48 Charles Shaw, Manchester’s Chief Commissioner of Police from 1839–42, alleged it would alleviate the ‘alarming extent of misery and destitutions’ in Great Britain,49 whereas the Conservative peer and former Undersecretary of State for War and the Colonies, George, Lord Lyttelton, suggested it would prevent single working-class women falling into ‘vice and ruin’.50 Although relief of working class suffering was suggested as the principal motive to encourage emigration, an address given in 1848 pointed to less humanitarian motives. ‘In England’, the anonymous writer claimed, ‘a million and a-half . . . received parochial relief. In Ireland, nearly three millions. . . . In Scotland, pauperism is rapidly on the increase’.51 However, the writer continued, adopting: An efficient system of Colonization would augment the comfort of the people, – would secure the tranquillity of the State, – would greatly add to commercial prosperity, – would relieve manufacturing distress, – would assist the Agricultural and Shipping interest, – would diminish the Public Burdens and increase the Revenue, – would cement the affections of Colonists, and consolidate the distant portions of our vast empire.52

In October 1855, William Gladstone, former Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time and a relation through marriage of Lord Lyttelton, also stressed the moral benefits to imperial subjects of colonization. These came about:

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out of the influence which attaches to the spread of our language and English habits and tastes over the distant parts of the world. To have the scions of our families planting themselves in the colonies rearing our offspring . . . is to increase the moral influence of Old England, and maintain in a natural and legitimate manner the prestige of her name.53

By 1870 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper could report that hopefully ‘the cheering scene’ that accompanied emigrants as they left England would ‘have a stimulating effect among the working classes wherever the labour market is crowded’.54 The gradual realization that emigration was one solution to the problem of the working classes caused debate to focus on the two great colonizing nations of the ancient world.55 Adam Smith had written of the motive that drove the Greeks and Romans to colonize – the need for land – and although this differed from modern motives for colonizing the West Indies and America as these ‘arose from no necessity’,56 Britain’s need for land was now clear. Gladstone viewed the Greeks as ‘the first, and probably the best, colonizers’ because, like Sir Edward Creasy, he considered the Romans’ reason for colonization was purely for ‘conquest’ although he admitted England had too often travelled the same path as Rome.57 J. S. Mill agreed praising the ancient Greeks for ‘flourishing so rapidly and so wonderfully’ and for ensuring liberty, stability and encouraging progress. Greek colonies, he argued, were an ‘excellent template’ for those of the British.58 The Indian Mutiny in 1857, however, was not only to challenge the civilizing mission but also to cause Roman rather than Greek methods of colonization to be regarded more favourably.59 Blame for the Mutiny fell partly on the reforms of the Governor General Dalhousie and partly on Macaulay’s reforms outlined in his Minute.60 Westernizing India had neither improved the country nor ensured the loyalty of educated Indians, although The Times in September 1857 was quick to portray the mutiny as a minor setback rather than a complete failing of the civilizing mission. After all, Rome had succeeded in civilizing provinces regardless of uprisings. ‘The Indian Mutiny’, the editorial stated is what: civilized States have always been liable to from the ruder nations whom they held in subjection – such, for example, as the Romans had to encounter, and did encounter with success, a hundred times from Gauls, from Britons, from Germans.61

The Mutiny stunned the nation and articles appeared in newspapers designed to provoke outrage at the ‘ingratitude’ shown by Indians towards their ‘benevolent’ masters.62 One of the most vocal was the influential Times. An editorial in

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October credited the Indian mutineer with a status higher than that of ‘savage’ to downplay accusations of provocation by the British and to highlight Indian treachery. ‘The Indian mutineer is not a “dog driven mad” intentionally or unintentionally’, the paper reported, ‘he is a person who, after the best treatment, in cool blood and in the full possession of his reason, turns round and murders his benefactor’.63 Over the coming months, The Times continued to throw coals on the fire reporting in November in emotive language that: We cannot conceive anything more malignant and unprovoked than this Bengal mutiny. The people were prosperous beyond any precedent within the range of history, the soldiery were well treated and well cared for in old age, their religion was not only respected, but even honoured as a kind of dominant church, their prejudices of caste were inviolate, their caprices too much humoured by the negligence or good nature of the authorities; yet, without a cause or even a pretext, they burst into insurrection over an extent of 1,500 miles, slaughter their officers, violate women, cut children into pieces, and crown their audacity and insolence by setting up a King of their own out of the degenerate family of the Moguls.64

Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins expressed extreme feelings towards imperial subjects who opposed English authority in their colonial novel set in the West Indies, The Perils of Certain English Prisoners which was published in December 1857 in Household Words, a weekly journal edited by Dickens. On being directed to ‘treat the enemy’ with leniency following a mutiny, the English officer, Captain Carton exclaimed: these villains . . . have despoiled our countrymen of their property, burned their homes, and barbarously murdered them and their little children. . . . Believing that I hold my commission by the allowance of God, I shall certainly use it, with all avoidance of unnecessary suffering, and with all merciful swiftness of execution, to exterminate these people from the face of the earth.65

The mutiny added a new and urgent imperative to the colonization of overseas territories as a greater number of Britons in the colonies increased the potential for the control of ‘troublesome’ natives.66 Coinciding with this new imperative, it became evident that the Roman system of colonization rather than the Greek more closely approximated Britain’s needs. Adam Smith had drawn a distinction between the two. Whereas a Greek colony was deemed a child to the mother city, ‘entitled to great favour and assistance’ and ‘yet considered . . . as an emancipated

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child, over whom she pretended to claim no direct authority or jurisdiction’, Roman colonies were ‘at all times subject to the correction, jurisdiction, and legislative authority of the mother city’.67 Four years after the mutiny, the historian J. G. Sheppard in The Fall of Rome described Rome’s method of colonization as ‘admirable’ as it ‘planted an armed sentinel of civilization, a counterpart of Rome, where nothing but forests, morasses, and barbarian huts had been found before’.68 Nor was Sheppard the only historian to commend Rome’s system of colonization or recognize that founding colonies was necessary to secure and hold territorial gains. As the Reverend Mandell Creighton, subsequently Bishop of London, stated, Rome’s power in Italy emanated from her colonies, which explained why after each successive conquest Romans ‘founded colonies’.69 Increasing the presence of Britons overseas though was not in itself enough to restore confidence in the civilizing mission. The rule of the East India Company ended in 1858 and India fell under the direct control of the British Government. Furthermore, with trust eroded in the loyalty of imperial subjects and the possibility of further rebellions overseas, previous ideas that so-called inferior races could progress to a civilized state lost ground. This, in turn, caused attitudes to methods of rule of non-white subjects to change. The Jamaican rebellion at Morant Bay in October 1865 was to speed up the change. If the Indian Mutiny challenged the civilizing mission, the rebellion in Jamaica virtually sealed its fate. In November 1865, most likely in response to the revolt in which almost 500 people were killed, many hundreds more wounded and after which Governor John Eyre took ‘severe’ repressive measures,70 a report appeared in the Eastern Counties Herald: We would not say that the negro is incapable of being civilised; but the ease with which he relapses into a state of barbarism forces upon us the conviction that hitherto his moral and intellectual progress has not been such as to justify his claim to rank equal with his Anglo-Saxon brother. Like the elements fire and water, the negro makes a very good servant, but a very bad master.71

Alfred, Lord Tennyson made his view of those who had taken part in the rebellion exceedingly clear at a party attended by Gladstone and the English poet John Addington Symonds in December 1865. Symonds recorded the event: They were talking about the Jamaica business – Gladstone bearing hard on Eyre Tennyson excusing any cruelty in the case of putting down a savage mob. Gladstone had been reading official papers on the business all the morning

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and said, with an expression of intense gravity . . . ‘And that evidence wrung from a poor black boy with a revolver at his head!. . . .’ Tennyson did not argue. He kept asserting various prejudices and convictions. ‘We are too tender to savages; we are more tender to a black than to ourselves’. ‘Niggers are tigers; niggers are tigers’, in obligato, sotto voce, to Gladstone’s declamation.72

Frederic William Farrar, latterly Dean of Canterbury and a man with a reputation as a liberal, went one step further describing black races as ‘irreclaimably savage’ and, by implication, beyond salvation.73 They were ‘without a past and without a future, doomed’ and what was worse by Western standards, they had not contributed ‘one iota to the knowledge, the arts, the sciences, the manufactures, the morals of the world’. It was to the Aryans alone that such knowledge belonged and to this race belonged Greeks, Romans, and other Europeans.74 As ideas that non-white subjects were incapable of being civilized took hold, so too the issue of race assumed a new importance. The question of race had underlain much of the discussion of civilization and Empire prior to the uprisings and stereotypical images of natives had portrayed them as inferior to white Europeans, in effect the barbaric ‘other’ a concept borrowed from classical societies.75 For Thomas Carlyle, West Indians were a barbaric race who, being ‘Black blockheads’,76 were useful only as servants.77 Negative stereotyping of natives had reached beyond academia. Dickens who described the ‘Bush-people’ as ‘grim’ and ‘stunted’,78 incorporated inferior images of non-white races into his storylines. But if Elizabeth Gaskell had merely hinted at the vast difference between non-whites and Britons in Cranford (1850), others were more overt.79 In Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë’s description of Bertha Rochester – a Creole – left the reader with little doubt that Bertha’s ‘savage face’, swollen lips and furrowed brow belonged to a person from an inferior race.80 Advances in science had enabled theories to be produced that supported negative stereotypes. In 1850, the scientist Robert Knox, based on his study of African skulls, had concluded that ‘a Kaffre, a Red Indian, a New Zealander’ could not be taught and like animals they were destined for extinction.81 By the 1860s the shift to a more secular society evident from the growing discord between monogenists and polygenists and with scientists giving more time and energy to the question of race, it was possible to construct the ‘other’ using a scientific formula.82 Paradoxically in view of the more rational approach to evolution and the challenges to the exclusivity of the classical curriculum from the scientific community, the texts of Roman writers and references to Roman history were frequently, implicitly or explicitly, incorporated into scientific arguments.

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In 1859, Charles Darwin had published Origin of the Species. In it Darwin argued man was not a created being. Rather he had evolved naturally from an animal and what lay between animals and men were the lower savage races. It was the struggle for life that Darwin believed caused the selection of natural traits necessary for survival and it was ‘[t]his preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations’ that, he termed, ‘Natural Selection’.83 Alfred Russel Wallace enlarged on Darwin’s theory in an article he wrote on ‘The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man’ for the Journal of the Anthropological Society in 1864. For Wallace, natural selection ceased to be of consequence with the acquirement of mental qualities. Man’s ‘superior intellect’ made it possible for him to equip himself with the basics of life – ‘clothing and weapons’ – thus rendering it superfluous for a man’s body like an animal’s to evolve as circumstances altered.84 With physical development less important for survival, it was ‘mental and moral qualities’ that increasingly affected ‘the well-being of the race’. Moreover, Wallace argued, that as men learnt to work together they gained a ‘sense of right’ and ‘self-restraint’ and the ‘intelligent foresight which prepares for the future’ while losing ‘combative and destructive propensities’.85 Inevitably this led Wallace to the conclusion that ‘the higher’ races, those with intellect and morals, ‘must displace the lower and more degraded races’.86 Civilizational development, for Wallace, had replaced evolutionary development. Echoes of Lucretius were evident in Wallace’s work as, according to the Reverend John Selby Watson’s 1851 translation of De rerum natura (c. 54 BC), once man had: procured huts, and skins, and fire, and the woman, united to the man, came to dwell in the same place with him; and when the pure and pleasing connexions of undivided love were known, and they saw a progeny sprung from themselves; then first the human race began to be softened and civilized. (Lucr. 5)87

In addition to this as time went by: those who excelled in sense, and had power of understanding, taught the others, every day more and more, to change their rude diet, and former mode of life, for new practices and improvements by means of fire. At length the leaders began to build cities, and to found fortresses, as a protection and refuge for themselves. (Lucr. 5)88

If Darwin and Wallace did not acknowledge their debt to Lucretius, others did. The English Bishop and son of William, Samuel Wilberforce, reviewing Darwin’s Origin claimed his observation on the survival of the fittest was ‘no new

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observation; Lucretius knew and eloquently expatiated on its truth’.89 William Young Sellar, elected to the Latin Chair at Edinburgh in 1863, alluded to the overall debt scientists owed Lucretius: The question, vitally affecting the position of man in the world, which are discussed or raised by Lucretius in the course of his argument, are parallel to certain questions which have risen into prominence in connection with the increasing study of Nature.90

With Wallace applying his theory to explain European hegemony over other races claiming the ‘great law of “the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life” . . . leads to the inevitable extinction of all those low and mentally undeveloped populations’,91 Lucretius had been worked into a modern debate that was to contribute to legitimating harsher methods of rule of non-white imperial subjects. Darwin and Wallace’s theories were taken up and used to support arguments that the unequal development of man proved that the darker races could not advance to civilization. For John Crawfurd, a former doctor working for the East India Company and from 1861 president of the Ethnological Society, the Hindus were not of ‘the same mental capacity’ as Europeans,92 Africans had physical strength but little intellect as no African tribe had ‘invented letters’93 while Australian natives were inferior to both being a ‘unique variety of man, black and of the lowest physical and mental organisation’. Such men were, in Crawfurd’s opinion, ‘very low in the scale of humanity’ and despite ‘occupying countries at the same distance from the equator with the lands that produced Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Chinese’, it was ‘very difficult to imagine a Homer, a Caesar, or even a Confucius, spring from such a race’.94 In October 1865, the month the Jamaican rebellion began, an article appeared in the Anthropological Review in which the writer, similarly to Crawfurd, conjured up an image of the ancient world in order to prove to his readers the inferiority of Africans. In comparison to the Caucasian who represented ‘the intellectual and progressive division’ of mankind and was the only race ‘capable of invention’, the ‘Negro’ had ‘vegetated on in contented barbarism from immemorial times’, and this despite ‘all that Egyptian, Carthaginian, and Roman civilization could possibly accomplish for his elevation’.95 However, although scientific theories that non-white peoples were racially incapable of advancement solved one dilemma by legitimating despotic methods of rule, these same theories produced other concerns. Higher rates of emigration had already fuelled anxieties over the corruptive influence of native cultures on

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Britons living in the colonies.96 The Reverend Charles Merivale, historian and subsequently Dean of Ely, had warned in 1833 that inexperienced administrators in India were only saved ‘from moral ruin by the strong influence of home associations and the cherished prospect of return’.97 Partly to alleviate the fear of ‘moral ruin’, exclusively white clubs had been established in the colonies, for instance, at Simla in India, to restrict contact between colonizer and colonized and towns were constructed in an English style to remind colonizers of home.98 The historian James Anthony Froude who recorded his experiences of touring the Empire in Oceana showed the extent to which England had been reproduced in Australia. Adelaide was ‘busy England over again’,99 Sydney had ‘grown in the old English fashion’ with roads and paths reminiscent of London’s100 while a station property ‘needed only a lodge to be like the entrance to a great English domain’.101 Scientific proof of the racial inferiority of non-white imperial subjects, however, now added the fear of racial degeneration through interbreeding to escalating fears of cultural corruption in the ruling race. Edward Long, the Jamaican planter and author of the History of Jamaica (1774), had warned that freeing slaves in Britain and physical relations between former slaves and Englishmen would contaminate English blood. Originating with the lower classes their women being ‘remarkably fond of the blacks’, this contamination would spread until: in the course of a few generations more, the English blood will become so contaminated with this mixture and from the chances, the ups and downs of life, this alloy may spread so extensively, as even to reach the middle, and then the higher orders of people, till the whole nation resembles the Portuguese and the Moriscos in complexion of skin and baseness of mind. This is a venomous and dangerous ulcer that threatens to disperse its malignancy far and wide, until every family catches infection from it.102

Scientists were largely in agreement on the dangers of racial mixing. In 1850 Knox had warned against intermarriage between ruler and ruled on the grounds that it produced an individual ‘intermediate generally, and partaking of each parent; but this mulatto man or woman is a monstrosity of nature’.103 Eleven years later and four years after the mutiny in India, John Crawfurd returned to the issue claiming ‘[t]he offspring of an Englishman and an Australian degrades the Englishman’.104 Nor was it only native Australians that were responsible for contaminating European blood as crossing Europeans and Africans with no further ‘infusion of European blood’ would result by the fourth or fifth

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generation in the offspring of such a mix being ‘no longer distinguishable from an ordinary negro’.105 The rebellion at Morant Bay had contributed to keeping alive scientific interest in hybridism. The scientist John W. Jackson wrote at length on the subject believing African nations had never ‘with or without assistance, reached the civilisation, again and again achieved in the great centres of Caucasian culture’.106 Ancient Romans, he continued, had succeeded in civilizing natives but only because they had an advantage over modern Britons as slaves who became ‘learned freedmen of Rome were often, racially speaking of as good blood as their masters’.107 Consequently there was, Jackson concluded, a vast difference between ‘a Plato, who was once sold as a slave . . . from a Congo negro’. In Jackson’s opinion, a hybrid inheriting the worst but not the best characteristics from ‘both parents’ was ‘a fermenting monstrosity . . . a blot on creation’ who without ‘the institution and rigid maintenance of caste’ had the potential to bring down nations. The fall of Carthage proved this. Carthage fell, Jackson believed, ‘for while splendid Numidian cavalry undoubtedly helped Hannibal to some of his early victories, the mingled mobs at home contributed yet more effectually to his final defeat’.108 If science formulated the theories, others spread racism. The writer, Liberal politician and supporter of social reform in Britain, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke’s Greater Britain (1866–7), a book that remained popular throughout the last years of the century, reinforced negative attitudes to non-white races. Dilke described his encounters with indigenous races that he met on his travels. Native Americans, he wrote, were ‘[l]ow in stature, yellow-skinned, small-eyed . . . not less inferior in mind than in body’ and the ‘gradual extinction’ of their race would be ‘not only a law of nature, but a blessing to mankind’;109 the Singhalese were an idle ‘cowardly, effeminate, and revengeful’ people;110 the Indians varied with the Rajpoots ‘fine barbarians, the Bengalees mere savages, and the tribes of Central India but little better than the Australian aborigines or the brutes’.111 In fact, his study of the indigenous population of India led Dilke to the conclusion that despotic government was ‘not bad; indeed, the hardest thing that can be said of it is that it is too good’.112 Novelists also continued to transmit negative images of so-called inferior races to a wider audience. For instance, George Eliot, although attributing such comments to the unenlightened characters in her progressive novel Daniel Deronda (1876), not only left her readers with a picture of a ‘Jamaican negro’ as ‘a beastly sort of Baptist Caliban’ but also with the idea that ‘blacks would be manageable enough if it were not for the halfbreeds’.113 Nor were children immune from racist indoctrination and, in 1877,

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the ‘educational’ stories of the English writer Maria Hack were republished. As two children, Harry and Lucy, travel the Empire, their ‘mamma’ described the natives they encountered. The Malays, the children were informed, were ‘beasts of prey that inhabit the torrid regions . . . always on watch, to assuage their thirst of blood and plunder’. In fact all the nomadic tribes of Borneo, Billiton, and Sumatra were savage races and ‘perhaps the most merciless and inhuman to be found in any part of the world’.114 By the 1880s, those formulating overseas policy in Britain and administrators in the Empire had been provided with the necessary justification for the despotic rule of non-white imperial subjects and, as the century moved towards its conclusion, Rome continued to be the model in which the debate on Empire was framed.

‘New’ imperialism Fear of both native uprisings and cultural and racial degeneration in the imperial race were exacerbated by the annexation of Egypt in 1882, Burma in 1885 and Kenya in 1886. However, with non-white peoples classified scientifically as the ‘other’ and therefore biologically unable to progress to a civilized state justification for despotic rule had been found. Territories populated by non-white races could only, so Knox maintained, be held like India ‘with the sword’.115 Even staunch liberals by the 1880s could accept the necessity for despotic rule in some instances.116 The doyen of liberalism, J. S. Mill, had argued in Considerations on Representative Government (1861), that the improvement of savage societies could not ‘come from themselves, but must be superinduced from without’. Although not condoning government by force (recommending ‘guidance’ instead) to this, Mill had added a caveat: ‘[b]eing . . . in too low a state to yield to the guidance of any but those to whom they look up as the possessors of force’, Mill believed, the government most fit for barbarians ‘is one which possesses force, but seldom uses it: a parental despotism or aristocracy’.117 Despotism then by Mill’s reasoning as he put it in On Liberty (1859) was legitimate when ‘dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end’.118 Indeed, Mill had earlier in the century expressed approval of the policy of the United States towards native Americans: ‘for the purposes of civilizing the Indians’, as he put it, ‘the conduct of the United States towards the Indian tribes has been throughout, not only just, but noble’.119 Corresponding to this gradual change in attitude towards overseas rule, there had been a shift in attitude to Rome itself. During the early nineteenth

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century and in contrast to the Republic, Imperial Rome and its emperors had been perceived in a negative light. Speaking at a meeting in Middlesex in June 1817 called to rally support for petitioning parliament to overturn the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act passed in February after the Spa Fields riots, the politician, Sir Philip Francis, claimed the meeting had been infiltrated by ‘spies and informers’ who were one of the ‘the greatest’ evils that any nation had to deal with. Informing on others, Francis claimed, had become so common in Rome under ‘those devils the emperors’, that the practice was enough to bring Rome and her Empire to its knees.120 Earl Grey, subsequently Prime Minister, conjured up a similar image of the emperors in expressing his condemnation of the Act. He could find no comparable occurrence in modern times of such an infringement of an individual’s freedom from illegal imprisonment although there were ‘instances’, he claimed, ‘to be found . . . under that succession of monsters, which preceded the downfall of the roman [sic] Empire’.121 Likewise, in 1822, the Whig politician, the Marquis of Lansdowne, accused members of the House of Commons committed to maintaining high levels of taxation in Britain which was not in the best interests of the people, of wanting, like Caligula, to ‘wallow in gold’.122 Such negative representations of Imperial Rome were also evident in the historical record. Thomas Arnold was scathing of the ‘tyranny’ of Julius Caesar and condemned Augustus, first, for the part he played in the Republic’s destruction as his victory at Perusia in 42 BC was a victory ‘over the liberty of his country’ and, secondly, for his unemotional response at the execution of 300 Romans who had fought at Perusia on the side of liberty and the law.123 Possessing a ‘power entirely despotic’,124 Arnold believed, Augustus had presided over a society with: no public hospitals, no institutions for the relief of the infirm and poor; no societies for the removal of abuses, or the improvement of the condition of mankind from motives of charity. Nothing was done to promote the instruction of the lower classes, nothing to mitigate the miseries of domestic slavery, and far less to stop altogether the perpetual atrocities of the kidnapper and the slave market.125

Only with the birth of Christianity had Imperial Rome acquired, in Arnold’s opinion, ‘a nearer interest’ as the home ‘of those whom we love’.126 Charles Merivale was equally unimpressed by the actions of Caesar and Augustus in The Fall of the Republic (1853). While Caesar, he wrote, was ‘an autocrat in every essential exercise of power’ despite outwardly maintaining ‘all the institutions

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most opposed to autocracy’, the power of Augustus lay with his ability to deceive the people of Rome ‘that the republic still continued to exist, while they were in fact no better than the slaves of a monarchical despotism’.127 However, by the mid-1850s, in fact two years before the Indian Mutiny (the event most commonly identified as the reason for the change in attitude to Imperial Rome), there was a slight but perceptible shift in intellectual circles towards aligning Britain with Imperial Rome. An early campaigner on its behalf was president of the Oxford Union, Richard Congreve. Congreve challenged the preoccupation of historians with Republican history and the idea that Rome’s decline began during the Augustan era, an idea that he believed to be ‘erroneous’.128 Rather, Congreve considered it was the period following the Republic’s fall and prior to Commodus’ rule, a period in which there was no serious ‘indication’ that the Empire was in decline,129 that deserved attention as it was during this time that was to be found ‘the result which atones for the means – the peaceful settlement’ after the many years of suffering.130 In contrast to Arnold and Merivale, Congreve singled out Julius Caesar for praise first as he had ‘the truest policy’ by adding ‘materially to the security’ of the Empire by conquering Gaul and, secondly, by ‘securing and organizing’ the Empire within existing boundaries.131 Equally, he admired Augustus who accomplished ‘either the peace of good order within or the peace of definite treaties with foreign nations’; Nero whose government was ‘a positive gain’; Claudius’ ‘thoughtful and tender care for the provinces’; Domitian, a ‘just administrator of justice’ and Trajan.132 As Trajan’s expansionist policy was to avert the threat to global civilization, it could be ‘termed as correctly, defensive’.133 Overall, Congreve regarded the emperors as the ‘champions and representatives of the democracy of Rome’ and ‘what rulers ought to be, and have so seldom been, a terror, not to good work, but to the evil’.134 Significantly, Congreve included in his defence of Imperial Rome criticism of those who believed the government should have ‘been modified into a constitutional one’. On this point he differed ‘wholly’ as the condition of England proved: I think that, under the conditions of the Roman Empire, its political organization was based on a correct view of its wants. I may go further. . . . I may add, that not merely the Roman Empire, but that every large political society . . . all such states as the larger kingdoms of modern Europe, with no exception as to our own country, are not fit subjects for the constitutional system. That system, with its fictions and its indirect action, may offer

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advantages at certain times – as, historically, it has done with us – but on the whole, I think it alien to good government. It has ever failed, – and I appeal to the history of England in support of my assertion, and not merely to the present disgraceful state of our government . . . – it is failing you now, in the presence of real dangers and war.135

Clearly for Congreve, it was not just what was happening overseas but what was happening at home that caused him to question the preoccupation of historians with Republican history.136 Congreve’s work was not well received. Goldwin Smith, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford from 1858, challenged Congreve’s idea that the Republic represented the ‘infancy and youth’ of Rome while during the imperial period Rome reached maturity.137 If this was the case, Smith questioned, and the Empire was ‘full of that moral, intellectual, and physical vigour which the analogy of manhood implies’ then why did it ever decay?138 In Smith’s opinion, the Roman Empire remained ‘what it was before, – a tyranny’ which he trusted would not be seen again.139 J. G. Sheppard also questioned Congreve’s portrayal of the Imperial government as ‘good’ and a ‘precedent for ourselves’. He suggested picturing ‘a few social and political analogies in our own England’: An entire revolution has taken place in our principles, manners, and form of government. Parliaments, meetings, and all the ordinary expressions of the national will, are no longer in existence. A free press has shared their fate. There is no accredited organ of public opinion; indeed, there is not public opinion to record. Lords and Commons have been swept away . . . half the population of London, under the present state of things, subsist upon free distributions of corn dispensed by the occupant of the throne. . . . The free citizens and prentices of London; the sturdy labourers of Dorsetshire and the eastern counties; the skilful artisans . . . of Manchester, Sheffield, and Birmingham; the mariners and shipwrights of Liverpool, have been long ago drafted into marching regiments, and left their bones to bleach beneath Indian suns and Polar snows. Their place has been supplied by countless herds of negro slaves, who till the fields, and crowd the workshops of our towns, to the entire exclusion of free labour.140

Regardless though of Sheppard’s obvious aversion to what the Imperial regime stood for, he did appreciate the need for a change in government. In fact, in detailing the break down in Roman society during the civil wars that came about as a result of ‘the decay of the Roman spirit’, he included a statement made by Goldwin Smith that showed he too recognized the change

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in government was a necessary evil. For Smith, the ‘despotism of the Empire was almost justified’ by provincial misgovernment during the Republic and by ‘the difficulty’ if not the ‘impossibility of any effectual reform’.141 Indeed, by the 1870s, Smith was seeing other justifications for the imposition of an autocracy. Lecturing on ‘The Greatness of the Romans’, he stated, that not only was the rise of a military despot ‘perhaps a fatal necessity’ but also that Roman ‘despotism’ was ‘tempered, elevated, and rendered more beneficent by the lingering spirit of the Republic: the liberalism of Trajan and the Antonines’.142 Although not going so far as to admit the Imperial government was overall an improvement on its predecessor, evidently between 1855 and 1870 Smith had revised his view of the regime.143 He was not alone in this. Charles Merivale although previously disparaging of Caesar and Augustus, nonetheless praised ‘the system adopted’ by the latter, ‘the real founder of the Roman empire’, in the History of the Romans under the Empire that he completed in 1864. The reason the system deserved to be commended, he explained, was that it had survived for over 200 years and, what is more, it had ‘continued to animate with its principle the governments of Rome and Constantinople down to the commencement of modern history, if, indeed, it can be said to be even yet extinguished’.144 Merivale had also clearly revised his opinion of Augustus. No longer did his achievement lie in the concealment of the despotic nature of Rome but rather in the establishment of ‘the theory of the constitutional Empire upon a durable foundation’.145 It was Goldwin Smith who acknowledged the ‘curious change of opinion’ that had taken place in liberal circles. Roman Republicans who 100 years previously had been the ‘political saints of the Liberal party’ were now being cast ‘into the nethermost hell’. The change arose, he believed, not from new evidence ‘but from the prevalence of new sentiments – Imperialism of different shades’.146 A new vision of Roman Imperialism had emerged largely due to the change in attitude to British rule in the Empire. In the process, Roman Republican heroes had lost their high status in the British imagination.147 This revised and largely positive interpretation of Imperial Rome became increasingly popular in intellectual circles as the century progressed. In 1870, Sir J. R. Seeley published a series of lectures.148 In the first – the ‘Great Roman Revolution’ – he acknowledged that the revolution was ‘a triumph, not of liberalism, but of military organization’.149 However, although democracy was ‘nowhere’ in sight during the Augustan era, this did not prevent Seeley from seeing Augustus as most suited to succeed ‘the liberal-minded Caesar’ and as ‘being more completely successful than almost any statesman in history’ on the

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grounds that he had replaced ‘anarchy’ with ‘centralization and responsibility’.150 Seeley made two additional observations. First, that: Though the imperial period is inferior as a period of foreign conquest to the period of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar, this is not owning to any military superiority of republicanism, but to the fact that the imperial system had been practically introduced long before it was legally recognized.151

Secondly (and endorsing Congreve and Merivale), that although ‘true that the imperial system did not in the long run succeed . . . two centuries passed before the system showed any signs of inadequacy’.152 In other words, not only had republicanism died long before the Augustan era but also the change to an authoritarian regime could neither be deemed a failure nor the reason for the Empire’s eventual demise. What was to blame for Rome’s fall, in Seeley’s opinion, was that the Empire became ‘stationary and unprogressive’ not because expansionism had brought wealth and luxury into Rome but because ‘[m]en were wanting; The Empire perished for want of men’. Being compelled to ‘replenish’, the Roman army with non-Romans guaranteed that in the fight against the barbarians, it was conducted ‘with the help of barbarian soldiers’. Ultimately, Rome’s Empire in the West was defeated by its own army.153 Even for this, Seeley held Republicans responsible. Despite the best efforts of Caesar and Augustus who ‘struggled earnestly’ to increase the Roman population, it was the inability of Republicans to look ahead and see the dangers of population decline that had brought the Empire down.154 Author and Liberal politician, James Allanson Picton, suggested a modern imperial power could learn much from its imperial predecessor. The Leicester Chronicle reported on Picton’s lecture – ‘Imperial Rome, a pattern and a warning’ – in 1879. Despite some reservations, the paper reported that overall Picton believed: there was much in the story of the Roman empire which a truly imperial race might be glad to imitate. Whenever the Romans extended they ameliorated the condition of the people by the erection of public works, arranging the dispensation of justice and the interchange of commerce, and in establishing what were called colonies, which means towns, under Roman government’.

As such and with Englishmen superior to Romans in their treatment of imperial subjects thanks to England’s undeniably higher morality, Picton believed, it was not only ‘inevitable’ but it was also ‘right’ that Englishmen ‘should wish for influence, and seek by moral means to sway the destinies of the world, for in every true sense they were an imperial race’.155 Seemingly, for Picton, Britons

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as an imperial race not only had the skills necessary to improve the lives of subject populations as the Romans had before them but they also had a duty to do so. This revised version of Roman imperialism and ‘new’ images of central figures at a crucial period of Roman history were transmitted to the next generation via children’s histories. For instance, Charlotte Yonge, author of Aunt Charlotte’s Stories of Roman History (1877), described Julius Caesar as ‘one of the greatest men the world has ever produced’. Although admitting the illegality of his seizure of power, Yonge defended Caesar on the grounds that he used his power for the good of Rome.156 Remarkably and presumably based on her reading of Virgil’s Eclogue IV, she compared Augustus to Christ. Augustus, she wrote, was ‘a wise and deep-thinking man’ who some mistook ‘in their relief ’ at his ‘good rule’ as the ‘great Deliverer and peaceful Prince’.157 But it was not just historians who used Rome to support a modern imperialist argument. Scientists carried on legitimating despotic rule overseas using race as a basis. Moreover, they continued to incorporate references to Rome into scientific tracts. Indeed, they accused historians of inadequacy due to a lack of scientific knowledge and for not bringing the matter of race into histories of Rome. Without such knowledge, one commentator maintained, ‘explanations cannot fail to be imperfect and . . . hypotheses unsatisfactory’.158 In 1876, Kelburn King, writing for the Anthropological Society, pointed out the need for an historical analysis of race: Although history . . . is not considered to be a subject for anthropological investigations, there is one view of historical events which brings them within our scope . . . when we take broad views of the great events in the written records of our race, and trace them to the results of racial differences, we bring the broad stream of history within the cognizance of the science which concerns itself with the natural history of man.159

King used Rome as an example of the way acknowledging and comprehending the importance of race aided understanding of the rise and fall of empires. Rome, King wrote: originated from a mixture of many races, out of which ultimately sprang the great Roman race, which multiplied exceedingly, stamped on all southern, western, and central Europe an impression which lasts to this day, swallowed up in its empire all the known world worth the trouble of conquering, then gradually dissolved and disappeared, dying out both as to the numbers and the distinctive qualities of the race.160

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In short, King believed, if the British Empire was to avoid Rome’s fate, historians had to give due attention to the racial composition of the Roman Empire and evaluate the role of race in its changing fortunes.161 J. R. Seeley favoured a balance between teaching science and the Classics, recommending the two disciplines should work together as ‘[w]e cannot do without facts in education, and we cannot do without words’.162 Sheppard too acknowledged, albeit grudgingly, the value of science to history. ‘The question of race’, he believed, was ‘one of the largest elements in that important problem of modern politics’, by which he meant ‘the balance of power’. This being the case, statesmen could not afford to ignore it.163 Only now, he continued, have the ‘great families of the European or Western Iranian migration . . . been clearly determined by ethnologists’.164 Deviating therefore into the ‘science of ethnology’ although a tiresome activity was worthwhile if it allowed a ‘more connected and coherent notion of that barbarian world whose relations with Rome form the prelude to modern history’.165 By the late 1870s, theorizing about the British Empire frequently involved drawing parallels with the Roman. After all, in the eyes of the Conservative Earl of Carnarvon, Henry Herbert, by 1878 the only ancient model that could be compared to the British Empire was Rome’s.166 Sir H. Bartle Frere, who had been present in India at the time of the Mutiny and was High Commissioner of South Africa from 1877–80, seemed convinced that Britain’s civilizing mission had worked. He compared ancient Britons to the Zulus in an article ‘On the Laws Affecting the Relation Between Civilized and Savage Life’ (1882), in order to prove its success. Romans, he stated, ‘found Britain in a condition of civilization little if at all superior to that of the Zulus in our own day’ and yet, by the time of the Roman withdrawal, ‘so many of the aborigines had been civilized and educated as Romans, that men and women of British birth and Roman education were sufficiently numerous to be a recognisable element among the upper classes in Rome’.167 The Fingoes in South Africa confirmed to Frere that Britain had achieved similar successes in her Empire. This once so-called barbarous and utterly destitute tribe had, with British protection and help, improved materially, intellectually and morally.168 Some approved of Frere bringing to the public’s attention the conduct of Britons towards imperial subjects. Surprisingly, in view of his belief in eugenics, Frere found support from the geneticist and cousin of Darwin, Francis Galton. Galton thanked him for his inquiry and criticized those who were inclined ‘to look upon race as something more definite than it really was’ as certain tribes in South Africa proved ‘savages’ could progress and become ‘prominent nations’.

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Responding to Frere’s comparison between the Roman method of dealing with uncivilized subjects and Britain’s, Galton’s wish was that Britons acted more like their Roman predecessors. Although Britain’s ‘military hold’ over subject territories and ‘tolerance of local customs’ equalled that of Rome’s and her fair treatment of indigenous populations surpassed Rome’s, the lack of interaction between Britons and imperial subjects in comparison to the interaction that occurred between Romans and provincials, he regarded as a failure. Indeed, in Galton’s opinion, it was a pity that, unlike in Rome, foreigners could not be seen on the streets of England.169 Others however disagreed with Frere. The archaeologist, John Evans, disputed that ancient Britons and Zulus were comparable in the first place. The physical remains of towns and the discovery of coins that predated Claudius’ invasion showed a rudimentary civilization existed in Britain prior to the Roman occupation, which was not the case in South Africa before it became part of the British Empire.170 The zoologist, Professor Flower, again pointed out that a particular problem for Britain was the racial difference between conquerors and conquered. Whereas subjects of the Roman Empire ‘were closely related’ to their conquerors which meant there was ‘no difficulty for the one to adopt the civilization of the other’, the relationship between Britons and her subjects, particularly the Zulus, Tasmanians and Australians was ‘far more remote’.171 As native unrest persisted and pessimism over the stability of the Empire escalated, Frere and Galton appeared to be in the minority and many Victorians accepted or at least did not question the need for a more despotic form of governance. The 1880s was a decade of tension in the Empire. South Africa remained unsettled following the 1870 Boer rebellion and, in 1881, the Boers defeated British troops at Majube while the Mahdi rebelled in the Sudan in 1885. A letter to The Times from a Thomas C. Early of Mafeking warned of further ‘evils’ that Britain would have to face if expansionism and oppressive methods of rule carried on: the annexation of Bechuanaland to the Cape Colony at this early stage of its existence as an Imperial colony appears ominous for its future prosperity and peacefulness. I am afraid it will include in the transaction breach of faith with the chiefs and natives there and beyond . . . Whatever may be said generally of the ‘nigger’, the fact is established. The natives of South Africa, commercially speaking, are one of the country’s most valuable assets, and in that light (apart from philanthropy) should be ruled and treated. The change, if effected, of Cape Town rule in Bechuanaland for that of even the feeble second-hand Imperial management now in existence there will certainly not

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be welcome to its population, either white or black, and will bring with it evils too numerous to contemplate.172

One politician who seemed to agree with Early was the Liberal politician, Robert Lowe. Lowe wrote of his distaste for imperialism which he defined as the ‘assertion of absolute force over others’173 and which he considered ‘neither just nor honourable’. In his opinion, never in England’s history had the nation ‘abused her power’ to such an extent or ‘descended so low’.174 Underlying Lowe’s reasoning, not unexpectedly for a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the question of finance. England was in a worse position than Rome, he believed, as: the ancient conqueror could impose a tribute, which the comparative mildness of modern notions will scarcely tolerate; and it was once worth while to conquer poor and savage races for the sake of obtaining slaves, which the civilisation of modern Europe no longer endures. Thus it appears that the principal motives which spurred men on to war in former times no longer exist, and that it is the duty of statesmen to act solely for the happiness of the people they govern.175

Nonetheless, with the Empire for many essential to the maintenance of Britain’s global status, politically and economically, the control of it remained paramount. So too did countering increasing pessimism at home over the problems that others argued arose with the possession of an Empire and in order to demonstrate its importance to the nation, Britons were subjected to an intense barrage of pro-imperial utterances and writings in which Imperial Rome figured to a significant degree. The Conservative Prime Minster, Benjamin Disraeli, conjured up an image of Rome in a speech at the Guildhall in November 1879 to show Britain was up to the task of running an Empire. Probably thinking of Tacitus, Disraeli stated, ‘[o]ne of the greatest of Romans, when asked what were his politics, replied, Imperium et Libertas. That would not make a bad programme for a British Ministry’ and, he told his audience, it was ‘one from which Her Majesty’s advisers do not shrink’.176 Arthur Balfour, in a lecture he gave in 1882 on ‘Cobden and the Manchester School’, tackled what he saw as Britain’s increasingly insular attitude towards the Empire, implying its value was more than financial. If, he stated, we: turn our gaze solely inwards upon ourselves and our local affairs; if we are to have no relations with foreigners, or with men of our own race living on other continents, except those which may be adequately expressed by double entry and exhibited in a ledger; – we may be richer or poorer for the change,

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but it is folly to suppose that we shall be richer or poorer only. An element will be withdrawn from our national life which, if not wholly free from base alloy, we can yet ill afford to spare.177

Balfour attacked Cobden’s adherence to a policy of free trade. He claimed Cobden, who had died in 1865, would have abandoned India ‘with pleasure’ and ‘the colonies without regret’ on the grounds that defending them was costly and Britain ‘got nothing for the privilege of defending them’ other than ‘commercial advantages which we should equally possess if they had to defend themselves’.178 This was flawed thinking, in Balfour’s opinion, as Cobden had underestimated the effects of the loss of the Empire to Britain. Effectively, Balfour accused Cobden of short-sightedness by concentrating on the commercial value of the Empire while missing out on the disadvantages that would arise from severing ties with overseas territories and by default with their inhabitants. For Balfour, Cobden was a man who in dwelling on the economic was prepared to ignore the cost in human terms. J. R. Seeley’s response to what he also saw as ‘insular thinking’ at home was to publish The Expansion of England (1883). In it he addressed the controversies that arose as a result of the possession of India. Despotic rule, Seeley maintained, was justifiable as India was ‘already in a state of wild anarchy’, a state unknown in Europe, with a ‘pretty invariably despotic’ government when Britain took possession of it. This combined with his somewhat hypocritical statement considering his justification for annexing India in the first place, that ‘withdrawal even of an oppressive Government is a dangerous experiment’ was reason enough not to abandon the country.179 Countering allegations that India was a drain on Britain financially, Seeley drew attention to the trade links that existed between Britain and India, which made India ‘self-supporting’.180 In addition to this mutual benefit, there was a supplementary gain for India in Seeley’s paradigm; in successfully bringing to an end ‘anarchy and plunder’, what Britain had given to India was ‘something like the immense majestas Romanae pacis’.181 Seeley was not alone in arguing the success of what could be termed a policy of despotic philanthropy throughout the Empire. Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890–6, claimed the colonized gained under the British from the best rule ‘in the world, the most likely to promote Justice, Liberty and Peace’.182 As well as facilitating trade, imperialists pointed out other political and economic advantages to Britain of being an imperial power. Seeley, like his predecessors, argued these arose out of the possession of foreign soil because having ‘an outlet for its superfluous population’ was ‘one of the greatest blessings’.

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With Britain full and increasing by approximately ‘a million every three years’, he recommended the rate of emigration should if anything be speeded up if ‘the greatest evils’ were to be avoided at home.183 Territorial expansion therefore was vital to the well-being of the nation providing lands ‘for the landless, prosperity and wealth for those in straitened circumstances’.184 J. A. Froude agreed believing Britain could not ‘bear a larger population . . . without peril to soul and body’,185 while the industrialist and politician, Joseph Chamberlain, considered the Empire was vital for economic stability. Although expressing regret for the bloodshed, Chamberlain saw it as ‘the condition of the mission we have to fulfil’.186 Seeley’s Expansion was, so the Westminster Gazette reported in 1895, ‘a decisive impulse to what may be called, in the slang of the day, “the new Imperialism” ’.187 Moreover, in selling half a million copies by the end of the century, it was a major factor in promoting Roman Imperialism. Like Goldwin Smith, Seeley acknowledged that the change in attitude to the Romans was a recent phenomenon driven by the contemporary situation. ‘There was a time’, he wrote, when: the Roman Empire, because it was despotic and in some periods unhappy and half barbarous, was thought uninteresting. A generation ago it was the reigning opinion that there is nothing good in politics but liberty, and that accordingly in history all these periods are to be passed over and, as it were, cancelled in which liberty is not to be found. . . . The Roman Republic was held in honour for its freedom, the earlier Roman Empire was studied for the traces of freedom still discernible in it.188

But, he continued, there were ‘other good things in politics besides liberty’ as ‘a government that allows no liberty is nevertheless most valuable and most favourable to progress towards . . . other goals’, namely, civilization and nationality.189 In other words, loss of liberty was a necessary by-product of advancing peoples to a civilized state and fitting them for self-government. As such, Seeley believed, understanding the ideology behind Imperial Rome and discovering ‘the laws of political growth and change’ would aid administrators of a modern Empire.190 Seeley’s reading of Imperial Rome that helped justify the move towards and acceptance of a more despotic method of rule overseas, was taken up by other scholars as the century advanced. Some, for instance, the historian and classicist Thomas Rice Holmes, merely implied that harsher methods of rule had enabled Britons to achieve in her Empire what the Romans had before. India was a case in point. Maintaining much as Seeley did that Britain had brought ‘peace, and justice’ to a nation

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previously wracked by ‘anarchy, intestine war and injustice’ was remarkably similar to what many historians argued the Romans had achieved in her Western Empire.191 More frequently though scholars concentrated on how the change in government and Augustus’ leadership had saved the Roman Empire. Two years after Expansion was published, William Shepard’s Young Folks’ History of the Roman Empire (1885) appeared. Shepard described in glowing terms the ‘mighty genius’ of Julius Caesar and yet admitted his downfall was his ambition or rather his inability to hide it. In this respect, Augustus was his ‘superior’.192 Shepard dismissed the charges of ‘cowardice’ levelled at Augustus by ‘hostile historians’ seeing him instead as a man of ‘shrewdness and foresight’ who was ‘idolized’ by both soldiers and the masses alike.193 The future Dean of St Paul’s, William Ralph Inge, was another who believed Rome’s reputation as a civilizing force and, therefore, its success as an imperial power stemmed from the change in government. In Society in Rome under the Caesars (1888), Inge wrote, in stark contrast to earlier accounts of Roman Republican history, that the entire history of the Republic was ‘full of instances of . . . unfeeling cruelty’, whereas in the first-century AD, there were ‘many evidences of awakening sensibility in this matter’.194 Evidence of this lay with the lack of slave revolts during this period which proved that the treatment of slaves ‘was better under the empire than under the Republic’.195 Inge also dismissed Thomas Arnold’s image of Augustus as cruel and unemotional, claiming Augustus showed distaste at the brutality inflicted on slaves ‘at least on one occasion’.196 Contrasting Republican and Imperial culture led Inge to the same conclusion. Whereas during the Republic ‘[l]iterature spread corruption’, theatre ‘pandered to the vilest tastes’ and art was ‘shameless and suggestive’, the Imperial era saw the rise of great writers.197 Virgil was ‘conspicuous among the writers of all ages for his purity’; Quintilian’s texts were ‘admirable’; Pliny’s work was ‘an undigested congeries of facts’ while the letters of Pliny the Younger gave ‘so high an idea of the real civilisation of the age’. Indeed, he saw them as ‘a valuable corrective of the common tendency to brand Roman civilisation as only material and external’.198 John Bagnell Bury’s A History of the Roman Empire (1893) followed Inge’s study. Bury’s intention was to produce a history for schools and universities that covered the first 200 years of the Empire as these, in his opinion, were the ‘most important’ years.199 Despite the principate being ‘a transparent falsehood’ (although a necessary one) and ultimately failing, he praised the age of Augustus as ‘brilliant’ for the ‘peace and security’ it brought both to Rome and the Empire.200 Oxford historian, Henry Pelham, agreed. Augustus’ violent seizure of power was justifiable in the circumstances and Augustus, in Pelham’s

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eyes, was the man most suited to the job of ‘re-establish[ing] the sovereignty of Rome throughout the civilised world’, of ‘reconciling personal rule with at least the forms of republicanism’ and of undertaking to eradicate the evils that had beset Rome during the late Republic.201 Thus Augustus’ success lay with ‘the foundation of that new and better order of things at home and abroad’ which replaced a period of ‘extravagance, mismanagement, and peculation’.202 Although Pelham avoided making direct comparisons between the Roman and British Empires, H. P. Judson, the reviewer of Outlines praised Pelham for writing ‘from a full mind, with ample command of the sources as well as of modern views’.203 Not all though shared Pelham’s apparent reticence to draw overt comparisons between the past and the present. George Edward Tarner in A Future Roman Empire (1895) believed that Europe’s loss at the breakdown of the Roman Empire was incalculable and, what was worse, it was a loss that was still being felt in the present as it was the Empire’s dissolution that was responsible for Europe’s ‘present state of division’.204 This division might be healed, Tarner argued, if the Empire was restored. A federated Europe ‘under a common headship and central power’ with common borders, one army and navy and international law would, he suggested, result in ‘the practical immunity from war, otherwise than from without the Empire’.205 This had enormous advantages for Britain and could be, as the title of this book suggested, a ‘solution of some modern political and economic problems’.206 Tarner was dismissive of any charges of despotism that might arise as a result of his views claiming these were not something that ‘concerned’ him.207 Revised interpretations of Roman history were not the only means used to awaken the British consciousness to the fact of Empire. With education for all primary school children compulsory from 1870, schools were the logical place to start. Lack of knowledge of the history and geography of the Empire was rectified by the publication of histories of Britain (and often more specifically England). For instance, Arabella Buckley’s History of England for Beginners (1887), Cyril Ransome’s A Short History of England (1887) and George Parkin’s Round the Empire (1892) prefaced by the future Liberal Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, who believed ignorance of the British Empire could well be its downfall.208 In recounting the nation’s past, a positive spin was put on the period of the Roman occupation. Buckley (better known for her scientific works) praised the Romans for their ‘good laws . . . solid roads’ and the general happiness of the ancient Britons as conquered people,209 while Ransome credited the Romans with bringing industry and civilization to Britain.210 In other words, all the benefits subject peoples gained from British rule were benefits that the ancient Britons had themselves received from the Romans. Some made direct comparisons.

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Parkin, for example, claimed unlike Roman provinces which contributed ‘a certain amount into the imperial revenue’, India paid ‘nothing directly into the revenue of Great Britain’211 while Buckley praised the Romans for ruling Britain ‘much as the English govern India’.212 However, with India remaining unstable and ‘dark clouds’ on the horizon in South Africa, as the historian George Peabody Gooch subsequently wrote, proimperialists questioned whether public schools equipped future administrators with either the knowledge or the requisite skills to run the Empire.213 After all, according to Pelham, it was the replacement of the ‘amateur governors of republican days’ with ‘trained experts’ that went a long way to ending corruption in the Roman provinces and unifying the Empire.214 Sport was one activity that many believed would inculcate the necessary characteristics into future administrators. Headmaster of Harrow, the Rev. J. E. C. Welldon observed that ‘the instinct of sport’ had played ‘a great part in creating the British Empire’.215 Forging team spirit, it was believed, would result in a successfully run empire. It would also, so the historian and politician, James Bryce believed, bring Englishmen together in the colonies and this, in turn, would help to protect the national character. Of cricket in Rhodesia he stated, ‘[o]ur countrymen are not to be scared by the sun from the pursuit of the national game. They are as much Englishmen in Africa as in England’.216 As well as instilling leadership qualities and a sense of ‘fair play’ into colonists clearly, for Bryce, team sports were one way of protecting Englishmen from the corrupting influence of alien environments and foreigners. Additionally and adding to the plethora of accounts of Britain’s ‘glorious’ imperial past that were published, school magazines recounted recent colonial events while lectures were given and debates held on issues related to the Empire. Specialized training was also provided at facilities charged with the job of turning classically educated boys into successful administrators and colonists, such as, the Colonial College at Hollesley Bay (established in the 1880s) and by the end of the century, cadet corps in schools ‘rammed imperial lessons home’.217 No longer could schools turn out gentlemen who, as Samuel Butler wrote in Erewhon (1872), were ‘born and bred to no profession’.218 Concern over lack of specialized training though caused a renewed attack by the scientific community on the amount of time devoted to teaching the Classics in public schools. Thomas Huxley held ‘very strongly’ to ‘two convictions’: The first is, that neither the discipline nor the subject-matter of classical education is of such direct value to the student of physical science as to

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justify the expenditure of valuable time upon either; and second is, that for the purposes of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education.219

Nonetheless, with a classical education still perceived by the middle classes as necessary to advance up the social ladder and, therefore, pushing for it to be retained in its prominent position on the school curriculum, Huxley was compelled to admit that the majority remained convinced culture was only obtainable via ‘a liberal education’ which was ‘synonymous not merely with education and instruction in literature, but in one particular form of literature, namely, that of Greek and Roman antiquity’.220 Influential imperialists, Cecil Rhodes and Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1899–1905, both acknowledged their debt to the Classics. Rhodes famously stated it was important never to forget ‘you are a Roman’ and was flattered by those who compared him to certain Roman Emperors while Curzon claimed an important lesson he had learnt at Eton was ‘the pomp and majesty, the law and the living influence of the empire of Rome’.221 With such open admittance to an enduring fascination with the Classics, Roman history and ancient writers continued to be cited in discussions on the Empire. Virgil was a favourite not least as, according to Seeley, ‘some of the founders of the British Empire remind us of Abraham and Aeneas’.222 Sellar praised both Virgil and Horace as it was thanks to these two that ‘the Augustan era owe[d] its rank among the great eras of poetry’.223 In contrast, the years separating Tiberius Gracchus and Pompey were, ‘unfavourable to the cultivate of that poetry which is expressive of national feeling’.224 In prose, F. H. Howard, an American lawyer writing for the School Review, advocated study of Caesar in schools. Caesar’s history of the Gallic war, he considered, was not only of ‘extraordinary value as a disciplinary instrument’ but remarkable for ‘presenting to the pupil the spectacle of Rome as a conquering and organizing power – a lesson which he must learn if he is to understand the history of modern Europe’.225 Furthermore, the publication of the Classics in translation, for instance, Blackwood’s Ancient Classics for English Readers from the 1870s, ensured that knowledge of the ancient world and its relevance to modern society spread downwards.226 Inspector of secondary schools and member of the Board of Education, Sir James Headlam (later Headlam-Morley), reminded readers of The Times in 1904 that solutions to contemporary imperial problems could be found in Rome. The British Empire, he stated, ‘presented the greatest problem ever put before any statesman, comparable only with the difficulty put before Augustus and Caesar, when they had to deal with the co-ordinations and government of the Roman Empire’.227

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In the mid-nineteenth century, Republican Rome had supported arguments for a liberal ‘improving’ imperialism. As these arguments faded, Imperial Rome started to exercise as a model of technical good governance from which liberty was entirely absent. Additionally, scientific arguments on racial inferiority used to justify ‘new imperialism’ were supported by Rome’s experience of Empire if only to differentiate the modern experience from the ancient. Historian J. B. Firth summed up attitudes to Imperial Rome and Augustus, a man who was ‘rather the Managing Director of the Empire than its Emperor’, at the turn of the century:228 We may regret the degeneration of Rome, its loss of freedom, the tyranny of the later Emperors, the civil wars which followed, and the decay of the old martial spirit in the Roman people. But the seeds of degeneration and decay had been planted in the days of the Republic, and would have come to maturity far sooner if there had been no Augustus and no Empire. Augustus started the Roman world on a new career.229

The rise of English nationalism At the turn of the century the economist, social theorist and anti-imperialist, J. A. Hobson, pointed out in his influential study Imperialism (1902) the hypocrisy of a nation whose political ideology at home was not reflected in the Empire. ‘We have taken upon ourselves . . . the responsibility of governing huge aggregations of lower races in all parts of the world by methods which are antithetic to the methods of government which we most value for ourselves’ or, as he put it more succinctly, by methods ‘distinctively autocratic’.230 Arguments that territories were annexed on the basis that inferior races could be educated ‘in the arts of popular government’ were antiquated and used by the turn of the century, Hobson believed, ‘for platform purposes’ only.231 The provision of limited training for Indian subjects to achieve junior (and on the odd occasion senior) positions could not hide the fact that there was little chance that they would ‘in the future become the servants of the free Indian nation rather than of the bureaucratic Imperial Government’.232 Hobson cited from Alfred Milner’s (later Viscount Milner) England in Egypt (1892) written following his time serving in Egypt as Undersecretary of Finance, to prove attitudes to India were typical of attitudes to British possessions elsewhere: I . . . take off my hat to everything that calls itself Franchise, Parliament, Representation of the People, the Voice of the Majority, and all the rest of

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it. But, as an observer of the actual condition of Egyptian society, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that popular government . . . is for a longer time than any one can foresee at present out of the question. The people neither comprehend it nor desire it. They would come to singular grief if they had it. And nobody, except a few silly theorists, thinks of giving it to them.233

The expansion of the empire had heightened tension between pro- and antiimperialists and a major point of contention was the financial repercussions for Britain.234 Hobson believed the cost of running the Empire and paying for the military to satisfy rich industrialists drained the ‘public purse’ and hindered the implementation of much needed reforms at home to improve the lives of the working classes.235 The ongoing cost of the Second Anglo-South African war proved this. Journalist and Liberal politician, Charles Masterman in The Heart of Empire (1901) agreed arguing Britain’s overseas policies were proving costly in terms of time, money and energy and what needed to be asked was whether or not it was ‘necessary’ or even ‘intrinsically desirable’ to carry on expending money on all three when it was clearly ‘detrimental to domestic progress’.236 He accused statesmen of filing plans for social reform ‘on the dusty shelves’ of their ‘brains’ and only letting them see the light of day when it was politically expedient to do so as all that really excited them was ‘the lust of domination, the stir of battle, the pride in magnitude of Empire’.237 The war fought for economic not ‘political and humanitarian considerations’ was, for Hobson, a debasement of the nation.238 The struggle to defeat the Boers confirmed what many already suspected, that Britain’s working classes who made up the ranks of the army were physically not up to the task. Not only was the economy dependent on a healthy population but so was the safety of the Empire. Further threatening the Empire was the expansionist aims of other European nations. Along with Belgium and France, Germany was competing for territory in Africa, the Pacific and in parts of Asia.239 The steady rise in German power since unification in 1871 and the imperial ambitions of Bismarck made it possible that Germany would need to be contained militarily at some point in the not too distant future.240 This naturally would also depend on a strong army. Journalist and Liberal Member of Parliament for Tyneside from 1906, J. M. Robertson in Patriotism and Empire (1900) warned of the danger of Bismarck’s ‘systematic reign of militarism’ that disregarded what had been, in his opinion, ‘a confused but gradually clarifying ideal of international peace’.241 Consequently and arising out of a combination of concerns; first, imperial decline as a result of competition for overseas lands and ongoing unrest in British territories; secondly, an economic

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downturn exacerbated by European rivalry (which posed a threat to trade links) and the crisis following the agricultural collapse in Britain in 1875; thirdly, fear of political instability at home as the working classes, supported by the growing Trade Union movement, continued their struggle for political, economic and social reform, there emerged during the early years of the twentieth century, in Jonathan Rutherford’s words, ‘an anti-imperialist English nationalism’.242 Hobson drew analogies with Rome despite arguing that ‘history devises reasons why the lessons of past empires do not apply to ours’.243 Although in the light of this Rome was absent from much of Hobson’s study, he nonetheless did resort to drawing comparisons between Roman and British Imperialism, if only occasionally, to support his arguments.244 As well as the cost of Empire, Hobson’s antipathy to modern imperialism lay with his belief that it set empire against empire. This, Hobson argued, differed from the: root idea of empire in the ancient and mediaeval world [which] was that of a federation of States, under a hegemony, covering in general terms the entire known recognized world, such as was held by Rome under the so-called pax Romana.

As Roman citizens had ‘full civic rights’ in Africa, Asia, Gaul and Britain, Roman Imperialism had a ‘genuine element of internationalism’ that was lacking in its modern equivalent.245 Moreover, in controlling the lives of so-called inferior races, modern imperialism stimulated ‘a corresponding excess of national selfconsciousness’ in native populations which endangered the pax Britannica.246 If Hobson though portrayed a positive side to Roman Imperialism to sustain his anti-imperialist stance, overall his opinion of the Roman Empire was derisive and his infrequent references to it were intended to show not only the extent to which the British Empire was being administered unwisely but also to support his primary objection to it – that the Empire was bleeding the nation dry. Two particular aspects of Roman imperialism that Britain was in Hobson’s eyes foolishly emulating concerned him. First, Rome’s policy of employing ‘cheap foreign mercenary armies’ and entrusting ‘lives and possessions to the precarious fidelity of “conquered races” commanded by ambitious pro-consuls’. Britain’s equally ‘perilous dependence’ on an army made up of imperial subjects was, he argued, ‘[o]ne of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of Imperialism’.247 Secondly, and responding to a question posed by Richard Cobden in 1860 as to whether it was ‘possible’ that Britain might be corrupted by her Eastern Empire ‘just as Greece and Rome were demoralised by their contact with Asia’, Hobson’s response was that this was not only possible but ‘inevitable’.248 In one other

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respect Britain was too closely following Rome’s example. In the same way that Italian peasant farmers had been ousted from the country only to be ‘sucked into’ cities where they existed on ‘public charity’ while the vigour of the Roman elite was destroyed by luxuria and indolence, so too the same was happening in Britain. Summing up, the ‘new Imperialism’ varied ‘in no vital point from this old example’.249 Robertson was another who was openly opposed to the Empire as, like Hobson, he believed the cost of maintaining it prevented ‘vital’ domestic reforms.250 But it was not just the health and vitality of the working classes that concerned him. In primarily benefiting the wealthy, Robertson believed the Empire and the possibility of further expansion put a block on advancing the relationship between men and masters by effectively putting ‘off the day of reckoning as between capital and labour’ and securing instead ‘a possible extension of employment for labour on the old terms’.251 Taken together, the time and money expended on civilizing native populations and acquiring territories that had left the Roman ‘imperial people . . . a community diseased’252 was, in Robertson’s opinion, senseless ‘[w]ith our own race riddled with the leprosy of decivilization’ and the majority of Britons living a ‘life that the zoologist declares to be immeasurably more ignoble than that of the lowest savage whose ways he has scanned’.253 Although Robertson was also critical of the ‘uncomprehending way’ pro-imperialists scanned Roman history for their own ends, he too was not averse to comparing the ancient and modern, sometimes criticizing Rome and sometimes finding in the Rome’s favour, in order to prove his points.254 In the stormy generations in which we find Roman history taking something like clear shape among the receding mists of legend, we find on one and the same scene the play of an egoism which shirks from no extremes of tyranny within the society itself, and a vigour of patriotism which shirks no effort for the maintenance of the State against others.255

In Rome’s favour, however, was the way the Roman masses, the ‘worthless city population of idlers’ as he termed them, were provided with ‘bread and games’, whereas in Britain even the ‘dole is flinched from when there is reason to think that it can be withheld without party disaster’.256 Hobson and Robertson’s use of classical analogies was interesting and showed the extent to which, by the start of the twentieth century, Rome had become a political implement. If proimperialists used a particular interpretation of Roman Imperialism to gain support for Britain’s overseas mission, Hobson and Robertson garnered support for their nationalistic stance either by distancing the narrative on the Empire

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from Roman Imperialism (perhaps attempting to establish a non-classical understanding of the British Empire) or, on occasion, providing an alternative interpretation.257 However it was applied for pro- and anti-imperialists, Rome provided a common point of reference in which they could frame their arguments. The classical scholar, Gilbert Murray, was another who used the ancient world to express disapproval of British Imperialism but on humanitarian rather than economic grounds. In the Exploitation of Inferior Races in Ancient and Modern Times (1900), it was Aristotle’s definition of a slave that Murray used to draw attention to the inhumane treatment of natives in British territories: In so far as a person is ‘exploited’ – that is, in so far as he is used for another’s interests without any regard for his own, he is, according to Aristotle a slave. The ancients would certainly have regarded not only the enforced labour of the Matabele, but the ordinary indentured labour of ‘niggers’ in Kimberley, Kanakas in Queensland, and coolies in India, Demerara, Fiji, and the like, as slave labour.258

Murray described two systems of exploitation that were employed in Africa. The ‘compound’ system where African natives were ‘herded some 3,000 together into compounds or huge enclosures covered with wire netting’, and the ‘location’ system. This involved, ‘inducing’ natives and their families to settle where they were needed but: prevented by law from having enough land to live upon, prevented from leaving the locality by a rigorous system of passes, deliberately reduced to destitution by a Hut Tax and a Labour Tax, and thus forced into the mines to work at twopence a day.259

Murray quoted the prominent imperialist Lord Grey, a member of the South Africa Committee and colleague of Rhodes, as evidence that the oppression of indigenous populations was an acceptable government policy. ‘Means must be sought’, Grey had stated, ‘to induce the natives to seek spontaneously (sic!) employment at the mines, and to work willingly for long periods of more or less continuous service’.260 As punishment for non-payment of tax was ‘imprisonment with hard labour’, Murray concluded natives were legally reduced ‘to destitution by special laws in order to force him to work for us’.261 This system though was not comparable to any system used by Greece but to the ‘Roman plantation system’ and, in Murray’s eyes, it was the equivalent of ancient slavery.262

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The ancient employer did not specially want legal slaves; he wanted cheap alien labour, and that could only be had in the form of slaves. The modern employer can, as a rule, get his cheap alien labour by processes less wasteful, less shocking to outside opinion, and less disastrously cruel. But the essence of the demand is the same, and the essence of the thing supplied is the same. A man does not become a slave . . . through a legal process. He becomes a slave when he is brought into contact with a superior race, which can and will use him as a tool.263

Murray also dismissed as rhetoric claims that education and progress would lead to self-government. In fact, in not granting dependencies self-government, he believed Britain was committing a grave error and, what is more, an error that for the Romans had been fatal. If the Roman provinces ‘had ever really been vitalized and trained to self-government, instead of being administered by despotic bureaucracies, that Empire might never have fallen. We are at present shirking the Herculean task, just as Rome shirked it’.264 In effect, Murray used the moral questionability of the Roman Empire to debunk the British. In this respect, and aligning himself with Hobson and Robertson, Murray was asking whether or not the Roman Empire was a good thing. Regardless though of the views of anti-imperialists, the Empire remained a reality and control of it was essential, so pro-imperialists argued. Lord Curzon was adamant that native Indians could not be part of the administration. They were, he wrote to, Alfred Lyttelton, Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1903–5: crooked-minded and corrupt. We have got therefore to go on ruling them and we can only do it with success by being both kindly and virtuous. I daresay, I am talking rather like a schoolmaster; but after all, the millions I have to manage are less than school-children.265

Accordingly, despotic methods of rule carried on, as did efforts to foster an imperial spirit in Britain. The League of the Empire in 1901 and the Empire Day Movement in 1903 followed the establishment of the British Empire League in 1896. Historians continued to play their part in promoting the Empire. A. F. Pollard, founder of the Institute of Historical Research, stated in the preface to The British Empire (1909) that the book’s aim was ‘to promote a knowledge’ and, more importantly, ‘an understanding of the Empire’,266 while the 12th Earl of Meath and avid campaigner on behalf of Empire Day, Reginald Brabazon’s Our Empire Past and Present (1905), written in conjunction with Edith Jackson, lauded the origins of the Empire as a period ‘full of deeds of . . . romantic courage,

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self-sacrifice and devotion’.267 Eleanor Richardson argued for the inclusion of The Building of the British Empire (1913) on the school curriculum on the basis that the Empire was ‘a theme which should interest every one who is a member of that Empire’.268 Historians also kept alive the connection between the Roman and British Empires. The Historians’ History of the World (1908), edited by the lawyer Henry Smith Williams, claimed England was in possession of the only modern empire comparable to Rome’s.269 Ideologically, Romans and Englishmen shared a ‘conservative spirit’ while politically England was in possession of ‘provinces in the antique sense of the word’. As such, ‘the position of the ruling nation in the very midst of the ruled’ was ‘in modern times, just what it was in the days of antiquity’. Whether or not this ‘parallel’ between the two empires would endure into the future or whether England and her Empire would travel a different path to that taken by Rome remained to be seen.270 Samuel Gardiner’s Outline of English History (1881) was reprinted in 1912. In it, Gardiner maintained that the English ‘have treated the people of India’ in the same way that the Romans treated ancient Britons.271 Oxford Scholar C. R. L. Fletcher and Rudyard Kipling paid tribute to the Roman occupiers of England in a School History of England (1911). The Romans, they wrote, ‘had introduced into all their provinces a system of law so fair and so strong, that almost all the best laws of modern Europe have been founded on it’.272 Thus, it was the spirit of Roman justice that Britain was introducing into India and Egypt and, as neither of these territories had been shown such ‘justice and mercy’ since the Roman Empire’s fall, both were benefiting fully from British rule.273 As before, it was suggested that lessons could be learnt from Rome’s experience of Empire. In 1908, the reviewer of William T. Arnold’s (grandson of Thomas) Studies of Roman Imperialism, H. J. Edwards, claimed the ‘whole theme’ of Roman provincial administration was ‘so intimately connected with later history, so close a counterpart of our own imperial experience to-day, that we are almost compelled to make a study of it’.274 Arnold was an acknowledged expert on Roman history. Army officer, Ian Hamilton, present at the siege of Ladysmith and knighted soon after, wishing to give clarity to his ideas ‘about certain parallels between English and Roman history’, visited Arnold as he considered him to be ‘a competent authority’ on the subject.275 Although perhaps the influence of the Classics had diminished with the introduction of an extended curriculum, commentaries on Roman writers and translations of ancient texts, readily available in cheap editions, continued to be done in such a way that suited a modern agenda.276 As American Professor

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of Classics, Paul Shorey explained it in The Classical Journal in 1906, the ‘great writers . . . Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca, Plutarch, Dio, Lucian, Epictetus’ as well as ‘the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Julian’ were ‘all men of liberal intelligence and moral earnestness’ and it could not therefore be ‘rashly inferred that they have nothing to teach us’.277 The ardent imperialist, John A. Cramb in Reflections on the Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain (1900), published partly to justify the Anglo-South African War and partly to warn of the threat from other European powers, claimed there was a ‘consciousness within the British race of its destiny as imperial people’.278 This was a destiny Britons had in common with Romans. Polybius, himself ‘a representative of a defeated race’, provided Cramb with the evidence he needed. After ‘study of his conquerors’, Polybius was convinced that the Romans were ‘a people divinely appointed to the government, not of Hellas merely, but of the whole earth’.279 Virgil, the ‘national poet of the Empire’ as James Bryce called him, had long been considered worthy of study280 although according to the poet and classicist, J. W. Mackail, his importance ‘as an interpreter and recorder of Roman history’ had only been appreciated within the last generation’.281 Certainly it was within the last generation that the classical scholar and clergyman, James Lonsdale, had described the Aeneid as the ‘Imperial Poem’, a title it merited as in it Virgil had correctly predicted Rome’s imperial destiny.282 Preference for the order and control of Imperial Rome over the liberty of the Republic persisted as concern over the decline of the British Empire peaked. Williams’ History of the World dismissed notions that the early imperial period was ‘decadent’ and praised the wisdom of Julius Caesar and Augustus who perceiving a politically corrupt world established the only ‘form of government’ possible.283 Sir William Meyer, an administrator in India, was convinced ‘the most flourishing period of Roman rule’ was found in the 250 years after Augustus284 while J. B. Firth’s Augustus Caesar and the Organisation of the Empire of Rome (1903) appeared as part of the Heroes of Nations series, the term ‘heroes’ defined by the publishers, G. P. Putnam, as people who had ‘been accepted as types of the several national ideals’.285 Firth claimed Brutus and Crassus (who earlier in the century had been hailed as heroes) were ‘conspirators’ and guilty of slaying the one person who had the strength to bring ‘order out of the chaos’.286 He questioned those who saw the destruction of the Republic as an ‘inexpiable crime’ and Augustus as a ‘cold-blooded’ and calculating man due to his actions during the civil wars. It was ‘absurd’ in his opinion not only to judge a man for his past actions when fighting for survival but being calculating was a quality that also spelt ‘statesmanship’.287 Rather Augustus was a man possessed of a

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‘guiding principle’ that could ‘be summed up in the one word – Order. He set the Roman world in order’.288 Cambridge scholar Evelyn Shuckburgh in Augustus (1908) echoed Firth’s vision of Rome’s first emperor. Stating his intention was to present a balanced account of his ‘hero’ Augustus, Shuckburgh justified his ‘cruelty’ before the Battle of Actium (31 BC) which was explainable by ‘age and circumstances’ and had to be weighed up against what he achieved.289 Accusations that the new regime led to despotic rule in Roman provinces were dismissed on the grounds that ‘despotism there added to the sum of happiness and took nothing away’ as imperial subjects had ‘lost their independence long ago’.290 Prominent American historian, Tenney Frank’s Roman Imperialism (1914) was published worldwide. He praised Julius Caesar for being the first to ‘appreciate the barbarian of Europe and rate him above the Oriental’ and Augustus for establishing ‘orderly government’ both in Rome and the provinces. His ‘wise reform of the civil service’, Frank believed, was sufficient to withstand even the tyrannical rule of some of the later emperors.291 The classical scholar John Clarke Stobart in his influential work The Grandeur that was Rome (1912), reached similar conclusions. Stobart admitted the Roman Empire’s ‘obvious and unique resemblance to the British’ made the Empire’s fall a subject of ‘enormous interest’ and yet, for him, the idea that the Empire was in decline for 500 years was ‘ridiculous’ as Rome had ‘the most stable form of government, the strongest military and political system that has ever existed’.292 Stobart stressed Augustus’ excellent credentials to guide the new Rome claiming him to be ‘the greatest statesman’ in history and the man who had restored ‘confidence’ in and brought ‘order’ to a world on the brink of ruin.293 He rejected Tacitus’ and Suetonius’ accounts of the early Empire as biased.294 Moreover, he dismissed the latter’s descriptions of Augustus ‘as a selfish hypocrite, Tiberius as a libidinous tyrant, Gaius as a maniac, Claudius as a pedantic clown, and Nero as a monster of wickedness’ as wholly false as the evidence proved that it was under these five that the Empire grew ‘in peace and prosperity’.295 Indeed, Stobart believed, Nero who had made ‘an interesting proposal for the abolition of customs in the Empire’, deserved the title ‘The Father of Free Trade’.296 As an Inspector of Schools and subsequently the British Broadcasting Corporation’s first Director of Education, Stobart was uniquely placed to influence attitudes to Roman and British imperialism. Stobart was not alone in dismissing Tacitus’ accounts of Roman history or reinterpreting him in accordance with a modern agenda. Clearly intent on justifying British Imperialism, the prolific translator of Tacitus’ texts, George Gilbert Ramsay, published his translation of Histories in 1915. Ramsay criticized

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historians who hailed Tacitus ‘as a champion of liberty’ and sympathetic to Republican ideals as nothing was ‘further from the mark’. As evidence he detailed the speech of Cerialis to the Treveri and the Lingones (Hist. iv, 73–4), as it was in this speech that Tacitus declared ‘his faith in the justice and endurance of Roman rule’ knowing ‘of no distinction between Empire and Republic’. Moreover, it was Tacitus who told us, Ramsay wrote, that: For eight hundred years . . . Rome had been training and preparing herself for the work which she alone could do – to keep the peace among the nations. She entered Gaul for no selfish ends of her own; it was to save the Gauls from being overrun and despoiled by the Germans . . . Rome gave liberty to her peoples, preserving them from tyrants of their own, opening up to them her privileges, and exacting from them no more tribute than was needed to make sure of their own defence.297

From this Ramsay concluded that Tacitus had proclaimed, ‘himself an uncompromising Imperialist’ seeing it as Rome’s business to bring peace to the world.298 Crediting Rome with a moral motive for the invasion of a weaker nation – to give liberty – Ramsay justified Roman expansionism in similar terms to those employed by pro-imperialists to justify British expansionism. The cross-fertilization of ideas between history and politics kept Rome’s position central in debates on the Empire. J. B. Bury in ‘Darwinism and History’ (1909) argued ‘pragmatical’ historians themselves ‘regarded history as an instructress in statesmanship’.299 Author of The Romanisation of Roman Britain (first published in 1905–6), Francis Haverfield who succeeded Henry Pelham as Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford in 1907, was convinced of the didactic worth of Roman history in particular. It was, he wrote, in the modern age the ‘most instructive of all’ as ‘the problems of our own day lay strikingly near to ancient Roman controversies’.300 Although, politically Rome’s republican constitution remained, for Haverfield, ‘the one true analogy to the seeming waywardness of our English constitution’, it was ‘[i]ts imperial system, alike in its difference and similarities, [that] lights up our own Empire, for example in India, at every turn’.301 Like his peers, by the early twentieth century, Haverfield’s interpretation of Roman history was at least partly informed by scientific theories on race. Claiming Rome’s western territories had been inhabited by barbaric peoples ‘racially akin to the Italian’ who had been quickly civilized and become ‘Italian’, the incorporation of the old civilizations of the East into the Empire had been an ‘obstacle to Imperial assimilation and even to peaceful rule’.302 Haverfield compared Rome’s failure to incorporate the civilized Greeks into their culture to

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Britain’s situation in India; ‘I am told’ he wrote, that ‘we might assimilate in some sort the uncivilised hill-tribes . . . But the civilised Hindoos and Mohammedans have crystalised’.303 Haverfield was a friend and colleague of James Bryce, who as an historian and politician was ideally placed to advance current historical theories in the political arena.304 In 1901, in an essay on ‘The Roman Empire and the British Empire in India’, Bryce claimed that it was only by comparing the ancient world before the Roman conquest and India prior to the arrival of traders that it was possible to ‘appreciate what Rome did for her subjects, or what England has done in India’.305 He dismissed Rome’s Republican system of government on the grounds that it was unequal to ‘the task of governing the world’ and it was this that for Bryce made ‘the concentration of powers in a single hand’ essential.306 Moreover, he believed: When we wish to examine the methods and the results of British rule in India by the light of any other dominion exercised under conditions even remotely similar, it is to the Roman Empire of the centuries between Augustus and Honorius that we must go.307

Bryce, an admirer of Lucretius, incorporated scientifically proven notions of white superiority into his discussion on the problems of assimilation.308 Unlike Roman territories comprised of peoples ‘full of intellectual force, capable of receiving her lessons, and of rapidly rising to the level of her culture’, India’s indigenous population was either ‘intellectually backward’ or ‘inferior in energy and strength of will’. This made assimilation an impossibility.309 Bryce was not the only politician who carried on the tradition of conjuring up the past in the present. In 1908, Balfour, in his essay ‘Decadence’, claimed Roman Imperialism solved more successfully than any government before or since the ‘problem of devising a scheme’ which ‘equally satisfied the sentiments of East and West’,310 while the Earl of Cromer, Consul General of Egypt from 1883–1907, lectured on ‘Ancient and Modern Imperialism’. Cromer, President of the Classical Association, wrote to Gilbert Murray in February 1909, suggesting he address the subject in his inaugural lecture. Cromer who found classical literature ‘not only an elevating, but a very useful influence on [his] mind’, suggested comparing the Roman rather than Athenian Empire to Britain’s Empire as ‘the comparison with Rome holds much more good than that with Athens’.311 Cromer’s lecture was published in The Classical Review in June 1910. Haverfield wrote the introductory remarks introducing Cromer as a man who had ‘a unique right . . . to discuss the conditions of modern Empire’ and point ‘out the actual

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bearings of ancient history on our understanding of our own problems’.312 A fuller account of Cromer’s paper was published the same year. Expanding on his preference for the Romans, he explained, the Greek was ‘undisciplined and idealistic’ in comparison to the ‘austere and practical Roman, who not only made the law, but obeyed it’ and was born to be an imperialist.313 Duty and obedience were, for Cromer, as fundamental to the success of modern as ancient empires as his experiences in Egypt had taught him. Additionally, Rome like Britain had been compelled ‘by the imperious and irresistible necessity of acquiring defensible frontiers’ and as for neither, in Cromer’s opinion, was the motive ‘an insatiable lust for an extended dominion’ both could correctly justify expansion on the grounds that it was defensive.314 Indeed, sagacious Romans, namely Augustus and Vespasian, had recognized Rome’s limitations and ‘struggled as honestly and manfully to check the appetite for self-aggrandizement as ever Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville strove to shake off the Egyptian burthen in 1882’.315 For Cromer though assimilating conqueror and conquered was a modern problem and, like his predecessors, he believed, that one of the main obstacles to its success was that Britain was governing, as Gilbert Murray noted, a ‘vast number of races’ that were not only ‘profoundly diverse’ but also racially unlike Europeans.316 In addition, Cromer believed, a willingness to learn Latin had united conquered races to their Roman rulers whereas he feared the same could not be said in modern times. In Britain’s Eastern Empire having the ‘bond of a common, if on one side acquired, language’ was ‘too brittle to resist such powerful dissolvent forces as differences of religion and colour’. Disunity rather than unity had been the outcome.317 This though did not mean that Cromer was in favour of discarding imperial possessions and he categorically refused to contemplate any suggestion that India should be granted self-government let alone abandoned. In contrast to Haverfield’s perception of the Hindoos and Mohammedans who had reached a level of civilization that made it difficult if not impossible for them to assimilate, for Cromer, India had always been a backward nation and remained so. Therefore, ‘handing over the torch of progress and civilization’ to the nation’s people was not on his agenda for the foreseeable future. Instead, what India required was a government that had ‘something of the clearness of political vision and bluntness of expression which characterized the Imperialists of ancient Rome’.318 The idea that India and other territories remained backwards was popularly held. Mary Orde Tippet recalled how her father, Frank Herbert Bigg-Wither (d.1942), who had spent lengthy periods in India and Burma, described India as ‘a savage country’ and told that on arriving in Burma in the early twentieth century he had been ‘savagely attacked’ by ‘dacoits

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(robbers-with-violence) wild tribes’ and left for dead.319 The Times spread the idea that India had made little progress towards civilization. An editorial of 1908 portrayed India as ‘backwards’ on the grounds that their cultural output did not match that of Greece and Rome as between 1500 BC and 1000 AD. India had produced ‘no Indian Herodotus, Thucydides, or Pausanias . . . no Livy, Sallust, or Tacitus’.320 However, although the British Empire (past and present) continued to be written about in glowing terms and judged equal to, if not greater than, the Roman Empire, a subtle change occurred in presentations of it perhaps designed to make it more appealing to the growing number of anti-imperialists. The 11th Marquess of Lothian, subsequently Under-Secretary of State for India, Philip Henry Kerr, showed the change that was underway in The Growth of the British Empire (1911). On the one hand and in traditional fashion, he praised methods of rule over uncivilized ‘black and brown peoples’ that had replaced ‘riot, and bloodshed’ with ‘liberty and justice’321 while, on the other, the image he presented of the relationship between Britain and the dominions was one of mutual respect. Having abided by the principle while under British protection that, ‘every man should be allowed to choose his own living’ so long as he ‘obeyed the law’ and lived in harmony with his fellow beings, the dominions had ‘become strong daughter-nations’ to the mother-country rather than ‘separate peoples’. This led Kerr to conclude that ‘one of the greatest disasters of history’ would be the break-up of the British Empire.322 This representation of the Empire as a ‘family’ (although not entirely new having been alluded to in the latter part of the nineteenth century) circulated in the colonies.323 The racial similarities between New Zealanders, descendants of early colonizers but not the Maori people, and Britons earned New Zealand (which gained Dominion status on 9 September 1907) a favoured place within the family being ‘[t]he nearest, because the dearest, with face most like her own of all the Children of Empire, that gather round the throne’.324 Moreover, New Zealanders celebrated Empire Day, according to the May 1909 edition of the School Journal, ‘just as we might keep up mother’s birthday in the family, to show that we are still her loving children’.325 This ‘softer’ vision of the Empire however did not prevent administrators drawing analogies with Rome. Sir Charles Lucas of the Colonial Office and a contemporary of Viscount Milner, like his peers, promoted the British Empire in a steadily more nationalistic framework. In Greater Rome and Greater Britain (1912), Lucas dismissed those who maintained talk ‘about the family’ in relation to the Empire as mere rhetoric and those who saw ‘in the family analogy the bogy of Imperialism’ as, for him, the only ‘way of looking at the Empire, so far as

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it consists of the Mother Country and the self-governing Dominions . . . [was] to argue from the family’.326 In this respect, the British Empire was no different from the Roman Empire, the origins of which also lay with the family. What did though separate the two Empires were ancient and modern understandings of the term ‘family’. If Rome’s imperial family reflected the domestic family whose members were consistently subjected to despotic rule of the master, Britain’s dependent territories would on reaching maturity be granted freedom: The Roman state started with the family, and the Roman Empire reproduced the Roman family in so far as the Roman family, like the Roman Empire, was under a despotism, the patria potestas. The British family is on a different model. In a well ordered British family the sons, while they are children, are governed, protected, trained, and paid for, but always with the direct object of making them, when they come to man’s estate, self-dependent and able to stand on their own footing.327

Furthermore, Lucas persistently praised Roman achievements as Empire builders but always showed Britain’s way was superior. For instance, although the Romans were the masters in maintaining communications, as primarily the construction of roads in the provinces had been for the control and suppression of conquered subjects, Britons, whose motive for constructing roads was to develop ‘the resources of the countries through which they passed’, had the moral high ground.328 India, therefore, was ‘less a piece on a military chess-board’ in British hands than it would have been in Roman.329 Additionally, Lucas emphasized the role of the ‘ordinary individual’ in the British Empire whereas in the Roman it had been ‘the State’ not the individual that had been ‘the moving force’.330 The British Empire, Lucas implied, was something which every Briton could take pride in. Summing up: ‘if Roman and British colonization are set side by side’, he wrote, ‘they differ on the whole, as town differs from country, as conquest differs from peaceful settlement, as the state differs from the individual man’.331 The Earl of Cromer, clearly aware of the growing antipathy to Empire, also saw the need to appeal to the nationalistic mood. Unlike Lucas, however, rather than suggesting Britons were superior to their Roman counterparts, he represented Roman imperialism in a way that made it more acceptable to nationalists. Roman imperialism, he claimed in 1913, did not preclude nationalism as the ‘Roman system created a double patriotism’.332 As citizens of the Roman Empire attached themselves to a locality as well as to Rome, ‘smaller and the larger patriotism’ could ‘exist side by side’.333 In short, as the Romans had discovered, imperialism and nationalism need not be mutually exclusive.

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But, if pessimism over Britain’s future and the survival of the Empire following the Second Anglo-South African war resulted in a rise in nationalism, the First World War was to cause a resurgence of it in the interwar years. Conservative, Andrew Bonar Law, in an election address in November 1922, summed up the national mood: ‘The crying need of the nation at this moment – a need which in my judgement exceeds any other – is that we should have tranquillity and stability both at home and abroad’.334 Nonetheless, in the post-war age of emerging superpowers, Britain still had need of the Empire. Trade links had to be maintained while emigration remained one solution to the problem of unemployment made worse by demobilization.335 For, pro-imperialists persuading the public of the Empire’s fundamental role in securing Britain’s future remained crucial. Lucas was patently aware of this. In 1915, he had published six lectures which appeared together in The British Empire. By 1924 this book had significantly reached its 6th edition. Lucas’ lectures were addressed to England’s workers because he believed, as he noted in his introductory remarks, that there was a ‘suspicion’ among them, that the Empire ‘was of no use to them, and that they had no use for the Empire’.336 His intention therefore was to demonstrate: the value of the Empire to our friend John Smith . . . who is often out of work, who argues that he and his mates have not profited by the Empire, but on the contrary, pay taxes which they might not have been called upon to pay, had not the present Englishmen and past Englishmen gone fooling round the world . . . 337

Working class prosperity and national defence formed the basis of his argument. First, foreign imports provided food and clothing, raw materials and employment for workers ‘at Price’s candle factory, at Lever’s soap works, at Cadbury’s cocoa mills’ and, secondly, with England’s population ‘far below’ that of Germany and Russia meant England had no choice but to ‘include in her estimate of herself, and in the estimate which others form of her, the area and the population of her overseas Empire’.338 In Lucas’ opinion therefore, ‘the mother country must identify herself absolutely with the empire, as the one road to national salvation’.339 In effect the message Lucas was sending to England’s workers was that the Empire was necessary not only to secure their future and that of their families but also to secure the future of the nation. It was in their best interests to support the Empire but for personal and national reasons rather than to fulfil the grand designs of those who traditionally benefitted most from it.

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To support his claim Lucas resurrected a civilizing argument reminiscent of mid- rather than late-nineteenth century imperialism. As in Greater Rome and Greater Britain he drew attention to the similarities between Rome and, in order to align himself with English nationalists, England rather than Britain, prior to showing that England’s way was superior to its ancient counterpart: ‘Like the Romans of old, and to a greater extent, the English have been conspicuous in their Empire for toleration of language, race, and creed’.340 In addition to seeing evidence of this ‘in the method of declaring a British Protectorate over Egypt’, Lucas maintained the same was happening in all parts of the world controlled by the English. Reminiscent of Disraeli, he claimed, ‘Imperium goes hand in hand with libertas’341 and he reiterated what Englishmen had achieved overseas. The irrigation and reclamation initiatives and the construction of roads and rail all demonstrated that Englishmen cared for the ‘lands and peoples’ of the Empire.342 Sir Frederick Lugard, Governor General of Nigeria, also pointed out the extent to which Britain had succeeded in civilizing Africans claiming it to be the repayment of a debt Britons owed to Romans: As Roman imperialism laid the foundations of modern civilisation, and led the wild barbarians of these islands along the path of progress, so in Africa today we are repaying the debt, and bringing to the dark places of the earth, the abode of barbarism and cruelty, the torch of culture and progress, while ministering to the material needs of our own civilisation . . . If there is unrest, and a desire for independence, as in India and Egypt, it is because we have taught the value of liberty and freedom, which for centuries these peoples had not known. Their very discontent is a measure of their progress. We hold these countries because it is the genius of our race to colonise, to trade, and to govern.343

For the architectural historian, William Lethaby, Greece and Rome were the only two great civilizing nations of antiquity not because of their military prowess or their ability to manufacture goods or their business acumen but because they ‘produced spiritual things such as art and literature’ and, more importantly, ‘they developed high types of humanity’. A nation, for Lethaby, was: civilized only when it has a spiritual asset or ‘realised ideals’. The first thing you must do if you want to save civilisation is to know what civilisation is. Civilisation is first and above all a state of the mind and heart, a spiritual life.344

Thus, from the 1920s promoting the Empire to a nationalistic population resulted in the publication of histories that were different in subtle ways. Although, not

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necessarily supplanting earlier versions, the idea of Britain (or England) as a ‘parent’ was similar to the idea of Britain (or England) as a civilizer but more intimate and, used together, they provided a powerful argument as to why the Empire remained vital to Britain but in a way that was acceptable to the national mood. The shift in rhetoric added new layers of meaning and new ways of thinking about Rome that became part of the imperial rhetoric.345 F. J. C. Hearnshaw, Professor of History at King’s, for instance, argued that in Britain the word empire did not have the same ‘sinister significance’ that the word implied with regard to the Roman and other earlier Empires.346 This was because since the time of the Normans when rulers had not yet felt secure about ‘their hold on England’, the word empire ‘was used by them to connote not conquest but independence: it was adopted in their title not to indicate claims to rule alien peoples, but to assert their own freedom from external control’.347 For Hearnshaw, this historical definition of ‘empire’ which was a reference to ‘England herself ’ rather than her territories and, as such, ‘a synonym of liberty and selfdetermination’, remained the same in the present as it had in the past and it was, therefore, a term that Britons need not be ‘ashamed’ of.348 Although Hearnshaw acknowledged that the British Empire had been at one time ‘restrictive and oppressive’, he nonetheless considered that the ‘active principle’ behind the later Empire had been ‘laissez-faire’.349 Thus, and dating from around the end of the nineteenth century, the Empire could no longer be considered either a ‘millstone round the neck of the mother-country’ or as an ‘entanglement’ from which the mother-country should be freed. Rather, the Empire was: a family of daughter-nations which ought to be attached by ties of eternal affection to the parent stock, and as a group of natural allies and whose strength, if combined with those of Britain herself, could make the whole impregnably secure, both politically and economically, ‘against the envy of less happier lands’.350

Charles Lucas, as well as warning yet again of the dangers of isolating Britain from the Empire, also now distanced Britain from Rome in The Story of the Empire (1924). He agreed with Hearnshaw that the term Empire was a ‘misnomer’ implying as it did ‘military power, domination and dependence’ while giving ‘no hint of natural growth or of freedom’.351 Instead, he regarded Britain as merely ‘a province of a world-wide Commonwealth’ albeit ‘the oldest and most honoured province, the senior partner’.352 As such, the uniformity inherent in the Roman Empire was absent in the British as ‘nothing’ was ‘more alien than uniformity to the British Empire’.353 In contrast to what Cromer had

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seen as a failing of the Empire 14 years earlier – its disunity – what Lucas now argued was that its disunity was not only something to be proud of but also its saving grace. Presenting the Empire as a partnership with each part having an individual identity maintained essential ties to overseas territories and yet, significantly, allowed room for a separate English identity that fitted with the post-war nationalistic ideology. The Oxford and Cambridge scholars, Guy Wilfrid Morris and Leonard S. Wood, developed this theme of partnership in The English-Speaking Nations (1924) alternating between talk of the Empire and Commonwealth. In fact, the principle theme of the book was not what Britain had achieved through force of arms but ‘the development of the Commonwealth ideal and the gift to the world of the sense of imperial trusteeship – an imperial concept based upon nationality and self-government’.354 It was Britain’s ‘supreme achievement’ to have ‘given a new meaning to the word “Empire” ’.355 While admitting subject peoples had in the past been better treated in the French than the English colonies, Morris and Wood nonetheless claimed English colonists, particularly in India, had respected native customs and run the Empire ‘according to altruistic principles’. It was this ‘Imperial conscience’, as they called it, which proved that the mistreatment of native populations had always been ‘intolerable to British feeling’.356 Both saw the government’s decision to educate the indigenous peoples of Kenya and to put their interests above those of nonAfricans as actively demonstrating Britain was abiding by her principles and taking seriously the duties and responsibilities that came with being an imperial power.357 Indeed, this heightened ‘sense of trusteeship’ that had occurred gradually over the course of the nineteenth century had served to, at times, inspire ‘actual love’ in subject populations.358 Moreover, the ‘gift’ as Morris and Wood described it, ‘of self-government to South Africa’ in 1910 along with the attempts ‘to give India constitutional government to-day’, both demonstrated that the comparisons made between the ‘Commonwealth’ and ‘family’ were ‘no mere figure of speech’.359 Presenting the Empire as a Commonwealth, though, did not rule out the Roman Empire as a model for the two historians. They cited the English philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon (1562–1626), who had commended the Romans for their acceptance of other races and for their methods of colonization. In the same way that uniting the constitutions of the Roman colonies with Rome had ensured that ‘it was not the Romans that spread upon the world, but it was the world that spread upon the Romans’ which for Bacon was the way to ‘greatness’, Morris and Wood believed ‘[s]omething of the same sort might be said of the British Commonwealth’.360 With the Empire,

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they concluded, reliant ‘on the goodwill’ of imperial subjects rather than held by ‘force’ meant empire and democracy went ‘hand-in-hand’.361 J. C. and H. G. Robertson reinvented the Romans in a way that reflected the post-war image of English colonists. In The Story of Greece and Rome (1928), a book described by the publishers, J. M. Dent, as ‘showing the legacy of these two great nations to the modern world’,362 the Robertson’s claimed the Romans were not by nature aggressive, displaying aggression only when confronted by ‘restless neighbours’ but in the main having ‘little interest’ in political intrigue ‘and none at all in theories and ideals of government’.363 The credentials of Augustus, though, as leader of this Empire continued to be lauded. A casualty in the process was Julius Caesar. The Robertson’s clear preference was for the conservative statesman-like qualities of Augustus; his ‘tactfulness’, ‘cautious sagacity’ and ‘self-restraint’ over the ‘brilliant genius’ of Julius Caesar’.364 H. G. Wells in Outline of History (1919–20) was another who came down firmly on the side of Augustus. Compared to Caesar who was ‘dissolute and extravagant’ and showed no sign that his motive was anything other than to seize power,365 Augustus was ‘almost entirely free’ from such hedonistic motives. ‘He was neither God nor romantic hero; he was a man’, a man moreover who had organized ‘an empire that endured for centuries’.366 These visions of Augustus were remarkably similar to descriptions of Stanley Baldwin who had swept to power in 1924. The historian and son-in-law of Gilbert Murray, Arnold Toynbee, subsequently described Baldwin as a man who ‘typified the English character as it pleased the English to picture it to themselves: the character of a man who might not be a genius, but who was unmistakeably free from guile’.367 The historian and editor of the London Mercury from 1919–34, Sir J. C. Squire, in reviewing Baldwin’s On England agreed. It was, Squire wrote, ‘the work of a thoroughly representative Englishman: not the common man, but one expressing what the common man feels and cannot say for himself ’.368 Baldwin himself was keen to promote this image. He was, he admitted, no distinguished scholar but one who could ‘speak for the common folk as an ordinary man’.369 Despite his self-proclaimed lack of erudition though, he acknowledged his debt to the Classics. In fact, it was from his reading of Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid and the Odes of Horace that, Baldwin stated, he had gained ‘possession of a sense of proportion, of a standard of values, and of respect for the truth of words’ which had: proved an inestimable aid to political judgment. So far as I have had a sense of proportion it has helped me to assess the personal equation of the

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individuals, distinguished and undistinguished, who form the House of Commons. So far as I have acquired a standard of values, it has helped me to estimate speech and the written word, and has saved me many a time from bowing to the idols of the market-place.370

It was qualities then learnt from the ancients that Baldwin claimed had provided him with the ability to guide the nation and Empire in the interwar years. But, treading a careful balance between the nationalistic mood and the need for the Empire, Baldwin acknowledged, on the one hand in his lecture ‘England’, the desire for the ‘preservation of the individuality of the Englishman’ while, on the other in ‘Democracy and the Spirit of Service’, he promoted the new vision of Empire.371 ‘When we speak of Empire’, Baldwin declared, ‘it is in no spirit of flag-wagging. What we feel, I think, is this: we feel that in this great inheritance of ours, separated as it is by the seas, we have yet one home and one people’.372 The ‘great inheritance’ to which Baldwin referred was of course Rome. Although Rome had run ‘her course’, the ‘torch’ she had borne had passed through other hands to Britain ‘the youngest son’. Britain’s race was not over, he continued, ‘[b]ut we shall run more worthily so long as we base our lives on the stern virtues of the Roman character and take to ourselves the warnings that Rome left for our guidance’.373 Recovering Roman qualities ‘the pietas, the gravitas, and the truth of the spoken word’, would provide the foundations on which ‘civilization [could] be built’ and ‘on such foundations alone [could] civilizations stand’.374 Regardless then of a new interwar vision of the British Empire, Rome remained a friend of the Right (if not so much the Left) and images of the Imperial Roman Empire, albeit with new meanings attached, reflected this vision of a modern Empire working in partnership with subject territories, a parent, as Rome had been, to her many errant children. Reinterpreting the Roman Empire in a way that suited interwar ideas of imperialism ensured Rome remained the ancient historical model for the British Empire into the 1930s. But, as we shall see, positive readings of Imperial Rome and its increasingly high profile in an English intellectual tradition was not solely to do with the management of Britain’s Empire. As attitudes to race and class changed in Britain as optimism in the imperial mission waned, Rome was to be at the forefront of the debate.

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Anglo-Saxonism and the working classes For Linda Colley, it was the possession of an Empire (particularly an Eastern Empire) designated ‘British’ that caused Britons to see themselves ‘as a distinct, special and – often – superior people’ as they united in a cause to ‘act out the flattering parts of heroic conqueror, humane judge, and civilising agent’.1 This corporate image of Britishness legitimated the rule and oppression of imperial subjects. Problematic, however, in the construction of Britishness was the belief in the Anglo-Saxon origin myth that maintained Englishmen of Saxon origin were superior to Britons of Celtic origin. In other words, the problem was, as Shearer West puts it, ‘incorporating Celticism yet keeping it at arm’s length’.2 Further complicating the situation was the existence of a section of society who although English by birth were excluded politically, socially and economically from the nation.3 Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil (1845) told of the stark class division in society. It was not one nation that the Queen reigned over but two: Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each others habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws. . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR4

Despite protestations to the contrary, in reality, just as a hierarchy of races existed in the Empire with Britons at the apex, so too a hierarchy existed in Britain based on race and class. Supporting the belief in the Anglo-Saxon origin myth were the studies of physiognomists and phrenologists.5 While physiognomy detailed the varying racial traits of the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, phrenology allowed for the peculiarities and emotions, strengths and weaknesses of individuals to be

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determined through examination of the head.6 As such, so a Mr Levison was reported as saying at a dinner held by the Hull Phrenological society in 1828, being ‘instrumental in fostering and directing talent’, phrenology would be the way ‘to mitigate many of the moral evils’ that afflicted in particular the British working classes.7 Moreover, it was the influential phrenologist, George Combe, who ‘pioneered the linking of physical differences of the body with mental, moral and cultural differences, both between individuals’ and importantly ‘between nations’.8 Combe believed not only that Caucasians were superior ‘to all other races’ but also that the category Caucasian could be broken down further with the Anglo-Saxons superior to the rest.9 Phrenology, therefore, reinforced both the Anglo-Saxon myth and the class hierarchy. The conclusions reached by phrenologists were not restricted to the scientific community. In 1838, Richard Cobden established Manchester’s first phrenological society while George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope all included references to the science in their novels.10 By 1844 the Edinburgh Review could report that ‘of the great influence of Race in the production of National Character no reasonable inquirer can now doubt’.11 However, although scientists confirmed the theory of Anglo-Saxonism, it was not scientists but historians who created it.12 History recorded that England came into being with the Saxon invasion. The nation and its people, whether described as ‘Saxons, Teutons, Goths or Germans’ were, historians claimed, English, Protestant and constitutionally free.13 Translations of Tacitus’ Germania, such as the physician and writer John Aikin’s 1777 version, provided evidence that ancient Germans had been a republican society: ‘On affairs of smaller moment, the chiefs consult; on those of greater importance, the whole community’ (Ger. 11).14 Emphasis was placed on the racial similarities between the Saxons and their Germanic ancestors and the racial differences between the Saxons and Celts. In 1787, the historian and acquaintance of Edward Gibbon, John Pinkerton, on the one hand lauded Germanic character traits while, on the other, condemned the Celts as savages. The Celts, he wrote, ‘have been savages since the world began, and will be for ever savages while a separate people’.15 Again Tacitus could be cited to support this image of ancient Britons. They were a population inclined to war and the Romans had been forced ‘to reclaim’ them ‘from that rude and unsettled state’ (Agr. 21).16 Admiration for the Saxons continued into the nineteenth century.17 In 1839, the philologist and historian, John Mitchell Kemble, published Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici as he believed Englishmen were ignorant of Saxon customs. For Kemble, the Saxon’s task following the humiliation inflicted on

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England during the last years of the Roman occupation had been to ‘reinfuse life and vigour and the sanctity of a lofty morality into institutions perishing through their own corruption’.18 Any hint that the Normans had interrupted this continuous racial narrative was quashed on the grounds that either the Normans themselves were descendents of the Saxons or that the Normans following the invasion had become Englishmen. The former option was favoured by Thomas Carlyle who argued Normans were in fact ‘Saxons who had learned to speak French . . . brother-tribes’19 while Edward Augustus Freeman, subsequently Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, preferred the latter. Although admitting the arrival of the Normans must have affected the blood, language, culture and laws of the land, Freeman believed, this was but a ‘temporary overthrow of our national being’ as before too many years had passed ‘we led captive our conquerors’ and England became ‘England once again’.20 Thomas Arnold summed up the mid-nineteenth century version of English history in his inaugural lecture on modern history in 1842: We, this great English nation, whose race and language are now overrunning the earth from one end of it to the other, – we were born when the white horse of the Saxons had established his dominion from the Tweed to the Tamar.21

For Arnold, although ancient Britons and Romans might once have inhabited England, neither race were ‘our fathers; we are connected with them as men indeed, but nationally speaking, the history of Caesar’s invasion has no more to do with us, than the natural history of the animals which then inhabited our forests’.22 Like Carlyle, Arnold preferred to see the Normans as Saxons or Teutons in a cultural disguise. ‘Our English race is the German race’, he declared, ‘for though our Norman fathers had learnt to speak a stranger’s language, yet in blood, as we know, they were the Saxons’ brethren: both alike belong to the Teutonic or German stock’.23 Arnold’s argument, based on the perception that technically English society owed little to Celtic or Roman culture, was supported by philological theories.24 He believed a break had occurred in British society in the fifth century when the Saxons, ‘brethren’ of the racially and linguistically pure Germans, invaded. Tacitus had also written of the racial purity of Germans. ‘For my own part’, Tacitus was translated by the classical scholar and writer A. J. Church, ‘I agree with those who think that the tribes of Germany are free from all taint of inter-marriages with foreign nations, and that they appear as a distinct, unmixed race, like none but themselves’ (Ger. 4).25 However, although modern Englishmen were racially

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and linguistically separate from ancient Britons and Romans, politically and morally, Arnold believed Englishmen derived much from their Roman (if not British) ‘fathers’ as well as from Greece and from Israel because, for Arnold, in addition to race and language, ‘institutions and religion’ were the other two ‘great elements’ that made up a nationality.26 ‘[I]f we allow the two first of these elements’, he wrote, without the third and fourth to constitute national identity, especially when combined with sameness of place, we must then say that the northern countries of Europe have no ancient history, inasmuch as they have been inhabited from the earliest times by the same race speaking what is radically the same language. But it is better not to admit national identity, till the two elements of institutions and religion, or at any rate one of them, be added to those of blood and language. At all events it cannot be doubted, that as soon as the four are united, the national personality becomes complete.27

Both of these two additional elements – ‘institutions and religion’ – Arnold claimed, had originated in the ancient world and been passed down to modern Britain: [F]or the last eighteen hundred years, Greece has fed the human intellect; Rome, taught by Greece and improving upon her teacher, has been the source of law and government and social civilization; and what neither Greece nor Rome could furnish, the perfection of moral and spiritual truth, has been given by Christianity.28

Thus history was vital to scientists engaged in the debate on Britain’s ancestry and regardless of the fact that acceptance of this origin myth precluded racial ties to the Romans, scientists frequently included references to the Roman race in scientific tracts. For instance, Robert Knox, equally vocal in the national debate on race as he was in the debate on Empire and who believed ‘race, or hereditary descent, [was] everything’, did as much in The Races of Men (1850) if only to promote the Saxon.29 ‘The most illustrious name applied to any race has been the Roman’, wrote Knox, ‘and yet it does not appear that there ever was any distinct race to which this name could be applied. . . . No race interests us so much as the Saxon’.30 In effect, science and history supported England’s claim to be the superior partner in the imperial mission largely under the control of the English elite. The myth of Anglo-Saxonism inevitably problematized the status of the Celts. While on the one hand the construction of a corporate identity for an Empire

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designated ‘British’ implied a racial equality between Anglo-Saxon Englishmen and their Celtic neighbours, on the other hand, inclusion of the Celts in ‘Britishness’ undermined England’s claim to be dominant in the imperial enterprise and, after all, as Thomas Carlyle remarked, it was from the Saxons’ toil that there ‘became a BRITISH EMPIRE!’ in the first place.31 As a result, the process, which Edward Said terms the ‘interpretive process’,32 used to construct and categorize non-white imperial subjects as the ‘other’ was also employed to distinguish the Celts from the English. Carlyle had an equally negative opinion of the Irish Celts as he did of West Indians and, in both cases, the root of the problem lay with race. Carlyle described the ‘Irish National character’ as ‘degraded’ and evidence of this could be seen in the faces of the ‘miserable Irish’ who lived in English towns and with their ‘false ingenuity, restlessness, unreason, misery and mockery’ forced out the Saxon worker.33 Carlyle did though at least acknowledge that many of England’s ‘Celtiberian Irish brothers’34 had little option but to leave Ireland or starve, which was more than The Economist did. The Economist, founded in 1843 as the mouthpiece of the Anti-Corn Law League, showed little sympathy for the plight of the Irish.35 In 1847, two years after the start of the Irish famine and in response to an article in the Manchester Guardian about the large number of Irish poor who had recently arrived in Liverpool and applied for relief, The Economist accused Irish residents of the city of taking advantage of the ‘confusion’ to ‘apply in crowds’ for relief. After stating the Poor Law Commissioner had dealt with the situation in Liverpool by reducing deceitful claims from 22,318 to 4,996 in just one day, the paper recommended that those responsible for providing relief in Ireland itself use ‘vigilance’ to prevent fraudulent claimants being successful as this would spread ‘idleness’ among the workers. Cicero, The Economist reported, had ‘understood’ the consequences of distributing free food to the poor, for while ‘it was a measure acceptable to the Roman commonalty; for it gave them large supplies of food without labour . . . the good citizens condemned the system, because they thought that it diverted the people from industry, and rendered them lazy, and they saw that it exhausted the treasure’.36 The Welsh and Caledonian Celts fared little better although never quite sinking to the depths of the Irish. The Times considered that the Celts per se were racially inferior to the Teutons whose ‘maxims and habits . . . were alien to the Celtic mind’. However, the editorial deemed the Irish Celts as the most degenerate of all on the basis that the Welsh were more ‘orderly’ while the Cornish Celts, having benefitted from living in close proximity to the English and having therefore picked up their ‘habits and principles’, were ‘far superior’ to both.37 A previous editorial explained to Times’ readers just what had happened in Ireland. It was

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the ‘worst of all calamities’ that could have and indeed did happen in Ireland, the worst calamity being, for The Times, ‘that death of moral feeling, that fever of passion, that contagion of revenge and blood-guiltiness which ensanguines the whole island with murder’. As a result scarcely a day now passed: without the recurrence of spectacles as strange to the English mind as the horrid and unnatural deeds of the most barbarous tribes. Mingled cupidity and terror, an interest in the system and a well-grounded fear to betray it, band the whole people in a circle of blood. The Celtic Thug is not the member of a secret and separate sect. It is a national profession.38

Knox clearly agreed singling out the Irish as ‘the source of all evil’ although, like The Times, pouring scorn on the Celtic race as a whole. ‘Look at Wales’, Knox wrote, ‘look at Caledonia; it is every [sic] the same. The race must be forced from the soil; by fair means, if possible; still they must leave’.39 Making matters worse for the Irish and Caledonian Celt (but not the Lowland Scot who was a member of the Saxon race) was the fact that they were conquered peoples. ‘Culloden’, Knox wrote, ‘decided the fate of . . . the Caledonian Celt’ while ‘Celtic Ireland fell at the Boyne’.40 An anonymous article that appeared in the Anthropological Review in 1868 entitled ‘Knox on the Saxon Race’ implied that the Celts had made little progress since the Roman occupation. The texts of Cicero and Caesar provided the writer with evidence that historically the Celts had always been inferior to other European races. Whereas Cicero considered them ‘the ugliest and stupidest’ of peoples, for Caesar it was ‘their domestic and social habits’ that showed them to be ‘the most savage of nations’.41 Moreover, the writer continued, during the period of Roman occupation, the ancient Britons became ‘so effeminate’ and so enervated by the pax Romana that after the Romans’ departure being ‘unable’ to ward-off attacks from the Picts, they ‘whined to the Romans for help’.42 Even Matthew Arnold in his essay ‘On the Study of Celtic Literature’ (1866), despite his admiration for ‘Celtic genius’43 and in particular for Wales ‘where the people, the genuine people’ knew the past, considered the ‘sooner the Welsh language disappears as an instrument of the practical, political, social life of Wales, the better; the better for England, the better for Wales itself ’.44 Nor was it just the Celts who were the marginalized ‘other’ in Britain. With the title ‘Englishman’ reserved for upper and middle class Anglo-Saxons, the majority of the population, the disenfranchized working classes, did not meet the requisite criteria.45 Echoing the political division in the nation was the economic disparity between the classes. Speaking in the House of Commons in February 1843, William Gladstone, at the time President of the Board of Trade

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in Robert Peel’s government, told of ‘an increase in the privations and distress’ in the working classes that was in stark contrast to ‘a constant accumulation of wealth’ in the upper.46 Popular mid-century Victorian novelists portrayed the vast gap that existed between the rich and poor in describing the properties of their principal characters. For instance, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mr Carson in Mary Barton (1848) possessed ‘a good house, and furnished it with disregard to expense’, whereas the impoverished Davenport family dwelt in a fetid cellar where ‘the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up’ through the floor.47 However, for many, there was a more fundamental difference between the classes than that which arose out of political and economic inequality. Supporting the notion of a perceived racial inferiority in the working classes was the construction and categorization of them as the ‘other’ alongside imperial subjects and the Celts. Charles Kingsley in Yeast compared labourers to native Americans in order to highlight the backwardness of the former. While ‘wild Indians in the Brazils’ were identifiable as savages from the ‘skins and feathers’ they wore, neither the Irish nor English worker could be considered any more civilized because they happened to dress in ‘a coat and trousers’.48 Kingsley, like his peers, believed the Teutons were the ancestors of Englishmen and irrespective of his derisive analogy between Romans and ‘Trolls’, Romans were nonetheless far superior to Britain’s masses.49 They were, Kingsley stated, ‘more like men than half our English labourers’, some of whom hardly knew their own names (‘a sure sign of low civilisation’) and communicated in a fashion reminiscent of ‘savages’.50 By implication the lower orders were not descended from the Teutons and, thus, were culturally and racially different. Comparing the customs and sub-standard living conditions of workers to those of ‘savage’ populations was another method used to delineate the classes.51 For John Ruskin, the urban working class fell short of being Englishmen ‘when the comfort, the peace, the religion of home’ could no longer ‘be felt’ and this being the case, ‘the crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population’ differed in no great way ‘from the tents of the Arabs or the Gipsy’.52 The social reformer, Henry Mayhew, alleged in London Labour and the London Poor (1851) that in the same way African tribes who abided by ‘social laws’ were ‘surrounded by hordes of vagabonds and outcasts from their own community’, such as, the ‘Fingoes’, a tribe that brought to mind ‘wanderers, beggars, or outcasts’, so too a similar situation was now occurring in and around Britain’s cities.53 What is more, Britain’s ‘nomadic races’ from the town and from the country but in particular from the former, ‘the pickpockets – the beggars – the prostitutes – the street-sellers – the street-performers – the cabmen – the

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coachmen – the watermen – the sailors’ all showed, in Mayhew’s estimation, ‘a greater development of the animal than of the intellectual or moral nature of man’. Wanderers therefore were identifiable by physical and moral differences including: high cheek-bones and protruding jaws – for their use of a slang language – for their lax ideas of property – for their general improvidence – their repugnance to continuous labour – their disregard of female honour – their love of cruelty – their pugnacity – and their utter want of religion.54

Disrespect for women and a lax morality was sufficient proof that ‘wanderers’ were not descendants of the Teutons. Again, Church’s translation of Germania confirmed that respect for women and moral virtues were Germanic traits as ancient Germans believed first, that women had ‘a certain sanctity and prescience’, secondly, they had a strict ‘marriage code’ and, thirdly, they would not laugh ‘at vice’ or ‘call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted’ (Ger. 8, 18 and 19).55 Tacitus’ description of German society was, so Freeman professed, ‘essentially faithful’ as the more historians delved into the history of the ancient Teutons, ‘the more fully do we find the statements of the Roman historian borne out’.56 In a national discourse that defined the Celts (although, according to Freeman, the Celts did belong to the Aryan family but their ‘history’ had ‘been less brilliant’57) and lower orders as outsiders and reserved the category of true ‘Englishman’ for Anglo-Saxon gentlemen, the imprint of Rome could not be seen as genetic. Yet the absence of blood, as Thomas Arnold had pointed out, did not preclude all ties between Englishmen and Romans. Freeman too hinted at some fundamental but not necessarily racial tie between the two. Lecturing on ancient populations, on the one hand, he claimed that as Britons had ‘ceased to be Roman’ before the Saxon conquest then they could have ‘no true Roman element’ in them but, on the other hand, he argued that histories of Greeks, Romans and Teutons were ‘striking and instructive’ in themselves but even more so because all three were the ‘brethren of one common stock, parted kinsmen who shared a common heritage which they knew not of ’.58 A ‘common heritage’ as well as knowledge of Greek and Latin was enough to make it commonsense for comparisons to be drawn between English ‘gentlemen’ and Romans in particular.59 Anthony Trollope believed Cicero resembled ‘a well-bred polished gentleman of the present day’60 while Matthew Arnold, who admitted knowledge of Greek and Latin acted ‘as an engine of social and class distinction’,61 regarded Marcus Aurelius in much the same way. In fact, neither Alfred the Great nor Saint Louis, he wrote, could ‘be morally and intellectually

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as near to us as Marcus Aurelius’ as not only was he ‘the ruler of the grandest of empires; and . . . one of the best of men’, but he was also a man who had ‘lived and acted’ in an era ‘akin to our own, in a brilliant centre of civilisation’.62 An editorial in The Times in praising the exploits of Admiral Sir Charles Napier (1786–1860), veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and at the time involved in the Crimean, compared him to the ‘FABII and DECII of ancient Rome’ as, like them, Napier was ‘born to fight successfully the battles of the country’ while, Sir Henry Lawrence (1806–57), who had died at Lucknow and his nephew Sir John Lawrence (1811–79), Viceroy of India from 1864–69, were likened to Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.63 Even in fiction, comparisons were made. For instance, in Middlemarch (1871–2), George Eliot likened the wisdom and bravery of the solidly middle-class English farmer, Mr Garth, to that of the Roman farmer turned military leader, Cincinnatus.64 Maintaining a class hierarchy that gave the ruling elite control of the masses had become a priority following the social unrest in Britain during the 1840s and the 1848 European revolutions. Both had demonstrated the power of the masses if unchecked.65 Despite expressions of relief that revolution had been avoided (see, for instance, John Kemble – ‘On every side of us thrones totter. . . . Yet the exalted Lady who wields the sceptre of these realms, sits safe upon her throne’66) fear of a resurgence in popular unrest, such as Chartism had inspired, remained. Although Thomas Carlyle deflected arguments for political reform on the grounds that: Democracy never yet, that we heard of, was able to accomplish much work, beyond that same cancelling of itself. . . . In Rome and Athens, as elsewhere, if we look practically, we shall find that it was not by loud voting and debating of many, but by wise insight and ordering of a few that the work was done.67

increasingly scientific theories used to justify despotic rule of non-white races were employed to counteract attempts by the working classes to change the status quo.68 Regardless though of their status as the ‘other’ in the same way that imperial subjects at least before the Indian Mutiny had not been seen to be beyond salvation, neither were Britain’s marginalized ‘others’.69 Even in this, though, certain groups were considered less likely to progress than others. The Celts, especially the Irish Celts, were considered the least likely to advance. Irish involvement in the Chartist movement did not help. Charles Kingsley, in Alton Locke (1850), had written of the Irish and English working classes as being united

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in a cause, but disunited by race. On the one hand, Locke declared ‘Ireland’s wrongs are England’s. We have the same oppressors. We must make common cause against the tyrants’ while, on the other, his wish was that the Irish, ‘ninetenths’ of whom were ‘liars’, had ‘stayed at home, and ranted on the other side of the water’.70 Knox stirred up memories of unrest in France and the French Revolution to reinforce derogatory images of the Celts generally but the Irish specifically. ‘On four eventful occasions’, he wrote: the supreme power has returned into the hands of the Celtic men of France. . . . What use have they made of this power?. . . . Furious fanaticism; a love of war and disorder; a hatred for order and patient industry; no accumulative habits; restless treacherous, uncertain: look at Ireland.

The capricious British Celt also posed a threat to the stability of the Empire, in Knox’s opinion, as it was ‘the continental Celt’ who ‘deserted and betrayed the greatest of men, Napoleon’ and was thus responsible for France ‘losing the sovereignty of the world’.71 Despite as a self-proclaimed Saxonist Knox professed dislike of ‘dynasties, monarchies, bayonet governments’, they nonetheless seemed to be the only types of governments ‘suitable for the Celtic man’.72 Even Matthew Arnold, in spite of his belief that a touch of Celticism would relieve the ‘Philistinism’ of the Saxon, considered the Celts ineffectual both in ‘material civilisation . . . and in politics’ although, based on ‘the most weighty and explicit testimony, – Strabo’s, Caesar’s, Lucan’s’, – this race had historically ‘once possessed a special, profound, spiritual discipline’ that set them above the rest.73 Lucan’s admiration of the Celtic race: ‘To you only is given knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven’, was, for Arnold, proof that in the distant past the Celts had possessed great intellectual and/or spiritual wisdom.74 Time, though, had not been kind to the Celts and as they lost their grip on ‘the world’, they had become ‘undisciplinable, anarchical, and turbulent by nature’ which was the opposite of the disposition of the Anglo-Saxons.75 Like Knox, Arnold compared Celtic France with Ireland although, for him, the former had progressed whereas the latter had stagnated. The reason for this was that Celtic France had been Romanized: ‘Gaul, without changing the basis of her blood, became for all practical intents and purposes, a Latin country, France and not Ireland, through the Roman conquest’.76 Consequently, for Arnold, ‘the governing character of France, as a power in the world’ was ‘Latin; such was the force of Greek and Roman civilisation upon a race whose whole mass remained Celtic’.77 Reflecting the drive to integrate the Normans into English history for

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the sake of historical continuity, Arnold, like his peers, believed the Normans at heart were Teutons. However, it was not their Germanic origins that made the Normans interesting from England’s perspective but the fact that they too had benefited from Roman rule. Like the French, ‘the governing point in the history of the Norman race’, Arnold stated, ‘so far, at least as we English have to do with it, – is not its Teutonic origin, but its Latin civilisation’.78 Latinism, Arnold continued, ‘had conquered the Germanism imported by the Frankish and other invasions’ leaving the Normans with ‘the Roman talent for affairs, the Roman decisiveness in emergencies’.79 By default, England had benefited from this ‘talent’ and ‘decisiveness’ with the arrival of the Normans. In the hierarchy of marginalized Britons though, the greatest opportunity for advancement lay, so it was believed, with the English working classes. Although race was not everything in this analysis, it nonetheless was present in the argument and, ironically, it was an English labourer’s Teutonic heritage, a heritage denied him on account of his class, that the Scottish-born, medically trained supporter of universal suffrage, Samuel Smiles, believed would allow him to progress. As Smiles explained it in Self Help (1859), improvement was dependent on individual effort and individual effort was ‘thoroughly characteristic of the Teuton’.80 Carlyle was another who believed the Saxon worker had a greater chance of progressing than his Celtic brethren generally but his Irish brethren most of all as, unlike the Irish Celt, the Saxon worker had not ‘sunk from decent manhood to squalid apehood’.81 Opinion though was divided on whether progress especially through education was advantageous. Whereas John Stuart Mill in Principles of Political Economy (1848) argued education would speed up the process by turning the working classes into ‘rational beings’, Kingsley disagreed.82 ‘It is not mere starvation which goads the Leicester weaver to madness’ he wrote in Yeast, ‘It is starvation with education, – an empty stomach and a cultivated even though miscultivated mind’.83 Kingsley admitted in his diary that he had once, like Mill, believed that ‘all men’ were born equal and that any inequalities in ‘intellect or morals’ were wholly dependent on circumstances, circumstances which could be rectified through education.84 However, by 1866, he considered himself cured of this notion ‘in spite of its seeming justice and charity, by the harsh school of facts’. Not only did he believe the revolutionary activities prevalent across Europe before 1848 had been caused by the misconception that education for all was the way forward, but his 25 years’ experience of attempting to educate parishioners had taught him ‘that there are congenital differences and hereditary tendencies which defy all education from circumstances’.

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Extending this argument allowed Kingsley to argue against Irish Home Rule as ‘differences of race are so great, that certain races, e.g. the Irish Celts, seem quite unfit for self-government’.85 However, if for some the Teutonism of the English masses gave them more of an opportunity to advance, paradoxically it was their Teutonism that caused Matthew Arnold in ‘Culture and Anarchy’ (1869) to see them as a greater danger to political stability than the Celts. Although Fenianism caused alarm, it was not the ‘desperate and dangerous’ Fenian but the English labourer that could not be trusted. The Fenian, in Arnold’s opinion, as a conquered man and a ‘Papist’ who showed no respect for English traditions, was not entitled to have the same right to freedom as an Englishman. ‘It never was any part of our creed’, he argued: that the great right and blessedness of an Irishman, or, indeed, of anybody on earth except an Englishman is to do as he likes; and we can have no scruple at all about abridging, if necessary, a non-Englishman’s assertion of personal liberty.86

An English worker, however, who was beginning to put into ‘practice’ his ‘right to do what he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes’, tended towards ‘anarchy’.87 As this was the case what was lacking in Britain, in Arnold’s opinion, was: the notion, so familiar on the Continent and to antiquity, of the State – the nation in its collective and corporate character, entrusted with stringent powers for the general advantage, and controlling individual wills in the name of an interest wider than that of individuals.88

Control of the English masses ‘our own flesh and blood . . . Protestant . . . [and] framed by nature to do as we do, hate what we hate, love what we love’, was for Arnold essential.89 The belief in the Anglo-Saxon origin myth though was to give way as the fear that the Empire was in jeopardy, partly from the aggrandizement aims of other European nations and partly from the insular attitude of Britons to it, had to be faced. A show of unity and presenting a united British front to the world, so many believed, necessitated including the Celts (although some were more worthy than others) in the new mixed origin myth. Moreover, with some, if not all, of the working classes part of the political nation following the passing of the 1867 Second Reform Act, this new myth was less defined along class lines. Controlling rebellious elements across Britain remained a paramount objective

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but it had to be tempered by other more pressing needs. The construction of an origin myth that included Britain’s marginalized ‘others’ was dependent on a rewriting of British history and a reassessment of the period of Roman occupation.

The integration of Britain’s ‘others’ Even before their gradual integration into the new origin myth, some had acknowledged the contribution the Celt had made to the imperial enterprise.90 Charles Dilke, for instance, considered the Scottish Celt, if not the Irish, as a successful colonizer. As he put it, ‘[h]alf the most prominent among the statesmen of the Canadian Confederation, of Victoria, and of Queensland are born Scots, and all the great merchants of India are of the same nation’. In contrast, all the Irish had contributed was ‘supplying America with that which they never possessed before – a criminal and pauper class’.91 Others had challenged the belief in Anglo-Saxonism and the racial purity of Englishmen. Matthew Arnold had suggested there had been a cultural if not racial blending of the Saxon and Celt in his study of Celtic literature. ‘I say’, he wrote, ‘that there is a Celtic element in the English nature, as well as a Germanic element, and that this element manifests itself in our spirit and literature’.92 Both Milton and Shakespeare had displayed this ‘element’ of Celticism. While Milton spoke ‘a genius to whose composition the Celtic fibre was not wholly a stranger’, Shakespeare ‘in handling nature, touches this Celtic note so exquisitely, that perhaps one is inclined to be always looking for the Celtic note in him’.93 The scientist John Crawfurd had gone further suggesting that biologically Englishmen were by descent Celts more than Teutons as the Saxon invaders must have ‘mixed their blood largely with that of the original inhabitants’.94 Even Freeman, regardless of his belief in Anglo-Saxonism, suggested ‘no existing nation is . . . purely Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, or anything else. All races have assimilated a greater or less [sic] amount of foreign elements’.95 The Welshmen Luke Owen Pike in The English and Their Origin (1866) and Thomas Nicholas in The Pedigree of the English People (1868), not surprisingly, had also challenged the Teutonic myth. For Pike, ‘historical, philological, physical and psychical characteristics’ proved the English were largely Celts, while Nicholas came to the same conclusion by comparing the ‘different qualities’ belonging to the two races.96 Thomas Wright, historian and author of the popular The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon (1851), had specifically challenged attitudes to the Irish.

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Significantly, he countered claims of Irish backwardness on the grounds that the Irish had not received the benefits of Rome’s civilizing mission, maintaining that the Romans had in fact invaded and occupied Ireland. Agricola, Wright claimed, had great plans for the invasion and these plans were not abandoned following his recall to Rome. ‘I think’, Wright therefore argued, ‘we are quite justified in concluding that, subsequent to Agricola’s removal, his plan for the invasion of Ireland had been carried into execution, and successfully’.97 Further evidence of this was the discovery of hoards of Roman coins and weapons in Ulster and the testimony of Juvenal: ‘We have, indeed, advanced our arms beyond the shores of Juverna and the recently conquered Orkneys, and the Britons contented with a very short night’ (Sat. 2). In Wright’s opinion, as no one doubted ‘Agricola’s victories over the Caledonii’, nor could there be any doubt over the Roman occupation of Ireland.98 Notions that Britons were a mixed race gained ground as the century progressed. A steady decline in optimism over the Empire’s future perhaps made it more attractive to view Britain as one unit.99 Gradually a new origin myth emerged that predated Anglo-Saxonism. In 1870, Thomas Huxley, president of the Ethnological Society (1868–71) and Geological Society (1869–71), asked in an article published by the Anthropological Review: ‘Who are the Celts? Who are the Teutons?’100 Huxley believed that: the Teutons had conquered rather than exterminated the Celts in all but the east and south-east of Britain after the Romans’ departure (which pre-supposes that Huxley believed the Celts survived the Roman occupation); the inhabitants of Devon and Cornwall were ‘as little Anglo-Saxons as Northumbrians are Welsh’; the Normans were ‘Celtic as well as Teutonic’ and the men of Tipperary were ‘as much or as little an Anglo-Saxon as a native of Devonshire’.101 Moreover, Huxley continued, ancient authors all agreed that the Celts of Gaul and elsewhere in the Empire as well as the ancient Britons in the north-east all shared similar characteristics having ‘a tall stature, fair hair of a reddish or yellow tinge, blue eyes, and fair skins’, a description the ancients also used to describe other Teutons, ‘Angles, Saxons, Danes, or Norsemen’.102 Moving on to the darker-skinned inhabitants of Britain and Ireland, ‘the so-called black Celts’ these, Huxley contended, were descended from the Silures of Shropshire and South Wales who Tacitus compared ‘with the Aquitani’ of southern France and Spain. Thus, it was Iberian blood that accounted for Britain’s darker races. As the Celtic language had died out in Cornwall but the blood remained, so too had ‘Iberian blood . . . although all traces of the language may have been obliterated’.103 As a final point, Huxley claimed, ‘one of the keenest observers who ever lived, and who had the opportunity of comparing the Celt and the

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German side by side – I mean Julius Caesar – tells us especially that the Gauls in former days were better men than the Germans’.104 Grant Allen, author of The British Barbarians (1895), held similar views. He dismissed claims that the Celts had ever been ‘utterly exterminated’ and that there was no Celtic blood in Englishmen based on the assumption that the English did not marry Celts.105 White men in Jamaica do not marry native women, he stated, but nonetheless there were ‘no less than nine mulattoes to every white person’ on the island.106 Industrialization, ‘the great social revolution’, as Allen termed it, had also ‘exercised an immense reaction in favour of the older race’ as the Celt poured into the manufacturing towns.107 For Allen, there was Celtic blood in ‘almost all English families’ and Britain, although ‘Teutonic in form’ was ‘largely and even preponderantly Keltic in matter’.108 Allen agreed with Dilke that the Celt was the ‘great colonising race’ although, unlike Dilke, he included the Irish. ‘Personal experience and observation of names’ led him to the conclusion ‘that by far the largest number of Canadians are of Irish, Highland Scotch, Welsh, or Breton extractions’ and the same could be said of Australia and New Zealand.109 A major obstacle, though, to the integration of the Celt into ‘Britishness’ on a more equal footing with the Saxon was the Irish. Whereas the Celts of Cornwall, Wales and Scotland were tolerable Britons, the controversial question of Irish Home Rule as well as greater antipathy to the Irish generally, was a barrier to accepting them into ‘Britishness’.110 Tension arose between the need to present a united front and the desire, for many, to deny the Irish parity in order to justify England’s hegemony in Ireland. Huxley’s article in the Anthropological Review sparked off a debate indicative of the strength of anti-Irish feeling and opponents of Huxley called upon Roman sources to support their contentions. A letter to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette on ‘Professor Huxley’s Last New Theory’ from ‘A Devonshire Man’, obviously offended at the connection Huxley made between the inhabitants of Devon and Ireland, attacked Huxley personally. If ‘he has a fault’, the writer stated, ‘it is perhaps, that like, Caesar, he is ambitious’.111 In the writer’s opinion and based on his knowledge of the history and geography of the south-west of England as well as the surnames and local dialect, ‘the Devonshire man approache[d] more nearly than even the average Englishman to the recognised Teutonic type’. The writer questioned Huxley’s use of Caesar as a source. ‘He tells us what Caesar had heard as to the comparative merits of Gauls and Germans . . . but he does not tell us what this “keen observer” saw’.112 Nonetheless, despite casting doubts on Huxley’s use of Caesar as a source, the writer used Caesar’s testimony to distinguish between the modern Irish Celt (who had clearly not changed at all since Caesar’s day) and Devonshire man.

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He does not tell us that Caesar draws a broad distinction – one may almost say a contrast – between the Gauls and Germans as he knew them. He does not tell us that Caesar paints the Celt of his day in ‘living characters’, which even now, after the lapse of nearly 2,000 years, are most curiously applicable even in the smallest particular to the Celtic population of Ireland, and still utterly inapplicable to the Germans and their kindred.

Included in what Caesar had ‘observed’ of the Celts – their impulsiveness, their aggressiveness, their fickleness, their instability and the ‘power’ of their religious leaders (showing the ongoing antagonism towards Catholicism despite the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829) – the writer continued: Now, I would ask any Englishman who has lived in the Celtic part of Ireland whether this ‘keen observer’ if he had lived in our day, could have written a description of the actual Irish Celt more exact or more exhaustive than this, and I would ask any Irishman who has ever lived in Devonshire whether he could recognise any one of those traits in the Devonshire peasant.113

According to John Beddoe, at the time president of the Anthropological Society, the racial make-up of the British Isles was, by now, attracting widespread interest across the nation evident from the publication of letters in the Saturday Review, the Spectator and the Standard as well as the Pall Mall Gazette. Beddoe’s response to Huxley, which tallied with ‘A Devonshire Man’s’, appeared in the Standard. For Beddoe, it was Caligula who had pointed out physical differences between the Celt and German. ‘Caligula’, Beddoe wrote, ‘wishing to deceive the Roman populace with the semblance of a triumph over Germans, bought the tallest Gallic slaves and dyed their hair’.114 Although admitting to some Danish, AngloSaxon or Iberian blood in the Irish population, he nonetheless believed one ‘type’ predominated in Ireland – the Celt – identifiable by his elongated head, strange facial features and colouring. With such physical differences equating to mental and moral differences, in Beddoe’s mind, ‘[a]s the average Irishman differs from the average Englishman in the former, so we should expect him equally to differ in the latter respect’.115 The Liberal politician, Sir Edward Bunbury, agreed claiming the Irish had a long history of backwardness. Using Strabo as his source, Bunbury argued, that Ireland in the distant past had been inhabited by ‘savages, addicted to cannibalism, and holding promiscuous intercourse with their women’.116 Nonetheless, with the exception of the Irish, by the mid-1880s there had been a perceptible shift in attitude to the British Celt that made the new origin myth viable. Ironically it was John Beddoe in Races of Britain (1885) who summed up the extent of the change. ‘It is not very long since educated

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opinion considered the English and lowland Scots an almost purely Teutonic people’, Beddoe wrote, ‘[n]ow the current runs so much the other way that I have had to take up the attitude of an apologist of the “Saxon” view’.117 Rewriting England’s history naturally necessitated a reappraisal of the Roman occupation of Britain and a reassessment of traditional understandings of the contribution the Roman had made to the racial make-up of the modern Briton and, in the same way, the Norman had been reinvented to fit mid-century interpretations of English history, so too was the Roman. Again, intellectual opinion varied. Despite arguing strongly on behalf of the Celt, in Huxley’s estimation, the influence of the Roman had been minimal as Roman blood and the Latin language appeared ‘to have made no more impression on the ancient British people than the English blood and language have on the Hindoos’.118 Neither culturally nor racially were the Romans ancestors to the Britons in this reading. Others disagreed. Matthew Arnold, as already noted, in comparing Marcus Aurelius and English ‘gentlemen’ had implied a cultural if not racial tie. Moreover he went further: perhaps no nation after the Greeks and Romans, has so clearly felt in what true rhetoric, rhetoric of the best kind, consists, and reached so high a pitch of excellence in this, as the English. . . . I do think we may, without fear of being contradicted and accused of blind nation vanity, assert to have inherited the great Greek and Roman oratorical tradition more than the orators of any other country. . . . And the affinity of spirit in our best public life and greatest public men to those of Rome, has often struck observers, foreign as well as English.119

According to The Times, Garibaldi was one such astute foreigner who recognized that ‘of all modern nations’ England was ‘most like ancient Rome’. A Times’ editorial listed several points of ‘resemblance’: Like old Rome, England is the general refuge and asylum of all who come prepared to make her their home, and to do their duty as sons. Like Rome, we assimilate all who come to us till the nationality disappears. . . . As in Rome, our Constitution has undergone for centuries continual development in the direction of liberty and power, yet without the sacrifice of the virtues usually ascribed to the earlier and simpler arrangements of society.

The Times also alluded to a deeper connection to the Romans. We shall not inquire how it is that England has so much of Old Rome in her, but it certainly is something that so mighty a Power was the master and

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tutor of her infancy. It was in a Roman cradle and under Roman nurses that young England grew her strong nerve and her resolute will for three or four centuries.120

Nor was it merely the elite who had inherited Roman blood according to the reviewer of Napoleon III’s History of Julius Caesar as the ‘best representative of the British Celt’ was ‘the normal Englishman, the well-amalgamated result of Roman, Saxon, Scandinavian and Norman infusion. He is the re-habilitated Celt – in the process of resurrection’.121 It was though a member of the legal profession, Henry Charles Coote, who in challenging Teutonism in The Romans of Britain (1878), introduced explicitly into historical scholarship the idea of a racial tie between Britons and Romans. Coote’s hypothesis was based on his belief that the Celts had survived the Roman invasion and their joint issue, the Romano-Britons, had survived the Saxon. By accepting, he stated: the alleged extermination of the Romano-Britons we shall find ourselves reduced to admit, at the starting-point of our annals, a mere absurdity, viz., that a few generations after the Anglo-Saxon occupation, the Anglo-Saxon race, which we know to have been at the epoch of that event unequivocally barbarous, was enabled, by contact only of a soil once tenanted by a civilized, artistic, and policée race, and without communication with that or any other race equally gifted, to become possessed, through spontaneous and unconditioned development, not merely of civilization, but of the identical civilization of the erased race. . . . The theory itself is not only untrue as a fact, but is also disparaging to the national pedigree. . . . It disentitles a large proportion of the Britons of Imperial Rome to the sympathies of the present race of Englishmen, between whom and the Eternal City it leaves a gap without connexion or transition.122

Coote insisted there was evidence that Roman colonizers ‘survived all the barbarian conquests of our country, and continued to exist eo nominee as a separate and indefeasible caste and nationality’.123 He summed up his view of English history in a few sentences. First, the east and middle England was Teutonic ‘at the epoch of the imperial conquests’.124 Secondly, Saxon barbarians ‘did not destroy or exterminate any one class of the inhabitants of Roman Britain’ and as a result ‘the usages and the civilization of the lost empire, sheltered in the ark of the cities, preserved their vital and active forces’.125 Thirdly, the Anglo-Saxons subsequently fell to the Danes who, in turn, fell before the Normans and, finally, it was the Norman invasion, or ‘Gallo-Roman’ invasion as Coote termed it, that relieved ‘the Roman element in England from its former

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depression’.126 As the reviewer of Julius Caesar had argued for the rehabilitated Celt, so Coote argued, the ‘Roman element’ had been ‘rehabilitated’ from the time of the Norman invasion although in reality this Roman element had never ceased ‘in preserving and transmitting the deposit of civilization’ since the time of the Roman invasion.127 Moreover, as descendants of the barbarian invaders decreased, there was a corresponding increase in the ‘descendants of the Roman colonists’ which ‘spread from generation to generation’.128 England, Coote concluded, is ‘as much a Latin country as Spain or Gaul, though, unlike them, she has disguised her pedigree by her adopted Teutonic idiom’.129 A review of Romans of Britain by a J. F. Nicholls, that appeared in the Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, claimed Coote’s argument was ‘well sustained, calmly . . . irrefutably reasoned out . . . we look upon [the book] as supplying the lost link which brings the Briton of the 19th century into absolute connexion with his forefathers, the coloni of Imperial Rome’.130 Four years later in Early Britain, Roman Britain, Reverend H. M. Scarth enlarged on Coote’s theory. Maintaining his conclusions were supported by archaeological evidence, the study of coins and the remains of Roman monuments, all of which gave ‘life and colour’ to historical texts, Scarth claimed he could find no evidence to suggest that the ancient Britons had been wiped out by the Romans or Saxons.131 Not only did strong, healthy Britons serve in the armies of Rome but as the Saxon incursion ‘never destroyed either the RomanoBritish population or entirely uprooted what the Roman had planted’, then Roman and British blood must have ‘mingled’ and this blood had ‘flowed ever since in English veins’.132 For both Coote and Scarth there was little doubt that the Celts and Romans were the ancestors of modern Britons. Although Roman values remained primarily cultural, that cultural continuity was slowly coming to be read as resulting from a demographic continuity. By the 1880s, scientists engaged in study of Britain’s ancestry were also suggesting a biological inheritance from the Romans. The philologist and orientalist, A. H. Sayce, referred to Coote in an address to the Anthropological Association. Coote, Sayce stated, had correctly ‘pointed out the continuity of laws and customs and territorial rights between the Roman and the Saxon era’ which took for granted ‘a continuity of population’. Similarly to historians Sayce dismissed theories based on the lack of Celtic words during the Anglo-Saxon period that the Celts had been exterminated by the Romans. He argued instead that ‘Roman Britain . . . was so thoroughly Romanised indeed that before the end of the first century, according to Tacitus, even the inhabitants of North Wales had adopted the Roman dress and the Roman habits of luxury’.133 In fact, for Sayce, if Latin had not become the language of Britain after four centuries of occupation it

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would have been ‘a miracle’.134 As a result and supporting John Crawfurd’s earlier contention that speech was ‘a mere acquirement’ and not ‘evidence of race’,135 Sayce believed the ‘philological argument’ had ‘been cut away from under the feet of the advocates of the theory of extermination’.136 If Sayce undermined philological theories in order to prove the British population were racially diverse, the psychologist, Charles Myers, reached a similar conclusion by combining anthropology and ancient testimony. Skulls unearthed in Britain, Myers claimed, had been identified as either the Cimbri or Belgae who had originally inhabited, according to Tacitus, Germany.137 Furthermore, Tacitus had written of Germans, namely the Batavians, fighting bravely in Britain in the first century, while ‘a panegyric of Mamertius’ proved that during Diocletian’s reign (284–303 AD) Germans lived in Britain.138 In addition, physical evidence suggested to Myers that ancient Britons had interacted racially as well as culturally with the Romans prior to the Saxon invasion. Skulls unearthed at Brandon in Suffolk were neither purely Gallic nor Roman as they were distinguishable from other skulls identified as Gallic and had no ‘traces of a true Roman or Italian element among them’. Rather the Brandon skulls that resembled ‘skulls styled Romano-British’ in a Cambridge museum, led Myers to the conclusion that the skulls were the remains of the progeny of Romans and Britons.139 John Beddoe also pointed out the differences between Saxon and Romano-British skulls. Not only did the latter have ‘the greater prominence of the superciliary ridges’ than the former, but the ‘orbital index’ was ‘greater on the average in the Romano-Britons’ being ‘rounder or less angular and square in the Saxons’.140 As Sayce noted, ‘the historian and the craniologist’ shared the view ‘that the blood that runs in our veins is derived from a very various ancestry’.141 By the close of the century, the very complexity of and variations in the debate on ancestry and the cross fertilization of ideas across disciplines showed the extent to which the issue of the racial make-up of Britons was taken seriously.142 As important though in directing the racial discourse on ‘Britishness’ was class.143 If fear of imperial decline necessitated the construction of an identity inclusive of the Celts, so too it necessitated including the working classes on whom, to a large extent, the success of the imperial mission depended. However, in the same way the Irish Celts were less acceptable Britons than their Scottish or Welsh counterparts, so too did certain elements of the working classes remain the ‘other’. It was the Second Reform Act of 1867 that drew a metaphorical line between those deemed worthy of the vote and those not. Whereas demands for the vote in early nineteenth century had been made on behalf of the employed and unemployed paupers, a pauper defined by the Chartist Ernest Jones as a

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man ‘prevented by our system from getting work’ who by rights ‘ought to have the vote in order to redress his own injuries’,144 the 1867 Act prohibited from voting non-tax payers and those who did not meet property qualifications and so, for many (including rural workers), the right to vote remained out of reach. The Liberal statesman and radical John Bright, instrumental in the campaign for parliamentary reform, effectively divided the working classes into citizens and what he termed ‘the residuum’. I believe that the solid and ancient basis of the suffrage is that all persons who are rated to some tax . . . should be admitted to the franchise. . . . At this moment, in all, or nearly all boroughs . . . there is a small class which it would be much better for themselves if they were not enfranchised, because they have no independence whatsoever, and it would be much better for the constituency also that they should be excluded, and there is no class so much interested in having that small class excluded as the intelligent and honest working men. I call this class the residuum, which there is in almost every constituency, of almost hopeless poverty and dependence.145

The same process of categorization that had previously separated the upper and middle classes from all the lower orders and was now employed to designate the Irish as ‘inferior’ Celts, was also used to split the working classes. Charles Kingsley in Yeast, using his knowledge of phrenology, had hinted at latent signs of intellectualism in at least half of the working classes present at a local fair. After ‘examining the faces and foreheads’ of individuals, Lancelot, the hero of the novel, had been amazed at the ‘development of the brain in at least one half ’ which led him to believe, ‘[t]here were intellects there – or rather capacities of intellect . . . ’.146 Although suggesting a kind of physical manifestation of degeneracy stemming from societal problems, poor food, housing and care, Kingsley also suggested something more fundamental – racial degeneration – in attributing this lack of intellectual potential to ‘worse blood’. Tregarva’s observation that youths were unlike ‘their fathers, and still more from their grandfathers . . . such fine-grown men’147 would have brought to mind in Kingsley’s classically educated readership, Horace’s famous Ode (Book 3.5) which told of racial degeneration in the Roman race during the late Republic: Age cankers all things: so our grandsires’ time Bequeathed us one more ripe in crime; Our sires did worse again beget, And we shall yield the basest yet.148

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Despite Kingsley’s belief in the ethnic purity of the English – ‘the only real Teutons left in the world’ – and his contempt for the Irish who he subsequently termed ‘white chimpanzees’ following a visit to Ireland in 1860,149 he nonetheless conceded the need for new blood which would instil ‘new life into the old frozen South Saxon veins! Even a drop of the warm enthusiastic Celtic would be better than none’.150 Ideas that the ‘residuum’ was racially inferior to the ‘respectable’ working class were built on. In the same way, the darker races were deemed as incapable of advancing to a civilized state, as Douglas Lorimer puts it, ‘by reason of their biological endowment’, the same logic was used to argue that not all members of the working classes could progress.151 Francis Galton was an advocate of this, believing what was true for races was equally ‘true for its varieties’ as degenerate genes were passed from father to son. Mental characteristics and intellectual prowess in addition to infectious diseases, alcoholism, the propensity to gamble, sexual fervour, pauperism and criminality were all, Galton argued, inherited along with physical characteristics.152 Galton’s theory was supported by the findings of the Italian criminologist, Cesare Lombroso, a ‘man of genius’ so the Scottish physician Thomas Clouston wrote in an article for the Anthropological Society.153 Examination of the skull and brain of a murderer showed, Lombroso wrote in The Criminal Man (1876), an ‘anomaly in the cerebellum’ and such an anomaly was also present in the cerebellum of natives of certain South African tribes indicating a ‘close relationship between the criminal and the savage’.154 Closer study of the remains of murderers had also revealed other abnormalities – ‘the prehensile foot . . . flattened nose and angular or sugar-loaf form of the skull’, large orbits, hooked noses reminiscent of ‘birds of prey’ and ‘the projection of the lower part of the face and jaw’. These abnormalities were also to be ‘found in negroes and animals’. All then were features inherited from ‘remote ancestors’.155 Not unnaturally in view of his theories, Galton focused on breeding. However, and taking a Platonic/Malthusian stance (according to Malthus’ Principle of Population (1878), Plato in Republica (Book 5) had recommended ‘excellent’ and ‘inferior citizens’ should marry their equals with the children of the former ‘brought up’ but ‘the others not’156), it was not breeding per se that he thought would regenerate the race but the right kind of breeding. This being the case, in 1873 Galton published the results of his inquiry into the ‘relative fertility of the labouring classes’ in the town and country populations of Britain finding that, at present, the urban working classes contained ‘an undue proportion of the weak, the idle, and the improvident’ and that with them contributing

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a disproportionate number of offspring to future generations, the race would inevitably deteriorate.157 By 1883 and with signs that the birth rate among the middle classes was falling in comparison to the number of working-class births and, believing that to improve a race (a task he compared to ‘the labour of Sisyphus’) and maintain ‘a high level of efficiency’ a race must be ‘subjected to rigorous selection’, Galton claimed the solution to the problem lay with what he termed ‘eugenics’. Eugenics, he explained, ‘would consist in watching for the indications of superior strains or races, and in so favouring them that their progeny shall outnumber and gradually replace that of the old one’.158 Countering any criticism his theory might receive, Galton maintained, this was not same as wiping out a large section of the population as ‘the process of extinction works silently and slowly through the earlier marriage of members of the superior race, through their greater vitality under equal stress, through their better chances of getting a livelihood’.159 Kingsley was another who felt the present generation was inferior to their ancestors. In contrast to his recommendation in 1857 that money should be spent on combating disease and implementing urban reforms, albeit to save the ‘public purse’, and driven perhaps by what he considered to be a lack of progress among the working classes, by 1872, Kingsley was blaming advances in science for interfering with nature’s grand plan.160 Speaking on ‘The Science of Health’ at the Midland Institute in Birmingham, Kingsley argued that anything which made life easier for people (by which he meant advances in medicine, the provision of suitable houses, workhouses or even hospitals) and ultimately saved those ‘who would otherwise have died’, was detrimental to the nation as marriage between those who had defied ‘natural selection’ would result in ‘weaklier children’ who were racially inferior to past generations.161 Not all, though, accepted Galton’s theory arguing instead that unhealthy cities were responsible for racial decline and that any improvement in the urban environment would have an immediate affect on the race as a whole. Those favouring the environmental argument included the theologian Henry Liddon. In a sermon preached in June 1876, Liddon claimed the modern pauper was inferior not just to his grandparents but to his barbaric predecessors: ‘for worse his lot who lives in the back lane of a great city . . . than that of the man of another time, who roamed in the forest beneath the sky of heaven’.162 J. A. Froude drew attention to the comments of the Premier of Australia who questioned: whether, after all our scientific discoveries, our steam-engines and railways and newspaper printing-offices and the other triumphs of the revolutionary period, mankind were really superior, morally and spiritually, to what they

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had been two thousand years ago; whether, if we were to meet Ulysses or Pericles, Horace or Lucian, we should be conscious of any steep inequality in our own favour.163

In arguing, if not racial degeneration then racial stagnation since ancient times and in warning that future generations of city dwellers ‘must be sickly, poor and stunted wretches’, Froude drew attention to Horace’s experience in Rome as the Roman masses crowded into the city. Horace, Froude claimed, ‘had seen in Rome what we are now witnessing in England, – the fields deserted and the people crowding into cities. He noted the growing degeneracy’.164 In doing so, Froude undoubtedly considered modern Britons faced a future at least as traumatic as the last years of the Republic had been for the Romans and this made study of the late Republic and the civil wars of paramount importance. As a man’s life was like that of a nation that could be lengthened or shortened by civil unrest if not guided ‘the history of national revolutions’, Froude believed, was as essential ‘to statesmanship’ as ‘the pathology of disease [was] to the art of medicine’.165 Wise politicians should therefore learn from the experience of the Republic, it being ‘exceptionally instructive’ as ‘[w]e see it in its growth; we see the causes which undermined its strength. We see attempts to check the growing mischief fail, and we see why they failed’.166 In short, Britain could avoid the Republic’s fate if lessons were learnt from its history. Froude was not alone in arguing racial degeneration in the Roman masses had contributed to the Republic’s and ultimately the Empire’s fall. What had exacerbated the problem in Rome had been the corrupting influence of imperial subjects, in particular from the East, on the Roman race. As early as the 1830s, Charles Merivale had pointed out that it was the population of Rome’s Eastern Empire that had been injurious to the ruling race as, ‘the fusion which ensued resulted rather in turning the Romans into Orientals than the Orientals into Romans. The conquorer [sic] abandoned the simple virtues of his own land, and sank into oriental vices deeper than the Orientals themselves’.167 Irish-born historian, W. E. H. Lecky, in the History of European Morals (1869), also placed the blame firmly on slaves arriving in Rome from Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor claiming the ‘slave population’ was ‘a hotbed of vice’ that ‘contaminated all with which it came in contact’. With the Roman masses having to exist on free handouts, ‘the consequences’ of which ‘were worse than could have resulted from the most extravagant poor-laws’, ‘public spirit’ had been all but destroyed and with efforts by the Emperors to revive it failing, the ‘degradation of the national character was permanent’.168 As the London-born Australian politician, Charles

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Pearson, author of the internationally acclaimed National Life and Character (1893) warned, the fall of the Roman Empire itself was an example of how ‘a splendid political organisation’ could be ‘destroyed by the concert of inferior or less highly developed races’.169 Henry Pelham and William Inge also held Easterners arriving in Republican Rome responsible for racial decline. Whereas for Pelham, interaction between the masses and foreigners ‘with foreign worships and foreign vices’ had ‘produced a love of novelty which no legislation could check’,170 for Inge, the flood of Orientals, particularly the Greek, into Rome who could ‘turn his hand to every trade, from rhetoric and fortune-telling’ and was without scruples when it came to making money had depleted the Roman race.171 Inge again cited Tacitus, a modern historian as he called him, as evidence of the harm that had also arisen as a result of the decreasing Roman population.172 ‘The habit of “limiting the number of children”, as Tacitus euphemistically calls it’, Inge wrote, ‘was condemned on political grounds as tending to diminish population at a time when the human harvest was bad’.173 For Froude though as it was for Galton and Kingsley, it was not so much the falling birth rate that was to be feared in Britain as the fact that Britain was being repopulated by the offspring of working-class urbanites. As such it was impossible that ‘future generations’ of Britons could ‘equal or approach’ their forefathers ‘if . . . bred in towns such as Birmingham and Glasgow’. Froude, like Kingsley, furnished readers with an Horatian image (Odes, 3.vi) of the Republican Roman population as proof of what the consequences could be for Britain – a population ‘inferior to sires’ and as ‘likely to leave an offspring more degraded than themselves’.174 However, if the consequences of racial degeneration during the Republic were conjured up to warn of the dangers to Britons of interacting with the indigenous populations of her eastern Empire, historians often pointed out that the Republic’s fall had neither brought the Empire down nor reduced the power of Rome which remained at its heart. As J. R. Seeley pointed out, the change in government had not only saved the Empire but also allowed Rome to prosper for the next 200 years.175 Clearly not sharing Lecky’s pessimistic outlook, Pelham claimed a major factor in rejuvenating the Roman race had been the attention Augustus gave to the Roman population that ‘was in danger of ceasing to be Roman except in name, owing to the admixture of alien blood’. Augustus, he continued, ‘true to his policy of maintaining the ascendancy and purity of the imperial race’ tried, although not altogether successfully, ‘to check this evil’ by encouraging marriage and increasing the Roman population.176 In fact, remarkably reminiscent of Horace’s title of Augustus as ‘best keeper of the

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race/Of Romulus’ (Odes, 4.5, ll.1–2)177 was Pelham’s designation of him as the guardian of ‘the purity and vigour of the ruling race’.178 With loss of ‘racial vigour’ then perceived as a major contributory factor in the Republic’s (and ultimately in the Empire’s) demise, attention focused on ways to rejuvenate Britain’s working classes and, in line with this, increasingly Augustan Rome was looked to for guidance. Emigration was perceived as one solution. As well as ridding Britain of her surplus unemployed, reducing the prospect of social unrest and allowing Britons to impress ‘its stamps upon mankind with a print as marked as the Roman’, Froude considered temperate colonies provided a suitable environment in which to breed a strong race.179 The ‘English enterprise’, he wrote: had occupied the fairest spots upon the globe where there was still soil and sunshine boundless and life-giving; where the race might for ages renew its mighty youth, bring forth as many millions as it would, and would still have means to breed and rear them strong as the best which she had produced in her early prime.180

However, emigration did not solve the problem of racial degeneration in the home, principally urban population. If anything, despite the efforts of the paternalistic authorities to eradicate the ‘evils’ in British society that contributed to racial degeneration, such as urban reform, the prospect of further decline increased as the number of people facing a bleak future rose. In March 1886, Joseph Chamberlain wrote to the Board of Guardians informing them that ‘[t]he returns of pauperism show an increase’.181 Nor had segregation of the working classes into the ‘respectable’ and ‘residuum’ lessened the prospect of unrest.182 Speaking at the 13th Diocesan Conference in Liverpool, the Bishop of Liverpool, John Ryle, looked nostalgically back to a united Rome in an article on the coal strike in 1893 to highlight the disunity in Britain as the masses struggled for an improvement in their working conditions. ‘[T]he constant recurrence of strikes and lock-outs was becoming one of the most serious social problems of the day’ he stated, and although: It was vain to expect perfection in any social system. It was impossible by any law or regulation to make all men rich and none poor. The days of ancient Rome would never return, of which Lord Macaulay said – Then none were for a party/And all were for the State/Then the great man loved the poor/ And the poor man loved the great.183

In 1889, George Sims, a journalist with a special interest in slum towns, recorded his ‘journey into a region which lies at our own doors . . . a dark continent’ to report

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on the condition of ‘the wild races who inhabit it’,184 while fellow journalist and socialist Robert Blatchford’s visit to a workhouse school in the same year elicited a similar response. ‘It made me think’, he wrote, ‘of what I had read about savages crowding round white men who have landed on their shores’.185 Evidence of hostility from the higher echelons of English society towards the lower classes was everywhere. Manifesting itself in a worry that the great cities and the urban masses were unmanageable, theorists were drawn back time and again to the fall of the Republic and ideas of degeneration in Roman society from a unitary ideal to a series of worrying factors. The great unspoken worry, most likely, was that the upper and middle classes would not survive that conflict and the triumph of the ‘savages’, demographically, politically and racially, was an almost inevitable consequence.186 However, in the same way the Second Anglo-South African War shifted the debate on British imperialism, so too it was to have a significant effect on the debate on race and class in Britain.

Britishness vs Englishness The Second Anglo-South African War was, as Richard Soloway puts it, not ‘an auspicious debut to the twentieth century’ and stirred ‘up serious doubts about the ability of the race to cope with the complex challenges it would surely confront in the decades ahead’. The waning of ‘extraordinary “racial energy”’, he continues, ‘that had carried imperial Britain to pre-eminence’ had culminated in a nation unable to defend itself against ‘farmers and herdsmen’.187 The nonconformist, R. J. Campbell, in his influential pamphlet Some Signs of the Times (1903) asked, whether Englishmen who had recently fought in South Africa were the equals of ‘men who followed Drake and Raleigh and Cromwell and Nelson and Wellington?’ From personal experience, he had noted with ‘shame a certain deterioration in the spirit and quality of the men’ who had fought for Britain in the past. But, in contrast to most of his contemporaries, it was not the dedication or fighting prowess of the ordinary soldier that Campbell condemned, rather it was that of the officers who could not ‘by any stretch of imagination’ be descended from those who had fought at Naseby. What such a picture brought to mind, Campbell continued, was that England was treading the same path as Rome. It was: the old story, the break-up, the disintegration of the moral characteristics that are the most valuable asset of empire always, war or no war; these are

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the only things worth counting when you come to estimate the value of a nation and its permanence and its influence in the world.

England would ‘live or die by the quality of her manhood’ and anything that threatened to corrupt that manhood, Campbell believed, posed a serious danger to the nation. If examples were needed of what the end result would be then Rome (along with Greece and Spain), which ‘all hold up their warning to us’, would provide them.188 Thus, as fears of decline and fall were magnified by the war, for many, tackling racial deterioration in the national population became a priority. Although, according to Krishan Kumar, there had been a ‘clear concern with questions of “Englishness” during the late nineteenth century, accompanying the early twentieth century drive for national efficiency was a surge in English (as well as Scottish, Welsh and Irish) nationalism’.189 However, pulling against ‘Englishness’ was the British Empire and the Celtic revival. The Irish-born army officer, William Butler, a veteran of the Zulu Wars, had pointed out that it was only with the assistance of the Celts that victory in the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars had been achieved.190 With the Celtic revival, Boadicea had become a national heroine. An early indicator of her rise to prominence came in a review of a Miss Troutbeck’s Boadicea: a Cantata (1880) in which the reviewer claimed Boadicea’s heroic stand against the power of Rome appealed ‘to the patriotic feelings of the inhabitants of Great Britain’.191 By the 1900s, this image of a patriotic Boadicea was uppermost in the minds of politicians and the public, evident from the erection of an impressive statue of the heroic queen in a prominent position in Westminster in 1902 and the publication of Marie Trevelyan’s Britain’s Greatness Foretold (1900). In it Trevelyan wrote of the spirited Britons who fought ‘to render the slow progress of Roman arms’ and of Boadicea from whom sprang ‘the patriotic spirit of a race’.192 The children’s writer Henrietta Marshall in Our Island Story (1905), described her as a ‘British heart’ who chose ‘death rather than lose liberty’ and Caractacus of the Catuvellauni as a man who fought ‘well and bravely’ against the mighty Roman army and earned his freedom from Claudius on account of his ‘proud words’.193 Even fictional Britons, such as G. A. Henty’s Beric despite his upbringing in a Roman household never lost his Britishness and fought bravely alongside Boadicea.194 In line with the Celtic revival, the heritage of well-known Romans had been reassessed. William Young Sellar had explored the ancestry of Horace and Virgil. While Horace’s origin was in doubt due to his father’s status as a freedman although probably containing ‘the strong grain of Italian character and the

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Italian shrewdness of observation’, Virgil’s was not. Both his ‘more romantic imagination, and his greater susceptibility of spiritual feeling’, suggested to Sellar, ‘his affinity with the more impressible Celtic race of the Cisalpine district’.195 With Horace and Virgil of mixed blood and Virgil aligned to the Celts, the genetic tie between Romans and modern Britons remained workable. Of the great English writers it was now not only Shakespeare and Milton (as Matthew Arnold had suggested) who had Celtic blood in their veins as, according to one of the foremost promoters of the Celt and author of Lyra Celtica (1896), William Sharp, both Keats and Byron’s lineage could be traced back to the Celts.196 John Munro, author of The Story of the British Race (1899), added to the list of famous Britons whose ancestry could be traced back to Celtic Britain. Claiming the ancient Greek maxim ‘Know thyself ’ could be broadened out to include a family or even a race, Munro maintained, both English and Scotsmen – Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone and Thomas Carlyle (the great defender of Anglo-Saxonism) – hailed from the ‘Kymric or Brythonic’ tribes of the southwest of Scotland who were ‘the tallest element’ in Britain and exceeded even the Romans in height, a fact verified by an undisclosed Roman source.197 Many of the illustrious faces displayed in national galleries – Newton, Darwin, Nelson, Wellington, Pitt, Scott, Burns ‘and the rest’ – were also ‘all more or less “mixed types” of “Celt” and “Saxon”’. As such, Munro argued it was ‘high time’ that Celts and Saxons were no longer considered ‘aliens and enemies’ but instead became ‘friends and brothers’.198 For those who wished to hold on to the old AngloSaxon/Celtic divide in Britain, the possibility of doing so lessened as the image of backwardness attached to certain Celtic regions diminished. Arthur Norway, for instance, author of Highways and Byways in Devon and Cornwall published as part of a series of books on roads in Ireland and the West Country, dismissed claims that ‘the Romans were our first road-makers’ stating instead that ‘the main routes of commerce in this island were well trodden’ prior to Caesar’s landing.199 Indeed, for D. H. Lawrence, the Celticism of Cornwall was a blessing as well as a curse. In a letter to the essayist John Beresford written during a trip to Cornwall in 1916, Lawrence claimed the people of Cornwall ‘still attract me. They have become detestable, I think, and yet they aren’t detestable’. Despite being aloof and inclined to paganism, ‘the old race is still revealed, a race which believed in the darkness in magic, and in the magic transcendency of one man over another, which is fascinating’.200 The acclaimed novelist and poet, George Meredith’s Celt and Saxon (1910) published a year after his death, reflected the increasingly popular belief in Britain’s mixed ancestry. Intermarriage between the races of Britain including the Irish was, he suggested, advantageous. Indeed,

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in the union between the Irish Captain O’Donnell and his English wife, it was the ‘Englishness’ of O’Donnell’s wife – her lack of humour and pedantry – that Meredith ridiculed.201 Historians, key to the Celtic revival, moved beyond the classical literary texts and incorporated scientific theories into their studies. Francis Haverfield, critical of the indifference ‘to accurate and scientific training’ in ‘history or literature’, specifically saw the value of archaeological study.202 The ‘field of non-literary evidence’, Haverfield wrote, offered a new and exciting area of study and without it ‘we should still be struggling with vague Tacitean rhetoric or should remain the victims of errors’.203 Haverfield’s study of Roman Britain based on close examination of physical remains was to become a central text in the early twentieth century. The first edition of ‘The Romanisation of Roman Britain’ was published in The Proceedings of the British Academy (1905–6). In it Haverfield argued that in the years between the arrival and departure of the Romans, in the occupied non-military zones of Britain (largely England with the exception of the West Country), ‘Roman speech and manners, the extension of the political franchise, the establishment of city life, the assimilation of the provincial populations in an orderly and coherent civilization, had been accomplished’.204 The population had been Romanized. In the military zones, however, as the discovery of a silver fibulae of Celtic design dating from the late second/early third century at Hadrian’s wall demonstrated, ancient Britons survived.205 By 1912 though, Haverfield had modified his view as to the extent of Romanization in the occupied non-military regions. In the second edition of The Romanisation of Roman Britain (1912), he admitted the peasantry living in the country may have been less thoroughly Romanized than urban dwellers as beneath a ‘superimposed layer of Roman civilization. . . . the native element may have remained potentially, if not actually, Celtic’.206 Consequently, as not all ‘tribal or national sentiments or fashions’ had been destroyed, these elements were ‘capable of resurrection under the proper conditions’.207 In short, whereas urban dwellers had succumbed to the civilizing mission of the Romans, the ancient British race had lain dormant, not as Coote had suggested in the towns, but in the country. Thomas Rice Holmes agreed. In Ancient Britain and the Invasion of Julius Caesar (1907), Holmes maintained that in all of Britain, ‘the pre-Roman stock’ had ‘in greater or lesser proportion, survived’.208 As this was the case, investigation into racial mixing was essential in order to discover what Europeans had inherited from pre-Roman societies which, he suspected, would be ‘far more than we dream’.209

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The Celtic revival though while facilitating the presentation of a united front befitting the rulers of a mighty Empire, conflicted with, first, the rise in English nationalism and, secondly, the narrative that sanctioned England’s place as the superior partner in the imperial mission. Meredith was plainly hostile to the Welsh despite his somewhat unusual support for the Irish. While Welshwomen, according to Meredith, were illogical with ‘nothing solid in their whole nature’ and Englishmen married to them had to find a way to cope with ‘broomstick witches and irresponsible sprites’, in contrast, ‘Irishwomen were models of propriety beside them’.210 Normally though, it was the Irish who remained outsiders. In 1904, the sociologist Henry Havelock Ellis, a supporter of the eugenics movement, published British Genius. In a survey taken to establish a hierarchy of genius in Great Britain, he found there to be less Irish ‘geniuses’ in proportion to population than in England.211 Irishmen, by Ellis’ reasoning, were intellectually inferior to Englishmen. Others expressed a paternalism towards the Irish which tempered presentations of English superiority with an affectionate, but demeaning, infantile image of the Irish people. For instance, Fletcher and Kipling’s School History of England (1911), on the one hand, referred to the Irish as ‘the most charming of children, indeed, full of beautiful laughter and tender tears, full of poetry and valour’, while, on the other, they claimed Ireland was ‘incapable of ruling herself ’ and with the exception of Ulstermen, Irish Members of Parliament had proven themselves to be disloyal by ‘continually’ calling for ‘a separate Parliament in Dublin’.212 Kipling, however, in a private letter to his friend Henry Rider Haggard, portrayed a somewhat less paternalistic attitude to the Irish in describing an Irishwoman as following ‘the instincts of her race and spread[ing] miseries and discomforts around her’. His view of the Welsh was little better as his daughter’s Welsh maid was ‘moody and temperamental’ and prone to ‘continuous and exhaustive hysterics’ at times of distress.213 An advertisement in The Times for Henry Smith Williams’ The Historians’ History of the World in 1908, suggests Kipling’s attitude to the Irish at least was something that many identified with. ‘The relations between the Roman and the Latin citizens’, the advertisement stated, bore ‘comparison with the conflicting elements furnished by Englishmen and Scotchmen, which to-day are ever growing less and less’, unlike with the Irish who showed a ‘reluctance to obey’.214 The assimilation of the Scots and the Welsh into the imperial (analogously Roman) nation, contrasted with the inability of the Irish to do so on account of their childishness and illdiscipline. Theories of Celtic survival remained dependent on historical accounts of the Roman occupation. Holmes saw the imprint of Rome everywhere in

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contemporary Britain. In the sixth century, he proclaimed, the Roman name continued to be glorified and this glorification had even now not completely faded. For Holmes, it was the ‘composite influence’ of the Celts and Romans, as well as the Saxons, Danes and Normans which had ‘helped form the British character and determined the course of British history’. It was ‘[t]heir beliefs’ and ‘their spirit’ which were resurrected in modern Britons who had ‘done the deeds of which our nation may be proud’.215 By omission though, Holmes appeared to share Ellis’ view of the Irish including only the Welsh and Scots, who had fared better in Ellis’ study than the Irish (although not reaching an Englishman’s level of genius), in his list of Britons who could ‘count among their ancestors . . . sturdy warriors of the Bronze Age, and Celts who fought against Caesar’.216 Fletcher and Kipling specifically referred to the progeny of the Celts and Romans. ‘Celtic mothers’, they wrote, ‘bore British sons to Roman fathers, and crooned Celtic songs over the cradles of babies, who would one day carry the Roman flag’.217 Significantly though, these readings of Romano-British history could also accommodate the nationalist turn and England’s desire to retain its pre-eminent status in the British Isles. Geographically, England was the only Romanized and, therefore, civilized area of Britain and, according to Haverfield, it was the spread of ‘civilisation’ that counted ‘in the history of mankind’.218 Worry over decline and the rise in nationalism were also to cause a gradual shift in attitude to the English (at least) working classes. Charles Pearson had stressed the importance of a nationalistic outlook to a nation’s survival. ‘The future of society depends very much on the perpetuity of national feeling’, Pearson stated, ‘[p]atriotism is now the filial feeling to a mother country’ rather than to the Empire ‘we owe duties to our fellowmen, and cannot adequately perform them to the human race’.219 Perpetuating ‘national feeling’, though, involved all Englishmen, although Englishmen who were racially and physically fit and inclined to play their part and these qualities, so many argued, were largely absent in a sizeable proportion of the population. In 1893, Blackwood’s Magazine had warned of the prospect of further mob violence should the working classes not be kept under control. France, the magazine reported, ‘furnish perhaps the best-known illustration of the danger and the folly of allowing mobs to have their own way at first, in the vain hope that they will run their course and then subside’.220 Nor had the possibility of mob violence lessened by 1914 according to H. G. Wells. The country, in his opinion, was deeply unsettled which led him to believe that ‘we are in the opening phase of a real and irreparable class war’.221 The extended franchise (the Third Reform Act of 1884 had enfranchised the rural workers) had done little to satisfy the working classes and voters carried on

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displaying ‘contempt and hostility’ for elected representatives that was expressed in ‘an unprecedented lawlessness’.222 Wells recommended gentlemen should, ‘“Wake Up” . . . for the new generation of the workers is beyond all question quite alarmingly awake and critical and angry’.223 Nor were the working classes the only group in Great Britain threatening national stability. According to Dean Inge, unrest in Ireland could lead to civil war and the nation was also coping with ‘the abominable outrages of the suffragettes’ who, he was reliably informed, ‘were advocating vitriol-throwing and murder’.224 The task of rejuvenating the national population was by the early twentieth century seen to be a major factor in bringing to an end the uncertainty that arose from political instability and staving off decline and fall. As such, the search for reasons and solutions to the problem of racial degeneration continued. With blame already apportioned to the corrupting influence of foreigners on the national character overseas, increasingly the number of immigrants flooding into Britain (by 1911 the figure stood at 428,000 up from 157,000 in 1871) was looked upon with suspicion.225 Gilbert Murray wrote of the ‘annual invasion of foreign Jews’ arriving in the East End of London and in other British towns although this was small compared to the numerous foreign sailors in the merchant navy.226 According to Robert Blatchford, within ‘half an hour’s walk of the City boundaries we were in a foreign country’.227 It appeared that Charles Booth’s vision ‘of Oriental hordes of barbarians, streaming in like Huns and Vandals’ was becoming a reality and in order to stem the tide of immigration, in 1905, the Alien’s Act was passed.228 Booth, author of Life and Labour of the People in London (1902), was not alone in conjuring up images of the fall of the Roman Empire to warn of the dangers of immigration. Although Seeley had claimed England’s Oriental Empire was not ‘attached to England in the same way as the Roman Empire was attached to Rome; it will not drag us down, or infect us at home with Oriental notions or methods of Government’,229 this did little to alleviate the fear of foreigners after the Second Anglo-South African War. More often, however, it was not the Roman Empire’s demise that historians focused on but the Republic’s. Pelham and Inge’s picture of Orientals spreading corruption in the Republic was enlarged on. The classical scholar T. R. Glover maintained it was during the extended war with Hannibal that the ‘manhood of Rome’ had been displayed ‘at her best’ but conquest had brought into Rome, Greeks and Asians ‘far advanced in moral and intellectual decadence’. Again, Horace and Virgil were cited as witnesses to this. Horace (Epistles 2.1, ll.156–7) had written of degenerate Greeks ‘that took her captor captive’ but, Glover rather cynically remarked, ‘the arts she brought into rustic Latium were not as

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a rule those of Aeschylus and Phidias’.230 Virgil’s Dido in the Aeneid proved the effect Orientals had on the national character. Dido’s Oriental ‘touch’, Glover implied, surfaced with Aeneas’ departure from Carthage and, in fact, it was her Orientalism in the first place that had induced Aeneas to linger in Carthage longer than duty allowed and temporarily abandon his destiny to found Rome.231 Ruination of the Roman character along with provincial corruption, Glover concluded, produced ‘evils from which the empire was never to recover’.232 The classical scholar Cyril Bailey’s translation of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things (1920) carried a similar warning. The ‘Oriental cults’, introduced into Rome as a result of conquest, had a huge impact on the masses by adding ‘an ecstatic and orgiastic form of worship’ which was alien to the abstemious Roman.233 Modern examples of what were perceived as the corruptive influence of Orientals on Britons were identified. Headmaster of New College School, Oxford, George Carter, in History of England (1905), noted Clive of India’s reputation had been ‘sullied by two very shameful acts’ both of which came about due to his association with Orientals.234 When questioned about receiving substantial amounts of money from Mir Jaffir, the ruler of Bengal, that he put ‘to his own private use’, Clive remarked on recollecting ‘the heaps of gold and jewels’, so Carter stated, that ‘he was astonished at his own moderation’.235 Warren Hastings was another Briton who had been corrupted by his dealings with Orientals according to Samuel Gardiner (his Students History of England was republished in 1920) and the Oxford scholar, Arthur Innes. While Gardiner maintained the primary reason for Hastings ‘soiling the English name’ had been the influence of native princes and the loan of ‘English troops to an Eastern potentate, who was certain to abuse a victory won by their arms’,236 Innes argued Hastings had: allowed methods to be employed which were a matter of course in Oriental warfare and Oriental courts, but were thoroughly repugnant to European ideas. The lesson had not yet been learned that, in dealing with peoples whose moral standards are different from those of Europe, the white man must hold to the white standard that is not only the right course, but the course that pays best in the long run.237

But it was not just cultural corruption that historians lay at the door of foreigners arriving in Rome. Greeks or ‘adventurers’ as J. B. Bury described them, who ‘ingratiat[ed] themselves by flattery’, displaced ‘needy’ Romans competing ‘for the favour of the great’.238 As before, the large Greek slave population in the Italian countryside was blamed for the migration of the Roman peasantry into Rome that led to overcrowding, poverty and unrest. According to the Oxford

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scholar, William Warde Fowler, Cato’s treatise on husbandry told of the damage that resulted from the takeover of family-run farms by wealthy Romans that were managed by slaves while their original owners were driven into the city and, once there, subjected to untold vices. Moreover, it was slaves who aided Catiline in ‘his revolutionary plans’ in 63 BC.239 Equally damaging if not more so than the slave population, so Warde Fowler argued, was the practice of manumission that introduced ‘foreign blood into the Roman citizen body’.240 In short, the influx of foreigners into Rome, the ‘mischievous effects’ of slavery and manumission had culturally and racially corrupted the Roman race and created ‘an idle class of freemen, with all its moral worthlessness’.241 Thus the consequences of being an imperial power contributed to the chaos of the late Republic and its eventual fall. In 1901 in ‘The Roman Empire and the British Empire in India’, James Bryce addressed the issue of corruption in Republican Rome in order to counter fears of a similar occurrence in Britain. Two factors separated Britain from its ancient predecessor and so gave Britain the advantage Bryce insisted. First, Britain’s policy towards intermarriage avoided ‘imparting [native] character and habits’ into the national population and, secondly, England’s population was ‘too large to suffer sensibly from the moral evils which conquest and the influx of wealth bring in their train’.242 However, by 1902 and coinciding with the ending of the war in Africa, it would seem Bryce was less convinced that Englishmen could avoid moral ruin and he warned of the dangers of racial mixing. The ‘average offspring’ of Europeans and those deemed their intellectual inferiors, Bryce argued, would be ‘physically inferior’ to both parents and ‘more beneath the average mental level of the superior than above the average mental level of the inferior’.243 In fact, in Bryce’s opinion, with ‘the future of mankind’ now an issue of immense importance, ‘nothing’ was ‘more vital than that some races should be maintained at the highest level of efficiency’ and he advised against any further ‘mixture of Advanced and Backward races’.244 Indeed and regardless of his defence of history (which he believed to be ‘practically helpful’245) in the face of calls from the scientific community for an extended curriculum, for Bryce the issue of hybridity was of such ‘extreme interest’ that he recommended the subject ‘be fully investigated by men of science’.246 Arthur Balfour was another who appeared less than optimistic that Britons could ‘escape the fate’ of earlier races, notably the Roman, when he questioned in ‘Decadence’ (1908) ‘why for us alone is the doom of man to be reversed?’247 As historians were read as singling out the Roman urban masses as those most susceptible to cultural and racial degeneration from interacting with

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foreigners, so too it was Britain’s masses (and their offspring) who intellectuals considered were most likely to be racially compromised. Consequently, those preoccupied with preventing Britain’s downward trajectory returned not just to the issue of breeding but the ‘right’ kind of breeding. After all, as the Army officer and founder of the Scouting movement, Robert Baden-Powell warned, there was ‘much pauper over-population due to want of self-restraint on the part of men and women’.248 Francis Galton contributed an article on eugenics to The American Journal of Sociology in 1904. He reiterated the aim of eugenics which was ‘to bring as many influences as can be reasonably employed, to cause the useful class in the community to contribute more than their proportion to the next generation’.249 Galton’s objective was to produce ‘a “golden book” of thriving families’ in which those intending to marry should provide details ‘of their race, profession, and residence’ as well as their heritage.250 Response was mixed. Galton’s colleague, Karl Pearson, who after the war hoped the nation would realize that ‘physical characters . . . the backbone of a state’ were ‘not manufactured by home and school and college; they are bred in the bone’, was supportive of a eugenic solution’.251 Echoing Horace in a way that may or may not have been conscious, he felt ‘confident’ Galton would find a solution to a critical national problem of how ‘the next generation of Englishmen [was] to be mentally and physically equal’ to their ancestors.252 George Bernard Shaw, who just a year earlier had warned of the dangers of mass democracy claiming ‘[w]e must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy’ and fall as Rome had fallen, agreed.253 He suggested there was no reason ‘for refusing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenic religion can save our civilization from the fate that has overtaken all previous civilizations’.254 H. G. Wells also bought into the eugenic argument. Extrapolating it into a general law, Wells argued, it was lack of breeding that caused Rome to drift ‘into “race-suicide” at the climax of her empire’. Wells blamed civilization for the fall in Britain’s birth rate believing that every civilized community drifted towards ‘race-suicide’.255 In fact, it was ‘a necessary consequence of the individualistic competition of modern life’ as, largely, for economic reasons, marriage and parentage were deferred for as long as possible.256 But, if for Wells the problem was economic, so too was the solution. The state, he continued, had got to provide for the next generation by which he meant the ‘children of good homes’ to ensure ‘good-quality births’.257 Nonetheless, not all were convinced eugenics was the answer. As the author of Patriotism and Empire (1900) J. M. Robertson expressed it, ‘Rome did not rise through the fecundity or fall through the fecundity of her ruling or other classes’.258 Others believed a healthy environment and a balanced diet could reverse

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degeneration in the working classes. For the physician Robert Hutchison, giving him ‘a free hand in feeding, during infancy and from ten to eighteen years of age . . . would guarantee you quite a satisfactory race as a result’,259 while G. A. Reid, MD, believed the hereditary argument should be dismissed altogether. There was, he wrote, no proof that the offspring of an urban dweller was ‘inferior to the descendant of a line of rustics . . . a life in the slums deteriorates the individual, it does not affect directly the hereditary tendencies of the race in the least’. Instead, he believed, the slums ‘and the other evil influences of civilisation’ such as poor or insufficient provisions, unhealthy air and disease, were to blame.260 This was something the ancients had recognized according to J. B. Bury. For Bury (like a growing number of his contemporaries convinced that ‘the only way to true history’ lay ‘through scientific research’261), both Aristotle and Polybius had recognized ‘physical circumstances . . . were factors conditioning the character and history of a race or society’.262 With the potential then of renewing the race in the present generation rather than in future generations, the environmental argument gained ground. William Inge, resigned his membership of the Council of Eugenics in 1912 noting that council members ‘were becoming too environmental’ and ‘interested . . . in nurture rather than nature’. Subsidizing the ‘birth-rate of the slums’, he argued, was ‘not the way to improve the quality of the population’.263 However, if intellectuals debating the problem of working-class degeneration drew parallels with Republican Rome to warn of the dangers Britain faced, historians and classical scholars pointed out that Augustan policies had rejuvenated the Roman race. The Dean of Lincoln and son-in-law of Gladstone, E. C. Wickham, claimed Horace who had felt ‘the moral defects of the Roman people’ during the Republic was enthusiastic ‘for the social and moral reforms promised and sought’ by the Imperial government and ‘for the return of peace and stability, the restoration of religion, the rule of moderation, culture, and refinement’.264 Evelyn Shuckburgh’s tribute to Augustus in 1908 was not restricted to his skills as an imperial administrator. Although he ‘increased the good order and prosperity of the Empire’, this was not his only success as he also succeeded ‘in re-constituting a society shaken to its centre’.265 Augustus, Shuckburgh believed, had ‘never conceived of an empire filled with citizens enjoying equal rights, or in which Rome could possibly occupy a secondary place. He was ultraRoman in his views; and worked and schemed to maintain the supremacy of the Eternal City’.266 This he achieved by implementing urban reforms, by restoring religion and by encouraging marriage and breeding through the imposition of fines for Romans who refused to marry while releasing those with children ‘from

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certain onerous public duties’.267 Importantly and fitting in with Galton’s theory, Shuckburgh argued, Augustus encouraged the ‘right’ kind of breeding banning senators and members of senatorial families from marrying ‘a freed-woman, courtesan, actress, or the daughter of an actor’.268 J. C. Stobart also detailed the remarkable difference the change in government had made to Rome as well as to the Empire. During the Republic, he wrote, thousands of Romans who did not perish during the civil wars ‘went to swell the proletariat of Rome’ where physical and moral decline was inevitable. But, what was ‘perhaps worse’ was that those living in badly constructed houses in unhealthy parts of the city ‘could not perpetuate their breed’. With Rome then becoming steadily more overcrowded but from the influx of foreigners rather than with natural-born Romans imbued with all the virtues that had made Rome great, the people of Rome ‘became more and more cosmopolitan, less and less Roman’.269 The dual task of Augustus whose ‘regime’, in Stobart’s opinion, was ‘one of the most beneficent in the history of civilisation’ was to deal with a ‘thoroughly corrupt and effete’ aristocracy and the ‘Roman mob which still called itself lord of the world, but which was in a political sense hopeless, armies which were dangerous to the state, conscious of their power and destitute of real patriotism’.270 For Stobart though, Augustus merely created the conditions that enabled his successors ‘the good emperors of the second century’ to make the greatest change to Roman society by encouraging ‘the growth of a lower class with occupations and ideals of its own’. Inscriptions provided evidence of the existence of ‘a happy and industrious class of artisans and humble tradesmen grading down through the freedmen to the slaves, many of whom now lived and worked under quite tolerable conditions of life’.271 Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, history taught that it was the introduction of conservative social policies during the Augustan era that had not only overcome the ‘evils’ of the late Republic and prevented the masses from overwhelming their superiors but also laid the foundations that enabled Rome to prosper for the next 200 years. The Roman example held out the possibility that similar policies could produce similar results in Britain. The period from the end of the Anglo-South African War was a period of persisting tensions. On the one hand, there was a need to look outward to Empire and, on the other, a longing to turn inward toward the nation; there was the need for a British identity and, yet, a craving for Englishness; there was the need to incorporate the working classes into the nation state but also the desire to maintain a rigid class hierarchy. Effectively there was, as Robert Colls puts it, ‘two spirits of England’, the ‘state-and-nation spirit . . . the England on

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the “outside”, dealing with the world’ or, in other words, the imperial race, and ‘the gentler land-and-people spirit . . . England on the “inside”, most at home when dealing with itself ’.272 An article in The Times in 1901, although conceding the Empire still required the strong hand of England, had reported on the rise in England’s ‘land-and-people spirit’ claiming this spirit was ‘greater and more glorious’ than it had been in Rome. The ‘sway of these islands’, the article stated: rested not on the pride of the sword, although the sword could not be laid, but it rested upon industry and the arts of peace. It sprung not from the pride of a dominating race, but rather from the protection of national claims and national traditions, and the recognition of the great truth that the sentiment of nationality was the most honourable and most noble part of human nature.273

This increasingly spiritual aspect of Englishness formed the basis of the English novelist and poet Ford Madox Ford’s The Spirit of the People (1907). Englishness, for Ford, was ‘not . . . a matter of race but one, quite simply, of place – of place and of spirit, the spirit being born of the environment’.274 Consequently, ‘a touch of English soil was sufficient to do as much for William the Norman, who . . . [was] eminently more English than the Anglo-Saxon who was weak enough to get shot in the eye’.275 In fact, as Englishmen were, in Ford’s opinion: descended from Romans, from Britons, from Anglo-Saxons, from Danes, from Normans, from Poitevins, from Scotch, from Huguenots, from Irish, from Gaels, from modern Germans, and from Jews, a people so mixed that there is in it hardly a man who can point to seven generations of purely English blood,

it was ‘absurd to use the almost obsolescent word “race” ’.276 Rudyard Kipling also alluded to a spiritual quality within Englishness in Puck of Pook’s Hill, a book which Sarah Wintle describes as, ‘a major part of the artful reconstruction of a particular fiction of England and Englishness’.277 However, if the word ‘race’ was obsolescent for Ford Maddox Ford, Kipling combined the spiritual with the racial in tracing England’s heritage. Kipling noted the contribution Normans, Saxons and Romans had made to England’s ancestry but suggested Britain’s conquerors had undergone a process of reverse assimilation and become English, as Ford believed, through contact with English places. Both Richard the Norman and De Aquila had succumbed to the spiritual power of England – a power that made them more English than anything else. While the former following the conquest declared, ‘I did not then know that England

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would conquer me’, the latter thought no longer ‘for myself . . . nor for our King, nor for your lands. I think for England . . . I am not Norman . . . nor Saxon . . . English am I’.278 Prior to the arrival of the Normans, the Roman invaders, according to Kipling, had undergone a similar process of reverse assimilation becoming more Briton than Roman. The British-born centurion Parnesius (who had never visited Rome) on being questioned as to his Romanness responded, ‘Ye-es and no’.279 Parnesius’ loyalty, on account of his birthplace, was more to England than to Rome.280 Undeniably modern Englishmen were a mixed race but, for Kipling, it was their Englishness that was the vital quality. A similar theme pervaded Fletcher and Kipling’s A School History of England. The progeny of ‘Roman gentlemen’ into which ‘the spirit of the dear motherland entered’ had a dual loyalty to Rome and Britain and ‘an equal share of their love and devotion’. Long service in Britain had engendered in Roman colonists a desire to remain in England. Legate, I come to you in tears – My cohort ordered Home! I’ve served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome? Here is my heart, my soul, my mind – the only life I know – I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!281

The pre-war trend towards English nationalism continued post-war but despite a general acceptance that the English were a composite race, there remained a tendency to distance England from the other regions of Britain, particularly Ireland. Contributing to the desire for a separate identity from Ireland was the resurgence in Irish unrest as the question of Home Rule resurfaced.282 Familiar themes emerged that kept the Irish at arm’s length and certainly not on a par with the Welsh and the Scots, let alone the English. In 1920, Dean Inge condemned England’s ‘whole policy’ towards Ireland seeing it as indulgent. Indulging the Irish by using ‘soft words, and never making the Irish obey’, Inge observed, meant they ‘simply despise us’.283 An anonymous article, ‘Are the Irish Celts an Inferior Race?’, also appeared in The National Review in 1919 and in it the author referred to Henry Havelock Ellis’ earlier survey on genius. Although accepting Ellis’ contention that Ireland held ‘a respectable place in the matter of percentage [of geniuses] in proportion to population’, that proportion was nonetheless far less than England’s. Furthermore, the writer criticized Ellis for failing to inquire into ‘[w]hat proportion of the men

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of genius’ hailing from Ireland were Irish-Celts and what proportion were in fact descended from Englishmen and Scots who had emigrated to Ireland and settled there.284 From a study of names, the author suggested ‘no great authors, statesmen, artists, musicians, or men of science’ bore Irish-Celtic names. Of well-known men who did, orators and thespians, these men were ‘as often an instrument of evil as of good’ while other famous, or rather infamous, Irishmen could only be classified as revolutionary leaders ‘whose power lay in their appeal to the passions which tend to disintegrate civilizing forces’.285 An article in The Manchester Guardian on the Anglo-Irish Conference held at Downing Street on 11 October 1921 summed up the underlying problem of the Irish. Despite admitting ‘an unwilling bond, and a continuous connection and inter-mixture going right back through the centuries . . . does not count for nothing’ the Irish, the Guardian reported, were ‘not and never will be Englishmen’.286 With the views of the conservative National Review under the editorship of Leopold Maxse tallying with those of the Manchester Guardian owned by the former Liberal Member of Parliament, C. P. Scott, it would seem that with regard to the Irish, most were largely in agreement as to their racial inferiority. But it was not just the Irish that Englishmen preferred to keep at a distance. President of the Metropolitan Branch of the British Legion, Sir Ian Hamilton, who had led the Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces at Gallipoli and who had met with William T. Arnold to discuss the affinity between England and ancient Rome, referred to England rather than Britain in his address to the members of the Legion because, he stated, ‘the words Great Britain, British, Briton, Britannia strike harshly on my ear’.287 Liverpool-born poet, J. Lewis Milligan, writing for The Nineteenth Century and After, in asking ‘What is an Englishman?’ shared Hamilton’s preference for the term ‘English’, although admitting that physically there was no ‘English type’. Nonetheless and again alluding to a spiritual quality in Englishness, he continued, there was ‘an undefinable but unmistakable something stamped upon the forms and faces of every kind of Englishman’. Moreover, he clearly considered this Englishman superior to his Celtic brother maintaining it was only the cultural influence of the English that had enabled the Celts to make their way in the world. The Scots, Irish and Welsh, he stated: may object to being classed with the Englishman, but, whether he likes it or not, he will have to get back to his Highland haunts or to his pig-keeping if he desires to shake off his English characters. It is after all, English culture that makes the Scotsman, the Irishman, and the Welshman the effective men they are in the modern civilised world.288

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If Milligan believed there to be no racial connection between the English and Celts, evidently this was not the case with the Roman. Milligan recorded his encounter with Italian immigrants during a trip to Canada in which he noted he was ‘struck’ by ‘the strong resemblance in features and complexion’ between them and Englishmen. He claimed an acquaintanceship with a family from Manchester ‘who are almost all of the Italian type, yet they are English as far back as it is possible to penetrate into their ancestry’. Possibly, he speculated this was due to their being ‘the descendants of some Roman governor or his retinue who resided in Britain in the days when it was a Roman colony’.289 However, the rise in English nationalism and the extension to the franchise in 1918 with the passing of the Representation of the People Act, ensured the English working classes, at least, largely lost their mid-nineteenth century status as the ‘other’ although, for some, giving a greater number of workers a political voice did not rule out the prospect of unrest.290 The revolutions in Europe during and after the First World War had in fact increased fears. As Wells put it ‘four Caesars’ had been cut down as a result of the war leaving ‘no one left in the world to carry on the Imperial title or the tradition of Divus Caesar except the Turkish Sultan and British monarch’.291 Wells had hinted at impending trouble in Britain in 1914. The ‘shock of the Boer War has long been explained and sentimentalised away’, he stated, ‘[b]ut it will not be so easy to explain away a dislocated train service and an empty coal cellar as it was to get a favourable interpretation upon some demonstration of national incompetence half the world away’.292 Inge and Aldous Huxley wrote of their anxiety that a revolution might materialize in the immediate post-war period. For Inge, with over half Europe ‘devastated by famine, anarchy, and utter misery’, he feared similar outbreaks of violence in Britain as the nation was ‘seething with revolutionary unrest’, while Huxley, writing to his brother Julian that same year, felt a trip to America might be in order it being ‘the only place where revolution will not break out’.293 By 1921, if anything, the situation had worsened according to Inge. Britain ‘is going through a terrible crisis’ he insisted: We very narrowly escaped a general strike. . . . The precious lives lost in the war were needlessly sacrificed, since we are now at the mercy of a gang who care nothing for their country or for the suffering they inflict upon the whole community.294

With containing the masses then remaining a priority, the eugenic argument was resurrected as controlling breeding to preserve the best of the race was, for some, notably Marie Stopes, founder of the birth control clinic in North London

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in 1921, the best way forward. Speaking at a public meeting at the Queen’s Hall in London in May that year on constructive birth control, Stopes rebuked those who ignored the dangers and expense of permitting ‘wastrels’ to reproduce recommending instead that only those who added ‘individuals of value to the race’ should be allowed to do so. If successful in this, Stopes (who later admitted that she had ‘a standard for humanity at least as high as the old Greek standard of physical beauty’295) continued, in years to come parents would be able to think of their grandchildren as if ‘the gods had descended to walk upon the earth’.296 Politician and economist, Leonard Darwin, son of Charles and ex-president of the Royal Geographical Society (1908–11), agreed. In The Need for Eugenic Reform (1926), Darwin, at the time president of the Eugenics Education Society, argued the primary ‘impediment in the way of social progress’ was the ‘heredity or the germinal constitution of man’.297 Like Galton who he had succeeded as president, Darwin believed the great men of the past were ‘exceptionally healthy’ and he dismissed as unfounded any idea that Julius Caesar might have been ‘an epileptic’ (an idea which, in any case, was only based on the evidence of ‘one single authority’) as until his murder he showed himself to be ‘a man of marvellous powers of mind and body’.298 With the Greeks also capable of ‘turning out men of genius’ but both ancient civilizations declining ‘into obscurity after a few centuries of brilliancy’, Darwin asked, was it not also likely that ‘our civilization will fade away’ if certain ‘safeguards’ were not put in place? Certain ‘safeguards’ being, of course, preventing ‘the lower paid’ and ‘less efficient social strata’ from breeding.299 Nonetheless despite persistent notions of a racially degenerate and dangerously unpredictable working class, their admittance into the political community was recognized by others, such as Hamilton who composed lectures specifically for the working classes. Hamilton’s audience at the British Legion consisted of those who had fought for their country – ‘the navvies, the artisans, and the working classes’ (who Hamilton erroneously compared to centurions in the Roman army).300 In fact, C. P. Lucas had acknowledged the changing status of the working classes even before the passing of the 1918 Act when he addressed his lectures on The British Empire (1915) to them. Significantly in his opening lecture, ‘England in the Making’, Lucas had also made a point of referring to the nation’s mixed racial heritage claiming: Roman blood must have intermixed with the native Britons, and it is difficult to suppose that the future England did not derive some strength from the wonderful people who gave laws and roads and government to the greater part of the then known world.301

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Referring to Roman history and the ancestry of his working class audience indicated that mid-nineteenth-century notions of a cultural and moral tie between English ‘gentlemen’ and Romans had altered considerably. Although H. P. Judson had extended the analogy in 1894 to suggest the middle classes as well as the upper were in some way connected, if not biologically, to the Romans stating: The old Romans were in many ways like the modern English. They were hard-headed merchants and acute lawyers. They were keen, shrewd civilised men, using adroitly the means at hand. They were, in short, much what Englishmen would be without the printing press, steam and the telegraph wire.302

what Lucas now implied was that a racial tie existed between all classes of Englishmen and Romans. However, regardless of Lucas’ appeals on behalf of the Empire, more often in the post-war era, images of England as an imperial nation and its people as an imperial race continued to be displaced by nationalistic representations of an idyllic rural England populated by a domesticated race.303 The writer, G. K. Chesterton, lauded the English countryside in ‘The Spirit of England’ claiming no one had as yet ‘tried . . . to make England attractive as a nationality’.304 Picking up on the spiritualism inherent to Englishness as Ford Madox Ford and others had before him, Chesterton declared, there was a ‘particular kind of beauty . . . in an English village’, a ‘particular kind of humour . . . in an English public-house’.305 Chesterton’s panegyric to England extended to her people, a people who liked ‘tall hedges and heavy breakfasts and crooked roads and small gardens with large fences’.306 For Chesterton, it was ‘so obvious and so jolly to be optimistic about England, especially when you are an optimist – and an Englishman’.307 Wells had gone further and described what he saw as the ‘ideal’ citizen (clearly male) as truthful and temperate as well as: active in his own affairs, steadfastly law-abiding and respectful to custom and usage, though aloof from the tumult of politics, brave but not adventurous, punctual in some form of religious exercise, devoted to his wife and children, and kind without extravagance to all men.308

Furthermore, this quintessential Englishman would be community-minded and, ideally, free from class restrictions. Thus, he was: a very different creature from that indifferent, well-behaved business man who passes for a good citizen to-day. He will be neither under the slave

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tradition nor a rebel nor a vehement elemental man. Essentially he will be aristocratic, aristocratic not in the sense that he has slaves or class inferiors, because probably he will have nothing of the sort, but aristocratic in the sense that he will feel the State belongs to him and he to the State. . . . He will be good to his wife and children as he will be good to his friend, but he will be no partisan for wife and family against the common welfare.309

In other words, an Englishman would put the good of England above that of himself. Stanley Baldwin included an image of this new domesticated Englishman in his address to the Royal Society of St George in May 1924. After stating with what ‘profound thankfulness’ he could refer to ‘“England” without some fellow at the back of the room shouting out “Britain”’,310 Baldwin spoke of the English race and their love of home. The English, he stated, had ‘that power of making homes, almost peculiar to our people’ and that power Baldwin believed was what contributed to ‘their greatness’. Never forgetting though the line he had to tread between imperialism and nationalism it was, he claimed, qualities that Englishmen learnt in the home – justice, truth and humanity – that Englishmen took with them into the Empire. Moreover, Baldwin’s hope was that when people spoke in the future of English traits, they would do so in the same way as people spoke of ‘Roman strength, and the Roman work and the Roman character’.311 According to traditional conservatives, such as Robert Blake, Baldwin himself – ‘phlegmatic, honest, kind, commonsensical, fond of pigs, the classics and the country’ – symbolized to Englishmen ‘an idealised and enlarged version of themselves’.312 Thus, by the 1920s, if Baldwin could be believed, Wells’ pre-war conception of a home-loving, community-minded and classless Englishman had become a reality. ‘There is a brotherly and a neighbourly feeling’, Baldwin declared, ‘which we see to a remarkable extent through all classes’.313 Seven months later at the Albert Hall in a lecture on ‘Democracy and the Spirit of Service’, Baldwin claimed progress now rested ‘not only on the Government, but on every man and woman in the country’.314 ‘[W]e stand’, he went on, ‘for the union of those two nations of which Disraeli spoke two generations ago; union among our own people to make one nation of our own people at home which, if secured, nothing else matters in the world’.315 Fictional characters reflected this vision of post-war Englishmen. Replacing the imperial adventurers and heroes of Henry Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad were the domestic heroes of, for instance, John Buchan and Agatha Christie.316 John Buchan’s domesticated hero, Dickson McCunn in Huntingtower (1922), whose adventures begin and end in Glasgow when he returns to his home

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and wife, was in stark contrast to the adventures of his pre-war hero Richard Hannay.317 For Buchan, who admitted to a preoccupation ‘with the classics’ as they instilled in him ‘a standard of values’,318 it was this altered post-war Englishman, free ‘from melodrama’ with a ‘national gift of meiosis’ and ‘steady nerves’, who convinced him that ‘we could build up the world anew and embody in it the best of the old’.319 As Lucas, Baldwin and others carried on demonstrating the cultural and racial contribution ancient Romans had made to twentieth-century Englishmen, in order to make such an inheritance feasible, there was a notable transformation in characterizations of the Romans themselves. If Englishmen were no longer an imperial race, neither were the Romans: if post-war Englishmen put the State and family above individual will, these were virtues that were inherent in ancient Romans. Virgil’s Aeneid again provided the evidence. The classicist, M. S. Slaughter, claimed selflessness and restraint, patience and tolerance, were all characteristics present not just in Aeneas but in Virgil himself whose ‘own conception of man’s duty’ was not to ‘seek his own selfish ends’.320 Warde Fowler had interpreted both Virgil and Aeneas in much the same way in 1908 claiming Virgil’s personal acceptance of his duty was reflected in his representation of Aeneas’ treatment of Dido. Despite his love for her, Aeneas recognized that it was his duty as a Roman to abandon Dido and put ‘the State’ above personal considerations.321 Such representations of Virgil and Aeneas in the light of what were acceptable national characteristics in post-war Englishmen carried on throughout the 1920s. Warde Fowler returned to the figure of Aeneas and his relationship with Dido in Roman Essays and Interpretations (1920). Dido’s ‘frenzied outburst’ on learning of Aeneas’ departure was, for Warde Fowler, Virgil’s way of contrasting ‘the fury of ungovernable love, love of the animal type, with the settled order, affect, and obedience, of the Roman family life’.322 Although he acknowledged a ‘modern reader’ might question why Dido should not have been allowed to marry Aeneas to which the traditional answer would be that the gods ordained it was not to be, this was not ‘the whole of Virgil’s answer’ in Warde Fowler’s opinion. Rather, Virgil ‘would have said that Dido’s character, as he conceived it, was utterly incompatible with Italian ideals’ as she failed to ‘understand the combination of virtues which made up the ideal Roman matron’.323 This Warde Fowler attributed to her ‘true oriental ungovernableness’ that had led her to indulge ‘her passion’ for Aeneas rather than remain loyal to the memory of her husband.324 J. W. Mackail was another who considered Virgil ideally suited to act as a guide to a nation recovering from a global conflict on the grounds he

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had once stood where Britons now stood ‘among the wreckage of a world’. As such, Virgil could ‘give light and guidance . . . in the foundation of a new world upon its ruins’.325 Furthermore, for Mackail, a classical scholar employed at the Board of Education, it was not just Virgil but Rome itself that had much to offer post-war Britain representing as it did ‘the constructive and conservative side of life’. Indeed, training in Latin, Mackail believed, would produce ‘a corresponding type of citizen: hard workers, clear reasoners’.326 The Oxford historian, Hugh Last, also interpreted the past from an interwar perspective. Last, who insisted ‘[h]ome life by its presence or its absence’ could ‘make or mar a society’, considered neglecting family duties was putting loyalty to self over loyalty to the state.327 It was this sort of selfishness during the Roman Republic that had caused the population to decline and many old Roman families to die out.328 Vladimir Simkhovitch in Rome’s Fall Reconsidered (1916) had pointed out the consequences for Rome of the declining birth rate during the Republic, a decline that was tantamount to ‘race-suicide’. Ovid, Simkhovitch stated, had told of the widespread use of ‘birth-control and a disinclination to marriage’.329 Greece had also suffered from ‘childlessness and general depopulation’ according to Evelyn Shuckburgh’s translation of Polybius’ The Histories (1889) ‘owing to which the cities were denuded of inhabitants, and a failure of productiveness resulted’.330 Last picked up on Simkhovitch’s (and Wells’) emotive term ‘race-suicide’ perhaps to emphasize the danger Britain was now facing, should measures not be put in place to encourage Britons to breed. ‘[R]ace-suicide had shown itself to be a threat full of danger’ by the end of the Republic, he argued, that Augustan legislation to increase ‘the birth-rate was among the most important’ although ultimately ‘least successful’ of his actions.331 As a consequence then of new challenges that faced interwar Britons both nationally and internationally, ideas of race became more diffused, less particularistic, and secondary to values of home and land. Nonetheless, in this progression, Roman values continued to have their importance and the Romans adopted a position analogous to that of the English. Historian and philosopher, R. G. Collingwood’s Roman Britain (1923) included the results of anthropological studies of skeletons. From these, he concluded, that between Romans and ancient Britons, ‘there was no regular physical differentiation whatever’, not least, as the Romans themselves were ‘not a pure race but a very mixed one, and one of the chief elements in the mixture was just that Celtic strain which predominated in Britain’.332 In other words, prior to arriving in Britain and intermarriage with the Celts that for the Romans was ‘quite natural and defied no convention’,

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Romans and Britons already shared racial traits.333 Rome therefore succeeded in Romanizing ancient Britons without any ‘unnatural warping of the British character’ as they ‘were so far homogeneous both in race and in civilization that they could blend into a single whole’.334 Furthermore, as the majority of Britons survived the Roman withdrawal as Saxon invaders wanted the spoils of war not blood, ‘the race remained, and its character’, Collingwood remarked, had ‘reasserted itself – mental and physical character alike’.335 In line though with the post-war emphasis on Englishness, Collingwood made this ancestry specific to the English as qualities present in Romano-British artefacts were ‘especially English’ and ‘valued by English people more than by others’.336 Effectively, Englishmen were the particular inheritors of all things Roman. Egyptologist and journalist, Arthur Weigall in Wanderings in Roman Britain (1926), however, was keen to stress the biological tie that existed between Romans and modern Britons. Weigall openly admitted his intention was to pass on ‘some knowledge of ’ Roman Britain as he deemed it ‘of such value in the development of the national ideal’ that one could not make ‘too widely . . . known the result of archaeological and historical research’.337 Serialized in the nationalistic Daily Mail the largest selling daily newspaper at the time, Weigall’s findings reached a wide audience.338 Similarly to Collingwood, he maintained comparison of Roman and British skeletons proved the Romans were the ancestors of those who now dwelt in what had been the occupied zones of Roman Britain. Roman blood, he insisted, still flowed in the ‘veins’ of Yorkshiremen, while among Manchester’s present population there was ‘many a man’ whose ancestors ‘knew the place when it was an isolated Roman fortress’. The same could be said of the people of Kent, of London, of Northumberland and of Cumberland.339 In fact, King Arthur himself had been ‘a Roman’ and ‘the last really great figure in the history of Roman Britain’.340 In effect, by Weigall’s reckoning, Roman blood had ‘only passed through 45 persons in reaching our veins’, a period so brief that it was ‘not sufficient in itself to have produced much change in the nature of that blood’.341 However, although it was undeniable that the Romans had made a vast difference to ancient Britain, Weigall also emphasized the extent to which the Romans found Britain a civilized nation, indeed a nation so civilized that it ‘required very little to bring it into line with Roman ideas’.342 Proof of this was the welcome ancient Britons received in Rome itself. ‘Britain’, Weigall stated, ‘was very much in fashion in Rome’ where Romans drove ‘about in British chariots’ and ladies dyed ‘their hair golden like that of some of the British women’. Consequently, Caesar had been ‘misinformed’ when he wrote that Britons

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were a primitive race.343 A review of Wanderings in The Geographical Journal praised Weigall’s study on two counts. First, Weigall had achieved his aim of imparting some knowledge of Roman Britain to a broad audience and, secondly, he had properly stressed the ‘uncontrovertible but little-appreciated fact that the blood of the heterogeneous Romans still runs in our veins’.344 Not all though were convinced by Weigall’s argument. Nonetheless, although J. C. and H. G. Robertson denied Roman blood ran in the veins of Englishmen as important, in their opinion, was the ‘ancestry of the spirit’ that had been inherited by the English, along with the spirit of Greeks, Celts, Saxons and Normans.345 In one other respect too, the Robertson’s interpretation of Roman society fitted interwar rhetoric as ‘[a]ll classes of society’ in Rome ‘were loyal to the state and publicspirited to an unusual degree’.346 Reconstruction of the Romans as a domesticated, home-loving race, mindful of the concepts of duty, community and loyalty to the State and the cultural or racial ancestors of Englishmen, was of use to politicians promoting a conservative philosophy. Speaking at a meeting of the Classical Association in January 1926, Baldwin stated: To be an Englishman native of a country which was an integral part of the Roman Empire for a period as long as from the Reformation until this present night, and to be ignorant of the history of that Empire, is to be without that sense of perspective in viewing both the change of events and their day-to-day reactions which is essential to see our national life and to see it whole.347

Following the trend, Baldwin compared Romans with Englishmen using the language of race. Herbert Asquith, recently created Lord Oxford, was an example of an Englishman who displayed his Roman heritage as he had, in Baldwin’s opinion, ‘that reticence and reserve that belong[ed] essentially to the Roman and the Englishman’.348 The ‘experiences’ of the First World War ‘and post-war democracy’ sparked off what Peter Mandler considers to be ‘the greatest change in national stereotypes since the days of Edmund Burke’.349 Although tension remained between concepts of Britishness (and the Empire was territorially at its height) and Englishness due to the resurgence in English (as well as Scottish, Welsh and Irish) nationalism, the polarized debate on the racial make-up of Britain had largely dissipated. There can be no doubt the Irish remained something of an anomaly but, if Baldwin can be believed, the Scots and Welsh were no longer the marginalized ‘other’. The year before his address to the Classical Association

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at a St David’s Day dinner in March 1925, Baldwin spoke of how St David had become as ‘blessed by the English’ as the Welsh while in November that same year at the St Andrew’s Day Festival he rather disingenuously stated that Englishmen had ‘always taken the Scots to their hearts as blood brothers’.350 Furthermore, as worries about mob radicalism gradually faded, the division of the English into nobiles and plebs ceased to have such a hold and more unitary conceptions of the English emerged. Within this there was a strong environmental and spiritual emphasis in which geneticism was eventually to take a back seat as heterogeneity was applauded. Nonetheless, as it came to be seen that it was amid the culture and spirit of the home that Englishmen were made, Rome was made to work analogously to support this demonstration of values. As there was a move away from reliance on the Republic and liberty to the values of small communities, links were drawn with Caesarism or Augustanism which as well as providing the conditions for a new imperial domesticity also offered a solution to the turbulence of the late Republican period. If the rise of English nationalism caused a retreat from the politics of race, as we shall see, it was also to cause a retreat from the city itself.

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Ancient Rome and the Debate on the City1

From rural to urban Between 1801 and 1851 a demographic revolution gripped the nation. In England and Wales alone the population increased from 9 to almost 18 million.2 This in itself guaranteed that the England of Victoria was fundamentally altered in ‘a hundred and one ways’ from the England of the Georges.3 But population growth was not the only thing that happened. Running in tandem with it was a demographic shift as Britain was transformed from a rural to an urban society as a result of the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and industrialization. In 1800, only London had a population in excess of 100,000. By the start of the Victorian era the number of cities of this size had risen to five and by the close of the century to twenty-three.4 In 1886 the social reformer, Charles Booth, described the shift in demographics and predicted further movement in the future. Over the past 30 years, he wrote in an article for the Royal Statistical Society, ‘England has changed from a population about half agriculture and half manufacturing, to one in which Manufacturing is double of Agriculture, and we have no reason to suppose that the process of change in this direction is yet ended’.5 Sociologist and Liberal politician, Leonard T. Hobhouse, looking back at the first half of the nineteenth century in 1911, remarked that it was the change from rural to urban that had laid ‘the foundation of the future social problem’.6 In 1833, Jackson’s Oxford Journal reported on the adverse effects of the Enclosure Acts on rural inhabitants: ‘The common lands have been absorbed in order to swell estates . . . labourers have been dispossessed of their old right of common, while houses, without a patch of garden ground, have been accumulated in frightful squalidness and density’. The writer recommended adopting an allotment system suggested by the Labourers’ Friend Society but on the grounds that it would be advantageous to landowners and the nation rather than the dispossessed. Exchanging ‘slavish, vagrant and debased dependents . . .

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for steadier and abler labourers’, the writer suggested, would ensure landowners gained economically, in popularity and add to the peace of the nation. These benefits, he estimated, would be immense, as immense as those ‘which the Patricians of Rome (so fatally for Rome) refused to the long-sighted and sagacious urgency of the Gracchi’.7 However, although by 1844 the anonymous author of Remedies suggested for some of the evils which constitute ‘The Perils of the Nation’, claimed allotting land to rural workers, as some sagacious landlords had proven, had saved families from the workhouse, reduced criminality and improved morality, overall little had been done to counter the detrimental effects of Enclosure on the rural population.8 Making matters worse for ruralites and contributing hugely to the demographic shift was industrialization, a phenomenon that nineteenth-century historian, William Cooke Taylor, considered historically unique. In 1842 having toured the industrial areas of Lancashire, Taylor observed that the ‘steam-engine had no precedent, the spinning-jenny is without ancestry, the mule and the power-loom entered on no prepared heritage: they sprang into sudden existence like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter’.9 If the Enclosure Acts had stripped rural workers of the right to use common land, mass production made redundant their domestic industries. These factors, together with the mechanization of farm machinery and a drop in wages, forced labourers to migrate to the industrial cities to search for work, a higher standard of living and to regain, according to Frederick Engels, a sense of independence that had been lost as men were ‘obliged to hire themselves as labourers to the larger farmers or the landlords’ which, in comparison to their former way of life, was ‘a deterioration’.10 Instead they found the opposite. Industrialization had brought about a remarkable transformation in Britain’s landscape. A factory inspector’s report on Leeds in 1858 described the altered northern landscape. ‘It is true’, Robert Baker wrote, ‘that the fair meadows once possessed by Holbeck . . . are now covered with houses and workshops . . . and that the air is somewhat loaded with the black vapours which issue from its immense manufactories’.11 It was in overcrowded, unhealthy cities such as Leeds that rural workers were compelled to live and work for little recompense. Engels, who had seen first-hand the plight of the urban working classes during his two years in a Manchester factory, wrote of the appalling conditions labourers were subjected to in industrial cities and noted society’s indifference to them. [W]orkers have no property whatsoever of their own and live wholly upon wages, which usually go from hand to mouth. Society, composed wholly of

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atoms, does not trouble itself about them; leaves them to care for themselves and their families, yet supplies them no means of doing this in an efficient and permanent manner. Every working man, even the best, is therefore constantly exposed to loss of work and food, that is to death by starvation, and many perish in this way.12

Some had warned of the potential dangers of an urban existence. The social commentator Peter Gaskell in The Manufacturing Population of England (1833) had noticed a ‘vast deterioration in personal form’ in urbanites since the start of the century; a deterioration so great that he believed it ‘worthy of the attention of any statesman’.13 He considered it ‘extraordinary’ that so little had been written on the subject explainable perhaps by the short time that had elapsed since steam-powered machinery had been introduced. Although industrialization was in Gaskell’s eyes ‘as yet but a Hercules in the cradle’,14 he emphasized the negative impact on city living by contrasting a rural to an urban worker. Whereas the former was ‘a robust and well-made man’ of average height, the latter was not only morally inferior but also physically inferior, being ‘sallow and pallid’ and low in stature.15 Gaskell also pointed out other evils that could be blamed on the ‘conversion’ of a once noble race ‘from agriculturists to manufacturers’.16 One such evil was the appointment of middlemen the equivalent of Roman tribunes to intervene in disputes between men and masters. Withdrawing ‘confidential intercourse’ between the two was a reprehensible ‘practice’ and more than likely to end in disaster.17 W. Cooke Taylor, following a visit to a northern cotton mill, had also drawn attention to the fact that there was not an endless supply of labourers to replace those who died prematurely as a result of sub-standard living and working conditions. It made economic sense to him that labourers remained healthy. A ‘proprietor’, he warned, cannot treat [labourers] like Negroes; he cannot, when he has worked out one gang, go into the market, and procure a fresh supply. With him, obviously and immediately, waste of human life would be a vast waste of his own capital.18

In addition, Taylor envisaged psychological problems would arise from new methods of manufacturing and urban living. First, sub-dividing labour in factories and limiting the skilfulness of workers to just ‘one small article of production’ would degrade a man’s ‘understanding’ and make him no better than a machine19 and, secondly, condemning workers and their families to living in properties filled to capacity or worse that offered no possibility ‘for domestic

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comforts, domestic privacy, or the indulgence of the domestic affects’ would destroy ‘domestic virtues’.20 Equally concerned at the affects of industrialization was the Anti-Corn Law leaguer, William Cobbett and Thomas Carlyle. Cobbett strongly advised against further industrialization while Carlyle criticized the government for paying greater attention to the ‘Canada question, Irish Appropriation question, WestIndia question, Queen’s Bedchamber question’ than the ‘Condition-of-England question’.21 John Ruskin in The Stones of Venice (1860) argued the treatment of the urban population was worse than the treatment of slaves in the ancient world. There are, he observed, ‘signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek’. Industrialization smothered a worker’s soul and destroyed ‘human intelligence’ and, in Ruskin’s opinion, there had been greater liberty in England under the feudal system irrespective of its hardships than ‘while the animation of her multitudes [was] sent like fuel to feed the factory smoke’.22 Engels blamed the speed of industrialization for the unhealthy conditions of cities that were ‘everywhere badly planned, badly built, and kept in the worst condition, badly ventilated, damp, and unwholesome’ and condemned families to live in appalling dwellings.23 Charles Kingsley was shocked by what he saw when he visited the poorer areas of London. He recorded a visit to Bermondsey in 1849 in his diary: ‘oh God! what I saw! People having no water to drink – hundreds of them – but the water of the common sewer which stagnated full of . . . dead fish, cats and dogs, under their windows’.24 Viscount Palmerston, at the time Foreign Secretary, wrote to his brother William in September that same year stating ‘[c]holera has been very active’ in virtually every town and it was ‘almost everywhere . . . traceable to noxious effluvia, arising from accumulations of dirt and of animal and vegetable matter, choked-up drains, stinking sewers, and things of that kind’.25 Charles Dickens described the abject misery and lack of compassion for urban labourers in Sketches by Boz (1836). A worker in London driven by an urgent need to find employment endured a life that awoke: no sympathy in the breast of any single person; his existence is a matter of interest to no one save himself; he cannot be said to be forgotten when he dies, for no one remembered him when he was alive.26

Like Engels, Dickens clearly considered the situation was not helped by a general unwillingness to plan and construct towns in an orderly fashion. In Dombey and Son (1846–8), he wrote of cities where ‘[e]verywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimney,

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wanting half their height’.27 In Hard Times (1854) he described Coketown (his fictional name for Preston) as a city that ‘had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose’.28 Nor was Dickens the only mid-century novelist to express sympathy for the hardships of working-class urbanites. The daughter of a Manchester industrialist, Geraldine Jewsbury, in Marian Withers (1851) described from personal experience a Manchester Street ‘where all the refuse, slops and filth thrown from the houses and cellars were putrefying in the street. It was here that thieves, wretched women, ruffians, the offscouring of the worst class, had their place to dwell’.29 It was apparent to many that cities were unable to accommodate the new and expanding population. The provision of proper sanitation and good supplies of water remained limited and the ‘slums’ seemed to slip beyond order into chaos threatening to overwhelm the rest of the city. Adding to the hardships of the workforce in both town and country were two factors. First, the Corn Laws that kept the price of corn artificially high and put the cost of a loaf of bread beyond the reach of many. Taylor, working on behalf of the Anti-Corn Law League, compared the Roman Corn Laws to their modern equivalent in a letter to Richard Cobden. ‘It was the policy of the Patricians to keep corn at a high price’, Taylor wrote, and ‘so long as they succeeded the republic was kept tottering on the very brink of ruin. It was not until the Plebeians had justice at home that Victory began to crown the arms of Rome abroad’.30 The Chartist, John Watkins, censured the Corn Laws in a letter he wrote to The Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser in May 1841. ‘We want Agrarian Laws, not Corn Laws’, he stated, ‘but how are we get them [sic]’ with ‘[o]ur Gracchi’ in prison.31 Secondly, the utilitarianism of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 had removed what little financial assistance had been available to the poor from parish funds. Despite criticism of the Act from The Essex Standard which claimed it lacked ‘the republican spirit of the Gracchi’32 as those prepared to work had a right to live and Thomas Carlyle who, echoing The Standard, declared the Act announced ‘that whosoever will not work ought not to live’,33 the views of the political economist Thomas Malthus held sway. Malthus in his highly influential Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) argued the old Poor Laws depressed the ‘general condition of the poor’ in two instances; by encouraging the poor to marry with ‘no prospect of being able to support a family without parish assistance’ and by diminishing ‘the quantity of provisions’ rightly belonging to ‘the more industrious and more worthy members’ of society’.34 Malthus, whose primary concern had been that food production would not be sufficient to feed the growing population of Britain in

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the future, had condemned as ‘strange and preposterous’ Rome’s distribution of free corn to the Roman masses who without ‘charity’ would not have been able to support either themselves or their wives and children.35 Scottish reformer, Samuel Smiles in Self Help (1859) summed up Victorian justification for an act that left the workhouse the only option for many: Help from without is often enfeebling in its effect, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.36

In effect, the Act removed what little provision had been provided for the relief of paupers on the grounds that such relief encouraged idleness and harmed the economy.37 The process of pushing responsibility for poverty onto the poor established a moral distance between the rich and the poor that ‘othered’ the working classes and created an association with non-white peoples in the Empire. It also encouraged attempts to generate a greater degree of control over mutinous elements among the lower orders who had little option but to struggle against a utilitarian philosophy to improve their lot. Many blamed urbanization for the civil strife that had erupted across the nation during the early nineteenth century. Fearful at the loss of jobs caused by the mechanization of looms, the Luddites had been active in Lancashire and Yorkshire between 1811 and 1816 and it was also the introduction of mechanized farm machinery that was responsible for the Swing Riots in the South of England in 1830. The establishment of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers in 1832 in Tolpuddle was in protest at the drop in wages for agricultural workers while, in Wales, high toll charges levied on already impoverished agricultural workers led to the Rebecca Riots of the early 40s.38 Kingsley blamed the loss of traditional legal and economic rights for the rick-burning that was a prominent feature of the Swing Riots. In his novel Yeast (1851) he drew attention to the growing disparity between rich and poor and included rhymes that highlighted the difference enclosure had made to agricultural workers: They robs us of our turfing rights, Our bits of chips and sticks, Till poor folks now can’t warm their hands, Except by varmer’s ricks.39

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Thomas Carlyle argued working-class oppression was responsible for the rise in Chartism and other radical movements which, he believed, could yet be ‘our French Revolution’.40 Goldwin Smith in a lecture on the Labour Movement linked ‘industrial disturbances’ to ‘political disturbances equally formidable, with Chartism, Socialism, Cato Street conspiracies, Peterloo massacres’41 although for The Times, Chartism was ‘in its present form . . . a criminal question’ rather than a political one. There was, The Times, reported: a great alternative placed before all men who would not live like wild beasts amongst their fellows. Exertion or content, industry or resignation. The modern Gracchi will embrace neither one nor the other of these conditions. A vicious idleness debars them from the first; the second they esteem quite unworthy of men of spirit and resolution.42

If the elitist Times compared the Chartists to the Roman Republican heroes, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, so too did the Chartists themselves. Ernest Jones referred to the Gracchi in Notes for the People seeing them as ‘proto-Chartist[s]’ struggling ‘against ruling-class tyranny’.43 The Chartist Circular described them as ‘true patriots’ who struggled to ‘restore Roman liberty’ by reining in the aristocracy.44 The Irish Chartist leader, Member of Parliament and owner of The Northern Star, Feargus O’Connor, wanting to highlight the division in the nation between rich and poor, addressed the working classes in 1848: Labourers, again, again, and again, let me call your undivided attention to the fact, that in no country in the world, from the days of the Gracchi down to the French Revolution, has the labourer been used for any other purposes, whether moral or physical than to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.45

Nor was it just Anti-Corn-Law leaguers and Chartists who were compared to the Gracchi but, if the radical papers drew favourable comparisons between the ancient reformers and their modern counterparts, the right-wing press tended like The Times to do the opposite or to emphasize the difference between the two. A letter to The Morning Post in 1851 claimed the people were not deceived by reformers who believed themselves ‘popular enough to become a Gracchus’ with promises of ‘free trade and the cheap loaf ’.46 The actions of Daniel O’Connell, land reformer, supporter of Catholic emancipation and working to repeal the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland, were described in The Times as the actions of a despot on the grounds that ‘in the time of the Gracchi, popular leaders’ were ‘frequently disguised despots’.47 The Glasgow Herald, however, refused to compare

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O’Connell to ‘prime movers or guides of nations’ such as the Gracchi as he lacked their sagacity while the Blackburn Standard reported that to call O’Connell a ‘Gracchus’ was ‘a profanation of history’.48 Although the belief in progressivism inherent to the mid-century liberal ideology applied to the working classes in the same way it applied to non-white imperial subjects, that progress was bound up with notions of laissez-faire and selfhelp, the spirit of which, according to Smiles, was ‘the root of all genuine growth in the individual’,49 making progress the responsibility of individuals struggling to survive and without implementing the necessary reforms was both ill-founded and potentially dangerous.50 As the historian and master of Trinity College Cambridge, G. M. Trevelyan, pointed out in his study of English social history in 1944, ‘[i]t was not laissez-faire, but liberty for the masters and repression for the men’.51 Some industrialists and social reformers, like some landowners, in response to concerns and recognizing the link between land, efficiency and health, had made efforts to counteract the damaging effects of industrialization. As early as the 1760s, Matthew Boulton had provided allotments for labourers at the Soho Works in Birmingham and by 1801 he was also providing his workforce with gardens.52 Sir Thomas Bernard’s recommendation that workers in towns should be allocated gardens to supplement their diet (although this was on condition that they and their families work on the land in their free time) appeared in reports in the early 1800s that aimed to relieve distress among the poor.53 In addition, legislation was passed, such as Althorp’s Factory Act in 1833 which restricted the number of hours that women and children could work, and the 1844 Factory Act. Others tackled the issue of urban renewal. Edwin Chadwick, secretary of the Poor Law Commissioners in England from 1834 until 1847 when he joined the Royal Commission on Public Health, reported on the sanitary conditions in cities and proposed that sewage systems be replaced and cities rid of all decomposing materials, including bodies and, in 1848, the Public Health Act was passed.54 Nonetheless and despite these efforts at reform, during the 1850s with a ready supply of workers migrating from rural districts, few Victorians, it would seem, attempted, or were even prepared to attempt, to introduce reforms that would make a fundamental difference to the lives of the masses in the newly industrialized cities. Kingsley’s hero Lancelot in Yeast summed up mid-century attitudes to reform. Although debates had taken place and reports been produced on the ‘Condition-of-the-Poor question – that is, in blue books, red books, sanitary reports, mine reports’, the hero of the tale concluded that although ‘something was the matter . . . no man knew, or, if they knew, thought proper to declare’.55

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Several factors played against those attempting to improve the urban environment, not least, high levels of productivity that added to the coffers of already wealthy industrialists. In 1835 the French politician and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, had likened Manchester to a ‘foul drain’ but a drain from which flowed ‘pure gold’ for the masters if not the men.56 The Great Exhibition in 1851 told of Britain’s imperial power and economic might. Moreover, it marked Britain out as a progressive society and suggested that the problems associated with industrialization and urbanization had been successfully negotiated.57 Another factor was ignorance according to Charles Kingsley. Following a meeting in London in October 1849 with Archdeacon M-, Kingsley wrote in his diary that the Archdeacon ‘disappointed, but interested me. Had no notion that such specimens of humanity were still to be found walking about this nineteenth century England’.58 Yet another was indifference to the conditions labourers had to endure. In an anonymous letter to The Times in 1851, the writer claimed that he was ‘convinced’ that the time had almost come ‘to abandon Rotten-row altogether to the very miscellaneous population which has fallen upon it’. He insinuated that the ‘strangers’ he met on his tour of the area proved they had reached such depths of degradation that reforms had little chance of making any real difference. Rotten-row, he concluded, had ‘already undergone the fate of ancient Rome’.59 Adding to the disinclination to instigate wide-ranging reforms during the 1850s was the fact that a period of relative calm had descended on Britain following the unrest of the previous decades. The 1848 revolutions in Europe had not materialized and division among the leadership of the Chartist Movement with Richard Cobden advocating peaceful reform over Feargus O’Connor’s readiness to use force if necessary had resulted in a loss of impetus for the movement.60 The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 had also eased the situation as had emigration to the colonies which was perceived as one way of ridding the country of the unemployed.61 Despite a warning from ‘SEER’ in Awake! Or Perish! (1854) that the majority of the people emigrating were ‘the best bone and sinew’ of the race which left behind the ‘idle, discontented and vicious’, many welcomed the calm after the storm.62 The Viscount Palmerston, an Irish peer, in the same letter to his brother in 1849 in which he wrote that cholera had been rife, compared England’s situation to Ireland’s, stating: ‘Here in England everything is quiet. Our harvest is good, and the potatoes not much diseased; trade and manufactures are rallying, and all interests tolerably well off ’.63 An entry in Thomas Macaulay’s diary in 1851 also suggested upper- and middle-class fears of a working-class revolution had been defused. ‘I saw none

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of the men of action with whom the Socialists were threatening us’, Macaulay noted, ‘[t]here is just as much chance of a revolution in England as of the falling of the moon’.64 Kingsley too in the preface to the fourth edition of Yeast published 25 years after the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act claimed it had served its purpose having ‘taught the labouring men greater self-help and independence’.65 However, if certain ‘revolutionary’ factions had for the time being been contained, the effect of sub-standard living conditions on the health of the urban poor gradually became a worry that could no longer be sidelined as it became clear that unhealthy workers, as Taylor had warned, jeopardized the very thing the elite was most keen to maintain – production. Indeed, the social reformer, Henry Mayhew, considered the situation serious enough in 1851 to publish the first three volumes of his study, London Labour and the London Poor. Mayhew’s ‘earnest hope’ was: to give the rich a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under those sufferings, of the poor . . . and cause those who are in ‘high places’, and those of whom much is expected, to bestir themselves to improve the condition of a class of people whose misery, ignorance, and vice amidst all the immense wealth and great knowledge of ‘the first city in the world’, is, to say the very least, a national disgrace to us.66

With one way to solve the crisis of an unhealthy and unproductive urban population being the improvement in living conditions, serious attention was given to the question of urban regeneration and, in this, Rome was to play an increasingly important part. The influence of the ancient world on the urban landscape was highly visible. The classical terraces of Regent’s Park, theatres and museums (notably the British Museum) symbolized the civic power of the rich in the major cities. With the dawning of the industrial age, buildings associated with it – railway stations, town halls, factories and warehouses – were often constructed in a classical style. However, the development and expansion of an efficient railway system elicited more overt comparisons with Rome as it was Roman ingenuity in the construction of their transport system that was admired by modern engineers.67 As the Conservative political writer Robert Dudley Baxter put it to the Statistical Society in 1866, the ‘Romans were the great Roadmakers of the ancient world – the English are the great Railroad-makers of the modern world’.68 In 1868, reporting on a speech delivered by Cardinal Wiseman on the construction of railways and viaducts, The Times, conjured up images of Rome to demonstrate that Rome had succeeded where Britain had failed

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to incorporate new constructions into cities in an aesthetically pleasing way. Wiseman, the paper reported, had compared: the way in which ancient Rome dealt with aqueducts, and the manner in which railways were allowed to be made in modern London . . . if the aqueducts went near any ancient building the Romans endeavoured to incorporate that building harmoniously with the new work, while railways cut ruthlessly through any building, however beautiful.69

However, it was in response to concern over health from the 1850s when the hastily erected, badly constructed slums built earlier in the century to house the expanding city population had had time to deteriorate, that references to Rome in the debate on urban reform became more commonplace.70 For instance, the epidemiologist and president of London’s Statistical Society, William Farr, in his report on the spread of cholera in 1852 compared the geographical situation of Rome and London. Rome, he maintained, ‘on hills of nearly the same elevation as the high parts of London, was as happily chosen to secure the health as the defence of the Roman people’.71 The problem of providing clean and sufficient water to cities also frequently elicited comparisons between ancient Rome and modern London. In 1849, the Morning Post reported that Rome’s population was supplied with water by no less than nine aqueducts and asked ‘[w]hat would our water companies say to this?’72 The Times responded to the Liberal politician, Sir William Clay’s, public denial of ‘the risks of insalubrity connected with stagnancy and lead’ in London’s water supply, by suggesting Clay ‘bring up his reading to the age of Augustus and Trajan, and not to withhold from us, in the 19th century, the benefit of Vitruvius’ and Pliny’s experience’. The nation could then, The Times proposed, learn from ‘the sagacious reflections of those old philosophers on the quality and urban distribution of water’.73 The Daily News claimed Britain was approaching the issue conservatively and was satisfied with ‘patch[ing]’ and ‘darn[ing]’ rather than replacing ineffective systems. In contrast, the French were implementing an ‘immense’ and ‘radical’ plan to improve the supply of water to Paris by bringing water from Chalons by way of an aqueduct that resembled ‘old Roman aqueducts which are still the wonder and the admiration of the world’.74 The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent considered it a disgrace that the Romans could supply fresh spring water to their city while Britons, 2000 years later, were ‘swallowing the disgustingly polluted Thames water’ and this despite ‘our exclusively classical education’ which clearly ‘has conferred little practical benefit upon us’.75 The Blackburn Standard also questioned the quality of the water that Londoners were supplied with. Although proportionally Londoners

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had a more plentiful supply than Romans, unless water was brought into London from ‘pure sources’ as had been done in Rome, the population of the city would continue to be at the mercy of the spread of contagious diseases.76 In 1879 at the National Water Supply Exhibition at Alexandra Palace, the Chairman, Mr Hepworth Dixon, drew attention to Rome’s method of supplying water to cities in order to criticize ‘the apathy of the present day in matters of such vital importance’77 while, reporting on Lord Chichester’s speech at the Brighton Health Congress in 1881, The Times stated: With regard to the water supply of Brighton now, [Lord Chichester] said no one could complain, and he trusted that the sewerage of the town would prove of the benefit expected from it. Certainly this sewerage of Brighton was not an imitation in regard to magnitude of the cloaca of ancient Rome; but as the Romans appointed a goddess over the Cloaca Maxima, so he wished that the Brighton Corporation could so guard the capital of Sussex from the fear of evils arising from the subterranean channels from the houses.78

Charles Kingsley in The Air Mothers (1869) imagined what the reaction of a Roman Emperor would be on visiting nineteenth-century London. After admiring the public buildings and recognizing the achievements of an imperial people the Emperor, Kingsley wrote, would look ‘inquiringly’ but ‘in vain’ for the public baths and exercise rooms.79 ‘[I]f you wish me to consider you a civilized nation’, the Emperor continued in Kingsley’s imagination, ‘let me hear that you have brought a great river from the depths of the earth . . . and have washed out London’s dirt – and your own shame’.80 The civil engineer, John Grover’s, lecture ‘Modern Lessons from Ancient Masters’ (1873) was reported on by the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent. Grover’s intention, the paper stated, was to show that despite ‘all our modern achievements’, Britons could learn much from the Romans. Constructing Roman style baths would ensure that no longer could the masses ‘be called “the great unwashed”’ while, with regard to the sewerage system, Britain had been unable to achieve ‘what the Romans did 500 years before the Christian era’.81 Nor was Roman inventiveness restricted to the question of water supplies according to reformers. In 1877, Edwin Chadwick in expressing concern over the lack of escape routes from theatres implied the Society of Arts should consult Roman plans for large buildings and learn from them: The Society had not gone into the question of the means of escape provided in the theatres of ancient Rome in the event of fire or panic, but in the

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plans for the restoration of the Coliseum the vomitorium was excellently arranged.82

Even in a debate over the advantages and disadvantages of burial or cremation, room could be found for Rome. ‘Men’, a Times’ editorial stated, should be allowed ‘to have their corpses dissolved by fire or by earth, so only that they be dissolved effectually and cleansed in the process’. After all in ‘ancient Rome both practices went on side by side’.83 Roman solutions to the problems associated with urbanization though were not always perceived favourably. ‘If historians are truthful’, claimed a sanitary engineer in a letter to The Times in July 1887: no modern nation has ever approached the extravagance of the supply of water to ancient Rome by her 20 aqueducts, which are said to have poured in some 300 million gallons per day, which would be nearly equivalent to the dry weather volume of the River Thames this dry season at Teddington weir and lock, or nearly double the daily volume now supplied to London.84

Moreover, a review of the physician and Fellow of the Sanitary Institute, George Vivian Poore’s The Dwelling House (1897), claimed that sanitary conditions in Rome were so poor during the later imperial period that it was one reason why Constantine abandoned Rome preferring instead to live in the rebuilt and renamed city of Byzantium – Constantinople.85 Others compared British cities to Rome in order to show that Britons could equal and even improve on Roman feats of engineering. In 1873, the 15th Earl of Derby, Lord Stanley, subsequently Foreign Secretary in Disraeli’s government, speaking on the subject of national progress at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London, claimed British engineers ‘surpassed’ the Romans when it came to building roads. He anticipated too that it would not be long before Britain’s towns would be supplied with water via aqueducts ‘on a scale which no gone age has ever conceived’.86 By the 1890s it would seem this was the case with the Daily News reporting that the new aqueduct from Thirlmere to Prestwich was longer than that of Claudius’ Anio Novus by 34 miles.87 Whether used positively, negatively or merely to prove Britain was capable of dealing with the demands of the new industrial age, gradually from the 1850s Rome had become a key point of reference in debates on urban reform especially in relation to the supply of water to cities which, as the physician and colonial secretary of Mauritius, H. Sandwich pointed out in 1880, was a ‘burning question for London’.88 Coinciding with Rome’s increasingly high profile in the debate, histories of Rome, in addition to covering traditional aspects of Roman history – conquest,

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imperialism, decline and fall – documented the physical development of the city of Rome. According to George Harris, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, in the same way that historians had disregarded the ‘domestic history’ of Britain by which he meant the ‘every-day life of the people at large’ living in the towns and country, so too had the ‘domestic history’ of Rome been neglected despite the fact that there were sufficient ancient sources for such works to be produced.89 Evidence of the development of Roman cities could be found in a diverse range of ancient sources, for instance, from Joseph Gwilt’s translation of Vitruvius’ On Architecture (1874), from Bostock and Riley’s translation of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (1857) (especially Book 36) or from Church and Brodribb’s translation of Tacitus’ Annals (1876). The unearthing of Pompeii and Herculaneum as well as the remains of RomanoBritish towns spoke of towns constructed in an orderly fashion and with due attention given to sanitation. The Reverend Mandell Creighton and Charles Merivale included the physical development of Rome in their accounts of the ancient world. According to Creighton, study of Rome itself was worthwhile as only the Romans ‘lived in cities . . . and were what we in these times call civilised’90 while Merivale, although admitting discussion of Rome’s early development was reliant on a ‘series of poetical legends’ rather than facts, nonetheless concluded ‘we may admit that it has the germ of at least an historic basis’ from which to proceed.91 On Rome’s growth during the closing years of the Republic and in the Augustan period he was more certain. It was during the rule of Julius Caesar, he wrote, that there began ‘a new era in the history of the city’ apparent from ‘the conscious and deliberate design’ that became obvious during his rule.92 It was though, for Merivale, Augustus who made the greatest contribution to the physical development of Rome and presided over its transformation by enlarging the city, embellishing public buildings, restricting the height of houses to and laying out ‘newer quarters . . . in broader ways, with lower houses in the Grecian fashion, faced at least with stone’ which replaced older brick or wooden structures.93 This though was not enough to save Rome from the devastating fire during the rule of Nero. Church and Brodribb’s translation of Tacitus’ Annals (Book 15, 38) described the fire which ‘outstripped all preventive measures’ and rapidly spread through the city’s ‘narrow winding passages and irregular streets, which characterised old Rome’.94 However, it was also from Annals that evidence could be found to show how Rome was reconstructed in a structured way and with safety in mind, having ‘rows of streets according to measurement, with broad thorough-fares, with a restriction on the height of houses, with open spaces, and

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the further addition of colonnades, as a protection to the frontage of the blocks of tenements’. In addition to this, buildings; were to be solidly constructed, without wooden beams, of stone from Gabii or Alba, that material being impervious to fire. . . . Every building, too, was to be enclosed by its own proper wall, not by one common to others. These changes which were liked for their utility, also added beauty to the new city (Book 15, 43).95

In recognition then of what the consequences might be if Britain remained reliant on a physically degenerate urban population, a debate on urban reform emerged in which the city of Rome was utilized by politicians, economists and reformers to judge the success or failure of modern urbanization.

Physical degeneration and the working classes Up until the 1870s, Harold Pfautz states, ‘material progress and increasing wealth’ was still ‘sufficient to blind at least the dominant segment of the population to the existence of any pressing domestic problems’.96 But, by the end of the decade this was no longer possible. Genuine concern at the affect of overcrowded and unhealthy cities on labourers combined with worry that high levels of productivity could not be maintained in the future if productivity was reliant on a physically degenerate population. Competition from other European nations, in particular the newly industrialized Germany that was already showing signs that it had the potential to equal, if not exceed, Britain’s manufacturing output, did not help matters.97 Peter Gaskell’s warning in the 1830s that towns were the breeding place of a physically and morally degenerate population was rapidly becoming the reality. As reformers began to question whether urban regeneration would, in itself, be enough to undo the damage already caused to urbanites living in unwholesome surroundings (and the urban population by now exceeded that of the country), early nineteenth-century images of cities and their inhabitants as manifestations of civilization and the country and its inhabitants as the opposite, shifted.98 William Farr had, like Gaskell, compared urban and rural populations in his article on the ‘Fatality of Cholera’ in 1852. He had described the countenance of children ‘painful in [industrial] districts’ which presented ‘the most striking contrast’ to the health and vitality of children born to country folk. Degeneration in the former was ‘as inevitable as the degeneration of horses, oxen, sheep, in

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circumstances equally unfavourable’.99 Although Robert Baker, in describing the changed northern landscape in 1858, had recorded a slight drop overall in the mortality rate between 1851 and 1858 in the cities, it was ‘still high’ in comparison with the mortality rate in the country.100 Nor had matters improved a year later according to the reformer, J. T. Danson. His report to the Statistical Society in 1859 questioned what the future held for children bred in towns to retailers, workers and worse still those that fitted into the category of the ‘dangerous classes’.101 After conducting another survey into the relative health of the populations of large towns and small villages, he concluded: ‘I cannot but deem the latter preferable on all points’.102 His recommendation was that at the very least there should be trips to the country ‘on Sundays’,103 although his preference was for the construction of houses approximately 25 miles from towns with the provision of ‘cheap and rapid’ access to them by train on a daily basis.104 The marked difference between the urban and rural environment had also been noted in fiction. Dickens wrote of the boundary that existed between the two in Hard Times (1854) as Thomas Gradgrind ‘reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town, which was neither town nor country’.105 Elizabeth Gaskell’s foresight in observing the existence of the town and country divide in North and South in the mid 1850s was praised by the French literary critics Jean-Baptist Emile Montégut and subsequently by Louis Cazamian. Gaskell, Montégut wrote in his review for the French journal Revue des deux Mondes (1859), had drawn attention to two worlds. ‘On one side . . . lies a landscape restrained and select, full of cheerful and neat cottages’ of ‘very gentle voices that speak of qualms of conscience, of visits to the good farmers of the neighbourhood, of village schools, of family sorrow, of beautiful affections, of classical culture’ and, on the other, ‘a muddy town, noisy and filthy. Smoke from the factories hides the sky with its black fumes and falls to earth in a faint rain of soot’.106 In 1903, Cazamian made much the same point. Gaskell’s ‘imagination and senses’, he wrote, ‘could perceive the theoretical boundary dividing the green sunlit fields, where grey church towers rose behind aged oaks, and poets had idealised peasant poverty, from the noisy, smoky blackened cities, where the crowds moved gloomily between ugly little houses’.107 Interestingly, Montégut (and perhaps Cazamian too with his reference to the ‘idealised peasant’) linked ‘classical culture’ to the country rather than, as had traditionally been the case, to the city. It would seem Montégut was referencing classical pastoral and picking up on the Roman literary association of moral values and the countryside evident in the Odes and Epodes of Horace and Virgil’s Georgics. The pastoral poetry of Horace and Virgil was to become an increasingly important point of reference in the debate on town and country.

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By the 1870s, Lloyd’s Weekly had taken up the campaign if not for a return to the rural past then for ready access to ‘fresh air’ suggesting this would provide the answer to society’s ills: What does fresh air mean? The doctors answer health. What does health mean? The politician and the moralist reply, prosperity and virtue. Drive shafts of pure air through the poisoned ways of poverty and crime, and you lessen both. The man weakened by foul air, is if a workman, drawn towards the workhouse; if a criminal, towards the gaol.108

Genuine concern and the economic prerequisite for a healthy population though were not the only motives responsible for the change in perceptions of the city. Although the threat of a European-style revolution had diminished, the upper and middle classes remained fearful of further civil unrest and, as the working classes continued their campaign for political and social reform, many Victorians came to view cities as the breeding ground of revolutionaries. Outbreaks of violence such as the 1866 Hyde Park Riot in response to the failure of Gladstone’s proposed Second Reform Bill, stirred up memories of the strikes and riots of the early part of the century and the rise of radical movements. Dickens had hinted at working class preparedness to fight oppression in Hard Times (1854) in a speech he attributed to Slackbridge, the organizer of a strike by the ‘down-trodden operatives of Coketown’ who were ‘the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding despotism’.109 In so doing, Dickens aligned the working classes to ancient heroes but, rather than opting for the traditional working class warriors – the Gracchi – favoured by the Anti-Corn Law Leaguers and the Chartists, he chose instead L. Junius Brutus and the Spartan mothers more usually regarded as patriotic heroes in their self-sacrifice for the State or community: Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended . . . applied himself to raising [the workers’] spirits. Had not the Roman Brutus, oh my British countrymen, condemned his son to death; and had not the Spartan mothers, oh my soon to be victorious friends, driven their flying children on the points of the enemies’ swords? Then was it not the sacred duty of the men of Coketown, with forefathers before them, an admiring world in company with them, and a posterity to come after them, to hurl our traitors from the tents they had pitched in a sacred and a Godlike cause?110

In this way Dickens alluded to a growing solidarity among working-class urbanites suggesting labourers were prepared for self-sacrifice to further their cause. He implied the working classes could come to perceive themselves as a

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quasi-state. Elizabeth Gaskell had also touched upon the distrust engendered in the upper and middle classes by labourers in North and South. The workers, Gaskell wrote: came rushing along, with bold, fearless faces, and loud laughs and jests, particularly aimed at all those who appeared to be above them in rank or station. The tones of their unrestrained voices, and their carelessness of all common rules of street politeness, frightened Margaret a little at first.111

Engels had gone further pointing out that it was ‘high time . . . for the English middle class to make some concessions to the working men who no longer please but threaten for in a short time it may be too late’.112 For Engels, ‘some concessions’ meant putting in place reforms that would have a real impact on the lives of labourers and their families. Covering up the cracks would not be sufficient to avoid revolution, Engels warned, as unlike the Roman masses English labourers would not ‘be pacified so easily’ by empty promises and tall tales.113 Making matters worse for labourers was the economic inequality between the classes. Gladstone, during his campaign for political reform in the 1860s, provided figures that showed the working classes were not permitted a fair share of the country’s wealth. ‘There has been an increase of 65 percent in the wealth of the country liable to income tax’ he announced in Parliament, and yet ‘this vast increase of wealth has been going on almost entirely in the upper and middle classes’.114 Moreover, the agricultural collapse in 1875, which resulted in a new exodus of rural workers flocking to towns, added to the number of urbanites living on or below the breadline. Any remaining assumptions that industrialization and urbanization would benefit all classes financially, albeit not equally, were finally overturned by Charles Booth’s study of London’s poor in 1889 which showed that approximately a third of those living in the East End were living in poverty.115 Cities were growing in terms of population but were seemingly incapable of providing working (if indeed work could be found) or living conditions that would ensure a healthy and productive work force. Indeed, if anything, the urban environment was continuing to deteriorate. In January 1874, Joseph Chamberlain, at the time the Mayor of Birmingham, claimed at a meeting of the Town Council that ‘Birmingham had unfortunately fallen from its high position and was no longer the healthiest town in the kingdom’. In his opinion, it was now ‘absolutely necessary’ that attention was given ‘to the sanitary condition of the town’.116 Despite though this largely pessimistic outlook, it would be wrong to assume nothing was done to try to alleviate the sufferings of the working classes.

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Charitable schemes were set up and a range of legislation was passed – the Trade Union Acts of 1871 and 1875, the Artisans’ Dwelling Act and the Public Health Act of 1875 as well as the 1878 Factory Act – that aimed to improve conditions in the cities. The 1867 Second Reform Act also gave the ‘respectable’ urban working classes – the artisans – a political voice and the Act was extended again in 1884 to include rural workers. However, for some, such measures were not sufficient to overcome the ‘evils’ inherent to cities. The Reverend Andrew Mearns in The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (1883), despite praising the ‘noble work’ of the London City Mission, claimed there was still ‘seething’ in the cities hidden only by ‘the thinnest crust of civilization and decency . . . a vast mass of moral corruption, of heart-breaking misery and absolute godlessness’. Moreover, rather than rectifying the economic inequality between the classes, Mearns believed, the poor were actually ‘growing poorer’.117 Indeed, the whole idea of providing charity and doling out free food to Britain’s paupers was a contentious issue. Regardless of his earlier expressions of disgust at the state of cities, in the same lecture on ‘The Science of Health’ given at the Midland Institute in Birmingham in 1872 in which he warned of signs of racial degeneration in the lower orders, Charles Kingsley criticized the ‘conscientious care’ given to people unable to care for themselves. ‘If war kills the most fit to live’, he claimed, ‘we save alive those who – looking at them from a merely physical point of view – are most fit to die’.118 Kingsley’s utilitarian philosophy evident in his aversion to charitable donations that merely facilitated idleness leading to ‘drunkenness’ and ‘depression’, was a philosophy that others shared.119 In 1901 the economist, A. C. Pigou, having noted that London was divided along the lines of the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, argued charity that made it possible for people to survive with little or no effort was responsible for producing what he termed ‘professional tramps’.120 George Bernard Shaw also hinted that providing paupers with free food as Rome had to keep the ‘proletariat quiet’ was not the way to avoid unrest. Rather what was needed was ‘to invest capital and organize industry at home’.121 Legislation designed to improve living conditions in the poorest districts such as the Artisans’ Dwellings Act had also, in some cases, ‘made matters worse’, according to Mearns. Although the Act required districts to be cleared of the worst properties to enable the construction of ‘decent’ homes, exorbitant rents for newly constructed dwellings put them ‘far beyond the means of the abject poor’.122 Pessimism over the condition of the working classes found its way into fictional narratives. Gone were the rosy futures of working-class individuals who had struggled to advance against the odds such as Sissy Jupe in Dickens’

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Hard Times (1854) and the drunkard, Roger Scatcherd (later Sir Roger) in Anthony Trollope’s Dr. Thorne (1858). Replacing them was Mary in Margaret Harkness’ novel A Manchester Shirtmaker (1890) and the occupants of London’s East End in Arthur Morrison’s Tales of Mean Streets (1894). Despite Mary’s move from the workhouse to employment as a domestic servant and marriage to the artisan, John Dillon, there was to be no happy ending. Following Dillon’s premature death, the novel concluded with the loss of Mary’s newly-acquired social status, the death of her child at her own hands to spare her a slow death by starvation, imprisonment in an asylum and suicide.123 Morrison blamed the urban environment for the fact that in the East End, no-one ‘laugh[ed]’ or sang. He described the change that the move from country to town had wrought in young women: There was once a woman who sang – a young wife from the country. But she bore children, and her voice cracked. Then her man died and she sang no more. They took away her home, and with her children about her skirts she left this street for ever. The other women did not think much of her. She was ‘helpless’.124

As optimism in working-class progression died, so too did the image of cities as symbols of civilization continue to decline.125 In fact, for F. J. Mouat writing for the Journal of the Statistical Society in the 1880s, poverty and the social problems associated with it were ‘the outcome of civilization itself ’126 while Charles Pearson in National Life and Character (1893) dismissed the ‘ancient idea’ that the city ‘elevated and civilised men’ as cities produced neither ‘genius’ nor ‘intellectual distinction’ but instead destroyed ‘physical stamina’.127 In 1891, the Chairman of the London County Council, Lord Rosebery, described London as a ‘tumour, an elephantiasis sucking into its gorged system half the life and blood and the bone of the rural districts’128 and William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, ruminating on Stanley’s portrayal of ‘Darkest Africa’ asked whether there was not ‘also a darkest England?’.129 Nor was it just the health of the nation that had failed to improve if a report in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1893 could be believed: however, much society at large may have changed for the better, the lowest stratum of all has not changed, and that lawlessness, cupidity, and ruffianism are just as rife in it now as they were in the days of Sir Robert Walpole or Lord George Gordon.130

For Blackwood’s cities had always been and remained the home of a morally degenerate underclass. Faced then with such fundamental issues as, urban

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squalor and a physically degenerating working class, a potentially failing economy, rural depopulation aggravated by the agricultural collapse and the possibility of further civil unrest, disregarding the now urgent need for reform was no longer an option as the consequences of not doing so mounted. Despite the best efforts of reformers and philanthropists, as the multiple problems associated with an urban existence raised the prospect of national decline, the intelligentsia casting around for ways to ward off impending disaster carried on looking to Rome for guidance. One major asset common to the Roman and British Empires, and a source of wealth for both, was the colonies. Ownership of land overseas and the importation of cheap raw materials had enabled the upper and middle classes to prosper. Furthermore, systematic emigration had to some extent eased overcrowding in industrial cities, reduced the number of unemployed, lessened the financial burden of the State and reduced the potential for civil unrest. Seeley in The Expansion of England (1883) and Froude in Oceana (1886) had discussed in length the benefits of possessing colonies, seeing emigration as a means of solving urgent social problems and maintaining the racial vigour of the ruling race.131 General Booth also viewed emigration as one way of restoring the physical and mental health of urbanites. After insisting it was a hopeless task to try to improve people faced with ‘innumerable adverse conditions which doom[ed] the dweller in Darkest England’ to a living hell, his recommendation to overcome this hell caused by the ‘foul and fetid breath of our slums’, was to devise a plan whereby the poorest would be reformed through education and a return to a rural existence.132 After learning the ‘habits of industry, honesty, and truth’, he wrote, the urban poor should be sent to the rural districts there to continue ‘the process of regeneration’ and thence to the ‘virgin soils’ overseas.133 However, although the advantages of emigration to the colonies were considerable, by the last quarter of the century, it was evident that emigration might have eased the problem of overcrowded cities but it had not solved it and the possibility of civil disturbances remained. More importantly, emigration exacerbated growing anxiety over the consequences to Britain of rural depopulation.134 J. G. Sheppard in The Fall of Rome (1861) had documented the consequences to Republican Rome of denuding the countryside of its rural folk. Although on the one hand describing Roman colonization as ‘admirable’, on the other hand, depopulation of the Italian countryside had been disastrous: The lands, where cultivated at all, had fallen into the hands of great proprietors, who indulged their extravagant taste by covering whole

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districts with piles of buildings and wilderness of pleasure-grounds. . . . The employment of Cincinnaturs, the employment lauded by Cicero as the most gentlemanly, the most honourable, the most worthy of human arts, would have been held to degrade the insolent hands of those who bore the dishonoured name of Roman citizen. What was the result? There could be but one. ‘A bold peasantry, their country’s pride, Where once destroy’d can never be supplied’.135

Although admitting the quote from Oliver Goldsmith’s the Deserted Village (1770) was ‘trite’, Sheppard, nevertheless considered it to be ‘so trite, indeed, that we are in some danger of forgetting that it is true’.136 Historian W. E. H. Lecky enlarged on Sheppard’s theme in a History of European Morals (1869). In Italy if not in the provinces, he wrote, ‘agriculture, with the habits of life that attended it, speedily and fatally decayed’. With Italy no longer self-supporting the ‘land fell to waste’ until in vast areas ‘the race of free peasants entirely disappeared’.137 Merivale in the General History of Rome (1880) also wrote of large estates that ‘had fallen into the hands of the wealthy few during the Republic, who had chased the free cultivators from the soil’, although this had resulted in displacement of the population as farmers migrated into Roman cities rather than the destruction of the Roman race.138 The Reverend Creighton dated the destruction of Italy specifically from the time of the war with Hannibal, a time when ‘little farms’ were destroyed. Avarice was a contributory factor, Creighton believed, as ‘[e]very Roman when he grew rich wanted to have a great deal of land’.139 But, for Sheppard, it was not only migration to the city that could be blamed for rural depopulation but also Roman expansionism and the need to establish military colonies. In fact, it was the creation of colonies and the settlement of Roman soldiers in the Empire that had ‘finished the depopulation which a short-sighted policy had begun’.140 From these readings of Roman history there was reason to believe that denuding Italy of its rural population, a population that had led Rome to greatness, and all the moral values that were intrinsic to country living, was understood as leading directly to the political crisis that caused the Republic’s fall. In placing modern concerns about rural decline within an ancient historical framework either consciously or unconsciously, plainly Sheppard and others believed that an historical understanding of the consequences of rural depopulation would add force to modern concerns. Thus, historians created a shared and powerful truth between the two historical periods and the effects of rural decline became a universal law. Conjuring up ancient history, though, as a warning of the present was not confined to the historical community. Novelist and social commentator, Henry

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Rider Haggard, considered the consequences of rural depopulation would be so serious for Britain economically and proof of this lay with the fact that under similar ‘circumstances . . . Rome did not remain prosperous’,141 that he brought the matter to the attention of the government in May 1899: This Chamber [the Norfolk Chamber of Agriculture] respectfully calls the attention of Her Majesty’s Government to the continued and progressive shrinkage of the rural population in the Eastern Counties. . . . In view of the grave and obvious national consequences which may result if this exodus continues, the Chamber prays that her Majesty’s Government will soon as may be convenient make its causes the subject of Parliamentary inquiry and report with a view to the mitigation or removal.142

Nor was it just rural depopulation that concerned the intelligentsia. Equally worrying and equally arising out of industrialization was the way the town had trespassed into country districts destroying both village communities and a traditional way of life. Anthony Trollope in his novel, Dr. Thorne (1858), had placed the blame on the arrival of the railway. ‘Trade’, the narrator commented, ‘had not thriven since the railway had opened’ and if the number of customers entering a local shop was any indication, he ‘might well have wondered that any shops in Courcy, could be kept open’.143 George Eliot also wrote of the destruction of rural areas in Daniel Deronda (1876): ‘Outside the gate the country, once entirely rural and lovely, [was] now black with coal-mines’,144 while Thomas Hardy observed not only how the landscape had changed but also how the move from country to city had impacted on country folk. Hardy chose North Wessex (Berkshire) and Christminster (Oxford) rather than the rural Wessex (Dorsetshire) of his earlier novels as the setting for Jude the Obscure (1895). Although the country-born lower-class, Jude Fawley, had dreamt of success as a scholar in the city of Christminster, Jude’s move from country to town ended not in success but tragedy and personal ruin. Christminster was not the city of Jude’s dreams but a town with two sides, colleges and slums, with the latter inhabited by people struggling to survive. For Jude it was these people who ‘were the reality of Christminster, though they knew little of Christ or Minster’.145 In Hardy’s tale Berkshire represented the new suburbia and Jude the country boy facing ruin after abandoning the country for the city. Showing Jude’s classicism was his brooding ‘on the sorrows’ of Virgil’s Dido and the finding of peace in Horace’s Carmen Saeculare and yet the city he discovered, which was forever closed to him, was not the new Rome being ultimately corrupt and capable of corrupting.146 The author and critic, Edmund Gosse, in reviewing

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Jude, clearly agreed with Hardy that Britain’s transformation from rural to urban had destroyed the countryside: The local history has been singularly tampered with in Berkshire; it is useless to speak to us of ancient records where the past is obliterated, and the thatched and dormered houses replaced by modern cottages. . . . In Berkshire, the change which is coming over England so rapidly, the resignation of the old dreamy element of beauty, has proceeded further than anywhere else in Wessex.147

As the various concerns – physical degeneration, rural depopulation as well as the destruction of village habitats along with the rural values associated with a country lifestyle – coalesced in the last decade of the nineteenth century, Rome had become central to the increasingly polarized debate on town and country. With historians and social theorists blaming similar circumstances for contributing to the chaos of the last years of the Republic and, in due course, its fall, concerned Victorians made predictions as to what Britain’s future was likely to be. However, with emigration to the vast open spaces of the colonies now questionable, attention focused on the English countryside. According to Froude, in the same way that Rome had discovered salvation ‘could come only from free citizens in the country districts whose manners and whose minds were still uncontaminated’, so too would Britain.148 Yet, not all were convinced that Rome could be relied on to provide the answers to modern problems. The American philosopher, subsequently head of international education and the recipient of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, Nicholas Murray Butler, for instance, in an article for Science in 1887, argued that moral and physical degeneration were intrinsically linked although this was a concept the Romans had never fully grasped. ‘The sound mind and the sound body seemed to the Roman to be two distinct and separate things whose conjunction was desirable’, Butler stated, whereas ‘[w]e have come to know that the two are so intimately related, indeed so interdependent, as to be practically one thing’.149 More often though those, like Froude, concerned about the condition of England, believed Republican Rome’s experience of urbanization and the damage this had done to the Roman population was invaluable. After all, as the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Manning, a supporter of working-class reform put it, London had become ‘a desolation’ that resembled ‘Rome of old’.150 Conservative politician for West Norfolk, Thomas de Grey, Lord Walsingham, was convinced that Rome having trodden a similar path to that which Britain was now treading, held the answer to the problem of national degeneration.

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Look at the pure bred Cockney – I mean the little fellow whom you see running in and out of the offices in the city, and whose forefathers have for the last two generations dwelt within a two-mile radius of Charing Cross. And look at an average young labourer coming home from his days field work, and I think you will admit the city breeds one stamp of human beings and the country breeds another. . . . Take the people away from their natural breeding grounds, thereby sapping their health and strength in cities such as nature never intended to be the permanent home of men, and the decay of this country becomes only a matter of time. In this matter, as in many others, ancient Rome has a lesson to teach. 151

As modern Britons gradually came to the conclusion that salvation lay in a return to rural living, the pastoral works of Horace and Virgil were reread as advancing a rural Rome in which moral values were located in the countryside and associated with Augustan attempts to restore the Roman masses to health and moral rectitude.152 Horace had a love of the country, according to Wickham’s translation of Epistles 1.10: If our business is to ‘live agreeably to nature, and we must begin by choosing a place to live in, do you know any place to be preferred for happiness to the country?’153 Robert Louis Stevenson and Macaulay showed a preference for Virgil’s pastoral works. For Stevenson, Virgil spoke ‘not so much of Mantua . . . but of English places’ while Macaulay loved ‘him best on Italian ground. I like his localities; his national enthusiasm: his frequent allusions to his country, its antiquities, and its greatness’.154 If Virgil’s Aeneid fitted the bombastic utterances of imperialists, W. Y. Sellar considered that it was his Eclogues that ideally fitted national sentiments. Virgil, having himself suffered dispossession of his own land at the hands of Varrus and having given ‘expression to the sense of disorder, insecurity, and distress’ that ‘accompanied . . . forced divisions and alienations of land’ could, Sellar believed, help those who had undergone similar upheavals in the nineteenth century.155 Moreover, Virgil’s ability to treasure ‘the whole land’ enabled him by the late nineteenth century to be, if anything, of more value to the nation.156 ‘If poetry’, Sellar wrote, ever exercised ‘a healing and reconciling influence on life, the deep and tranquil charm of Virgil’ could provide ‘some antidote to the excitement, the restlessness, the unsettlement of opinion in the present day’.157 Nor was it just the Augustan poets who were useful in the modern debate. According to the classicists T. J. Arnold and R. Mongan’s 1889 translation of Juvenal’s Satires, it was the loss of old rural virtues as Romans migrated to the city that resulted in the ruination of Rome:

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Live contented with those little cottages and hills, O boys . . . let us gain by the plough bread, which is sufficient for our tables. . . . It is the purple foreign and unknown to us, leads to wickedness and villainy, of whatever kind it may be. (Sat, 14)158

For Froude, it was from Horace, ‘a true prophet’,159 that lessons could be learnt of the consequences of rural depopulation and, in citing him, Froude provided a manifest link between ancient and modern urbanization, rural depopulation and degeneracy. Despite, in Froude’s opinion, it was unlikely that the nation would ever ‘see idle city mobs sustained on free grants of corn’, he nonetheless considered England could expect to share Rome’s fate should the masses be employed in jobs that would destroy their health and vigour.160 Like other Victorian intellectuals, Froude contrasted the evils of modern urbanization with an idealized rural past in order to warn of the danger to Britain’s economy should the problems associated with the city not be dealt with. A nation’s wealth, Froude maintained, was dependent: in the long run upon the conditions mental and bodily of the people of whom it consists, and the experience of all mankind declares that a race of men sound in soul and limb can be bred and reared only in the exercise of plough and spade, in the free air and sunshine, with country enjoyments and amusements, never amidst foul drains and smoke blacks and the eternal clank of machinery.161

Moreover, there was an abundance of ancient evidence beyond the literary that could be used to prove Romans had a love of the country. As archaeologists revealed more of Romano-British towns and their findings were published in the press, historians suggested the physical remains of the Roman occupation painted much the same picture.162 All over England, H. C. Coote wrote in The Romans of Britain (1878), was evidence that the Romans loved the countryside and, what is more, it was from the Romans that the English had inherited this love. ‘The English cottier’, he claimed, ‘has never forgotten the lesson, as profitable, which the Roman landlord taught his forefathers. The peasant’s garden . . . is characteristic of the lowly homes of England as it was of the casulae of Italy’.163 Liberal politician, J. A. Picton, was another who plainly saw an unbroken line running between the period of Roman occupation and the present as to this day Englishmen inhabited Romano-British towns, included Roman words in their vocabulary and lived ‘according to Roman law’. Indeed, he concluded, ‘Roman civilisation was indestructible’.164 Scarth in Early Britain, Roman Britain (1882)

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stressed the value of archaeology to the historian arguing that as ‘the handmaid of history . . . [s]cholarship and archaeology should go hand-in-hand’.165 Scarth’s interest (along with his interest in the racial make-up of Britons) lay in the transformation of Britain’s landscape that occurred with the construction of towns and military encampments ‘with their attendant suburbs’.166 Such a transformation, he believed, even in the distant past had brought about ‘a great change in the habits and manners’ of ancient Britons.167 He described the opulence of villas and the objects: pottery, statues, personal possessions, domestic utensils and surgical instruments, unearthed in towns, such as Silchester, that led him to this impression.168 Scarth too alluded to a relationship between RomanoBritish ‘commercial’ cities and their modern equivalent claiming the former had ‘continued to exert their influence over parts of the island to a very recent date’.169 In fact, as the influence of the Romans had never completely ceased, Scarth considered, modern day Britons remained ‘indebted’ to their ancient conquerors.170 Yet, as concern over physical degeneration mounted it was interest in the final years of the Republic and the transformation in the fabric of Rome following the change in government that preoccupied historians. For J. B. Bury, it was during the age of Augustus that Rome’s transformation from brick to marble commenced. However, it was not Augustus but Nero, in Bury’s eyes, who had made the greatest difference to the physical state of Rome and deserved the title of ‘the great reformer’ as it was Nero who succeeded in improving the poorer quarters of the city.171 But, Bury was in the minority and, more often, it was Augustus who was perceived as the great social and urban reformer. Henry Pelham in Outlines of Roman History (1894), after recounting the events leading up to the change in regime, included a chapter on the social and domestic policies of Augustus. Pelham, like Sheppard, blamed migration to the cities and Roman expansionism in the Republican period for rural depopulation and degeneration. When ‘[t]he small holders went off to follow the eagles or swell the proletariat of the cities’, Pelham wrote, ‘their holdings were left to run waste or merged in the vineyards, oliveyards, and above all in the great cattle-farms of the rich’.172 Moreover, it was not Roman Republicans previously regarded as ‘heroes’ for fighting to stave off agricultural decline and introduce social reforms, for instance, the Gracchi, who Pelham admired but the Emperor Augustus. It was Augustus, Pelham claimed, who as well as attempting to maintain the purity of the Roman race, succeeded in rejuvenating the population and re-establishing public order following the civil wars, a period during which the masses had degenerated into an urban mob. This Augustus achieved by undertaking the ‘“cura annonæ”; the maintenance

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and regulation not merely of the monthly distributions of corn to the poor, but of the corn-supply needed for the wants of the great city’ and, by checking ‘the turbulent spirits among the citizens’ through the introduction of ‘a regular and numerous force of police’.173 Pelham was clearly impressed by Augustus’ programme of urban and social reform. He wrote at length of the Emperor’s achievements rather than merely remarking on them as previous scholars had done. For nearly 3 years from 19 BC, Pelham claimed, Augustus ‘was busily engaged at Rome in the work of domestic reform’ and, within a decade, had secured Rome’s rightful place at the heart of her Empire.174 A principal part of Augustus’ reform programme centred on rebuilding the metropolis. First, he took over control of Rome’s water supply and, at his own expense, repaired the aqueducts. Secondly, he appointed commissioners to oversee the care of other public buildings and the ‘banks and bed of the Tiber’, whereas previously responsibility for these tasks had been ‘ill-defined’ and conducted in a haphazard fashion.175 Thirdly and despite the subsequent fire, he did what he could to ensure the safety of the city of Rome by appointing a prefect who was ‘the chief of a fire brigade’ and, fourthly, he repaired and extended the roads of Italy.176 Significantly and perhaps most importantly, Pelham argued, it was Augustus who endeavoured ‘to bring back society to the simpler and purer life which had once been the glory of Rome, and which still flourished in the country districts of Italy’.177 The picture Pelham painted of the effect of these changes on Rome and Roman society was entirely positive. Whereas Republican Rome had been insufficiently supplied with water and with food and been subjected to floods, fires and frequent outbreaks of violence and rioting, the Rome of Augustus was entirely the opposite.178 It was not the ‘daring genius’ of Julius Caesar who placed himself on a pedestal above the ordinary Roman that had saved Rome and the Empire, but the policies of the respectful, vigilant, self-controlled and perceptive Augustus.179 In effect, in rewriting Roman Imperial history and representing Augustus as he had been represented by Horace (Odes, Book 4.15): No force, till Caesar’s rule shall cease, Nor civil rage shall banish Peace: Nor passion, swift at forging swords for war, Shall set our sister towns to jar.180

Pelham was demonstrating how conservative statesmanship had created order out of chaos.

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The mid to late nineteenth-century view of Roman urbanism drew a distinction between the ordered Augustan city of Rome and the uncontrolled megalopolis of urban industrialization. Republican Rome itself could be made to stand for the latter, and was made to represent all the dangers of social and environmental degradations that could be perceived in the industrial city. The revolutionary period of Rome was as powerful a warning of the unrest inherent in the large urban centres as the French Revolution was in a more modern context. Although, for many, the civilizational value of the city had been lost by the end of the nineteenth century, what Pelham suggested was that cities could be restored and that an enlightened imperial ruler, such as Augustus, could bring the true values of rural Rome back to the city. The city, which had become a source of danger and degeneration in the nineteenth century, retained its potential for reform and civilization, but the city would have to be very different from the industrial chaos of the contemporary town and from its ancient predecessor, the megalopolis of Rome.181 By the close of the nineteenth century the connections between overcrowded cities, physical degeneracy and social disorder, the countryside, health and social order, had become established in the Victorian mind. So too had the belief that the state of Republican Rome in its last years was analogous to the state of late nineteenth-century Britain. Despite opposition from some who denigrated comparative history on the grounds that looking to the past ran counter to the idea of progress, Republican Rome was deemed worthy of study in order that Britain could avoid its fate. Conversely, Imperial Rome’s success in overcoming the problems associated with urbanization, were extolled.182 Britain, so many believed, could learn from Imperial Rome.

Return to the country and small-town urbanism Britain’s struggle to defeat the Boers in the Second Anglo-South African War confirmed to many that the Empire’s safety was dependent on a racially degenerate population. It also confirmed, according to Donal Lowry, that ‘Britain’s military manhood was . . . physically “degenerate” and apparently lacking in the yeoman qualities which had sustained their forefathers’.183 Indeed, for Nancy Stepan, it was the war that ‘raised the spectre of a physically degenerating British people’ to a new level.184 With the ranks of the army formed from the working classes and swelled by the unemployed and the so-called dregs of society, it appeared that a comment made in 1896 by Viscount Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief of the

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Army and veteran of Burma, the Crimea, India and Africa, was true. Speaking at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution on ‘Modern Armies and the Influence of War upon Civilization’, Wolseley had warned, that ‘[n]o modern nation could be great where book education was neglected, but all the book education in the world without strong limbs would fail to make a nation powerful’.185 What was becoming increasingly clear was that Britain was paying for the short-sightedness of early Victorians who had ignored warnings and done little practically to counter the changes in Britain caused by the Enclosure Acts, industrialization and urbanization. The government came under attack for failing to take action. Charles Masterman, who considered urbanization to be the biggest change the nation had ever faced on the grounds that it had isolated a destitute work force from the countryside in a way that was historically unique, criticized the administration for being all talk but no action. ‘“Social reform” is extolled in pompous phraseology’, he wrote in the preface to The Heart of Empire (1901), ‘but when examined is often found to disappear in a maze of verbiage’.186 Liberal Member of Parliament for Plymouth from 1910, Aneurin Williams, warned that ‘the best specimens of the human race’ were being destroyed in the great cities and George Bernard Shaw berated town councils for failing to improve urban environments despite having the power to do so.187 In March 1903, Rider Haggard reiterated his concerns over rural depopulation in a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Asquith, as in his opinion the government had failed to ‘really take the matter to heart’. Plunging into foreign adventures and ‘so cruelly’ giving no thought to England was ‘madness’ in his opinion. He questioned the rationale of those who wanted to conquer the world at the expense of losing ‘our country-bred population’.188 Like his contemporaries, it would seem Rider Haggard was suggesting moral values were located in the villages of England. A speech made by him though on ‘Rural Depopulation’ which was reported in The Times, indicates that again underlying both his personal concern and that of wider society was the fear that a physically degenerate workforce was a danger to the economy. Using figures supplied by Rider Haggard, according to The Times, it was clear ‘the economic competence’ of urban dwellers was not the equivalent of those who lived and worked in England’s villages.189 By 1904 the situation had not improved according to the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration established following the war and chaired by the inspector for schools, Sir Almeric Fitzroy. The report condemned the state of cities although

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finding that urban ‘degeneracy’ was not all pervasive but restricted to slum dwellers. ‘The evil is, of course, greatest’, the report stated: in one-roomed tenements, the overcrowding there being among persons usually of the lowest type, steeped in every kind of degradation and cynically indifferent to the vile surroundings engendered by their filthy habits, and to the pollution of the young brought up in such an atmosphere.190

As the security of the nation was added to the list of concerns that vexed intellectuals as the likelihood of a European conflict increased, efforts to revive the population to the point where they matched the health and strength of their pre-industrial ancestors were speeded up.191 Strategies to increase Britain’s population were also contemplated but, in the same way encouragement was given to the middle classes to breed to prevent racial degeneration, so too ‘right’ breeding, it was argued, would help prevent physical degeneration.192 For many though it was exercise that would greatly improve the nation’s health. The Conservative politician and Admiral, Lord Charles Beresford, using an analogy with Rome, had pointed out the importance of physical fitness at a gymnastic display in London in 1893: such an exhibition was not intended merely to make the performers athletes or gymnasts, as in the days of ancient Rome, but to induce others to join the society. . . . In these days, when large numbers of the population were flocking to the towns, they lost a great deal of the opportunity of getting healthy exercise. Consequently such societies as the Physical Recreation Society must do an enormous amount of good to those people in maintaining their health, happiness, and manliness.193

Robert Baden-Powell, the ‘hero’ of Mafeking, also saw physical exercise as essential in the battle to rejuvenate the national population. His response to the war in South Africa was to set up the Boy Scout Movement. In a lecture on scouting reported in The Times in 1907, Baden-Powell, having noted the ‘many similarities between our own country and the old Roman Empire’, warned against repeating the mistakes that ultimately led to the fall of the Rome. ‘Roman soldiers’, he stated, who preferred to watch rather than take part in physical activities, ‘became puny and weak and we should take care that ours maintained their strength’.194 A year later he reiterated his views in Scouting for Boys as: Recent reports on the deterioration of our race ought to act as a warning. . . . One cause which contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire was

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the fact that the soldiers fell away from the standard of their forefathers in bodily strength.

Army recruits, Baden-Powell claimed, were ‘two inches’ smaller than the average height of men of a similar age and underweight. School children, even those born into relatively well-to-do families, had ‘knock-knees . . . curvature of the spine . . . flat feet . . . pigeon-breasts – all preventable deformities’.195 Indeed, according to the sociologist and industrialist, B. Seebohm Rowntree, nearly 50 per cent of lads wishing to enlist in 1901 had been rejected on the grounds they were unfit even though the standards of physical fitness and health set by the army had been lowered considerably.196 This image of army recruits was remarkably different to the image of the Boers propagated by some, including H. G. Wells. For Wells, the ‘ordinary Boer’ resembled the ‘ordinary Roman citizen’ but not the degenerate Roman of the late Republic but the old Roman who had fought to make Rome a great power. The Boer was a farmer at heart, he ‘fought extraordinarily well’ but always with ‘an anxious desire’ to return to his farm.197 As intellectuals and politicians urgently sought for ways to reverse physical degeneration, Rome remained an important reference point. The Times pointed out in 1907 in an editorial on the ‘rural exodus which all deplore but none has yet stemmed’ that ‘[f]rom the days of Ancient Rome agrarian questions have been among the most troublesome matters with which statesmen have had to deal’.198 Reporting on the classical scholar William Warde Fowler’s lecture, Panem et Circenses in October the same year, The Times again referred to Rome. After initially warning against pushing ‘[h]istorical parallels . . . too far’ in order that ‘impossible conclusions’ were not reached, the editorial nonetheless observed that it was ‘difficult not to infer that to a certain appreciable extent history is even now repeating itself before our eyes’.199 In particular, The Times considered the analogy Warde Fowler drew between the urban masses in London and those who lived in poorly constructed insulae in Rome as ‘striking’. In Warde Fowler’s opinion, it was an urban existence that made the people ‘restless, pleasureloving, and too reckless and revolutionary, useless for prompt political and military action’. The Times commended Warde Fowler’s insightfulness, widening the analogy to suggest Rome’s ultimate fate not just the Republic’s fall could be partly blamed on a weakened and, therefore, vulnerable Roman race. Although not wishing to ‘paint’ too bleak a picture, there was: at least enough in the decay of Roman society, as sketched by Mr. Warde Fowler, to make us think seriously about some of the signs of our own time . . . hands . . . beckon us to the downward road along which Imperial Rome

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hastened to its decay and fall. Nor can there be any doubt that any decline in home life and the domestic virtues must, if it spreads, spell national degeneration, as it did in ancient Rome among the masses.200

A year later in Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, Warde Fowler once more pointed out the resemblance between the urban populations of modern industrial towns and Rome. Although seeing Rome’s situation as significantly worse than Britain’s, he nonetheless believed it was: true enough that the factory system of modern times, with the sweating, the long hours of work, and the unwholesome surrounds of our industrial towns, has produced much misery, much physical degeneracy; and we have also the problem of the unemployed always with us.201

Rome was consistently used to warn of the dangers inherent in an urban/ industrial society. With emphasis though placed on the similarities between London and Republican Rome but with The Times claiming there was ‘room for hopefulness’ and signs of ‘real progress’ in modern cities,202 historians focused on the Imperial megalopolis and the successes of Augustus in making a real difference to the fabric of Rome and the lives of the urban masses. Like Pelham, Evelyn Shuckburgh in Augustus (1903) credited Augustus with refurbishing Rome and instigating other measures that ensured its safety including the formation of ‘a kind of fire brigade’.203 The classical scholar, W. E. Heitland, wrote of the ‘mean appearance’ of the Republican city with its tall ‘cheaply-built’ insulae that were susceptible to fire and flooding and noted the contribution Augustus had made to the embellishment and safety of Rome in the public areas and in the poorer quarters of the city.204 Stobart described the ‘ill-built, ill-drained quarters’ of Rome into which discharged soldiers were ‘herded’ on returning to Italy from the civil wars.205 Horace and Virgil already established as authorities on the state of Rome, the condition of the masses and the advantages of a return to the country, continued to be cited. For Wickham, Horace had felt ‘the horror’ caused by the civil wars.206 Happiest was the man, according to Wickham’s 1903 translation of Epode 2, who avoided the city preferring to plough ‘his ancestral land’ alongside his ‘chaste wife’ and ‘sweet children’.207 Moreover, it was Horace who had come to realize that accepting Augustus and his reforms was the best the Roman people could hope for following the chaotic years of the Republic.208 Translations of Virgil’s Georgics told a similar story. According to James Lonsdale’s 1887 translation of Book 2, Virgil had recognized that purity dwelt in the countryside: ‘O husbandmen, too dear to Fortune, if they know their own

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blessedness! For them of herself, far from the clash of arms, all-righteous Earth pours from her soil an easy sustenance’.209 With J. W. Mackail’s 1889 translation of Georgics carrying a similar message, effectively, the pastoral was becoming attractive in reaction to the decay of modern cities.210 Classical scholars were not the only intellectuals publishing books about the ancient world and interpreting Roman texts from a modern perspective. In 1912, the renowned geologist Archibald Geikie who admitted to being a scientist through and through, published The Love of Nature Among the Romans. For Geikie there was a ‘diversity of manners and morals’ between the town and country-bred population during the late Republic that was particularly evident among the Roman masses. This he blamed on urbanization.211 Evidence could be found in the Rerum rusticarum of that ‘brave old conservative’ Marcus Varro.212 Remarking on ‘the problem of the country versus the town’, Varro had told that ‘two distinct kinds of human life [had] been handed down to our time – that of the country and that of the town’ with the former preferable to the latter.213 In addition to the works of Virgil, Geikie considered, those of Cato the Censor, Pliny the Younger, an ‘excellent example of a Roman country-gentleman’, and Lucretius all showed a love of the country and the advantages of country living.214 Even Ovid demonstrated a ‘love of Nature’ that transcended his fascination with ‘the gallantries, frivolities, and dissipations’ of the city and its people.215 As debate on the health of the nation intensified, political parties including socialists produced reports and plans for the development of towns and villages.216 The Labour Leader reported in August 1908 that socialism ‘would not destroy but recreate and greatly sweeten and ennoble the towns’ while villages would ‘be restored, invigorated and enriched’.217 In 1907, Kier Hardie addressing a Labour gathering in Scotland cited Republican Rome as an example of a civilization that had been destroyed because of the destruction of its rural inhabitants. ‘The lands of Rome passed into the hands of the great landlords’, Hardie stated, ‘who subdued the peasantry and broke their spirits, and the causes that brought about Rome’s ruin are not to be allowed to exist in this country’.218 By 1911, ‘Back to the Land’ had become in the words of Viscount Milner, ‘a watchword which . . . is beginning to appeal to serious men of every hue of political thought’.219 However, for H. G. Wells, it was not Augustus but Tiberius who in attempting to ‘restore the yeoman class to property’ might properly be termed ‘a “Back-to-the-land” man’.220 Fiction reflected the growing anti-industrial, anti-urban trend. In 1890, the socialist William Morris had published his utopian fiction News from Nowhere which depicted a future England where ‘the nineteenth century . . . counted for nothing’.221 After emerging from a ‘vapour-bath of hurried and discontented

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humanity, a carriage of the underground railway’ which ‘civilisation has forced upon us’, the narrator found himself in an altered London, ‘a pleasanter country place’.222 This new classical paradise was a place of contentment and harmony where factories had been discarded and rural crafts reintroduced, where ancient texts were the ‘most useful ones as genuine records’ and where ‘the doling out of bread to the proletariat’ was unheard of.223 It was a place without politics and without formal education, other than the teaching of modern languages and Latin and Greek, where women were the equal of men but proud of their role as mothers and where old men, ‘the type of men’ the narrator ‘was not used to seeing’ roamed the countryside.224 In the introduction to The British Barbarians (1895), Grant Allen wrote of cities rife with ‘the diseases and vices of centuries’ where men gathered in ‘sham idylls’ and ‘tinsel Arcadias’ amid ‘painted goddesses’ and dallied with ‘venal Muses’.225 Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) was set in the place that Kipling considered to be the centre of England, the rural South East.226 Nor did Kipling restrict his vision of rural England to fiction. In A School History of England, Kipling and his co-writer Fletcher concluded the book with a poem on the garden, the glory of which ‘glorifieth every one’.227 G. K. Chesterton had a similar mental picture of England. Of the Sussex Downs, he wrote, ‘I crawled across those colossal contours that express the best quality of England, because they are at the same time soft and strong’.228 Chesterton’s England though extended beyond Sussex to the West Country where ‘the warm sunshine, settling everywhere on the high hedges and the low hills, brought out into a kind of heavy bloom that humane quality of the landscape which, as far as I know, only exists in England’.229 Nevertheless, irrespective of the rhetoric and despite recognition in The Times that overcrowding was ‘a disease to be combated’, with London increasing by 300,000 every 10 years and greater tracts of countryside disappearing, little had been done to rectify the situation. As The Times reported, ‘no attempt has yet been made to regulate, in the interests of all classes, the formation and development of the suburbs’.230 However, one scheme with a chance of succeeding in relieving overcrowding and halting degeneration lay, in the opinion of The Times, in the ideas of Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City Movement, a movement in which Rider Haggard ‘expressed himself strongly in favour’.231 At a meeting held in support of it, although Rider Haggard claimed he could see the commercial advantages of emigration to overseas colonies which was certainly preferable to people ‘being left to rot in city slums’, he recommended instead that ‘the sons and daughters of the country should be retained at home where possible, and the garden city movement was one which tended to make it possible’.232

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Howard’s aim was to revive and refine the ‘lost art’ of building cities.233 His intention was not to return to a pre-industrial time but to deal with the needs of the present by building industrial towns and setting them in the countryside. Instead of ‘dark satanic mills’, factories would become attractive places to work in, situated in rural settings with the houses of workmen built with the health of the population in mind and placed either in a garden or around a communal area of land.234 ‘Town and country must be married’, he wrote in Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902), ‘and out of this joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civilization’.235 For Howard, garden cities were the future and he believed the benefits they offered the masses would help to prevent the civil unrest of the past as the title of the earlier edition of his book – To-morrow: Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898) – suggests. Others agreed. Social worker and suffragette Mary Neal claimed that the town had encroached so far into the country that ‘an interchange between town and country’ was now essential236 while, Charles Purdom, later financial director of Welwyn Garden City, subsequently observed that in ‘all modern Utopias town and country are pictured as being in happy relations’.237 The Garden City Movement was not wholly a philanthropic movement and by 1908, with the establishment of eight companies at the newly constructed Letchworth, the economic advantages of garden cities were plain to observers. Indeed, Howard himself referred to the economic motive that had contributed to the establishment of the movement in a letter to The Times in March 1919. It began, he wrote, ‘with the express object of increasing the productive powers of the nation and of solving the twin evils of the overgrowth of great cities and the decay of rural districts’.238 Howard also included in Garden Cities a quote from the political economist Professor Marshall’s article on ‘The Housing of London Poor’ that had appeared in the Contemporary Review in 1884, to show he was not alone in seeing the economic advantages of combining town and country. Moving urbanites to the country, Marshall had stated, would be ‘in the long run economically advantageous’ both ‘to those who moved and those who remained behind’.239 The press were in agreement. The Financial Times saw no conflict between ‘carrying out a successful commercial enterprise’ and the ‘principles of the movement’ and envisaged that the ‘profit’ from the scheme could not ‘fail to be large’.240 A news article in The Times reported: The Garden City proposition was a thoroughly business proposition, and not a philanthropic proposition. The only difference between this company as a landowner and the ordinary landowner was that while he wanted to sweat as much as he could out of the profits of industry, the Garden City Company

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only wanted to make a certain moderate percentage on their capital (5 per cent), and any surplus over that was to be spent for the development of the Garden City itself.241

The economic benefits of garden cities were also evident to L. Fisher, the reviewer of Howard’s Garden Cities. Rather than purchasing highly priced slums on expensive urban land and rebuilding, Howard, Fisher wrote, ‘would go straight to the country, where land is cheap, choose a suitable area, and build a brand new town’.242 In 1913, Purdom admitted that nobody could disagree that ‘economic success’ was ‘a matter of great importance’.243 In the opinion of both Howard and Fisher, fundamental to the success of garden cities was town planning. It was absolutely necessary, Howard stated, to achieve ‘unity of design and purpose’ by which he meant that towns ‘should be planned as a whole’,244 while Fisher believed garden cities should grow ‘on an ordered plan, which would forbid blind alleys, closed courts, [and] other horrors’ that allowed an accumulation of detritus, human or otherwise.245 As interest in modern town planning intensified, so too did interest in Roman town planning already stimulated by the recognition of archaeology as an academic speciality and the unearthing of Roman towns abroad and at home. Newspapers printed with growing regularity articles on excavations of Romano-British towns. No one could deny, the Reverend Dugald Macfadyen stated in 1933 in his history of Howard and the Garden City Movement, that town planning was nearly ‘as old as towns themselves’. The ancient Greeks ‘had definite ideas’ about the construction of towns and the ‘Romans were always town planners’. The excavations at ‘Verulam, [sic] Silchester, Colchester, Chester and London’ proved to Macfadyen that Roman cities were constructed with the same ‘conventional order and individual integrity’ that Howard envisaged for garden cities.246 Thus, the archaeology of Romano-British towns was to have a considerable impact on modern town planning. In 1913, Francis Haverfield published Ancient Town-Planning which, so his contemporary J. S Reid commented, ‘appear[ed] at an opportune time, when town plans are being much discussed’.247 Like Howard, Haverfield believed the construction of cities was an art more than a science and he admitted TownPlanning was designed to aid city reformers.248 Written as his ‘contribution to a modern movement’, Haverfield stated, the book ‘looked on town-planning as one of those new methods of social reform which stand in somewhat sharp contrast with the usual aims of political parties and parliaments’. While politics were more to do with looking outwards at the ‘public life of men . . . newer ideals’

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were inward looking and concerned with ‘the daily life of human beings in their domestic environment’.249 As such, what must be taken into account when constructing dwellings for workers was the well-being of their inhabitants and, in particular, their ‘health’, ‘convenience’ and the diverse range of ‘occupations’ they were engaged in. This being the case, Haverfield suggested that students of the ancient world ‘might proffer parallels from antiquity’, from Hellenistic Greece and Rome, as they ‘somewhat resemble the present day in their care for the well-being of the individual’.250 Regardless of the fact that unlike modern town planners the Romans planned on a smaller scale for fewer citizens and did not have ‘to provide lungs for their cities’, the goal of both was to satisfy the needs of urban dwellers and turn them into ‘human and orderly citizens’.251 He specifically recommended Roman town planning since it was the Romans who ‘made a more real sober and consistent attempt to plan towns than any previous age had witnessed’.252 The physical remains of Roman towns in Italy and the provinces were proof of this. The publication of Town-Planning at a time when rigorous town planning was recommended for garden cities ensured Haverfield’s theories found an audience. Again much like Howard, Haverfield’s fascination with Roman towns lay in their unity in the sense that Roman towns were ‘harmonized’ and planned consistently with ‘the whole . . . treated as one organism’.253 He was critical of modern town planners and builders who until quite recently had shown little imagination when it came to planning towns having ‘only one idea of a small house . . . which today characterizes the monotonous streets in the poorer quarters of our new towns’ and occasionally in the country.254 In addition, the care and attention the Romans gave to avoiding the unsanitary conditions of modern cities by providing them with pure water and sewers made them worthy of study.255 Nevertheless, despite his obvious admiration for Roman building methods, Haverfield clearly had some reservations about an urban existence. An inhabitant of Silchester, he claimed, was taught a great deal by Rome and was even taught about ‘town-life’ and yet what he was not taught was: town-life in its highest form. When his town had been ‘haussmannized’ and fitted with Roman streets, and equipped with Roman Forum and Basilica, and the rest, he yet continued to live – perhaps more happily than the true townsman – in his irregularly grouped houses and cottages amid an expanse of gardens.256

In other words, as ancient Britons had not been subjected to Roman townlife ‘in its highest form’ and the essential ruralism of the Celtic life had been

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preserved, they had benefited to a far greater extent than city dwellers in other more comprehensively romanized provinces such as Gaul.257 Haverfield, it would seem, considered a better existence was related to life in the country amid the eccentricities of English villages rather than in towns constructed according to Roman and French order. Haverfield refrained however from referring to Silchester as a ‘garden city’ as they represented, in his opinion, ‘an attempt to add some of the features of the country to a town’, whereas Silchester’s town plan suggested attempts had been made ‘to insert urban features into a countryside’.258 With Letchworth, though the only garden city to be constructed pre-war, efforts were made to bring the country into the city. A hotel in Manchester was recommended on the basis that it ‘breathes an air superior to and independent of its environment’. This had been achieved so the advertisement claimed by building a ‘court’ that looked out over a ‘garden, which is to the Hotel what the atrium was to a house in ancient Rome’.259 Additionally, with urban planners giving thought and attention to suburban development and improving the transport system, thousands opted to move to the outskirts of cities in search of a healthier lifestyle and to get back, as the promoters of the Hampstead Garden Suburb stated, ‘something of the old English village life’.260 The Times also described Hampstead as a ‘suburb with a difference’ being constructed not merely for profit but as ‘a social experiment’. It was: an attempt to show that a plan of residence may be provided on the outskirts of a large town which may accommodate not one class but many, and which may have a beauty of its own – not the accidental charm of the country or the planned symmetry of a fine town, but the beauty of a group of houses standing amid trees and flowers and arranged, with reference to each other, according to one harmonious design.261

H. G. Wells hinted at a philanthropic motive behind the change in attitude to town planning. However, while this was to ‘re-house’ the masses ‘in a more civilised and more agreeable manner’, the benefits to the State were considerable.262 First, constructing garden cities or developing the suburbs relieved the pressure on overcrowded cities. Secondly, providing an environment conducive to good health would ensure workers remained productive and, thirdly, many now believed that escaping to the suburbs or to the country was the key to restoring the traditional family unit which, in turn, lessened the prospect of civil unrest.263 Warde Fowler had also drawn attention to the link between the breakdown in the family unit and political unrest in his lecture to the Classical Association in 1907

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that had been reported in The Times. It was ‘the transition’ from farm to urban dwelling that had been responsible for the breakdown in ‘home life’ in Rome and history, in Warde Fowler’s opinion, was repeating itself.264 The Times had again commended Warde Fowler’s discernment in linking the demise of the traditional family to population degeneration. There can be no doubt, the paper commented, ‘that any decline in home life and the domestic virtues must, if it spreads, spell national degeneration, as it did in ancient Rome among the masses’.265 Canon Rawsley echoed Warde Fowler in a sermon in St Paul’s in 1914 maintaining the decay of home life was what he termed ‘A Great National Peril’, a peril that could bring about England’s fall as it had brought about the ‘fall of Greece and Rome’.266 Nonetheless with the growth of cities, a natural by-product of industrialization, the countryside continued to shrink. The Manchester Guardian reported in 1913 that the smoke cloud surrounding Manchester now extended to ‘something like 15 miles from the city’ with Whaley Bridge standing on the boundary between the town and country – ‘smoke and rusticity’.267 With further movement into the country unavoidable in the future, the negative effects of industrialization and urbanization were not diminishing with any great speed. By 1914, however, concern over domestic issues gave way to the far more pressing issues that arose with the onset of total war. The First World War was to have a profound effect on Britain and the town and country debate.268 Craving for the English countryside and home became palpable and the English lyric tradition flourished in the trenches as is apparent from the war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Wyndham Tennant, Wilfred Owen and Ivor Gurney.269 The London-born writer of Welsh stock, Edward Thomas, author of such works as The Heart of England (1909), who was killed at the Battle of Arras in 1917, turned from prose to poetry at the outbreak of the war. Rather than recounting his experiences of war, he chose instead to reflect on the beauty of England in, among many others, The Manor Farm and The Glory.270 Posters sent overseas reminded troops of home and country. A George Clausen poster issued by the Underground Electric Railways Company in 1916 displayed a quintessential English scene with a church, thatched cottages, a woman and child.271 Waiting in France to join his battalion in July 1917, Charles Purdom wrote that soldiers were fighting not for ‘slums and industrial injustice’ but for ‘a country seen in a vision, a land of truth, righteousness, and freedom, a place of infinite possibilities’.272 Postcards sent home revealed a genuine yearning for rural England.273 With the Verney Committee on Land Settlements reporting in 1916 that the nation depended on, at best, a country-born and raised population but at the very least on those who had benefitted from a ‘county life’,274 what emerged

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at the end of the war was ‘conservatism with a small ‘c’.275 This ‘conservatism’ included a rural vision, but a vision that remained influenced by Imperial Rome. It was the Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George who reaffirmed the value of Rome’s conservative ideology to Britain. In an election campaign speech in 1918, he asked ‘What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in’. He called for schemes whereby ex-soldiers and sailors could be settled on the land and, in so doing, he praised the ‘great Emperor Augustus’. It was Augustus, he stated, who ‘finally settled the soldiers on the land, and it was only then that you had real peace and prosperity in the Roman Empire. Now, that’, Lloyd George concluded, ‘is a lesson’. 276 In bringing to mind images of Rome in a campaign speech addressed to a vastly extended voting population suggests knowledge of Roman history and its significance for modern Britain had by the post-war period moved beyond the elite. The war itself appeared to have contributed to the expansion of Rome’s general appeal as higher levels of literacy and the boredom ensuing from time in the trenches allowed greater reading time of the cheap translations of the Classics shipped out to the soldiers by the Everyman Library.277 R. C. Sherriff, a grammar school boy from a lower middle-class background and author of Journey’s End, relied on his books as he strove to survive the horrors of trench warfare and, on hearing he had been refused a transfer, he wrote of the comfort he gained from reading Marcus Aurelius.278 Modern books written prior to the war were also reinterpreted in the light of it. Charles Carrington, Kipling’s biographer, suggests Kipling’s tale of Roman soldiers defending England from barbarian incursions at Hadrian’s Wall in Puck of Pook’s Hill, ‘strengthened the nerve of many a young soldier in the dark days of 1915’.279 Indeed, David Jones, a Welsh Fusilier, noted after the War ‘how consciousness of the past . . . included fellow feeling with Roman legions along Hadrian’s Wall’.280 Post-war writers reflected the introverted mood of the nation. Indeed, it was ‘[m]emory of war’, Rosa Maria Bracco claims, that resulted in authors coming up with ‘explanations’ which included ‘the land of England . . . as the locus of unchanging meanings’.281 John Buchan’s detailed and idyllic descriptions of the countryside, the weather, the sounds and the wildlife, demonstrated the value he placed on rural Britain. Buchan admitted it was the war that had left him a powerful yearning for the countryside of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire for the ‘quiet after turmoil’.282 In particular, he idolized the Border country, which in his imagination was an ‘appropriate setting . . . for the shepherds of Theocritus and Virgil . . . and for Horace’s Sabine farm’.283 Buchan was not alone in craving the peace of the countryside or, at the very least, a healthy environment. Schools,

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recognizing parents desired such an environment in which their children could learn, offered places on the basis that they could provide it. Croham Hurst School near Croydon paid ‘special attention to health and physical development’ while St George’s Kerri School at Gerrard’s Cross and the London Garden School (a branch of which was to be opened in early 1921 either in the country or on the coast) held classes outside.284 In 1922, the Spanish born American educated philosopher and poet, George Santayana, described the ‘new’ post-war England in Soliloquies of England: We should none of us admire England today if we had to admire it only for its conquering commerce, its pompous noblemen, or its parliamentary government. . . . There is, or was, a beautifully healthy England hidden from most foreigners: The England of the countryside and of the poets, domestic, sporting, gallant, boyish, of a sure and delicate heart, which it has been mine to feel beating, though not so early in my life as I could have wished.285

In line with this rural idealism, and with Letchworth an example of what could be achieved with town planning, the construction of Welwyn Garden City, defined by Major W. H. Close in Garden Cities and Town Planning as ‘a town planned for industry and healthy living’, commenced.286 In one of his campaign speeches, Lloyd George had stated that ‘housing schemes have, got in the majority of cases, to be schemes outside the town’, although he anticipated that not all returning soldiers would desire a rural lifestyle and, in order to provide for those who preferred ‘little allotments’ or a home and a garden, plans for suburban development also went ahead.287 By the 1920s it would seem Lloyd George was correct as many discharged servicemen opted to live in the city despite the ban on building throughout the war years that had left a desperate shortage of new houses. The New Statesman reported that regardless of expectations that ‘hosts of demobilised men would decline to return to the desk and the factory, and long for the rustic ideal of “three acres and a cow”’, instead, modern men longed for an urban lifestyle. The report concluded that ‘modern like ancient urbanisation is not a consequence of special local conditions, but is the result of instincts or desires which are inborn in nearly all modern men’.288 The census of 1921 backed up the New Statesman’s findings recording that 79.3 per cent of English and Welshmen now lived in cities in contrast to merely 20.7 per cent who lived in the country.289 The post-war nationalistic turn though was to have an impact on ideas of town planning. With most now agreeing it was essential, in 1919, the Town Planning Act was passed. This specified that rigorous planning was required

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for all districts with a population exceeding 20,000 including the slums and the suburbs.290 Moreover, Haverfield’s pre-war notion that new towns should be based on Roman order subsided as preference for towns constructed in an English style grew. As Major Close stated, although the Romans (and the Greeks) had ‘conceived the idea of grouping all public buildings into a common centre [and] surrounding it with residential quarters’, this was no longer ideal as the close construction of houses in small areas left ‘no adequate outlets of breathingspaces’.291 Haverfield and Howard’s perception of town planning as primarily an art was also summarily dismissed by Close. The ‘science of town planning’, he wrote, has ‘superseded the ancient art of building towns’ as ‘[w]ithout the application of scientific methods evils are inherent in a development so huge and containing so many difficult problems’.292 Macfadyen pointed to the way Letchworth had developed along its own lines without the strictures of the Roman model. However, although claiming Letchworth was ‘not typically English or typically anything’,293 his description of ‘cottage building’ in Letchworth conjured up a distinctly English rural scene.294 As pre-war, multifaceted motives underlay ideas of town planning although, for the majority, the prime motive was to provide a healthy environment for the workforce as healthy labourers equalled a healthy economy. The town planner and engineer, Raymond Unwin, believed a balance between town and country would result in a ‘greater degree of economic organisation’ as well as providing an enhanced ‘social life, and human fellowship’ while his contemporary, George Pepler, argued ‘the fitter the man . . . the better his work’.295 In a speech probably delivered in 1923, Ebenezer Howard again referred to the economic advantages of garden cities. In addition to providing space for industries to expand and affordable properties for workers in a rural environment, Howard was convinced they had the potential to reduce the financial burden on the state and lessen the prospect of civil unrest: Every one must realise that the unemployment of over 1,300,000 persons in England – and this number is steadily increasing – is putting a terrible strain on the resources of a country already exhausted by a long and terrible war. It represents too a vast amount of seething discontent in a land which was to be made fit for heroes, and is thus a serious and growing menace to the stability of the Society – a menace which our self-interest if not our humanity should cause us to make every possible effort to remove.296

The historian and architect, William Lethaby, was another who saw the political advantages of planned and ordered garden cities. Embodying ‘rational effort,

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discipline, and aspiration’ into a town would have a corresponding effect on its population. Without discipline and aspiration the population would, Lethaby believed, undoubtedly ‘be unsatisfied, hopeless and anarchical’.297 Fear of civil unrest had increased as a result of demobilization. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the post-war revolutions in Europe testified to the power of the working classes. International town planners, who toured housing areas overseas that were constructed post-war, reported on the unsuitability of European housing schemes designed to cram people into cities. Their prime concern, according to Macfadyen, had been the potential for the spread of communism among city workers especially those who lived in flats. In their opinion, Macfadyen reported, ‘blocks of flats on the Vienna plan bred Communists’ as the ‘loss of individuality, of idealism, of home and human affections’ had made flat-dwellers ‘an easy prey to herd movements’. In other words, the construction of flats, reminiscent of the Roman insulae, was perceived to be for a political community. Thus, it was revolutionary activity in Europe that helped push town planners in England towards a non-European and nonRoman urbanism. Recommended instead of continental models were: small independent homes and gardens not only for the sake of the people who live in them but still more for the stability and continuity of the State, and the civilisation it represents. If you want a population which will be an easy tool in the hands of a stunt politician build flats and make everyone a ‘number’. If you want people who can take care of themselves, who will take a pride in the maintenance of their town and their country on the best standards they know, build for them, or enable them to build individual homes, however small, at about the rate of twelve to the acre with enough space for each to allow of some privacy. 298

However, although the structured town planning of the Romans was less appealing in the interwar years, in other ways, Roman history and Roman Britain particularly remained useful to those contributing to the town and country debate. After all, as the renowned town planner Patrick Abercrombie stated, it was the Romans who first planned ‘the country consciously on a national scale’.299 R. G. Collingwood continued Haverfield’s work on Romano-British towns and, like him, he considered the Romanization of Britain had been incomplete in comparison to other Roman provinces. Only in London, he wrote in Roman Britain (1923), could there be found ‘an imported and purely Roman culture, a culture devoid of distinctively British traits’. The reason for this, Collingwood explained, was the cosmopolitanism of London whereas in the country,

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individualism still existed.300 He contrasted the close construction of London’s houses to the free and random scattering of houses ‘over spaces that were mostly open gardens’ in Silchester estimating that each house stood in approximately an acre of ground.301 In short, the small cities with their irregularly placed houses had retained their ruralism and something of their native culture and Silchester ‘always remained something of a garden city’.302 Whereas Scarth in the 1880s had merely described Romano-British towns and Haverfield had resisted comparing Silchester to a garden city, Collingwood had no such reservations in attributing modern notions of town planning to the ancient constructors of Silchester. In the same way town planning was developing in a uniquely English way, RomanoBritish towns, Collingwood implied, had developed along similar lines. Roman Britain ‘was not an urban civilization’.303 Arthur Weigall followed Collingwood’s lead interpreting the ancient remains of Silchester from a modern viewpoint in Wanderings in Roman Britain (1926). He described houses with ‘red brick and timber walls . . . red tiled roofs, and . . . bottle-glass window-panes’ which he told his readers must have resembled ‘an ordinary “antique” bungalow in a modern garden city’.304 It would seem that for both Collingwood and Weigall, Silchester was the prototype of garden cities. Weigall though went further maintaining that an unbroken line linked the countryside at the time of the Roman occupation to the present day. In Roman Britain we should see here and there the same serene cornfields that we see to-day . . . the Roman roads and lanes would have the same wealth of English wild-flowers on either side . . . the sheep and cattle would be browsing in the same luscious meadows of grass and daisies and buttercups; and even the houses . . . with their gardens ablaze with old English flowers and trim with clipped hedges, would not be strange to our eyes. . . . These things which constitute for us our dearest picture of the unrivalled English countryside, were here when our Roman-British ancestors of this neighbourhood went into Corinium (Cirencester) or Glevum (Gloucester) . . . transacted their business in the Latin tongue, and discussed the latest news from Rome in the shadow of the colonnades of the local Forum.305

Clearly Weigall was impressing upon his readers the idea that the ancestors of modern Britons were country-dwellers who commuted into cities. Thus, two cultures emerged in the post-war years: the Latin culture of the city and the real and unchanging culture of the English countryside. Historically, the English had been in the past a rural rather than an urban society and, at heart, they remained so.

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As archaeologists carried on uncovering Roman Britain, popular interest in all things Roman grew. As well as Collingwood’s Roman Britain, the historian H. H. E. Craster reviewed three other books in 1922 that dealt with the period of the Roman occupation: Lethaby’s Londinium: Architecture and the Crafts; Sir Bertram Windle’s The Romans in Britain and the British Museum’s expert on British antiquities, R. A. Smith’s A Guide to the Antiquities of Roman Britain, all of which were written in response to a popular demand for histories of the Roman occupation. While Windle made no claim that his book was a scholarly work, Collingwood’s was comprised of a series of lectures written for people who had scant knowledge of the period.306 Taking all four together, Craster believed they expressed ‘the growing recognition that the period of the Roman occupation of Britain forms an integral part of English history and that its civilisation is deserving of study in every detail’.307 These histories focused on the everyday aspects of life in Roman Britain and on the interaction between conquerors and conquered. Lethaby’s interest lay in ‘buildings and streets’ and, as the title of the book suggests, in ‘sculpture, mosaics, wall-paintings and marble linings’ and Windle included chapters on the conquest, the military system and frontiers as well as others describing Roman roads and towns, houses and their contents. Equally, Collingwood discussed among other things housing, art and pottery in order to show the emergence of a Romano-British culture.308 This concentration on the domestic side of Roman Britain was reflected in post-war histories of Rome itself. For instance, C. E. Boyd’s Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome (1922) dealt with the contents of libraries and the administration of them, according to the reviewer of the book, F. W. Hall.309 This was followed by the publication of Walton Brooks McDaniel’s Roman Private Life and its Survivals in 1923. Particularly noteworthy though was Cyril Bailey’s The Legacy of Rome (1923), prefaced by Asquith, at the time Leader of the Opposition, which brought together a series of essays dealing with various aspects of Roman society. In particular, Heitland’s Agriculture and the prominent Roman historian, Hugh Last’s Family and Social Life, appeared to be influenced by two significant post-war developments. First, confidence that town planning and access to the countryside was making a considerable difference to the health of urban populations and, secondly, the 1918 Representation of the People Act which extended the franchise to the majority of 21-year-old males and females over the age of 30. It was clear from Heitland’s Agriculture that renowned Romans had been reinvented since the 1850s. Although Heitland’s perception of Cato the Elder as ‘a practical farmer . . . who laid down the law with a self-confidence that

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makes us think of our own William Cobbett’310 was reminiscent of nineteenthcentury descriptions of Cato, such as Charles Merivale’s, crucially Heitland did not appear to share Merivale’s admiration for Cato as a man who was a ‘vigorous scion of the Latin homesteads’.311 Instead, Heitland argued, Cato was realistic enough to have accepted ‘the agricultural situation as he found it, and not to have aimed at impracticable reaction towards the vanished past’.312 In other words, Cato had realized as post-war Britons must, that it was impossible to be a staunch defender of a lost past and that a return to a rural society with a rural population imbued with all the values that went with it was no longer feasible. In subtly re-inventing Cato, effectively Heitland made him as pertinent to the debate on the city in the 1920s as he had been to the debate in the previous century, regardless of the way the debate had evolved. No such reinvention however was necessary for Virgil. In fact, so J. W. Mackail remarked in Virgil and his Meaning to the World Today (1922), the ‘remarkable similarity between our own times and the days of the Roman poet’ would allow scholars ‘to interpret, more vividly, Virgil’s message to the world’.313 In this the classical scholar, Sir Herbert Warren, agreed as, for him, it was Virgil who ‘linked together the ancient and the modern world’.314 But, whereas for Mackail it was the Georgics that drew ‘a living picture of a world of simplicity and industry, of hard work and true happiness’,315 for Warren it was the Eclogues that would today be ‘filmed’ and used by the government ‘as “back to the land” propaganda’.316 Virgil, in his role as ‘poet of the fields and streams of Italy’, as the classicist M. S. Slaughter described him, rather than in his role as poet of the Empire, retained in the interwar years the high position he had reached in Victorian Britain.317 However, it was Hugh Last, subsequently president of the Roman Society, who showed the extent to which, as Charles Martindale puts it, ‘the present and past’ remained ‘in dialogue with each other’.318 For Last, Roman society provided a template by which contemporary society could be judged either a success or failure. He focused though not on Britain’s achievements as an imperial race or on Britain’s global status but on what he considered to be the foundation of a successful nation and a Roman invention – the home. To emphasize the importance of home to the Romans (but not the Greeks for whom a house was a ‘house and nothing more’), he cited a passionate speech made by Cicero in 57 BC, following his exile from Rome and the destruction of his home: Is there anything . . . more hallowed, is there anything more closely hedged about with every kind of sanctity than the home of each individual citizen? . . . For all of us this is a sanctuary so holy that to tear a man away therefrom is an outrage to the law of heaven.

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In Last’s opinion, even allowing for the ‘rhetoric’ that such an upheaval called for, it was safe to assume that Cicero’s speech ‘expressed a sentiment’ which his ancient ‘audience would share’.319 Thus, with the Romans established as home-loving individuals, it naturally followed that the most honoured virtues, ‘gravitas, pietas, and simplicitas’, were virtues learnt in the home.320 But, whereas the former two characteristics had long been regarded as Roman qualities (and the second was embodied in Virgil’s Aeneas evident from his obedience ‘to authority’), simplicitas, which allowed Romans ‘to keep their feet firmly planted on the ground’, was a modern construction which corresponded remarkably well with the post-war image of Englishmen.321 In the words of the former (and soon to be again) Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, Englishmen were sound and sane with a nervous system that did not break under pressure or, in other words, who were good in a crisis.322 Last’s description of the Romans said as much about post-war Englishmen as it did about Romans. Yet, it was not from study of the elite that Last considered the real reason for Rome’s success could to be found. Although in comparison to Greece who had few ‘great men’, Rome had a significant number who stood head and shoulders above their peers, in order to fully understand Rome’s success and why it was ‘deserved’ it was necessary, so Last believed, to study the lives of the lowly masses who lived ‘in the back-street and the village’ as it was their ‘virtues and failings’ that had made Rome great.323 Last bifurcated the Roman population into urban and rural and drew a parallel between ancient Romans and modern Britons who lived in cities implying that for both family life and the virtues associated with such an existence were unobtainable in the metropolis. The urban Roman masses were ‘people who lived, if they were lucky, in the great blocks of tenements built in the style of a modern slum, where home life was a thing utterly unknown’.324 Last’s perception of Roman cities was exceedingly clear and presumably, in view of the parallel he had drawn, influenced by his view of modern cities. Pompeii, he wrote, was ‘the home of a degraded people who would have met no more than their deserts if all instead of a mere handful had perished in the ashes of Vesuvius’. Last stressed though that not all Romans could be condemned outright because not all were without virtue. He singled out for praise those who retained ‘the undiminished vigour of the Roman ideal’ in provinces such as African Timgad and the desolate high ground of Aurès and in the countryside, although their populations tended ‘to be forgotten’.325 Even in towns ‘good’ Romans could be found although not among the Roman masses as only the ‘better side of the educated class found expression in what may generally be called Stoicism’ and stoics alone, Last

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argued, were honest, decent citizens who respected and took seriously their role as head of the family.326 If Last implied Britain, like Rome, had failed to successfully deal with the evils of urbanization, his representation of the Roman family whose members displayed the ‘purest family affection’ suggested that adopting ancient family values could help resolve the situation.327 With Roman fathers described as men with authority over the family but not abusive of it and mothers both respected by their sons and influential in their lives (for instance, Julius Caesar’s mother, Aurelia, who helped shape ‘his career’), Last emphasized the importance of the family.328 In fact, Last’s depiction and praise of Roman women generally was most revealing. Women, he claimed, if permitted ‘to build up round themselves a proper home, seem somehow to have a sobering effect on their husbands’ conduct in wider spheres’.329 However, he was also keen to show women were not subservient to their husbands or in any way comparable to others in Roman society without a political role. Despite having no political voice women were nonetheless almost equal to their husbands and entitled to claim, “[w]here you are master I am mistress”.330 This hint of equality between Roman men and women though was neither intended to undermine the masculinity of Roman men who ‘in all things . . . retained their sanity’, nor suggest that women move outside their domestic sphere as Roman women accepted with equanimity their traditional role. Their ‘freedom’ in Roman society did not mean they acted as men or felt ‘aggrieved at exclusion from the few occupations for which by nature’ they were not suited to do.331 In short, Last was suggesting Roman society had found the right balance in family relationships. Bearing in mind the new political freedom granted to women in Britain and their taking on the role of men both at home and in the workplace during the Great War, it would seem that Last was constructing the ideal Roman family in order to promote what, in his eyes, was the ideal family in modern Britain and perhaps warning of the dangers of any breakdown in the traditional family unit where men were men and women respectful and accepting of their domesticity. Reinventing Roman history to fit an interwar ideology continued throughout the 1920s. Historians J. C. and H. G. Robertson in The Story of Greece and Rome (1928), developed Last’s urban theme but offered a more balanced picture. Rather than concentrating on Last’s negative view of Roman cities, the Robertsons expanded on his point that in cities, ‘good’ Romans could be found and not just from the privileged classes. Although acknowledging that Imperial Rome brought to mind the ‘same sort of image as Paris or New York does to many – that of a city given over to frivolity and immorality’ they added a caveat,

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suggesting that even ‘in the most wicked and profligate of modern cities’ there were ‘countless people’ who lived unspectacular lives, but these people offered ‘no material to a sensation-loving reading public. So it was in Rome’.332 To blame for what had been a flawed image of Rome were Roman ‘wits and satirists’ who had given a ‘highly coloured’ picture of Roman city life in order to satisfy popular demand. From other less thrilling but ‘not less truthful’ (if unspecified) ancient sources, a picture emerged of upright, dutiful Roman families and of many people ‘with honest homely ideals and virtuous family affection, proud of their industries and sustaining one another by help and kindness’.333 As Cato had been reinvented to support a modern agenda, so too were the ‘wits and satirists’, such as Juvenal. Juvenal, cited in the nineteenth century as proof of the degeneracy inherent in Roman towns, had effectively been dismissed. On one point though the Robertson’s and Last were in agreement. A ‘Roman’s heart’, they argued, ‘was in his family and his farm; all other occupations and interests – war, politics, trade, education, religion were subordinate to these. The family was the basis of the Roman state’.334 Moreover, Imperial Romans, like modern Britons, opted to escape from the city to enjoy all ‘the simplicities’ of the country and it was the country which remained the ‘home of an unspoiled and frugal race, kindly, industrious, and self-respecting’.335 As the values of country life became unchanging in the interwar years represented in Mantua and the English countryside, the values of urbanism became somehow ephemeral. In this reassessment, Republican Rome remained a negative image that encouraged the English vernacularism of garden cities and the ‘house’ centred model of urban development, specifically to avoid European/Roman revolutionary activity. However, although there was a move away from Rome, so architecturally dominant in the nineteenth century and in the municipal planning of London, Birmingham, Bolton, Leeds and Liverpool, to a non-urbanism based on the English village, historians frequently explored the everyday lives of Romans and Romano-Britons and maintained that the family and community was the basis of both ancient Roman and modern British society. The gradual turn away from acculturation, from Rome as a powerful and civilizational force in English history, resulted in a kind of environmental determinism – the soil of England – giving birth to the ideal society, both naturalistic and isolationist, but also deeply conservative.

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Summary

During the nineteenth century, debates on the Empire, the Nation and the City evolved directly as a result of political, economic and social change in Britain’s overseas territories and at home. These changes related to two fundamental transformations. First, there was a change in the politics of Empire. The Empire expanded rapidly in the nineteenth century and the number of dependant territories increased again after the settlement of the 1914–18 war. However, from the 1850s, imperial subjects had increasingly challenged British hegemony, pressing either for self-governing states or independence.1 Secondly, enclosure and industrialization transformed Britain from a rural to an urban society. Rapid industrialization had resulted in equally rapid urbanization. But the growth of badly planned, unhealthy and overcrowded cities, made worse by the migration of rural workers to the city in search of work, threatened to destabilize Britain. As a consequence of both factors, mid-nineteenth-century optimism in Britain’s future, partly reliant on the belief in the continuance of the Empire and partly dependent on confidence that working-class unrest had been successfully contained and would continue to be resolved without a revolution, was gradually supplanted by fear of decline. Corresponding to the demise of optimism, the nation moved from the belief in a liberal ideology based on ideas of freedom and progress, to a conservative ideology in which control and order were seen as virtues. Although modern historians meticulously investigate this period of history and note the use of classical allusions in debates, rarely do they draw out the significance of intellectual engagement with the past. Charges that classical allusions were used for dramatic effect or designed to show-off the erudition and status of the elite or as a means of social progression has meant references to ancient history have tended to be categorized as rhetorical. Of course, such accusations cannot be entirely discounted. Knowledge of ancient history and the ability to quote from ancient texts were certainly signs of education and status. The desire of the middle class to retain the classical curriculum and the struggle by working-class autodidacts to access the history and language of the ancient world allows some insight into the rewards that were conferred on those in

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possession of such knowledge.2 Yet, seeing Rome’s increasingly high profile in an English intellectual tradition as purely rhetorical, as a status symbol or as a means of social progression, misses out on the fundamental importance of the work Rome did in imperial and national debates. Addressing this imbalance in the modern historiography and showing Rome both informed debates and had a very real affect on outcomes, adds a new and as yet under-explored strand of knowledge to it. What caused this phenomenon of engagement with the past was, as John Stuart Mill pointed out in the 1840s, to do with change,3 but change that engendered a sense of fear in the elite: fear about the stability of the Empire and aggrandizement aims of other European and world powers; fear of revolutionary activity in Britain; fear about the racial vigour of Britons; fear about the physical fitness and industriousness of the working classes especially when vying with other industrialized nations; fear for the safety of the Empire and Britain itself. Put succinctly, it was fear of decline and fall that brought to mind images of the decline and fall of ancient civilizations. In the first half of the nineteenth century, comparisons were most frequently drawn between Britain, ancient Greece and the Roman Republic in the debate on British imperialism. Ideologically these ancient empires were perceived as the forerunners to Britain’s. Yet, as the need arose to divest Britain of her unemployed and increasingly troublesome working classes to the colonies, comparisons with ancient civilizations infiltrated domestic debates. What is more, with Rome possessing a world empire comparable to Britain’s and with Rome’s systematic method of colonization enabling a regular outward flow to the colonies as well as maintaining political ties to the colonies in a way that Greece’s did not, the elite became captivated by Roman efficiency and breadth of vision. But, as ideas that ‘inferior’ subject peoples with guidance from liberallyminded rulers could progress to civilization were tested and finally overturned by challenges to British authority, attitudes to Rome itself altered. As administrators focused on justice and imperial security, there was a change in historiographical focus from the politics of the Republic to the politics of Imperial Rome. A more despotic form of governance had an additional benefit. With scientific proof that interaction with non-white subjects, the imperial ‘other’, was disadvantageous to the ‘superior’ race, regulating contact between ruler and ruled would, so many believed, prevent infusing ‘inferior’ cultural or racial traits into Britons overseas. Despite growing antipathy from anti-imperialists at the start of the twentieth century concerned that the Empire was detrimental to national well-being, pro-imperialists who were convinced of the Empire’s importance

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to Britain’s future, continued to promote it in a Roman Imperial framework although, acknowledging the nationalist turn, Britain was represented less as an imperial power and more as a nation working in partnership with subject territories. Echoing this new domesticated vision of the British Empire was the domestication of the Roman Empire. Familial imagery suggested neither Britain nor Rome were imperial powers but instead members (albeit senior members) of a commonwealth of nations. This tendency to ‘domesticate’ both ancient and modern empires continued in the post-war years and, with the Roman Empire represented in a way that mirrored the British, Rome remained a common point of reference in the debate on the British Empire into the 1920s and beyond. The debate on the Empire was intrinsically linked to what was happening at home. If the twin evils of rising unemployment and working-class unrest contributed to making Rome a more attractive model for Britain than Greece in the debate, equally what was happening in the Empire caused Rome, and ultimately Imperial Rome, to become enmeshed in national discourses. In the 1850s the English elite, although inheritors of Roman culture, claimed to be the racial descendants of the racially-pure, superior Anglo-Saxons. The Celts and working classes were categorized as Britain’s ‘others’. Challenges to British authority, however, from distant and ‘barbaric’ peoples, the task of administering an expanding empire and the imperial ambitions of other nations required a show of strength from all Britons. Fearing imperial decline, historians and scientists, working on parallel paths, revisited British history and new theories suggested the Celts survived the Roman invasion and their joint progeny, the Saxon. Modern Britons were as much Celtic and Roman as they were Teutons. But, with the Irish deemed ‘lesser’ Celts, partly having never benefitted from Rome’s civilizing mission, and signs of racial degeneracy in the urban working class, some Britons remained outsiders. As a nature versus nurture argument evolved, the fall of the Republic acted as a warning of the consequences of racial degeneration while Imperial Rome offered both eugenicists and environmentalists hope that the problem could be overcome. Although by 1900 a rise in English nationalism pulled against ‘Britishness’, a continuing sense of crisis exacerbated by the prospect of war with Germany, ensured belief in a mixed origin myth persisted. Moreover, as the environmental argument took precedence in mainstream politics in the post-war years, with heterogeneity (largely) commended and the class division less rigid with the passing of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, by the interwar years all modern Englishmen, at least, could claim to be biological descendants of the Romans.

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Britain’s transformation from rural to urban was not only seen as partly responsible for racial degeneration, but it was also blamed for physical degeneration in the lower orders. The debate on the city that emerged, pitted the town and country or the concepts of civilization and backwardness against each other. By the late nineteenth century, traditional understandings of the city as a place of civilization and progress and the countryside as uncivilized and backwards had been reversed. Within this debate and coinciding with the re-evaluation of the modern city, Rome was consistently deployed as a negative or conservative image. Republican Rome became a symbol of physical degeneracy and political instability while Augustan Rome supported the idea that cities could be restored. But, by the early twentieth century, there was little evidence to suggest that efforts to improve the urban environment had restored the health of urban labourers. Although emigration to the far-flung outposts of the Empire was seen as one solution to the problem, with the fall of the Republic – an example of the consequences of stripping the countryside of its rural population and concern over the spread of cities into outlying rural districts – some openly compared Republican Rome to modern Britain. Yet, cities were the ‘new’ reality and Rome was made to support a new vision of urbanism that reflected a nationalistic ideology, conservative and non-urban. Town planners recommended the study of Romano-British towns constructed with due regard to order and the health of their populations. During the interwar years as modern European cities planned according to Roman order became the site of revolutionary activity, there was a move away from the structured town planning of Rome. Nonetheless, RomanoBritish towns constructed in a uniquely English way, remained the prototype of garden cities. Virtue could be found in the ‘ruralism’ of country towns and the conservative instinct was to support a dictatorial imposition of Augustan ‘rural’ values on British society. From this brief summary of three separate but interrelated debates, it is clear that the anticipation of fall caused Rome to become entrenched in an English intellectual tradition. From the 1850s, with remarkable regularity and progressively more so, the intelligentsia – politicians, scientists, economists, social commentators, urban reformers, novelists and journalists – conjured up images from ancient history as attempts were made to counter change, ease tensions and justify actions. No one debate in itself can explain the preference for Rome over Greece or Imperial Rome over the Republic. If preference for Imperial Rome is often associated with the move to a despotic form of government overseas, it is equally clear that the transformation in Britain from rural to urban and the birth of the modern contributed to its appeal. Imperial Rome was a ready-made

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model that had succeeded in meshing its internal structures with a vast external network of acquired territories. Moreover, Imperial Rome could be adapted to fit both an imperial or national agenda and suited the conservative ideology that came to the fore as pessimism replaced optimism in Britain and the Empire’s future at the start of the twentieth century. If Imperialists reinvented the British Empire in a way that accommodated the nationalist turn and rewrote Roman Imperialism to reflect this new vision, anti-imperialists rejecting the external in favour of a land and blood type of imagery used Imperial Rome to support ‘back-to-the-land’ movements and reject radical social reform. Imperial Rome became a lens through which it was possible to see that the Empire could achieve stability and security without liberty, by which civic virtues could be restored, by which class struggle could be suspended and plutocratic power absorbed within the imperial and national ‘mission’. Although knowledge of ancient history and the Classics continued to work as a ‘class-marker’, Rome’s influence on British political discourse was perhaps more profound by the interwar years in its conservatism and rejection of modernism and the movements of the European left. Roman history, reworked to underpin changing imperial and national ideals, was made to speak to a conservative agenda both in its Imperial anti-democratic emulation and in the negative portrayal of Republican Rome. The shift from the politics of social division: of class, of the struggle of the orders, of revolution and constitutionalism, to the politics of order and the nation, of community, of culture but also of Empire, could be supported by the Roman imperial model. The historian and schoolteacher Frederick Tickner in Outlines of British History (1923) summed up what the West and the nation owed to Rome: Every European nation to-day owes a debt to Rome for many things in its civilisation; probably very much of what we owe came subsequently to this first Roman association with the land, for there were to be many occasions in the future on which Rome and Roman ideas were to have an important influence upon the English people.4

Perhaps the last word should go to Stanley Baldwin, one of the most dominant politicians during the interwar years and at the time of his address to the Classical Association in 1926, the Conservative Prime Minister: During the first four centuries of the present era Roman thought and Roman manners imposed themselves upon our island and made themselves a home here. Rome must have seemed very real and present to the children of the near-by hamlets as they saw the great roads creeping towards them, past them,

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and ever onwards in ruthless and undeviating course, making the farthest ends of the island pervious to the legions’ tread. Shy traffickers coming from wild fastnesses as they chanced upon a Roman highway and, shading their eyes with their hands, saw it pass into the horizon, must have been awed at the thought of the great heart that beat at the end of that great artery. Beautiful buildings, kindly plants and flowers now so familiar came in the wake of the eagles and sank their foundations and their roots in English soil. It may well be that subconscious memories of those days and the mingling of blood for four centuries played their part no less than the arrival of the Normans in modifying certain characteristics of our Teutonic invaders and saved us from becoming what Carlyle called ‘A gluttonous race of Jutes and Angles, capable of no grand combinations, lumbering about in pot-bellied equanimity; not dreaming of heroic toil, and silence and endurance, such as leads to the higher places of this universe and the golden mountain-tops where dwell the Spirits of the Dawn’.5

Rhetorical this might sound but taken in context and seeing Baldwin as one of many influential individuals (and by no means the last) across a wide range of disciplines who engaged with the past; seeing the way Roman history was rewritten and Roman writers translated in order to understand and deal with the present; seeing the way Rome was made to support changing ideologies; seeing the way perceptions of Rome were broadcast to a broad audience via novels, the press and translations, can leave little doubt that Rome was central to the development of intellectual thought, ideology and philosophy. If ancient Rome was, as Norman Vance puts it, ‘very much alive in the imagination of Victorian England’,6 ancient Rome was also alive and kicking in the early twentieth century and arguably still is. Rome was no empty symbol but rather a very real influence shaping both political and social discourse in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, therefore, influencing the decision-making process. Understanding Rome’s significance to modern Britain and seeing why Britain stood in the shadow of Rome can only add to our knowledge of the period.

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Introduction 1 2 3 4 5

6

7

8 9 10 11 12

Levine (2007, p. 103). Berman (1983, pp. 18–19). The Times (8 July 1920, p. 10 – ‘The Amritsar Debate’). De Certeau (c.1988, p. 2). According to Edward Said (1994, p. 1), ‘appeals to the past are amongst the commonest of strategies in the interpretation of the present. What animates such appeals is not only disagreement about what happened in the past and what the past was, but uncertainty about whether the past really is past, over and concluded, or whether it continues, albeit in different forms, perhaps’. See also Martindale (2006, pp. 1–13). Stanley Cohen notes (1987, p. 22) that ‘[i]t is the perception of threat and not its actual existence that is important’. The tripartite nature of this book is not intended to sideline other fundamental debates of the period. My decision to investigate the debates on Empire, Nation and City was made in order to fulfill the aim of this book – to prove Rome, in and of itself, had a significant role to play in sociopolitical debates that emerged as pessimism replaced optimism in Britain’s future. Mill (1942, p. 1). ‘The articles on “The Spirit of the Age” began to appear in the Examiner over the signature “A.B.” on January 6 1831.’ They continued until the end of May (von Hayek, Frederick A. cited in Mill, 1942, p. xxvii). Mill then confirms de Certeau’s argument that the differentiation of ‘ages’ was central to political and historical thought and yet he also shares the opinion of Berman (and Marx) that modernity was philosophically and materially new. This is a term borrowed from Michel Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge first published in English in 1972. See Foucault (2008). Stray (1994, p. 127). For early scholarship see, for instance, Betts (1971) and Turner (1986). For the latest scholarship on the relationship between the British India, Greece and Rome, see Hall and Vasunia (2010). Vance (1997, p. 28). Vance believes this occurred because between the 1730s and 1830s Shakespeare overtook ‘the classics . . . as a site of political expression and debate and a site of political caricature’.

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13 Stray (1998, p. 22). 14 Mill (1942, p. 65). Along with Greece and the Roman Republic, Mill also considered Sparta to be an example of an exemplary commonwealth. In other ancient civilizations, ‘the circumstances of society itself, being in a perpetual flux, the elements of moral influence never remained long enough in the same hands, to allow time for constitutional doctrines, or received maxims of policy, to grow up’. However, in the Roman Republic, Greece and Sparta, ‘such constitutional doctrines, and such received maxims of policy, did exist, and the community was intensely attached to them’. 15 Richard Jenkyns (1992, p. 5) argues that although ‘[i]t would be absurd to claim that English history has been determined by Roman example [sic], nonetheless, ideas have their part to play in the historical process as well as social pressures and sectarian passions’. 16 See Martindale (1993, p. xiii); Martindale and Thomas (2006); Bradley (2010). 17 Barry (2009, p. 292). Martindale (2007, p. 298) states that ‘[w]hen texts are reread in new situations, they have new meanings; we do not privilege the meanings that they had in their first, “original” contexts (even assuming these to be recoverable in principle)’. 18 Balfour (1893, p. 28). 19 Phiroze Vasunia (2005a, pp. 38–9) stresses that parallels between Britain and Rome were ‘returned obsessively to’ by establishment figures with Edwardians owing a ‘conceptual debt’ to the Victorians. ‘Invariably’, Vasunia continues, ‘comparisons between Rome and Britain point to contemporary concerns about empire, race, decay, and decline’ and reveal ‘the contradictions of liberal empire’. As frequently ‘arguments about the Roman Empire’ were ‘inseparable from [a writer’s] claims about the British Empire’, Vasunia maintains, analysis of these texts reveal more about the British Empire than the Roman. 20 Haverfield, Strachan Davidson, Bevin, Walker, Hogarth, Cromer (1910, pp. 105–6). 21 Alston (2010, p. 54). 22 Mill (1859, p. 23) claimed that a ‘ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable’. According to David Theo Goldberg (2005, p. 133), Mill believed ‘colonial despotism could achieve the happiness of colonized Others only by imposing the measure of Europeanized marks of happiness upon the other, which is to say, to force the other to be less so’. Richard Hingley (2000, p. 10) claims that Classical texts in ‘defining their own civilisation in opposition to barbarian “others” . . . provided a powerful interpretative tool for those who created modern imperial discourse’. See also Hingley (2005, pp. 22–9). 23 Hingley (2000, p. 19). T. P. Wiseman (2005, p. 42) however dates the change in attitude to Imperial Rome from the late 1850s. By then, he claims, ‘republican heroism’ was ‘fast becoming obsolete’.

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24 Seeley (1883, p. 238). Catherine Hall (2000b, p. 1) describes Seeley as the ‘founding father of British imperial history’. 25 Light (1991, p. 211). Light continues that ‘the domestication of the imperial idea’ saw ‘the elaboration of imperial fantasies within different kinds of nation, private, and indeed feminine contexts’. 26 See Congreve (1855). 27 Hall, McClelland and Rendall (2000b, pp. 46, 56). 28 Kingsley (1880a, p. 258 – ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’). 29 See Stray (1998, p. 32). Michael Banton (1977, p. 96) claims that although it was ‘unusual to hold that there were innate differences between Englishmen’ realistically, ‘it would have been eccentric to behave in practice as though there were not’. According to V. G. Kiernan (1972, p. 330) ‘[d]iscontented native in the colonies, labour agitator in the mills, were the same serpent in alternative disguises. Much of the talk about the barbarism or darkness of the outer world, which it was Europe’s mission to rout, was a transmuted fear of the masses at home’. 30 Soloway (1982, p. 137). 31 Weigall (1926, p. 80). 32 Migration from the country to the city had transformed Britain’s landscape. Towns with populations exceeding 20,000 rose from 15 to 185 between 1800 and 1900. Stevenson (2003, p. 13). Raymond Williams (1975, p. 188) suggests as industrialization ‘announced . . . the new character of the city and the new relationship between city and country’, a modern debate occurred in which the city of Rome was consistently deployed. See also Howkins (1991, p. 7). 33 Levin (2004, p. 20). 34 Young (1995, p. 31). 35 Strong (1963, p. 172). 36 Stevenson (2003, p. 20). See also Williams (1975, p. 9) and Short (1991). 37 Strong (1963, p. 176). 38 Janet DeLaine (1999, p. 146) in the ‘The romanitas of the Railway Station’, for instance, claims Roman building technology was replicated in order to empower the elite. DeLaine explores the ‘conceptual parallels’ between Roman aqueducts described in Frontinus’ On Aqueducts and praised by Pliny the Elder in Natural Histories and railways. Frontinus and Pliny ‘praised the combination of utility, benefit to the city, and control over nature’ of aqueducts and saw them ‘as a symbol of Rome’s world-wide Empire’, while ‘railways displayed domination and control over nature, a control which was itself an expression of power’. DeLaine (1999, p. 154) continues that the ‘obvious symbolism’ evident in ‘monumental structures’ to the classically educated ‘was the power of imperial Rome, in scale if not in detail’. 39 Jane Harding and Anthea Taigel (1996, p. 237) have tracked the origins of the debate back to the Renaissance reproducing maps of towns to show the importance of the provision of ‘orchards and gardens and little pastures’ for the population in the 1600s.

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40 According to Deborah Stevenson (2003, p. 23), garden cities ‘went beyond the rural-urban dichotomy’ combining ‘the “best” of the city (civilization) and the “best” of the country (nature)’. 41 Haverfield (1913, p. 146). 42 Alston (2010, p. 54). 43 See Chapter 1. 44 This project is not about what translations tell us about the ancient world but rather what they tell us about the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to Lorna Hardwick, ‘reception studies have to be concerned with investigating the routes by which a text has moved and the cultural forces which shaped or filtered the ways in which the text was regarded’. Cited in McElduff (2006, p. 180). 45 Vance (1997, pp. 87, 156). 46 Hobsbawm (1992a, p. 13). 47 Seeley (1883, p. 166). 48 Bryce (15 February 1915, MS Bryce 230, fol. 49). 49 Castle (1993, p. 39). 50 According to Edward Said (2003, p. 332), ‘the development and maintenance of every culture require the existence of another different and competing alter ego . . . Each age and society re-creates its “Others”’. Far from a static thing then, identity of self or of the ‘other is a much worked over historical, social, intellectual, and political process that takes place as a contest involving institutions and individuals in all societies’. 51 See Crawfurd (1861a, 1861b, 1863) and Farrar (1867). Laura Otis (2002, p. xix) notes the propensity of scientists to quote from ancient texts identifying two underlying reasons. First, classical knowledge ‘defined their [scientific] knowledge as “cultured” and therefore non-threatening’ and, secondly, being in receipt of a classical education they were ‘effectively gentlemen scholars’. 52 Knox (1850, p. 7). 53 Hampton (2004, p. 19). 54 The Times (7 November 1900, p. 9 – ‘The Winter Session of the Institution of Civil Engineers’). 55 The Times (17 January 1896, p. 7 – ‘The Plane-Trees by Spring-Garden’). 56 The Times (31 October 1925, p. 10 – ‘London Expects Every Voter to do his DutyMonday’). 57 Cited in Hampton (2004, p. 20). Lucy Brown (cited in Hampton, 2004, p. 19) claims that, during ‘the second half of the nineteenth century the newspaper became established as part of the normal furniture of life for all classes’. 58 For Kipling’s view on Horace, see Charles Carrington’s Kipling’s Horace (1978). 59 Said (1994, p. xii). 60 Said (1994, p. 38). 61 Eliot (1994, p. 704); Eliot (1894, p. 70).

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62 Street (1975, p. 4). 63 Disraeli (n.d. pp. 148–9). 64 Disraeli (n.d. p. 149). According to Andrew Sanders (2000, 163), Baron Sergius in Disraeli’s Endymion (1880) has a similar role to play declaring ‘a principle’ which Sanders states, was a principle to which Disraeli ‘himself would appear to have assented’. As the Baron put it to the principal character of Disraeli’s romance, Endymion Ferrars (1880, p. 44): ‘You have heard to-day a great deal about the Latin race, their wondrous qualities their peculiar destiny, their possible danger. It is a new idea, or rather a new phrase, that I observe is now getting into the political world, and is probably destined to produce consequences. No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key of history, and why history is so often confused is that it has been written by men who were ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves. As one who is a statesman and assist in governing mankind, it is necessary that you should not be insensible to it . . . its qualities must ever be taken into account’. 65 Sanders (2000, pp. 165–6). It is the novel, Said (1994, p. xii) states, being ‘the aesthetic object’ most closely connected ‘to the expanding societies of Britain and France’ that makes it ‘particularly interesting to study’. Hall, McClelland and Rendall (2000b, p. 39) claim ‘print culture was central to the process of giving people new ways to think about themselves and relate to each other, in making new ideas accessible and popular’. 66 See the introduction to Catherine Edwards’ Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789–1945 (1999, pp. 1–18).

Chapter 1 1 2 3 4

See Porter (2005, pp. 135–41). Hall (2010, p. 33). Colley (1992, p. 323). Ferguson (1995, p. 106). Michael Levin (2004, p. 10) claims ‘the whole point of the term [civilization], at least from the eighteenth century onwards, was bound up with the Western view of itself as in advance of the rest of the world; that it had developed and others hadn’t’. 5 Ferguson (1995, p. 159). The conviction that Englishmen were superior to other Britons will be discussed in Chapter 2. 6 Macaulay (1860, p. 279). This essay titled ‘Sir James Mackintosh’ first appeared in the July 1835 issue of the Edinburgh Review. According to Vance (1997, p. 5), Macaulay’s Lays ‘helps to demonstrate that ancient Rome, variously constructed or reconstructed, could be not just part of the dead past but a vision and an idea transcending its original context’.

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11

12 13 14 15 16

17

18 19 20 21 22

23

Notes Macaulay (1935, p. 359). Cited in Faber (1967, pp. 37–8). Cited in Baucom (1999, p. 55). Mangan (1993b, pp. 7, 10). This ‘ “ladder” perspective of human development’, as Peter Mandler (2006, p. 22) terms it, ‘chimed neatly, and not accidentally, with the British political elite’s preferences. A hierarchy of nations, based on different stages of development towards “civilization”, was an ideal vision for an expanding British Empire’. Christopher Stray maintains (1998, p. 46), ‘[t]he learning of Latin and Greek by peer-groups of boys in boarding schools led to a shared knowledge of classics which underpinned the self-images and solidarity of educated adults’. This, for many, gave rise ‘to an intense individual commitment to the formative, and transformative power of the classics’. Cited in Stray (1998, p. 204). Ward (1964, p. 413). Mill (1942, pp. 38–9). Mill (1942, p. 39). Lillo (1810, p. 304). Lillo himself was described by the English novelist and dramatist Henry Fielding (1707–54) as having ‘the spirit of an old Roman, joined to the innocence of a primitive Christian’. Cited in Patrick (1902, p. 277). Knowledge of the Classics, acting as a metaphorical barrier between the elite and the lower order, reinforced a class hierarchy. Once belonging to this select world membership was sustained by ‘interaction with other group members . . . and by contact with the source’. Stray (1998, p. 65). Monthly Review (1764, p. xxx). The Times (15 November 1813, p. 3 – ‘Letters of Vetus: Letter xxxiv’). Cited in The Times (6 August 1853, p. 2 – ‘House of Lords’). Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. 112, 25 June 1850, p. 444. See Vance (1997, pp. 125–8) for a full discussion of the Don Pacifico affair. Stray (1998, pp. 21–2). George Eliot (1997, p. 40) in Felix Holt (1866) set just after the passing of the Reform Act in 1832 acknowledged the power that lay with knowledge of the Classics. Harold Transome, standing as a Radical against the upper class Tory Debarry, is advised to ‘rub up’ on his Latin as ‘young Debarry is a tremendous fellow at the classics’. According to Stray (1998, p. 32), with Greek learning considered by the middle classes as ‘something above them’, there was a ‘shift from the predominance of Greek to that of Latin’. The ‘“civilisational” model of imperialism’ was, in Philippa Levine’s words (2007, p. 100), the ‘common and popular argument that allegedly backward peoples were well served by good colonial administration that would educate and Christianize them, help them curb disease and poverty . . . and fit them for a place in the afterlife’.

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31 32 33

34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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Eccleston (1847, p. 4). Eccleston (1847, p. 16). Church (1877, Agr. 21). Eccleston (1847, p. 23). See Bradley (2010, pp. 123–58) for a discussion of translations of Tacitus’ Agricola in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. 127, 3 June 1853, p. 1194. Cited in Stray (1998, p. 43). See Green (1994). As Richard Faber states (1966, p. 25), ‘[i]f the Pax Britannica was hailed in Latin it was because the Pax Romana served as a model for comparison and inspiration’. Richard Jenkyns (2007, p. 277) claims the parallel between the two was ‘inescapable’. Creasy (1856, p. 21). The Times (5 July 1856, p. 9 – ‘Among the many illustrations which history has’). Carter (2003, p. 5). William Jones claimed Asia ‘has ever been esteemed the nurse of science, the inventress of delightful and useful arts, the scene of glorious action, fertile in the production of human genius . . . abounding in natural wonders, and infinitely diversified in the form of religion and government, in the laws, manners, customs and languages, as well as in the features and complexions of men’. Cited in Mudford, (1974, pp. 88–9). Cited in Porter (1984, p. 19). Macaulay (1935, p. 349). Macaulay (1935, p. 351). See Vasunia (2000b, pp. 43–4). Stray (1998, p. 53). Phiroze Vasunia (2005b, p. 37) maintains ‘Greek and Latin authorized and participated in imperial culture, and also intersected, in metropolitan and colonial contexts, with such issues as race, class, and gender’. Carter, (2003, p. 3). Raphael Samuel (1998, p. 80) argues the empire was ‘a fetter on, rather than encouragement to trade’. Cobden (1908, p. 187). J. Hawthorne in the introduction to the 1900 edition of Carlyle’s book claimed this book ‘educated the generation to which it was given’. Carlyle (1900, p. ix). Cited in Wakefield (1914, p. 458). From Charles Buller’s Speech on ‘Systematic Colonisation’ given in the House of Commons on 6 April 1843. Cited in Wakefield (1914, p. 473). Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. 70, 22 June 1843, 205. The Times (25 September 1838, p. 3 – ‘Agitation in the manufacturing districts’). Robert Knox (cited in Young, 1995: 119–20) wrote in 1862 that it was following the ‘revolutionary epoch of 1848, that the press condescended to admit that race had anything to do with human affairs’. According to Peter Mandler (2000: 229), the revolutions in France, the German and Italian States, Poland and the Hapsburg territories had been viewed in Britain with a mix of ‘horror and self-congratulation’.

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182 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Notes MacDaugall (1848, p. 2). Scott (1848, p. 2). Shaw (1848, p. 3). Lyttelton (1849, p. 40). [Anonymous] (1848, pp. 5–6). [Anonymous] (1848, pp. 27–8). Cited in The Times (18 October 1855, p. 5 – ‘Mr. Gladstone on the Colonial Policy of England’ ,) Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (3 April 1870, p. 1 – ‘Self-help to Emigration’). Andrew Thompson (2005, p. 241) claims by the 1850s, the colonies were ‘ever more central to the economic and political dimensions of imperial ideology’. Smith (1904, pp. 58–9, 60). The Times (18 October 1855, p. 5 – ‘Mr. Gladstone on the Colonial Policy of England’). Bell (2006, p. 744). See David (2002). See Levine (2007, pp. 77–9). The Times (1 September 1857, p. 6 – ‘The Indian Mutiny is eminently a barbaric category’). Edith Hall (2010, p. 33) claims the ‘psychological shock’ to Britons of the mutiny was ‘incalculable’. The Times (6 October 1857, p. 6 – ‘We do not know that there is any particular . . . ’). The Times (7 November 1857, p. 6 – ‘It is certain that the fall of Delhi’). Dickens and Collins (1923, pp. 45–6). Mia Carter (2003, p. 6) states that prior to the mutiny many ‘believed that the fate and future of India and its people was theirs to determine’ whereas after the mutiny ‘it was easier and far more comforting to believe the uprising was a pathological symptom of the national character’ rather than resistance to British rule. Smith (1904, pp. 58, 60). Sheppard (1861, p. 65). Creighton (1875, p. 33). Heuman (1994, p. xiii). For public reaction in Britain to the actions of Governor Eyre see Baucom (1999, pp. 42–3). Cited in Porter (2006, p. 99). Symonds (1923, pp. 1–2). Farrar (1867, p. 116). Farrar (1867, pp. 119, 124–5). Linda Colley (1992, p. 311) maintains we usually decide who we are ‘by reference to who and what we are not’. Jane Webster (1996, pp. 116, 117) states that the concept of the ‘other’ ‘has been one of the most influential ideas in Western thought’ and has ancient roots originating during the Persian Wars (500–479 BC).

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76 77

78 79 80 81

82

83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

183

The Persians were constructed as the antithesis of the Greeks providing ‘a means for Greeks to pursue a self-identity at a time of threat’. The Romans exploited the idea as they justified territorial expansion. The ‘other’ became not the enemy, but natives in the Roman colonies. It turned ‘the discourse of the barbarian . . . into something specifically imperial’. According to Tim Barringer (1996, p. 34) scientific theories on race legitimated the management and oppression of the ‘other’ in the Empire. Carlyle (1971, p. 296). Carlyle (1867, p. 3). See also Carlyle (1885, p. 28). Nancy Stepan (1982, p. xi) states that although the Greeks considered they were superior to all non-Greeks who were marked out as barbarians, they did not rank non-Greeks ‘in a hierarchy of inferior and superior types’. Javed Majeed (1999, p. 101) claims the Romans tended ‘towards fusion and uniformity and race imposed few barriers’. Cited in Slater (1998, p. 142). See, for instance, Gaskell, (1929, p. 51). Brontë (n.d. p. 255). Knox (1850, p. 450). Knox’s (1850, p. 224) study of African skulls had disposed him ‘to think that there must be a physical and, consequently, a psychological inferiority in the dark races generally’. Knox, of course, was referring to native New Zealanders and not colonizers. While monogenists accepted the biblical version, according to Joseph Kestner (1996, p. 112), that ‘all mankind [was] descended from a single union’, polygenists argued that ‘the major races each [had] an independent point of origin’. Stepan (1982, p. 4) maintains that ‘a shift from a sense of man as primarily a social being governed by social laws and standing apart from nature, to a sense of man as primarily a biological being, embedded in nature and governed by biological laws’ occurred. Darwin (1861, p. 84). Wallace (1864, p. clxviii). Wallace (1864, p. clxii). Wallace (1864, p. clxix). Watson (1851, Luc. 5, ll.1011–14). For the reception of Lucretius in Victorian England see Vance (1997, pp. 83–111). Watson (1851, Luc. 5, ll.1105–9). Wilberforce (1860, p. 233). Sellar (1932, pp. 332–3). Wallace (1864, pp. clxiv–clxv). Crawfurd (1861a, p. 77). Crawfurd (1861a, p. 78). Crawfurd (1861a, p. 85). [Anonymous] (1865, p. 246).

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Notes

96 George Eliot (1997, p. 86) alluded to this fear in Felix Holt (1866). Upon discovering Harold Transome was standing as a Radical, criticism could be levelled at him on account of his time in Egypt. ‘He has become a regular beast among those Mahometans’, Sir Maximus Debarry stated, ‘he’s got neither religion nor morals left’. Charles Dickens also incorporated the theme into The Mystery of Edwin Drood (n.d. [1869–70], p. 337). On the return of the twins Helena and Neville Landless (the name itself implying a lack of identity) from Ceylon, the Rev. Septimus Crisparkle described them as ‘beautiful barbaric captives brought back from some wild tropical dominion’. 97 Cited in Thorne (2010, p. 102). 98 See Porter (1984, pp. 45–6). Robert Johnson (2003, p. 113) maintains exclusively white clubs in India were ‘an important focal point for reinforcing identity’. 99 Froude (1886, p. 86). 100 Froude (1886, p. 189). 101 Froude (1886, p. 121). Javed Majeed (1999, p. 89) claims it was the dominions not the subject territories that were thought of as ‘new Englands’ as they reproduced the ‘constitutional features of the mother country’s government’. 102 Long (1772, pp. 48–9). The author of this article was originally identified as ‘a Planter’. Robert Young (1995, p. 150) identifies him as Edward Long. The original document is written in old English. 103 Knox (1850, p. 88). According to Helen Cooper (1996, p. 206), ‘[w]here humanitarian monogenesist thinking had acknowledged mixed race offspring, polygenesists dismissed them as degenerate and sterile’. 104 Crawfurd (1861b, p. 356). 105 Crawfurd (1863, p. 202). 106 Jackson (1866, pp. 119–20). Jackson (1866, p. 117) was challenging intellectuals, for instance, John Stuart Mill, who denied ‘the great truth of racial diversity’ which ‘the experience of ages has demonstrated, and what the true wisdom of the present would dictate, the necessity for a diversity of religion and government corresponding to this diversity of race, whereby the formal institutions of a people are brought into harmony with their mental constitution’. See Biddiss (1979, pp. 113–14). 107 Jackson (1866, p. 124). 108 Jackson (1866, pp. 125, 126). The half-breed had become, as H. L. Malchow (1996, p. 103) puts it, ‘the threatening creature of the boundary between white and nonwhite, a living sign, an emblem of shame’. 109 Dilke (2005, pp. 95, 100). 110 Dilke (2005, p. 391). 111 Dilke (2005, p. 519). 112 Dilke (2005, p. 525). 113 Eliot (1984, p. 425).

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114 Hack (1877, pp. 95, 102). Maria Hack was born into a Quaker family and died in 1844. 115 Cited in [Anonymous] (1868, p. 270). 116 Edward Said (1994, p. 97) terms this a ‘schizophrenic habit’. In the 1870s, according to Anthony Webster (2006, p. 37), there emerged within the Liberal party a group who labelled themselves ‘Liberal Imperialists’. 117 Cited in Carter and Harlow (2003, p. 114). 118 Mill (1859, p. 23). 119 Cited in Levin (2004, p. 15). 120 Cited in The Times (24 June 1817, p. 3 – ‘Middlesex Meeting, June 23’). Lucian in Necyomanteia (c.11) considered informers one of the worst groups of offenders in Roman society. See Baldwin (1961, p. 202). 121 Cited in The Times (24 September 1817, p. 3 – ‘Newcastle FOX Dinner’). The Spa Field Riots took place in late 1816 in London. 122 Cited in The Morning Post (3 July 1822 – ‘House of Commons’). 123 Arnold (1853a, pp. 344, 342). 124 Arnold (1853b, p. 386). 125 Arnold (1853b, p. 422). 126 Arnold (1853b, p. 423). 127 Merivale (1853, pp. 433, 544). 128 Congreve (1855, pp. 5–6). 129 Congreve (1855, p. 11). 130 Congreve (1855, p. 7). 131 Congreve (1855, p. 10). 132 Congreve (1855, pp. 20, 29, 32, 36). 133 Congreve (1855, p. 40). 134 Congreve (1855, pp. 26, 28). 135 Congreve (1855, pp. 60–1). 136 What was happening in Britain is described further in Chapters 2 and 3. Possibly the comparisons drawn between the leaders of working class reform movements as the masses struggled for political, economic and social reforms, and Roman Republican heroes, such as the Gracchi, contributed to Congreve’s preference for Imperial over Republican Rome. See Chapter 3. 137 Congreve (1855, p. 7). 138 Smith (1856, p. 296). 139 Smith (1856, p. 311). 140 Sheppard (1861, pp. 104–5). See Hingley (2000, p. 20). 141 Sheppard 1861, pp. 65–6). 142 Smith (1881, pp. 19–20). 143 Smith (1881, p. 287). 144 Merivale (1870, p. 396).

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186 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154

155 156 157

158 159 160 161

162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173

Notes Merivale (1870, p. 550). Smith (1881, p. 286). See Bell (2006, p. 742). Catherine Hall (2000b, p. 1) states, Seeley ‘brought the empire into historiography and devised a philosophy of history appropriate to writing about empire’. Seeley (1870, p. 13 – ‘Great Roman Revolution’). Seeley (1870, pp. 22, 14 – ‘Great Roman Revolution’). Seeley (1870, p. 25 – ‘Great Roman Revolution’). Seeley (1870, pp. 25–6 – ‘Great Roman Revolution’). Seeley (1870, pp. 47–8 – ‘The Proximate Cause of the Fall of the Roman Empire’). Seeley (1870, p. 50 – ‘The Proximate Cause of the Fall of the Roman Empire’). The issue of the declining Roman population and its affect in Britain will be discussed in Chapter 2. Leicester Chronicle and the Leicestershire Mercury (25 October 1879, p. 2 – ‘Mr J. A. Picton on Imperial Rome’). Yonge, (1877, p. 213). Yonge, (1877, pp. 226, 227). Eclogue IV, ll.7–10: ‘now from high heaven a new generation comes down. Yet do thou at that boy’s birth, in whom the iron race shall begin to cease, and the golden to arise over all the world, holy Lucina, be gracious’. (Mackail 1889). [Anonymous] (1865, p. 237). King (1876, p. lvi). King (1876, p. lviii). Douglas Lorimer (1978, p. 202) maintains pessimism emerged in the 1860s as a result of imperial and domestic issues. These issues combined ‘with a new determinism declared that biological inheritance governed the individual’s physical, intellectual, and psychological attributes, and thus fixed at birth a persons place in the natural and social order’. Seeley (1870, p. 217 – ‘English in Schools’). Sheppard (1861, p. 109). Sheppard (1861, p. 119). Sheppard (1861, p. 122). Bell (2006, p. 745). Frere (1882, pp. 319, 321). Frere (1882, pp. 335–6). Cited in Frere (1882, pp. 352–3). Galton and eugenics will be discussed in Chapter 2. Cited in Frere (1882, p. 352). Cited in Frere (1882, p. 354). Cited in The Times (3 October 1888, p. 3 – ‘To the Editor of the Times’). Lowe (1878, p. 458).

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Notes 174 175 176 177

178 179

180 181 182 183

184 185 186 187

188 189 190 191 192

187

Lowe (1878, p. 459). Lowe (1878, p. 457). Cited in Monypenny and Buckle (1929, p. 1367). See Bradley (2010, pp. 139–40). Balfour (1893, p. 218 – ‘Cobden and the Manchester School’). Paul Ward (2004, pp. 95–6) argues that ‘[u]nder Disraeli and Lord Salisbury a concerted effort was made to reshape patriotism to suit the imperatives of an expansionist imperialist nation and those of a party suffering anxiety over its future in a period with increasing number of votes’. Balfour (1893, p. 216). Seeley (1883, p. 195). Seeley (1883, p. 43) believed the Empire to be English, not British. ‘Greater Britain’, he wrote is a ‘real enlargement of the English state; it carries across the seas not merely the English race, but the authority of the English Government’. See Catherine Hall (2000b, p. 2). There is a noticeable ‘looseness’, as Keith Robbins describes it (1988, p. 1) in talk of Britain and England, Britons and Englishmen among nineteenth and early twentieth-century commentators. Regardless of the designation of the Empire as British for many, as Seeley demonstrates, the Empire had been and always would be English. Charles Dilke (2005, p. A.2) was another who regarded the Empire as English. He ‘followed England round the world’ being ‘everywhere . . . in English-speaking, or in English-governed lands’. Seeley (1883, p. 304). Seeley (1883, p. 305). Cited in Faber (1966, p. 72). Seeley (1883, p. 296). For Seeley (1883, pp. 59–60) no nation ‘was half so much cramped for want of room in the olden time as our own nation is now’. Expansion therefore into a far off Empire would avoid the ‘great risks’ and ‘great hardships’ incurred by, for instance, the Goths who seized neighbouring territories, as well as bringing an end to pauperism in Britain. Seeley (1883, p. 59). Froude (1886, p. 10). Cited in Faber (1966, p. 62). See also Porter, (1984, p. 188). Cited in Faber (1966, p. 52). Richard Hingley (2000, p. 24) argues ‘Seeley’s views are particularly central to an understanding of the development of ideas of imperialism in Britain’ while Jonathan Rutherford (1997, p. 17) claims Seeley’s Expansion was ‘a major factor in converting the middle classes to the New Imperialism’. Seeley (1883, p. 237). Seeley (1883, p. 238). Seeley (1883, p. 237). Holmes (1883, pp. 42–3). See Thorne (2010, pp. 106–11). Shepard (1885, pp. 16–17).

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188 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204

205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213

214 215

216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225

Notes Shepard (1885, pp. 42–3). Inge (1888, pp. 40–1). Inge (1888, p. 41). Inge (1888, p. 43). Inge (1888, pp. 61–2). Inge (1888, pp. 65, 102–3). Bury (1893, p. iii). Bury (1893, pp. 564, 147). Pelham (1905, pp. 364, 366). Pelham (1905, pp. 378, 384). Judson (1894, p. 104). Tarner (1895, p. 43). A year previously George Tarner had published Unpopular Politics (1894) a book which he claimed had been favourably received ‘in many and unexpected quarters’ (1895, p. vi). Tarner (1895, pp. 41, 24–5). Tarner (1895, preface). Tarner (1895, p. 59). Parkin (1892, p. v). Buckley (1887, pp. 8–9). Ransome (1887, p. 10). Parkin (1892, p. 220). Buckley (1887, p. 8). Gooch (1946, p. 11). Johnson (2003, p. 217) claims, ‘Old hands’ in the Empire ‘were critical of the system that gave no grounding in the problems of government, racial antagonism and conflict resolution’. Pelham (1905, p. 381). Welldon (1895, p. 329). Richard Holt maintains sport ‘was regarded as an indication not only of physical fitness . . . but of personality, initiative and capacity for judgement and control of subordinates’. Cited in Ward (2004, p. 75). Cited in Johnson (2003, p. 210). Porter (2006, p. 52). For discussion of the Colonial College see Dunae (1988, pp. 194–208). See also Vasunia’s (2005b, pp. 37–44) discussion of Haileybury College. Butler, (1987, p. 124). Huxley (1881, p. 7). Huxley (1881, p. 8). Cited in Faber (1966, pp. 25, 120). Seeley (1883, p. 135). See Vance (1997, p. 142) Sellar (1891, p. 2). Sellar (1932, p. 271). Howard (1897, p. 562).

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226 Norman Vance (2007, p. 96) claims ‘the sense of a classical tradition was both witnessed and heightened’ by translations. By the turn of the century, learning the Classics, according to Stray (1998, p. 186), still took up 40 per cent of the school day for 13-year-old public school boys, rising to 60 per cent by the time they were 15. 227 Cited in The Times (23 August 1904, p. 11 – ‘Mr. Lloyd-George and Welsh Teachers’). 228 Firth (1903, p. 361). 229 Firth (1903, p. 365). 230 Hobson (1938, pp. 117, 124). 231 Hobson (1938, p. 122). 232 Hobson (1938, p. 119). 233 Cited in Hobson (1938, p. 123). 234 Colls (1986, p. 43). 235 Hobson (1938, p. 141). 236 Masterman (1901b, p. ix). 237 Masterman (1901c, p. 4). 238 Hobson (1938, p. ix). See Colls (1986, p. 43). 239 Levine (2007, p. 96). 240 According to Philippa Levine (2007, p. 97), the 1884–5 Berlin Conference ‘underlined the colonial prominence of newly unified Germany’. 241 Robertson (1900, p. 27). 242 Rutherford (1997, p. 8). Donal Lowry (2000, p. 222) states that it was the AngloSouth African War that ‘brought an end to complacency about the Empire across the political spectrum. Much of the music-hall swagger, which had manifested itself so ebulliently on Mafeking Night, went out of imperialism at the close of the war and the Empire now had to be presented as a more peaceful and progressive institution’. 243 Hobson (1938, p. 221). 244 Mason Hammond notes Hobson’s sparing use of references to Roman Imperialism claiming that despite the occasional analogy between Roman and British Imperialism, Hobson ‘devotes no further attention to imperialism in any meaning before the French Revolution’. Hammond (1948, p. 126, note 7). 245 Hobson (1938, p. 6). 246 Hobson (1938, p. 9). 247 Hobson (1938, p. 136). 248 Cited in Hobson (1938, p. 150). See Vasunia (2005a, p. 54). 249 Hobson (1938, pp. 366–7). 250 Robertson (1900, p. 189). 251 Robertson (1900, p. 188).

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190 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272

273 274 275 276

277 278 279

Notes Robertson (1900, p. 155). Robertson (1900, p. 193). Robertson (1900, p. 151). Robertson (1900, p. 8). Robertson (1900, p. 189). See Jenkyns (1992, p. 31). Murray (1900, p. 134). Murray (1900, pp. 143–4). Cited in Murray (1900, p. 144). Murray (1900, p. 144). Murray (1900, p. 145). Murray (1900, p. 147). Murray (1900, p. 151). Cited in Mudford (1974, p. 213). Pollard (1909, p. v). Meath and Jackson (1905, p. 1). Richardson (1913, preface). Williams (1908, p. 84). Williams (1908, pp. 84, 85, 86). Gardiner (1912, p. 3). Fletcher and Kipling (1911, p. 18). Commenting on the first draft of A School History of England to his co-author C. R. L. Fletcher in 1910, Kipling suggested, ‘shortening up that fascinating animal Neolithic man and giving the kids more about the Romans’. Kipling Papers (18 May 1910, Box 15/5.7). Fletcher and Kipling (1911, p. 244). Edwards (1908, p. 51). Cited in Arnold (1906, p. cviii). Hamilton wrote this in a letter to Mary Ward, Arnold’s sister. Dr. J. P. Postgate reported to The Classical Association that ‘Latin and Greek (and especially the last-named)’ was ‘slowly slipping out of the school curriculum’. The Times (21 October 1907, p. 9 – ‘The Classical Association’). Brian Doyle (1986, p. 93) suggests, ‘[o]ne of the signs of the eclipse of classics by English was the foundation in 1907 of the English Association which was to propound very effectively the view that the new discipline had become “our finest vehicle for a genuine humanistic education”, and that “its importance in this respect was growing with the disappearance of Latin and Greek from the curricula of our schools and universities”’. Doyle is quoting from the Bulletin, (8 June 1909), London: English Association. Shorey (1906, pp. 174, 194). Cramb (1900, p. 6). Cramb (1900, p. 60).

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280 Bryce (1901, p. 60). In a letter to G. O. Trevelyan dated 9 February 1916, Bryce wrote that for him the ancient texts grew ‘more precious . . . the longer one lives’. (MS Bryce, 19, fol.106). 281 Mackail (1913, p. 1). 282 Lonsdale (1887, p. 78). 283 Williams (1908, pp. 330, 329). 284 The Times (15 April 1901, p. 3 – ‘How Rome would have ruled India’). 285 Firth (1903, publisher’s stamp). 286 Firth (1903, p. 1). 287 Firth (1903, pp. 358, 362). 288 Firth (1903, p. 361). 289 Shuckburgh (1908, p. vii). 290 Shuckburgh (1908, p. 269). 291 Frank (1914, pp. 336, 353). 292 Stobart (1912, pp. 3, 5). 293 Stobart (1912, pp. 161, 164). 294 Stobart (1912, p. 4). 295 Stobart (1912, p. 162). 296 Stobart (1912, pp. 272–3). 297 Ramsay (1915, p. lxviii). 298 Ramsay (1915, p. lxix). Ramsay’s representation of Germany as an historically aggressive nation was most likely influenced by the outbreak of the First World War. As Germany had ‘despoiled’ Gaul in ancient times so Germany had ‘despoiled’ Belgium and France in modern times. Britain’s declaration of war on Germany so it could be argued was for precisely the same reasons Rome had invaded Gaul, to protect the peoples of Belgium and France from German aggression. Britain had taken on the role of Rome as peacekeepers. 299 Bury (1930, p. 23). 300 Haverfield (1911, pp. xviii, xviv). See Chapter 2 for a discussion of Haverfield’s Romanisation. 301 Haverfield (1911, p. xviii). See Hingley (2000, pp. 35–7). 302 Haverfield, Strachan Davidson, Bevin, Walker, Hogarth, Cromer (1910, p. 106). 303 Haverfield, Strachan Davidson, Bevin, Walker, Hogarth, Cromer (1910, pp. 106–7). See Hingley (2000, p. 50). Echoes of J. S. Mill’s theory that uncivilized societies were not a threat to civilized nations unlike once civilized nations such as China which had stagnated, were evident in Haverfield’s argument. See Levin (2004, pp. 96–7). Walter Bagehot developed Mill’s argument in 1872 claiming Oriental societies had seemed ‘ready to advance to something good – to have prepared all the means to advance to something good – and then to have stopped, and not advanced’. Cited in Levin (2004, p. 95).

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304 In 1903, Haverfield expressed regret that he was unable to join Bryce on a cruise to Victoria. He also advised Bryce on his paper on ‘the worship of Roma and Augustus’. Haverfield to Bryce (27 May 1903, MS Bryce, 77, fol.123); (13 April 1915, MS Bryce, 77, fol.125). 305 Bryce (1901, p. 19). 306 Bryce (1901, p. 23). 307 Bryce (1901, p. 6). 308 See letter from Bryce to G. O. Trevelyan (9 February 1916, MS Bryce, 19, fol.106). Lucretius remained popular not least due to perceptions of him as a man of science. According to classical scholar W. H. Mallock (1901, p. vi), Lucretius was ‘as consciously a scientific man and a physicist as Darwin, or Huxley, or any of our contemporary evolutionists’ while John Masson (1907, p. 175) considered Lucretius’ ‘explanation on the origin of the world’ analogous to that held by ‘some others at present’. This was understandable, Masson (1907, p. 166) explained, ‘as [w]hen we review Lucretius’s explanation of the origin and history of life upon the earth, we see that it is based on a clear perception of Darwin’s doctrine, that in the organic world none but the fittest continue to exist, because they alone have been able to perpetuate themselves. Beyond question, Lucretius had a firm grasp of this central doctrine of Darwinism’, Masson (1907, pp. 166, 175). 309 Bryce (1901, p. 63). 310 Balfour (1920, p. 16). 311 Cromer to Murray (1 February 1909, Gilbert Murray Papers, MS. 17, fol.102). 312 Haverfield, Strachan Davidson, Bevin, Walker, Hogarth, Cromer (1910, p. 106). 313 Cromer (1910, p. 14). 314 Cromer (1910, pp. 19–20). 315 Cromer (1910, pp. 21–3). 316 Murray (1900, p. 120). 317 Cromer (1910, pp. 102, 104–5). 318 Cromer (1910, p. 127). 319 Tippet (1967, pp. 3–4). Mary Orde Tippet was my grandmother. She was born in Indore, India in 1904. She later married Oxford scholar, Frederick Stanley Tippet, a surveyor in Ceylon who went on to become Chief Censor for Ceylon during the Second World War. 320 The Times (10 August 1908, p. 8 – ‘Archaeology in India’). 321 Kerr (1911, p. 132). 322 Kerr (1911, pp. 202–3). 323 Samuel Gardiner (1912, p. 491), for instance, in 1881, had written of ‘the mother country’ and of ‘an association of sister States’. 324 Cited in McGeorge (1993, p. 69).

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325 Cited in McGeorge (1993, p. 69). Colin McGeorge claims by the twentieth century the family ‘metaphor’ had become a convenient way to describe ‘the special relationship between the self-governing dominions and the Motherland’ (1993, p. 68). 326 Lucas (2005, pp. 30, 31). Despite the title of this book, Lucas, like his contemporaries, slips between talk of Britain and England. The Oxford historian, W. Warde Fowler (Times Literary Supplement, 16 January 1913, p. 20) in reviewing Lucas’ book noted some ‘interesting chapters, suggested to a large extent by a comparison of the Roman and British Empires’. For this Warde Fowler felt ‘Britons might be grateful’. 327 Lucas (2005, p. 23). Lucas could have been thinking of the senators who were patres conscripti or Augustus who was pater patriae. 328 Lucas (2005, p. 33). 329 Lucas (2005, p. 60). 330 Lucas (2005, p. 73). 331 Lucas (2005, p. 80). 332 Cromer (1913, p. 344). 333 Cromer (1913, p. 345). 334 Bonar Law Papers (November 1922, no ref). Address to Electors of the Central Division of Glasgow. 335 Bernard Porter (2006, p. 258) claims that between 1920 and 1930, approximately 870,000 people emigrated to the colonies. 336 Lucas (1920, p. 1). Including analogies with ancient Rome in lectures aimed at a working-class audience demonstrates that knowledge of classical texts and Rome’s relevance to Britain had spread beyond the upper and middle classes. Despite no longer dominating the curriculum, educationist Foster Watson (1919, pp. 930–1), writing for The Nineteenth Century, believed it important, ‘for the children of poor parents . . . to have the opportunity at school, which is denied them from the nature of their home-life, of finding mental satisfaction in the stories of Greek and Roman or other ancient history as well as in stories of animal and plant life . . . ’. Knowledge of the lives of classical heroes, he continued, would ‘give ready illustration of the concrete qualities of fortitude, loyalty, self-control, magnanimity’, all desirable traits in post-war Britain. In 1924, the classicist G. H. Hallam wrote to The Times (22 December 1924, p. 11 – ‘Classics as a Social Barrier’) stating, Latin and Greek were no longer the ‘close preserve of the moneyed and leisured classes’ as pupils of ‘high and new secondary schools’ could share in ‘that particular inspiration which Greece and Rome alone can give’. Hallam cited Dr Albert Mansbridge, founder of the Workers’ Educational Association, in his letter who believed ‘the day [was] coming when it will not be though a very strange thing for a working man to pull a Homer out of his pocket to read over his midday meal’.

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194 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358

359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374

Notes Lucas (1920, p. 225). Lucas (1920, pp. 227, 230). Lucas (1920, p. 230). Lucas (1920, p. 195). Lucas (1920, pp. 195–6). Lucas (1920, p. 216). Lugard (1922, pp. 618–19). Lethaby (1921, p. 62). See Alston (2010). Hearnshaw (1920, p. 12). Hearnshaw (1920, p. 13). Hearnshaw (1920, pp. 20, 22). Hearnshaw (1920, pp. 54–5). Hearnshaw (1920, pp. 63–4). Lucas (1924, p. 268). Lucas (1924, p. 276). Lucas (1924, p. 268). Morris and Wood (1924, p. vii). Morris and Wood (1924, p. viii). Morris and Wood (1924, pp. 358–9). Morris and Wood (1924, p. 359). Morris and Wood (1924, p. 360). As an example of this, Morris and Woods (1924, p. 360) claimed, the Pacific Islanders’ ‘love’ for Robert Louis Stevenson had led to their constructing ‘the Road of the Loving Heart’ of ‘their own free will’. Morris and Wood (1924, p. 370). Morris and Wood (1924, p. 370). Morris and Wood (1924, p. 371). Times Literary Supplement (2 February 1928, p. 74). Robertson and Robertson (1928, p. 229). Robertson and Robertson (1928, p. 288). See Wyke (2006). Wells (1919–20, p. 316). Wells (1919–20, pp. 319, 291). Toynbee (1936, p. 317). Cited in Baldwin (1938, dust jacket). Baldwin (1938, p. 108 – ‘The Classics’). Baldwin (1938, p. 120 – ‘The Classics’). Baldwin (1938, p. 15 – ‘England’). Baldwin (1938, p. 80 – ‘Democracy and the Spirit of Service’). Baldwin (1938, pp. 114–15 – ‘The Classics’). Baldwin (1938, p. 114 – ‘The Classics’).

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Chapter 2 1 Colley (1992, pp. 324–5). Edward Said (2003, pp. 1–2) claims ‘[t]he Orient . . . helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience’. 2 West (1996, p. 9). Andrew Thompson (2005, p. 198) suggests ‘[u]nity in a shared imperial cause did not, however, mean uniformity’. 3 Philip Mason (1962, p. 37) claims industrialization and enclosure ‘had started the process of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer’ and had ‘depersonalised and dehumanised the relations of master and man’. 4 Disraeli (1980, p. 96). For Douglas Lorimer (1978, p. 15), ‘[t]he question “does a black man equal a white man?” had little meaning in an age when few thought all white men deserved equality’. 5 Young (2008, p. 60) believes physiognomy and phrenology were ‘particularly important for the development of racial thought’ in Britain. Nancy Stepan (1982, p. 25) maintains it was also the science of phrenology that placed ‘the “savage” in a new light’ thus justifying Britain’s imperial mission. 6 Young (2008, pp. 61, 62). 7 The Hull Packet and Humber Mercury (8 January 1828 – ‘Dinner to Dr. Spurzheim’). 8 Young (2008, p. 63). 9 Horsman (1976, p. 398). 10 Newsome (1997, p. 211). For Stepan (1982, p. 27) it was phrenology that led to the development of racial biology which, in turn, led to the development of the science of anthropology. George Combe and George Eliot corresponded. In 1851 Combe wrote that Eliot ‘is the most extraordinary person of the party . . . She has a very large brain, the anterior lobe is remarkable for length, breadth, and height, the coronal region is large, the front rather predominating’. Haight (1978, p. 27). In The Lifted Veil (1985, p. 6), Eliot included a passage whereby a boy’s strengths and weaknesses were determined by examination of the ‘upper sides of [his] head’. The pseudo fortune-teller in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (n.d. p. 177) claimed destiny ‘is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes’. Likewise in Dickens’ David Copperfield (n.d. [1849–50], p. 688), Mr Murdstone and his sister showed ‘[s]trong phrenological development of the organ of firmness’ while in Dr Thorne (1858), Trollope wrote (1980, p. 34) ‘[i]f there was on Thorne’s cranium one bump more developed than another, it was that of combativeness’. 11 Cited in Horsman (1976, p. 399). 12 Robert Young (2008, p. 31) claims that it was historians who developed ‘the ideology of the English as Saxons, and of the continuing national Anglo-Saxon legacy’. Furthermore, he argues (2008, pp. 51–2) that it was a ‘single’ comment

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Notes made by the fifth to sixth-century historian, Gildas, who claimed ‘ancient Britons had been exterminated’ that enabled ‘the English to claim a pure Saxon lineage for themselves’. Young (2008, p. 16) states all these terms ‘were in practice more or less synonymous’. Aikin (1805, Ger. 11). Cited in Horsman (1976, p. 392). Aikin (1805, Agi, 21). Peter Mandler (2006, p. 13) suggests ‘“Tacitus” authority made Teutonism more respectable . . . even among the classically educated’. Young (2008, p. 22) refers to this period as the ‘golden age of Saxonism’. Kemble (1839, p. iii). Hugh MacDougall (1982, p. 89) claims ‘a conviction . . . formed in the Englishman’s mind that he was peculiarly manly, honourable, apt for leadership and that his social institutions, of ancient Saxon pedigree, were superior to those of any other people’. Carlyle (1971, p. 205). Freeman (1867, pp. 1–2). The allusion here is to Horace’s Epistles, Book 2.1, ll.156–7: ‘To Augustus’ – ‘Next conquered Greece became our conqueror/ Instructing us in her superior lore’ (Rose, 1869). Arnold, T. (n.d. p. 30). Arnold, T. (n.d. p. 30). Arnold, T. (n.d. pp. 33–4). Horsman maintains (1976, p. 392) the study of language was ‘of direct use to English Anglo-Saxonists’, including as it did research into ‘the Indo-European language family from which the German and English languages were descended’. Church (1877, Ger. 4). Arnold, T. (n.d. p. 31). Arnold, T. (n.d. p. 32). Arnold, T. (n.d. pp. 36–7). Christianity was perceived as part of a Judeo-Christian tradition hence his reference to Israel. Knox (1850, p. 6). Knox (1850, p. 9). For a discussion of Robert Knox, race and Classical Greece, see Debbie Challis (2010, pp. 94–115). Carlyle (1971, p. 202). Young (2008, p. 104) singles out Macaulay’s History of England (1858) as influential in the development of a narrative that depicted the Irish as inferior on the basis of race. As a result of its publication, ‘generations of British’ were ‘brought up on the analysis of Irish history in which the fundamental political difficulty was presented as that of the incompatibility of race’. Said (2003, p. 332). Carlyle (1971, pp. 169, 171). Carlyle (1971, p. 172).

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35 Koss (1990, p. 62). 36 The Economist (20 February 1847, p. 3 – ‘Irish Poor in Liverpool’), http://find. galegroup.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/econ/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=EC ON&userGroupName=tou&tabID=T003&docPage=article&docId=GP4100384700 &type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0 [Last Accessed on 17 June 2011]. 37 The Times (25 August 1848, p. 5 – ‘“I wish”, wrote SWIFT, after his final return to Ireland’). 38 The Times (19 June 1847, p. 5 – ‘While for one reason or another’). 39 Knox (1850, p. 379). 40 Knox (1850, pp. 26–7). Joseph Kestner (1996, p. 115) maintains that the Celts as Caucasians ‘permit[ted] them to be dominant over the dark colonised other’ but that ‘their Celtic birth, render[ed] them inferior in terms of a hierarchy of Caucasians, above all inferior to those of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic heritage’. 41 [Anonymous] (1868, p. 258). 42 [Anonymous] (1868, p. 259). 43 Arnold (1962, p. 294). 44 Arnold (1962, pp. 291, 297). In contrast to the Welsh, Arnold (1962, p. 291) believed the ‘prosperous Saxon’ had forgotten his past. Arnold’s reasons for arguing for the disappearance of the Welsh language are interesting as they are similar to Macaulay’s reasons for imposing English on native Indians (see my discussion of the debate between Orientalists and Anglicists in Chapter 1). Arnold (1962, pp. 296–7) wrote that ‘[t]he fusion of all the inhabitants of these islands into one homogeneous, English-speaking whole, the breaking down of barriers between us, the swallowing up of separate provincial nationalities, is a consummation to which the natural course of things irresistibly tends it is a necessity of what is called modern civilisation, and modern civilisation is a real, legitimate force; the change must come, and its accomplishment is a mere affair of time’. In contrast to Macaulay who was dismissive of Indian writings, however, Arnold (1962, pp. 297–8) considered ‘Celtic literature, – as an object of very great interest . . . I like variety to exist and to show itself to me, and I would not for the world have the lineaments of the Celtic genius lost’. 45 As Ian Baucom (1999, p. 20) points out, Englishness ‘was not . . . something to which everyone in Britain could necessarily lay claim’. The 1832 Reform Act had increased the electorate from 4.5 to just 7 per cent. Marquand (2008, p. 4). 46 Cited in [Anonymous] (1843, p. ix). 47 Gaskell (1987, pp. 74–5, 67). See Edgar Wright’s introduction in Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1987, p. xi). 48 Kingsley (2007, p. 154). 49 See Kingsley (1864, pp. 1–17 – ‘The Forest Children’). 50 Kingsley (2007, pp. 56, 100, 163). 51 Dolin (1996, p. 88).

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52 Ruskin (1903, p. 227). 53 Mayhew (1861, p. 1). Mayhew’s portrayal of the Fingoes was substantially different to that of Sir H. Bartle Frere’s. Under British rule, Frere argued, the Fingoes had progressed to a civilized state. See Chapter 1. 54 Mayhew (1861, pp. 2–3). Mayhew’s use of the term ‘nomadic’ here is crucial as it works with an opposition between the ‘desert’ and the ‘town’ in creating a vision of native African primitivism in the lower echelons of society. 55 Church (1877, Ger. 8, 18, 19). 56 Freeman (1873, p. 364). 57 Freeman (1873, p. 52). 58 Freeman (1873, pp. 47, 55). 59 See Stray (1998, pp. 22, 74–5). 60 Trollope (1880, p. 20). See Vance, (1997, pp. 78–9). 61 Arnold (1893, p. 4). 62 Arnold (1962, pp. 141, 140 – ‘Marcus Aurelius’). 63 The Times (9 March 1854, p. 8 – ‘It might possibly admit of a question’; 4 June 1859, p. 9 – ‘Presentation of the Freedom of the City to Sir John Lawrence’). In this respect the Gracchi were portrayed as martyrs to an imperial cause rather than more usually as social reformers. 64 Eliot (1994, p. 229). 65 Elizabeth Gaskell (1987, p. xxxvi) in the preface to Mary Barton linked workingclass unrest to the 1848 revolutions. ‘At present’, the working classes ‘seem to me to be left in a state, wherein lamentations and tears are thrown aside as useless, but in which the lips are compressed for curses, and the hands clenched and ready to smite . . . To myself the idea which I have formed of the state of feeling among too many of the factory-people in Manchester . . . has received some confirmation from the events which have so recently occurred among a similar class on the continent’. 66 Kemble (1849, p. v). 67 Carlyle (1971, p. 190). 68 According to Catherine Hall, the European revolutions helped scientists like Knox to be taken seriously for, as Knox pointed out, they ‘clarified to the world at large how race had something to do with the history of nations’. Cited in Hall (2000c, p. 192). 69 Peter Mandler (2006, p. 28) claims that ‘“Civilization” provided a language and an identity that was attractive to the rulers of a multi-national kingdom’ as much as it was attractive to the rulers of the British Empire. 70 Kingsley (n.d. p. 365). 71 Knox (1850, pp. 25–6). 72 Knox (1850, p. 27). Compare this to Knox’s view that non-white territories could only be held ‘with the sword’. See Chapter 1 and the article ‘Knox on the Saxon Race’ ([Anonymous] 1868, p. 270).

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80 81 82 83

84 85

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87 88 89 90

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92 93 94 95 96

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Arnold (1962, pp. 295, 346, 316). Arnold (1962, p. 317). Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (39 AD–65 AD). Arnold (1962, pp. 346–7). Arnold (1962, p. 349). Arnold (1962, p. 350). Arnold (1962, p. 349). Arnold (1962, pp. 349, 350). The ‘favourite conservative argument’, Sheridan Gilley (1978, p. 93) points out, ‘was that the Irish lacked political discipline because the Roman had never ruled them’. Smiles (1968, p. 150). Carlyle (1971, p. 171). Cited in Golby (1986, p. 136). Kingsley (2007, p. 164). Douglas Lorimer (1978, p. 15) states that in theory ‘avenues for self-improvement were open to all, blacks as well as white’, although ‘the belief in self-advancement applied less readily to groups than to individuals’. Kingsley (1881, p. 199). Kingsley (1881, p. 200). Even John Stuart Mill in ‘Of the Extension of the Suffrage’ (1861), despite believing voting rights should be ‘open to all persons of full age who desire to obtain it’, excluded those in ‘receipt of parish relief ’ and the uneducated. In Mill’s opinion ‘universal teaching must precede universal enfranchisement’. Cited in Golby (1986, pp. 259, 260–1). Arnold (1893, pp. 40–1). Arnold was responding to the riot in Hyde Park during the Reform League demonstration of 1866. According to Hall, McClelland and Rendall (2000b, p. 4), this symbolized ‘the threatening power of the workingmen’s movement to Liberal and Conservative politicians alike’. Arnold (1893, p. 37). Arnold (1893, p. 36). Arnold (1893, p. 41). Andrew Thompson (2005, pp. 197–8) points out it was the Celts as well as the English that had built up the Empire. The Scots had ‘earned a reputation for empire-building’, the ‘Irish middle-class . . . was well represented in the Indian Civil and Medical services’ and ‘the Welsh and Irish working classes were great colonisers’. Dilke (2005, pp. 361, 215). Linda Colley states all Britons had benefited ‘to a good extent’ from the Empire and had shared in ‘its spoils’. Cited in Kumar (2000, p. 590). Arnold (1962, p. 341). Arnold (1962, pp. 373, 378). Crawfurd (1861b, p. 371). Freeman (1877, p. 729). Young (2008, pp. 156, 158). See Pike (1866); Nicholas (1868).

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97 Wright (1867, p. 170). 98 Wright (1867, p. 169). He cited from Juvenal’s Satire II. My translation is taken from Arnold and Mongan’s Juvenal, The Satires (1889). 99 Nationalism was gaining ground across Europe. Mass politics must have had an effect, as must the mass media. See Gellner (1983), Smith (1986, Part II). 100 Huxley, Pike and Beddoe (1870, p. 198). 101 Huxley, Pike and Beddoe (1870, pp. 199, 201). 102 Huxley, Pike and Beddoe (1870, p. 201). 103 Huxley, Pike and Beddoe (1870, p. 202). 104 Huxley, Pike and Beddoe (1870, p. 203). 105 Allen (1880, p. 475). 106 Allen (1880, p. 476). 107 Allen (1880, pp. 479–80). 108 Allen (1880, pp. 485, 487). 109 Allen (1880, p. 484). 110 Catherine Hall (2000c, p. 233) states that although with the 1867 Second Reform Act ‘Irish men in England had been received into the nation on the same terms as Anglo-Saxons . . . their equal legal status did not prevent either their cultural exclusion from the nation or their own identification as different’. 111 Cited in Huxley, Pike, Beddoe (1870, p. 204). 112 Cited in Huxley, Pike, Beddoe (1870, p. 205). 113 Cited in Huxley, Pike, Beddoe (1870, pp. 205–6). 114 Cited in Huxley, Pike, Beddoe (1870, pp. 212–13). Both Huxley and Beddoe were influenced by the Irish question. For Huxley (Huxley, Pike, Beddoe 1870, p. 201) with proof that in Ireland and Britain ‘the present population is made up of two parties’, Celt and Teuton, he ‘absolutely den[ied] that the past affords any reason for dealing with the people of Ireland differently from that which may be found to answer with the people of Devonshire, or vice versa’. Huxley (Huxley, Pike, Beddoe 1870, pp. 198, 203) challenged scientific claims of racial difference. ‘What sort of grounds are afforded by scientific investigation’, he asked, ‘for the belief that these two stocks of mankind are so different as to require different political institutions?’ ‘If ’, he continued, ‘what I have to say in a matter of science weighs with any man who has political power, I ask him to believe that the arguments about the difference between Anglo-Saxons and Celts are a mere sham and delusion’. Beddoe (Huxley, Pike, Beddoe 1870, p. 213) thought the opposite. Noting the mental and moral differences between the Teuton and Irish Celt he questioned whether then it was ‘“cant” or folly’ to say such ‘peculiarities of large masses of citizens must of necessity have some effect on the course of politics’ with respect to Ireland. Beddoe maintained the Irish Celts were linked to ‘Cromagnon man’ hailing from North Africa who had migrated to Ireland. See Stepan (1982, p. 103).

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115 Cited in Huxley, Pike, Beddoe (1870, p. 213). 116 Bunbury (1879, p. 251). 117 Beddoe (1885, p. 269). Young (2008, p. 124) notes the ‘defence of Celtism . . . emanated from the new scientific racialists themselves, many of whom were Welsh or Irish . . . Saxon supremacism was therefore finally successfully challenged through invoking contemporary racial science’. 118 Huxley, Pike, Beddoe (1870, pp. 198–9). 119 Arnold (1962, p. 352). 120 The Times (20 February 1875, p. 9 – ‘The Mausoleum of AUGUSTUS’). 121 [Anonymous] (1867, pp. 159–60). 122 Coote (1878, ix–xi). See Hingley (2000, pp. 69–70). The growth in German power following German unification contributed to the desire to distance Englishmen from their Teuton ancestors. Young (1995, p. 73) states, ‘it was to be politics rather than culture or racial science that ended the Teutonic argument: it collapsed with the unification of Germany in 1871’. 123 Coote (1878, p. xii). 124 Coote (1878, pp. 2–3). Thomas Rice Holmes (1899, p. 301) in Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul confirmed that Caesar considered the Belgae who settled in Britain to farm ‘were, for the most part, of German origin’. 125 Coote (1878, pp. 3–4). 126 Coote (1878, pp. 4–5). 127 Coote (1878, p. 5). 128 Coote (1878, p. 477). 129 Coote (1878, p. 11). 130 Bristol Mercury and Daily Post (14 March 1878, p. 6 – ‘The Romans of Britain’). 131 Scarth (c.1882, p. viii). 132 Scarth (c.1882, pp. 110, 223 and 220). Increasing acceptance that archaeology was part of sound historical scholarship gave weight to Scarth’s argument. Hingley (2000, p. 90) maintains that ‘there is certainly no coherent theory of Romanisation’ in Scarth’s book. 133 Sayce (1888, p. 177). See Church (1877, Agr. 18–21). 134 Sayce (1888, p. 177). 135 Crawfurd (1861b, p. 370). Young (2008, p. 58) and Biddiss (1979, p. 15) both argue that the science of philology had lost ground by the mid-nineteenth century. 136 Sayce (1888, p. 178). 137 Myers (1897, pp. 123–4). 138 Myers (1897, p. 125). Myers cited from Tacitus’ The Histories, Book IV, 12. W. Hamilton Fyfe’s (1912) translation of this passage reads: ‘The Batavi were once a tribe of the Chatti, living on the further bank of the Rhine’ who ‘[a]fter a long training in the German wars, they still further increased their reputation in

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Notes Britain, where their troops had been sent, commanded according to an ancient custom by some of the noblest chiefs’. Mamertius was possibly the Archbishop of Vienne who died c. 475. See Latham (1852). Myers (1897, p. 124). Beddoe (1890, pp. 3–4). Sayce (1888, p. 168). Young (2008 p.169) argues ‘the shift of English identity from pure Teuton to one of mixed allied races proved less problematic than might have been expected’ due to the belief that ‘culturally’ Englishmen shared ‘Teuton and Roman characteristics’. Only rarely was this fascination with race challenged. William Morris (1924, p. 100), through his narrator, Hammond, in his utopic fiction News from Nowhere (1890) was one such challenger believing talk of race was a ‘folly’. It was ‘obvious’, he declared, ‘that by means of this very diversity the different strains of blood in the world can be serviceable and pleasant to each other . . . we are all bent on the same enterprise, making the most of our lives’. As has already been seen and as Shearer West (1996, p. 4) notes, the ‘discourses of race overlap with, help define, and are defined by, other discourses . . . the first, and perhaps most obvious of these is class’. Cited in McClelland (2000, p. 97). Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 186, 26 March 1867, 636–7. Keith McClelland (2000, p. 90) states ‘the Reform League and its ilk defined the potential working-class citizen as being a particular kind of worker – respectable and independent . . . ’. According to Catherine Hall (2000c, p. 229) the Act restricted the vote to householders who ‘had been in residence in rented property for a minimum of twelve months. It was independence that gave some working-class men the status to become part of the gendered world of the political nation’. As an additional benefit to those in authority, by imposing property qualifications on the right to vote, significantly large sections of the Irish population in Britain who as seasonal workers could not meet it, were excluded. Kingsley (2007, p. 161). Kingsley (2007, p. 162). It was not just evidence of racial degeneracy in the national population that caused concern. Signs of physical degeneracy in the working classes as a result of the change in Britain from a rural to an urban society was of equal concern. This will be discussed in Chapter 3. Gladstone (1895, Odes, Book III, VI, ll.1–4). Kingsley (1881, pp. 175, 111). Kingsley (2007, p. 163). Lorimer (1978, p. 204). Galton (1865, p. 321). Clouston (1894, p. 216). Cited in Otis (2002, p. 517).

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162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173

174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181

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Cited in Otis (2002, p. 518). Malthus (1807a, pp. 277–8). See Grube (1992). Galton (1873, p. 19). Galton, (1883, pp. 305, 307). See Challis (2010, pp. 94–120) for discussion of Galton and his use of classical references. Galton (1883, p. 480). Kingsley (1880a, p. 219 – ‘Great Cities and their influence for Good and Evil’). Kingsley (1880a, pp. 27–8 – ‘The Science of Health’). Kingsley did though express some sympathy for those who lived and worked in unhealthy towns and this is discussed in Chapter 3. Cited in Golby (1986, p. 123). Cited in Froude (1886, p. 106). Froude (1886, p. 9). The confusion between ideas of physical and racial degeneration is evident in the texts of some late nineteenth-century intellectuals. Froude (1894, p. 3). Froude (1894, p. 4). Cited in Thorne (2010, p. 102). Lecky (1877, pp. 263–4). Pearson (1893, p. 86). Pelham, (1905, p. 178). Inge (1888, p. 158). Inge (1888, p. 102). Inge (1888, p. 69). In Ger. 19 Tacitus claims the ancient Germans considered it a crime to limit the number of children or to kill any offspring. Church (1877, Ger. 19). Froude (1886, p. 386). See Seeley’s (1870, pp. 25–6 – ‘Great Roman Revolution’). Pelham (1905, p. 404). Gladstone (1895, Odes IV, v). Pelham (1905, p. 400). Froude (1886, p. 392). See Chapter 1 for a more comprehensive discussion of emigration and preference for Roman rather than Greek methods of colonization. Froude (1886, pp. 10–11). Cited in Englander (2002, p. 75). The publication of the Goschen Report in 1869–70 that recommended tightening up on the 1834 Poor Law had not helped. Relief had been restricted to ‘the actually destitute’ on the grounds that ‘no system could be more dangerous, both to the working classes and to the ratepayers, than to supplement insufficiency of wages’. Cited in Englander (2002, p. 26). According to Keith McClelland (2000, p. 111), ‘the anomalies of the 1867 Reform Act, which left many miners unable to qualify as county electors or get on to the borough registers’, caused resentment. Employers complained ‘trades unions have

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187 188 189

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Notes fostered a spirit of antagonism between themselves and their workmen which formerly did not exist’. ‘Majority Report of the Royal Commission on Trade Unions (1867–9)’ cited in Golby (1986, p. 24). Membership of trade unions also caused ruptures within the ranks of the working classes. In 1893 Robert Knight, General Secretary of the Boiler Makers’ and Iron Ship Builders’ Society, gave evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour claiming there was not only ‘a cleavage of interests between the skilled workmen and the employer’ but also ‘a corresponding cleavage of interests as between the unskilled and the skilled workmen’. Cited in Englander (2002, p. 55). Education was deemed partly responsible. The Times asked whether it would ‘turn the heads of ploughboys and make them look down on their destined walk in life?’ Joseph Arch, the agriculture workers’ leader, encapsulated the attitude of employers to education in 1898. ‘The less book-learning the labourer’s lad got stuffed into him’, he stated, ‘the better for him and the safer for those above him was what those in authority believed and acted up to’. Cited in Porter (2006, p. 118). Cited in The Times (25 October 1893, p. 7 – ‘The Coal Trade. The Church and the Dispute’). Mention of Macaulay here suggests the Bishop was looking back to Roman Republican idealism. Cited in Baucom (1999, p. 61). Blatchford (1899, p. 209). Eric Hobsbawm (1992b, p. 268) contends, ‘it became increasingly obvious that the masses were becoming involved in politics and could not be relied upon to follow their masters’. Soloway (1982, p. 137). Campbell (1903, pp. 3–4). Kumar (2003, p. xi). This concern with Englishness, Kumar maintains (2003, p. xi), was ‘a cultural movement’ due partly to the decline of Empire and partly due to ‘strong expressions of ethnic and cultural nationalism in other parts of the British Isles’. Kestner (1996, p. 116). [Anonymous] (1880, p. 415). See Bridge (1880). Trevelyan (1900, p. x). Marshall (2005, pp. 29, 12–13). Henty (1893). Hingley (2000, pp. 72–85) discusses in depth the representation of legendary and fictional British heroes in the late Victorian and Edwardian period claiming they ‘were perhaps partly utilised by some’ at the time ‘to obliterate a memory of a period of foreign rule over the country whose inhabitants “never shall be slaves”’ (p. 84). Sellar (1891, p. 9). Cited in Faverty (1968, p. 160). Sharp wrote under the pseudonym Fiona MacLeod.

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211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227

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Munro (1899, pp. 9, 143, 124). Munro (1899, p. 242). Norway (1923, p. 9). Lawrence (1950, pp. 96–7). Meredith (1910, pp. 91–2). Haverfield (1911, p. xii). Haverfield (1911, pp. xv, xvi). Haverfield (1905–6 p. 186). For a comprehensive discussion of Haverfield’s theory of Romanization, see Hingley (2000, pp. 111–29). Haverfield (1896, p. 73). Haverfield (1912, p. 59). Haverfield (1912, p. 18). Holmes (1936, p. 456). Holmes (1936, p. 457). Meredith (1910, p. 50). Meredith’s narrative, like that of his peers, was governed by the question of Home Rule. In a discussion between the Irishman, Patrick O’Donnell and the Englishwoman Caroline Adister over the hoped-for marriage of Patrick’s brother to Caroline’s cousin, Patrick referred to the Irish situation: ‘I’m for union; only there should be justice, and a little knowledge to make allowance for the natural cravings of a different kind of people. . . . But here comes a man, the boldest and handsomest of his race, and he offers himself to the handsomest and sweetest of yours, and she leans to him, and the family won’t have him. For he’s an Irishman and a Catholic. Who is it then opposed the proper union of the two islands?’ Meredith (1910, p. 76). Cited in Colls (1986, p. 39). Fletcher and Kipling (1911, pp. 21, 226). Cohen (1965, pp. 34, 139). The Times (26 February 1908, p. 13 – ‘An Historical Parallel’). Holmes (1936, p. 372). Holmes (1936, p. 456). Fletcher and Kipling (1911, p. 21). Haverfield (1924, p. 172). Pearson (1893, p. 180). Cited in Pick (1989, p. 223). Wells (1914, p. 43). Wells (1914, p. 252). Wells (1914, p. 49). Inge (1949, p. 29). Kiernan (1978, p. 53). In order to stem the tide of immigration, in 1905 the Alien’s Act was passed. Murray (1900, p. 138). Blatchford (1899, p. 16).

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228 Cited in Kiernan (1978, p. 53). This Act, David Feldman (1989, pp. 78, 79) states designed to ‘keep out’ peoples ‘deemed to have a degenerative effect upon the nation’s health and efficiency’ was ‘a landmark in the decline of Liberal England’. 229 Seeley (1883, p. 304). 230 Glover (1912, p. 4). 231 Glover (1912, pp. 196, 203). 232 Glover (1912, p. 5). 233 Bailey (1920, p. 7). 234 Carter (1905, p. 87). See Vasunia (2010, p. 5). 235 Carter (1905, p. 88). 236 Gardiner (1920, p. 802). 237 Innes (1907, pp. 86–7). 238 Bury (1908, p. 592). 239 Warde Fowler (1908, pp. 217, 225). 240 Warde Fowler (1908, p. 227). 241 Warde Fowler (1908, p. 234). 242 Bryce (1901, pp. 64, 66). 243 Bryce (1902, p. 26). 244 Bryce (1902, p. 36). 245 Bryce (1901, p. viii). 246 Bryce (1902, p. 26). 247 Balfour (1920, pp. 34–5). 248 Baden-Powell (2007, p. 209). 249 Galton (1904, p. 3). 250 Galton (1904, p. 4). Mary Tippet (1967, p. 3) noted in letters to her family that her mother, Ethel Cooke, had to be ‘vetted by the authorities’ needing to ‘be fit in body and mind’ before her marriage to Frank Bigg-Wither in 1898. 251 Cited in Mandler (2006, p. 121). 252 Cited in Galton (1904, p. 7). 253 Shaw (2004, p. 27). 254 Cited in Galton (1904, p. 21). 255 Wells (1914, pp. 229–30). 256 Wells (1914, pp. 230–1). 257 Wells (1914, pp. 232, 229). Again, Wells was possibly thinking here of Augustan concerns at the deferral of marriage and the benefits he introduced in order to encourage breeding. 258 Cited in Galton (1904, p. 25). 259 Cited in Galton (1904, p. 11). 260 Cited in Galton (1904, pp. 17, 19). According to Alun Howkins (1986, p. 69) the countryside came to be ‘seen as the essence of England, uncontaminated by racial degeneration and the false values of cosmopolitan urban life’.

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275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282

283 284 285 286 287 288

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Bury (1930, p. 19). Bury (1930, p. 34). Inge (1949, p. 14). The debate on town and country is explored in Chapter 3. Wickham (1930, pp. 10, 11). Shuckburgh (1908, pp. 269, vii). Shuckburgh (1908, p. 275). Shuckburgh (1908, pp. 269, 228–9). Shuckburgh (1908, p. 226). Stobart (1912, p. 68). Stobart (1912, pp. 193, 164–5). Stobart (1912, p. 284). Colls (2002, p. 203). The Times (5 November 1901, p. 8 – ‘ Mr. Morley at Forfar’). Hueffer (1907, p. 43). In 1919 Ford Madox Hueffer changed his name to Ford Madox Ford due to the unpopularity of German names at the time. Ian Baucom (1999, p. 17) maintains ‘[i]n direct opposition to the racial hermeneutics’ was this ‘localist discourse [which] identified English place, rather then English blood, as the one thing that could preserve the nation’s memory and, in preserving its memory, secure England’s continuous national identity’. Baucom claims this ‘localist ideology . . . was most fully worked out in the nineteenth-century texts’ but ‘sustained influence’ into the twentieth century. Hueffer (1907, p. 34). Hueffer (1907, p. 44). Wintle (1987, p. 10). Sarah Wintle (1987, p. 25) states that ‘Weland’s story starts a process of defining Englishness’. Kipling (1987, pp. 64, 106). Kipling (1987, p. 120). See Hingley (2000, pp. 43–4). Fletcher and Kipling (1911, p. 19). See Hingley (2000, pp. 68–9). Violence intensified after 1919 caused ‘by the disorganization and savagery of the “occupying” forces’ with atrocities committed ‘by the reconstituted Royal Irish Constabulary’ whose ranks were swelled by ‘the “Black and Tans” . . . recruited from the wartime officer corps’. Foster (1989, p. 208). Inge (1949, p. 59). Q.E.D. (1919–20, p. 803). Q.E.D. (1919–20, pp. 804–5). The Manchester Guardian (12 October 1921, p. 6 – ‘Nations in Conference’). Hamilton (1923, p. 16). See Chapter 1 for Hamilton’s meeting with Arnold. Milligan (1922, p. 440). According to Hall, McClelland and Rendall (2000b, p. 56) the Irish, to a large extent, the Scots and Welsh less so, remained both ‘within and without’ the nation.

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289 Milligan (1922, p. 440). 290 David Feldman (1989, p. 78) argues it was the Alien’s Act of 1905 that signalled a change in the status of the working classes. As perceptions of workers as the ‘other’ diminished, they gained ‘a more secure place’ within the nation. Nancy Stepan (1982, p. 143) points out the war ‘destroyed certainties’. 291 Wells (1919–20, p. 352). 292 Wells (1914, p. 63). 293 Inge (1949, pp. 52–3); Huxley (1969, p. 173). 294 Inge (1949, p. 65). 295 Cited in Overy (2009, p. 98). 296 Cited in Overy (2009, p. 96). 297 Darwin (1926, p. 72). 298 Darwin (1926, p. 251). 299 Darwin (1926, pp. 317, 326). 300 Hamilton (1923, pp. 15, 45). 301 Lucas (1920, p. 6). 302 Judson (1894, p. 105). 303 Stephen Daniels (1994, p. 32) states that after the war, ‘many spokesmen for England struck a less heroically imperial pose. The English were not a master race, they declared, but a domestic people, kindly, tolerant, somewhat old-fashioned, slightly at odds with the modern world’. Julia Stapleton (2000, p. 263) claims the ‘essence of a wide variety of interwar conceptions of Englishness was an association less with outward achievement than with a distinctively inward and private nation’. For Raphael Samuel (1998, p. 48), ‘English’ was ‘an altogether more introverted term than “British” and associated with images of landscape, beauty and home rather than those of national greatness’. 304 Chesterton (1928, p. 61). 305 Chesterton (1928, p. 70). 306 Chesterton (1928, p. 62). 307 Chesterton (1926, p. 169). First published 1909. 308 Wells (1914, p. 336). According to Peter Mandler (2006, p. 143) following the Great War images of the working classes as a ‘mob’ were transformed and a new Englishman emerged who had become ‘gentle and domesticated, kindly and humorous. He was England’s man, not the world’s, certainly not Ireland’s, possibly not the empire’s, sadly not even Europe’s’. 309 Wells (1914, pp. 339–40). What Wells was describing was a ‘utopian’ Englishness. 310 Baldwin (1938, p. 11 – ‘England’). 311 Baldwin (1938, p. 17 – ‘England’). 312 Blake (1985, p. 216). 313 Baldwin (1938, p. 14 – ‘England’).

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314 Baldwin (1938, p. 79 – ‘Democracy and the Spirit of Service’). 315 Baldwin (1938, p. 82 – ‘Democracy and the Spirit of Service’). 316 Alison Light (1991, p. 11) claims ‘readers of Agatha Christie . . . were invited to identify with a more inward-looking notion of the English as a nice, decent, essentially private people’. 317 Stonehouse (1996, p. vii). 318 Buchan (1940, p. 35). 319 Buchan (1940, p. 168). 320 Slaughter (1917, p. 376). 321 Warde Fowler (1908, p. 141). Noticeable is the way the character of Aeneas was manipulated to meet different agendas. Whereas Glover depicted Aeneas as a man who had forgotten his duty when under the influence of Dido in order to show the negative effect of interaction with ‘Orientals’, both Slaughter and Warde Fowler used Aeneas to emphasize the importance of duty with the latter maintaining, duty was more important than personal happiness. Dedication to duty had always been considered an admirable quality but Slaughter and Warde Fowler highlighted this aspect of Aeneas’ character prior to and after the First World War when duty was considered a prime quality in modern Englishmen. See Vance (1997, pp. 143–9). Virgilian domesticity is represented more by the Georgics than the Aeneid and this will be discussed in Chapter 3. Warde Fowler wrote to Gilbert Murray in January 1911 claiming introducing ‘Latin words with translation’ into chapters on Roman history was ‘desirable’ as it helped ‘to show our debt to the Romans’. Warde Fowler to Murray (23 January 1911, MS Murray 403, fol. 172). 322 Warde Fowler (1920, p. 185). 323 Warde Fowler (1920, pp. 186–7). 324 Warde Fowler (1920, p. 189). In this respect Glover and Warde Fowler were in agreement. If Dido did not have the virtues necessary to be a suitable wife to Aeneas, by implication, neither would ‘Orientals’ in the British Empire be suitable partners for Britons. 325 Mackail (1922, p. 141). 326 Cited in Stray (1998, p. 230). 327 Last (1923, p. 220). 328 Last (1923, p. 229). 329 Simkhovitch (1916, pp. 232–3). 330 Shuckburgh (1889, Book xxxvii, p. 9). Again, see Chapter 3 for discussion of the issues associated with rural depopulation. 331 Last (1923, p. 232). 332 Collingwood (1923, p. 13). 333 Collingwood (1923, p. 16). 334 Collingwood (1923, pp. 14, 15).

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210 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350

Notes Collingwood (1923, pp. 100–1). Collingwood (1923, p. 101). See Hingley (2000, pp. 97–8). Weigall (1926, p. 14). See Hingley (2000, pp. 103–4). Weigall (1926, pp. 142, 150, 27, 80, 102). Weigall (1926, p. 281). Weigall (1926, p. 20). Weigall (1926, p. 24). Weigall (1926, pp. 45, 25). S.E.W. (1927, p. 355). Robertson and Robertson (1928, p. 2). Robertson and Robertson (1928, p. 211). Baldwin (1938, p. 109 – ‘The Classics’). Baldwin (1938, pp. 192–3 – ‘Lord Oxford’). Mandler (2006, p. 143). Baldwin (1938, pp. 224, 216 – ‘Wales’; ‘Scotland’).

Chapter 3 1 A shortened version of this chapter appeared in New Voices in Classical Reception Studies, Issue 6 (2011). 2 Newsome (1997, pp. 15–16). 3 Kitson Clark (1962, p. 66). 4 Saint (2005, p. 255). Deborah Stevenson (2003, p. 30) writes that urbanization was ‘on a scale so great that the traditional demographic and environmental balance between the rural and the urban was overturned and previously agrarian societies were transformed into highly urbanized ones’. 5 Booth (1886, p. 327). According to Peter Mandler (2006, p. 66), the 1851 census revealed that the ‘majority of the population was now “urban”’. 6 Cited in Colls (2002, p. 219). 7 Jackson’s Oxford Journal (23 February 1833 – ‘The Allotment System’), 19th Century British Newspapers Online, www.find.gale.group.com, Gale Document Number: Y3202664231 [Last Accessed on 8 April 2011]. 8 [Anonymous] (1844, pp. 224–5). 9 Taylor (1842, p. 4). 10 Engels (1993, p. 267). 11 Baker (1858, p. 428). 12 Engels (1993, p. 85).

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13 Gaskell (1833, pp. 160, 10). Anthony Webster (2006, p. 31) claims ‘the deleterious social effects of industrialisation were becoming all too evident in the squalor of Britain’s burgeoning towns and cities’, as early as the 1820s. This factor plus social unrest and Thomas Malthus’ ‘gloomy predictions’ concerning the ‘growth in population outstripping the global capacity for food production’ created ‘a profound sense of foreboding in the minds of even the most enthusiastic adherent of laissez faire’. Malthus’ concern about population growth is discussed below. 14 Gaskell (1833, pp. 5–6). 15 Gaskell (1833, pp. 158–9, 162). 16 Gaskell (1833, p. 10). 17 Gaskell (1833, p. 304). 18 Taylor (1841a, p. 259). 19 Taylor (1841b, p. 354). 20 Taylor (1841a, p. 259). 21 Carlyle (1971, p. 152). 22 Ruskin (1985, p. 85). 23 Engels (1993, pp. 85–6). 24 Kingsley (1880b, p. 177). 25 Ashley (1877, p. 131). 26 Dickens (n.d. [1836], p. 159). 27 Dickens (n.d. [1846–8], p. 60). 28 Dickens (n.d. [1854], p. 550). 29 Jewsbury (1851, p. 8). See Trefor Thomas’ ‘Representations of the Manchester Working-Class in Fiction’ (1985, pp. 193–213). 30 Cited in Vance (1997, p. 39). 31 The Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser (29 May 1841, p. 7 – ‘The CornLaw Question’). 32 The Essex Standard (14 November 1834 – ‘Poor Laws’). 33 Carlyle (1971, p. 168). 34 Malthus (1807b, p. 96). 35 Malthus (1807a, pp. 289–90). 36 Smiles (1968, p. 11). In fact, in Smiles’ opinion (1968, p. 14), ‘[g]reat men of science, literature and art’ belonged to no particular class but came ‘from the huts of poor men and the mansions of the rich’. 37 Beatrice Webb recorded in her diary in 1905 that utilitarianism was a ‘heartless’ system that ‘deprived paupers of their liberty and political rights’ while workhouses demoralized inhabitants by destroying families and ‘herd[ing] the sick, the aged, the depraved, the orphaned and the workless together like cattle’. MacKenzie (1984, p. 6).

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38 See Williams (1971). 39 Kingsley (2007, p. 168). 40 Carlyle (1971, p. 181). According to David Newsome (1997, p. 44), the rise of the Chartist Movement in 1832 and the riots of the 1840s were as a result of the working classes realizing that ‘their lot was not one whit better than it had been before’. 41 Smith (1881, p. 124). 42 The Times (18 August 1848, p. 4 – ‘Who would suppose that in the midst of this rich metropolis . . . ’). 43 Vance (1997, p. 43). 44 The Chartist Circular (31 July 1841 – ‘The Victim’). 45 The Northern Star and National Trades’ Journal (20 May 1848, p. 1 – ‘To the Working Classes’). According to Thomas Arnold (n.d. p. 240) in lectures he delivered in 1842, French revolutionaries modelled themselves on the Republican figures of Cato and Brutus whose names were ‘magnified . . . as true republicans’. See Jennifer Harris (1981, pp. 283–312). 46 The Morning Post (6 November 1851, p. 2 – ‘Reform and Protection’). 47 The Times (12 September 1829, p. 2 – ‘Caution to Millers and Others, Owners, Tenants or Occupiers of Locks, Weirs, Bucks and Flood-gates on the River Thames’). 48 The Glasgow Herald (21 October 1844 – ‘O’Connell’s Influence’); The Blackburn Standard (26 May 1847 – ‘Death of Mr. O’Connell’). The alignment between Roman Republican ‘heroes’ and the leaders of reform movements in the nineteenth century formed the basis of a paper I gave (‘Ancient Class Warriors and Modern Reformers in the Nineteenth-Century Press’) at the ‘Classics and Class’ conference held at the British Academy in July 2010. 49 Smiles (1968, p. 11). See Biagini (1996, p. 1). 50 Biagini (1996, p. 9) states Liberals shared ‘a concern for the preservation of a limited electoral franchise, the containment of the radical pressure for universal suffrage, and the perpetuation of certain social privileges and inequalities as necessary for the survival of “liberty”’. 51 Trevelyan (1958, p. 20). 52 Harding and Taigel (1996, pp. 238–9). 53 Harding and Taigel (1996, p. 238). 54 Newsome (1997, p. 86). 55 Kingsley (2007, p. 90). 56 Cited in Saint (2005, p. 256). 57 Daunton (2005, p. 42). 58 Kingsley (1880b, p. 178). 59 The Times (12 April 1851, p. 8 – ‘The Claims of Rotten-Row’). 60 Newsome (1997, p. 46).

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61 The idea that systematic emigration would ease overcrowding in the cities and lessen civil unrest in Britain as well as allowing greater control of natives overseas has been discussed in Chapter 1. 62 SEER (1854, p. 9). 63 Ashley (1877, p. 131). From 1845, what is commonly referred to as the Irish Potato Famine, decimated Ireland. Over a decade, almost 1 million people died and it ‘forced mass emigration’. Levine (2007, p. 88). 64 Cited in Newsome, (1997, p. 47). 65 Kingsley (2007, preface). 66 Mayhew (1861, p. iv). Raymond Williams (1975, p. 267) states Mayhew based his report on ‘direct contacts with people, telling their own stories in their own words’. 67 See Janet DeLaine (1999, pp. 145–65). 68 Baxter (1866, p. 549). 69 Cited in The Times (26 June 1868, p. 8 – ‘The Peel Statue’). 70 Trevelyan (1958, p. 1) argues that by the 1850s the ‘English slum town [that] grew up to meet the momentary needs of the new type of employer and jerrybuilder, unchecked and unguided by public control of any sort’ had had time to deteriorate. Norman Vance (1997, p. 74) maintains the growth in urban populations stimulated ‘interest in the size and living conditions of ancient Rome’. Richard Jenkyns (1992, p. 32) makes a similar point claiming ‘one Roman influence that perhaps looms larger in the nineteenth century than before is the city of Rome itself ’. 71 Farr (1852, p. 172). 72 The Morning Post (15 December 1849, p. 6 – ‘Supply of water in ancient Rome’). 73 The Times (15 January 1850, p. 5 – Remarks on the Water Supply of London’). 74 The Daily News (4 January 1855 p. 4 – ‘The hare and the tortoise set out to run a race’), 19th Century British Newspapers Online, www.find.gale.group.com, Gale Document Number: BA3202896925 [Last Accessed on 18 October 2011]. 75 The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent (11 August 1855, p. 1 – ‘The London water supply’). 76 The Blackburn Standard: Darwen Observer, and North-East Lancashire Advertiser (20 October 1877, p. 2 – ‘The Roman Aqueducts’). 77 The Times (27 September 1879, p. 6 – ‘National Water Supply Exhibition’). 78 The Times (13 December 1881, p. 7 – ‘Health Congress at Brighton). 79 Kingsley (1880a, pp. 158–9 – ‘The Air Mothers’). 80 Kingsley (1880a, p. 163 – ‘The Air Mothers’). 81 The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent (23 August 1873, p. 3 – ‘Modern Lessons from Ancient Masters’). 82 The Times (21 March 1877, p. 11 – ‘The Metropolitan Fire Brigade’). 83 The Times (25 April 1885, p. 11 – ‘Ideas march fast when they are ideas’). 84 The Times (9 July 1887, p. 6 – ‘Effects of continued drought on water supplies’).

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85 Cited in The Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc. (23 October 1897 – ‘A Lesson from Ancient Rome’). 86 Cited in The Huddersfield Chronicle (31 March 1873 – ‘The Earl of Derby and Mr. R. Lowe, M.P., with the Civil Engineers’). 87 The Daily News (29 August 1893, p. 5 – ‘New Water Supply for Manchester’), 19th Century British Newspapers Online, www.find.gale.group.com, Gale Document Number: BA3203265648 [Last Accessed on 18 October 2011]. 88 Peel (1929, p. 73). 89 Harris (1873, p. 142). 90 Creighton (1875, p. 6). 91 Merivale (1880, p. 26). 92 Merivale (1880, p. 666). 93 Merivale (1880, pp. 668–9). 94 Church and Brodribb (1876, Book 15, p. 38). 95 Church and Brodribb (1876, Book 15, p. 43). 96 Pfautz (1967, pp. 10–11). 97 See Daunton (2005, pp. 78–9). 98 Deborah Stevenson (2003, p. 134) argues that gradually it became apparent that the city was ‘a place of great contradictions – being simultaneously the site and symbol of progress, creativity, democracy and wealth, as well as of poverty, inequality, exploitation and discontent’. Raymond Williams (1975, p. 9) claims whereas the city had been perceived as a place of ‘learning, communication, light’ and the countryside as ‘a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation’, gradually the country came to be seen as the place where ‘peace, innocence, and simple virtue’ could be found. 99 Farr (1852, p. 177). According to Deborah Stevenson (2003, p. 16), intellectuals began adopting ‘the metaphor of the human body and the explanatory frames of illness and medical diagnosis to describe and explain the problems of the city. They argued that in order to heal the sick urban body, the source of the disease needed to be identified and removed’. 100 Baker (1858, p. 432). 101 Danson (1859, p. 366). 102 Danson (1859, p. 367). 103 Danson (1859, p. 366). 104 Danson (1859, p. 367). Danson’s views prefigured what was to become the Garden City Movement. 105 Dickens (n.d. [1854], p. 515). 106 Cited in Gaskell (1993, p. 447). 107 Cazamian (1973, p. 227). 108 Lloyd’s Weekly London Paper (23 January 1870, p. 6 – ‘Our Fresh Air Supply’).

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109 Dickens (n.d. [1854], p. 601). Irving Howe (cited in Hardy 1999, pp. 396, 395) maintains the working classes were developing an ‘intellectual consciousness’ and showing signs of ‘social and moral solidarity’ which he believes had its foundation in the eighteenth century when the ‘English working class [came] to birth through the trauma of the Industrial Revolution’. 110 Dickens (n.d. [1854], p. 605). 111 Gaskell (1993, p. 68). 112 Engels (1993, p. 31). 113 Engels (1993, p. 230). 114 Gladstone, Hansard, Parliamentary, Debates, 3rd Series, vol. 183, 27 April 1866, 146. The Lancashire Cotton Famine lasted from approximately 1861–5. The working classes were not the only section of society threatening internal stability. Women too were challenging the status quo demanding voting rights and professional and social freedoms. In 1851 in the Enfranchisement of Women, Harriet Taylor Mill (cited in Golby, 1986, p. 243), wife of John Stuart Mill, had insisted that ‘every occupation be open to all, without favour or discouragement to any’. This, she claimed, would ensure ‘employments . . . fall into the hands of those men or women who are found by experience to be most capable of worthily exercising them’. Likewise Florence Nightingale (cited in Golby, 1986, p. 244) in Cassandra (1852) had questioned why women of ‘passion, intellect, moral activity – these three’ had no position in society where these attributes could ‘be exercised?’ 115 See Pfautz (1967, p. 30). Jonathan Rutherford (1997, p. 54) states economic prosperity had neither ‘alleviated mass poverty or the prospect of social unrest’. 116 Cited in The Birmingham Daily Post (14 January 1874, p. 6 – ‘Birmingham Town Council’). 117 Mearns (1883, p. 4). Alun Howkins (1986, p. 65) claims that the publication of The Bitter Cry of Outcast London shows that although London was at the heart of an Empire, ‘it was a heart which . . . was believed to be rotten’. 118 Kingsley (1880a, p. 27 – ‘The Science of Health’). See Chapter 2. 119 Kingsley (1880a p. 26 – ‘The Science of Health’). 120 Pigou (1901, pp. 238, 251). 121 Shaw (1900, p. 53). 122 Mearns (1883, p. 24). 123 See Harkness (1890). 124 Morrison (1903, pp. 17–18). 125 Although by the end of the nineteenth century the image of cities as centres of degeneration and disease peaked, ideas of urban decay had been around since the eighteenth century. The English novelist, dramatist and Bow Street magistrate, Henry Fielding (1707–54), expressed concern at the social problems of the day.

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126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134

135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143

144 145 146 147

Notes In 1751, he wrote Enquiry into the Increase of Robbers and in 1753 a pamphlet entitled Proposal for the Poor. According to David Patrick, editor of Chambers Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1914, p. 342), Fielding’s novel Amelia (1751) ‘is preoccupied to an exceptional extent with the social problems, prison discipline and what not, which were daily obtruding themselves on [Fielding’s] attention’. Mouat (1880, p. 203). Pearson (1893, p. 134). Cited in Howard (1902, p. 11). Booth (n.d. p.11). Cited in Pick (1989, p. 223). See Chapters 1 and 2. Booth (n.d. p.12). Booth (n.d. pp.14, 93). The promotion of the Empire and the encouragement given to emigrants made ‘distant lands’ become, Raymond Williams (1975, p. 336) states, ‘the rural areas of industrial Britain’. This had ‘heavy consequent effects on its own surviving rural areas’. Sheppard (1861, pp. 65, 100). See also Chapter 1. Sheppard (1861, pp. 100–1). See Goldsmith (1784). Lecky (1877, p. 266). Merivale (1880, pp. 194–5). Creighton (1875, p. 55). Sheppard (1861, p. 99). Rider Haggard (1899, p. ix). Rider Haggard (1926, pp. 133–4). Trollope (1980, p. 200). George Trevelyan (1958, p. 74) pointed out the extent to which railways had fundamentally altered the rural community by the end of the century: ‘With locomotion constantly diminishing the distance between the village and the city, with the spread of science and machinery even in the processes of agriculture, in a small island with a dense urban population that had now lost all tradition of country life, it was only a question of time before urban ways of thought and action would penetrate and absorb the old rural world, obliterating its distinctive features and local variations’. Stevenson (2003, pp. 15–16) also makes reference to the change that took place not just in Britain but throughout Europe due to the arrival of the railways when ‘villages became towns, towns became cities, and ultimately many cities grew into metropolises. None of these places, however, were equipped to cope with this dramatic growth’. Eliot (1984, p. 286). Hardy (1922, p. 144). Vance (1997, pp. 147, 193). Cited in Hardy (1999, p. 385).

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153 154 155

156 157

158 159 160 161 162

163 164 165

166 167

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Froude (1894, p. 23). Butler (1887, p. 218). Cited in [Anonymous] (1891, p. 6). Cited in Rider Haggard (1899, p. 466). According to Norman Vance (1997, p. 176), both poets were ‘at the heart of what every classically educated schoolboy needed to know’. Raymond Williams (1975, p. 9) states that ‘[i]n the long history of human settlement, [the] connection between the land from which directly or indirectly we all get our living and the achievements of human society has been deeply known. And one of these achievements has been the city . . . a distinctive form of civilization . . . A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times’. Wickham (1930, Epistles, 1.10). Cited in Griffin (1992, p. 147). Sellar (1897, p. 115). Virgil writes about the impact of the seizure of land in Eclogue IX ll. 2ff. Lonsdale’s translation (1887) reads: ‘O Lycidas, we have reached this point alive, a woe we never dreamt of, that a stranger should seize our farm, and say, “These lands are mine, yet ancient occupiers yield possession”’. For Raymond Williams (1975, p. 27), ‘the contrast within Virgilian pastoral is between the pleasures of rural settlement and the threat of loss and eviction’. Sellar (1897, p. 81). Sellar (1897, p. 91). According to J. S. Bratton (1986, p. 89), the ‘[i]nterconnection of the enjoyment and beauty of the countryside with its rootedness in history is the essential link in turning the merely idyllic into the inspiration’. Arnold and Mongan (1889, Satire 14, ll.179–89). Froude (1886, p. 9). Williams (1975, p. 29) states ‘where poets run scholars follow’. Froude (1886, p. 10). Froude (1886, p. 8). The Examiner (26 March 1859, p. 203 – ‘Miscellaneous News’) described the ongoing excavations at Wroxeter. Verulam and Silchester were both compared to Pompeii. See The Morning Post (10 August 1869, p. 7 – ‘Verulam and Pompeii compared’) and The Hampshire Advertiser (15 July 1876, p. 3 – ‘The Pompeii of Hampshire’). Coote (1878, p. 234). The Leicester Chronicle and the Leicestershire Mercury (25 October 1879, p. 2 – ‘Mr J.A. Picton on Imperial Rome’). Scarth (1882, p. viii). The publication of the German scholar, Theodor Mommsen’s History of Rome (1854–6) had a huge impact on the study of history in Britain. It sparked a debate on the inclusion of ancient history and archaeology on the curriculum. Scarth (1882, p. 130). Scarth (1882, p. 180).

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183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

192 193 194 195 196 197

Notes Scarth (1882, pp. 135, 163–4, 172–3). Scarth (1882, p. 219). Scarth (1882, p. 221). Bury (1893, p. 600). Pelham (1905, p. 185). Pelham (1905, pp. 408–10). Pelham (1905, p. 378). Pelham (1905, p. 409). Pelham (1905, pp. 410, 412–13). Pelham (1905, p. 400). Pelham (1905, p. 407). Pelham (1905, pp. 366–7). Gladstone (1895, Odes, Book 4, 15.4). See Mumford (1961). According to Norman Vance (1997, p. 4), with the Romans depicted as ‘a practical people, like the Victorians, with successful soldiers, engineers and administrators’ it was difficult ‘for mathematicians and engineers to repudiate them completely, even in the name of progress or technology’. Lowry (2000, p. 222). See Farwell (1987). Stepan (1982, p. 118). The Times (4 December 1896, p. 6 – ‘Lord Wolseley on Modern Armies’). Masterman (1901b, pp. v, vii). Cited in The Manchester Guardian (21 September 1901, p. 8 – ‘A “Garden City” Conference’). Rider Haggard (1926, p. 149). The Times (5 May 1903, p. 10 – ‘Mr Rider Haggard on Rural Depopulation’). Cited in Pick (1989, p. 185). See Soloway (1982). It was towards the end of the nineteenth century that associations such as the Preservation Society (1865) had increased in popularity while new ones, for instance, the National Footpaths Preservation Society (1884) and the National Trust (1894), were established. The ideas of Francis Galton and the eugenics movement are discussed in Chapter 2. The Times (14 October 1893, p. 9 – ‘Lord Charles Beresford on National Physical Exercises’). The Times (6 December 1907, p. 9 – ‘Lecture at the Polytechnic’). See Adams and Hingley (2010, p. 202). Baden-Powell (2007, p. 208). Rowntree (1901, p. 217). Wells (1919–20, pp. 301–2). Donal Lowry (2000, p. 208) claims the Boers were perceived by their supporters either to embody ‘the classical virtues of the

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198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210

211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221

222

219

Roman farmer-turned-reluctant-general, Cincinnatus’ or were ‘Tacitus’s German guerrillas come to life’. The Times (10 September 1907, p. 7 – ‘Back to the Land’). The Times (24 October 1907, p. 7 – ‘Panem et Circenses’). The Times (24 October 1907, p. 7 – ‘Panem et Circenses’). Warde Fowler (1908, p. 56). The Times (24 October 1907, p. 7 – ‘Panem et Circenses’). Shuckburgh (1908, p. 219). Heitland (1911, pp. 501–4). Stobart (1912, p. 68). Wickham (1930, p. 10). Wickham (1930, Epode 2, ll.1–8, 38–48). Wickham (1930, p. 11). Lonsdale (1887, Georgics 2, ll.458ff.). ‘Ah too fortunate the husbandmen, did they know their own felicity! On whom far from the clash of arms Earth their most just mistress lavishes from the soil a plenteous sustenance’. Mackail (1889, Georgics 2, ll.458ff.). According to L. P. Wilkinson (1982, p. 38) the ‘whole eulogy of country life at the end of Book 2 is built up of contrasts . . . between country simplicity and urban extravagance, urban restlessness and country tranquillity, scientific understanding and simple faith, country peace and world politics, political crime and country innocence, fratricidal war and family concord’. Geikie (1912, pp. 35–6). Geikie (1912, p. 31). Geikie (1912, p. 30). Geikie (1912, pp. 27, 31, 56). Geikie (1912, p. 100). According to Alun Howkins (1986, p. 68), ‘a rural vision was central to an English socialism’. Cited in Howkins (1986, p. 68). Cited in The Times (14 January 1907, p. 11 – ‘Mr. Keir Hardie on the Labour Party’). Cited in Howkins (1991, p. 225). Wells (1919–20, p. 310). Morris (1924, p. 57). William Morris, who was educated at Oxford, worked with Engels to establish the Socialist Movement. He was a member of the Social Democratic Federation. Although Morris was clearly aware of the value of the ancient world, News from Nowhere was set in mediaeval Britain not ancient Britain. Morris (1924, pp. 2–3).

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223 Morris (1924, pp. 59, 127). 224 Morris (1924, pp. 99, 34, 71, 56). This book became the ‘Bible of “back to the landers”’ (Howkins 1991, p. 227). 225 Allen (1977, pp. 17–18). 226 According to Sarah Wintle (1987, p. 21), Puck demonstrated the pre-war ‘conservative political ideology of the English countryside’. 227 Fletcher and Kipling, (1911, p. 249). 228 Chesterton (1926, p. 3). This image of the ‘south country’, Howkins suggests (1986, p. 64) ‘was the product of an urban world, and an urban world at a particular point in time’. 229 Chesterton (1926, pp. 116–17). 230 The Times (25 June 1904, p. 8 – ‘The Formation of London Suburbs’). 231 The Times (5 May 1903, p. 10 – ‘Mr Rider Haggard on Rural Depopulation’). 232 The Times (15 July 1905, p. 14) – ‘Garden City Association’). 233 Howard (1902, p. 161). 234 Macfadyen (1933, p. 29). Efforts to improve the living conditions of workers had resulted in the construction of model villages in the nineteenth century. Saltaire in Bradford was founded in 1853 by Titus Salt, a Yorkshire industrialist, who along with better housing and allotments provided a hospital, library and gymnasium for workers. The construction of Port Sunlight in Merseyside, influenced by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, began in 1888 for the employees of Lever Brothers’ soap factory. Bournville near Birmingham was constructed on a site specifically chosen by George and Richard Cadbury to provide a healthy environment for workers in 1893. Workers benefitted from large gardens and parks. Architect, designer of Bournville and author of The Model Village and Its Cottages: Bournville (1906, p. 1), William Harvey, stated: ‘The housing problem is no longer one in which the poor in the congested districts of great towns are concerned. A far larger sector of the people is affected’ such as skilled artisans ‘and even a class of the people more prosperous’. It has now been recognized, Harvey continued, that ‘the housing conditions of the past will not suffice for the future’ and this is an issue that concerns not just sanitarians but also ‘politicians and economists’. The towns Harvey described, however, were company towns specifically intended for company employees. 235 Howard (1902, p. 18). 236 Cited in Howkins (1991, p. 230). 237 Purdom (1913, p. 116). 238 The Times (26 March 1919, p. 7 – ‘Garden Cities and Suburbs’). 239 Cited in Howard (1902, p. 38). 240 The Financial Times (29 August 1903, p. 3 – ‘Garden City’), http://find.galegroup. com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/ftha/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=FTHA&use

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241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256

257 258 259 260 261

262 263

264 265 266

221

rGroupName=tou&tabID=T003&docPage=article&docId=HS2301245691&type= multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0 [Last Accessed 14 September 2011] The Times (21 August 1908, p. 11 – ‘The Garden City Movement’). Fisher (1903, p. 85). Purdom (1913, p. 199). Howard (1902, p. 51). Fisher (1903, p. 85). Macfadyen (1933, p. 129). Reid (1914, p. 244). Howard (1902, p. 161); Haverfield (1913, p. 4). Haverfield (1913, p. A2). Haverfield (1913, p. 4). Haverfield (1913, p. 145). Haverfield (1913, p. 18). Haverfield (1913, p. 18). Haverfield (1913, p. 131). Haverfield (1913, p. 17). Haverfield (1913, p. 132). ‘Haussmannized’ is a reference to the Frenchman, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809–91) who was responsible for the renovation of Paris. For a discussion of the romanization of Britain and other provinces, see Haverfield (1912). Haverfield (1913, p. 129). The Times (1 May 1906, p. 13 – ‘A Twentieth Century Palace’). Cited in Samuel (1998, p. 67). The Times (6 May 1907, p. 7 – ‘A New Suburb’). Alan Jackson (1973, p. 133) alleges that ‘many of the Londoners dreaming of a new house in the suburbs were seeking to renew contact with the rural environment which their immediate ancestors had deserted in the hope of attaining higher living standards in the metropolis’. For Howkins (1991, p. 231), ‘the reasons behind the movement out of the city were as much ideological as physical – the new country man and woman were not simply leaving a crowded in sanitary urban area, they were going to a rural myth which they were recreating’. Wells (1914, p. 64). Lewis Mumford (1946, p. 156) states it was ‘with the expansion of mechanical industry’ over the last century that ‘family functions, both immediate and remote, were dwarfed. Remoteness of the dwelling-house from the work-place made it less possible for the family to meet as a unit even for meals’. The Times (21 October 1907, p. 9 – ‘The Classical Association’). The Times (24 October 1907, p. 7 – ‘Panem et Circenses’). The Times (20 July 1914, p. 5 – ‘Decay of Home Life’).

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267 Manchester Guardian (6 May 1913, p. 4 – ‘The Peak Dwellers’). 268 According to Howkins (1986, p. 80), ‘[i]n Flanders, in the very antithesis of England’s South Country, the rural ideal was enshrined by mass slaughter’. Stephen Daniels (1994, p. 213) agrees: ‘The trenches enhanced the allure of pastoral England as a refuge from the absurd theatre of Flanders, that boundless, discomposed lane, a no man’s land, an anti-landscape’. 269 For instance, Siegfried Sassoon’s Grantchester, Edward Wyndham Tennant’s Home Thoughts in Laventie and Ivor Gurney’s To England – a note. See L. Macdonald’s Anthem for Doomed Youth (2000). Vance (1997, p. 222) notes that ‘the new experience of trench warfare activated Roman analogies’. It was a ‘gas attack’, Vance continues, that caused Wilfred Owen to compose Dulce et Decorum Est. See Owen (1994, p. 29). 270 Thomas (1981, pp. 18, 65–6). 271 Hardie and Sabin (1920, poster 10). 272 Purdom (1917, p. 20). 273 Howkins (1986, p. 81) writes of the ‘patriotic motifs, soldiers dreaming of fields and lanes, with wives and children living in rose-covered cottages’ that appeared on postcards. 274 Cited in Chambers (1921, p. 110). 275 Light (1991, p. 17). Raphael Samuel (1989, p. xii) believes this conservatism resulted in economics being ‘concerned with domestic industry rather than overseas trade, in politics with home affairs, in culture with the indigenous and the “organic”’. 276 Cited in The Times (25 November 1918, p. 13 – ‘Lloyd George on his task’). 277 Howkins (1986, p. 82). 278 Bracco (1993, p. 145). 279 Carrington (1955, p. 381). See also Hingley, (2000, pp. 56–7). 280 Vance (1997, pp. 222–3). 281 Bracco (1993, p. 30). 282 Buchan (1940, p. 182). 283 Buchan (1940, p. 35). 284 The New Statesman (9 October 1920, p. 31 – St George’s Kerri School for Young Children at Gerrards’ Cross’; 23 October 1920, p. 91 – ‘The London Garden School’). 285 Santayana (1923, p. 3). 286 Close (1923, p. 292). 287 Cited in The Times (25 November 1918, p. 13 – ‘Lloyd George on his task’). In contrast to the country, according to John Short (1991, p. 50), the suburbs offered, ‘a whole set of alternative values: family, stability, a place where people settle down raise children, become part of a community. The dream of suburbia was the possibility of the good life without the restraints of the country or the anonymity of the city’.

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Notes 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308

309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322

223

The New Statesman (16 October 1920, p. 42 – ‘City Street and Green Leaves’). Chambers (1921, p. 109). Close (1923, p. 287). Close (1923, p. 283). Close (1923, p. 284). Macfadyen (1935, p. 252). Macfadyen (1933, p. 97). Unwin (1921, p. 81); Pepler (1921, p. 65). Cited in Macfadyen (1933, p. 135). Lethaby (1921, p. 51). Macfadyen (1935, p. 255). Cited in Matless (1998, p. 180). Collingwood (1923, pp. 66–7). Collingwood (1923, p. 48). Collingwood (1923, p. 49). Collingwood (1923, p. 67). Weigall (1926, p. 204). Weigall (1926, pp. 258–9). Craster (1922, p. 144). Craster (1922, p. 142). Craster (1922, pp. 143–4). Matless (1998, p. 58) claims even road histories published during the interwar years ‘consistently posit a contemporary rediscovery of Roman “road sense”’. Hall (1922, p. 31). Heitland (1923, p. 488). William Cobbett (1763–1835) was a radical and opposed to the Corn Laws. Merivale (1880, p. 190). Heitland (1923, p. 488). Mackail (1922, p. v). Cited in The Times (12 August 1921, p. 6 – ‘Sir H. Warren on the modern use of the “Eclogues”’). Mackail (1922, p. 63). Cited in The Times (12 August 1921, p. 6 – ‘Sir H. Warren on the modern use of the “Eclogues”’). Slaughter (1917, p. 361). Martindale (2007, p. 298). Last (1923, p. 213). This is taken from Cicero’s speech ‘On his house’. Yonge (1913–21). Last (1923, p. 211). Last (1923, pp. 211–12). Baldwin (1938, p. 13 – ‘England’).

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224 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335

Notes Last (1923, pp. 209–10). Last (1923, p. 233). Last (1923, p. 234). Last (1923, pp. 234, 235). Last (1923, p. 235). Last (1923, pp. 215, 219–20). Last (1923, p. 221). Last (1923, p. 223). Last (1923, pp. 226–7). Robertson and Robertson (1928, pp. 314–15). Robertson and Robertson (1928, p. 315). Robertson and Robertson (1928, p. 229). Robertson and Robertson (1928, p. 315).

Summary 1 By 1900, the Empire consisted of 47 territories of which only 12 were ‘selfgoverning’. Levine (2007, p. 103). 2 As Jonathan Rose ably demonstrates in The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2002, p. 26), autodidacts ‘urged workers to read the ancient classics, because otherwise they would be at the mercy of the educated classes’. 3 Mill (1842, p. 1). 4 Tickner (1923, p. 23). 5 Baldwin (1938, p. 110 – ‘The Classics’). For Thomas Carlyle’s quote, see Carlyle (1859, Chapter 3). 6 Vance (1997, p. 3).

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Index Abercrombie, Patrick 162 Act of Union (1800) 125 Actium, battle of 57 Aeneid 12, 56, 67, 102, 114, 143 Africa, indigenous populations 18, 30, 31–2, 40–2, 53–4, 64, 66, 75, 90, 122, 138, 183n. 81, 198nn. 53, 54, 200n. 144 Agricola 21 Agricola, Gnaeus Julius 82 Agriculture 164 Aikin, John 70 Air Mothers, The 130 Alien’s Act (1905) 101, 206n. 228, 208n. 290 Allen, Grant 83, 153 Alston, Richard 5 Alton Locke 77 American Journal of Sociology, The 104 Ancient Britain and the Invasion of Julius Caesar 98 Ancient Classics for English Readers 48 ancient Britons 21, 46, 55, 70, 71, 72, 74, 82, 87, 88, 98, 115–16, 145, 156–7, 195n. 12, 196–7 see also Celts ancient Greece 4, 19, 22, 51, 61, 64, 72, 96, 115, 156, 158, 166, 170, 193n. 336 see also Greek colonies, Greek language and Greeks ancient Rome see individual entries Ancient Town-Planning 10, 155–7 Anglo-Saxons/Anglo-Saxonism 9, 22, 27, 171, 195n. 12, 196n. 24 and ‘Britishness’ 81–95, 197n. 40, 200nn. 110, 114 as native of Devonshire 82 and the working classes 69–81 see also Saxons; Teutons/Teutonism Anglo-South African War (1899–1902) 6, 50, 56, 63, 95, 101, 106, 110, 147 Anio Novus 131 Annals 132

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Anthropological Review 30, 74, 82, 83 Anti-Corn Law League 21, 23, 73, 122–3, 125, 135 anti-imperialism 6, 49–54, 61, 173 see also English nationalism Arch, Joseph 204n. 182 ‘Are the Irish Celts an inferior race’ 108–9 Aristotle 53, 105 army, physical degeneration of recruits 50, 95–6, 147–8, 150 Arnold, Matthew 74, 76–7, 78–9, 80, 81, 85, 197n. 44 Arnold, T. J. 143–4, 199n. 86 Arnold, Thomas 12, 34–5, 45, 71, 72, 76, 212n. 45 Arnold, William T. 55, 109 Artisans’ Dwellings Act 137 Asquith, Herbert 117, 148, 164 assimilation 58, 59, 98–100, 107–8 Athens 19, 59, 77 Augustus 8, 10, 14, 34–5, 37–9, 45–6, 48, 49, 56–7, 59, 60, 67, 93–4, 105–6, 115, 118, 129, 132, 143, 145–7, 151–2, 159, 172 Augustus 57 Augustus Caesar and the Organisation of the Empire of Rome 56 Aunt Charlotte’s Stories of Roman History 39 Aurelius, Marcus 56, 76–7, 85, 159 Austen, Jane 15 Australia 30, 31–2, 41, 83 Awake! Or Perish! Solemn Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Religious and Physical State of the Nation: Its Sins, Perils, and Prospects 127 back to the land movements 10, 165, 173 back-to-the-landers 12, 152 Bacon, Francis 66 Baden-Powell, Robert 14, 104, 149–50

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Bagehot, Walter 191n. 303 Bailey, Cyril 102, 164 Baker, Robert 120, 134 Baldwin, Stanley 14, 67–8, 113, 117–18, 166, 173–4 Balfour, Arthur J. 4, 42–3, 59, 103 Banks, Sir Joseph 18 Banton, Michael 177n. 29 Baring, Evelyn see Cromer, Earl of Barringer, Tim 183n. 75 Barry, Peter 4 Baucom, Ian 197n. 45, 207n. 274 Baxter, Robert Dudley 128 Beddoe, John 84–5, 88, 200n. 114 Beresford, John 97 Beresford, Lord Charles 149 Berman, Marshall 1 Bernard, Sir Thomas 126 Biagini, E. 212n. 50 Biddiss, Michael 201n. 135 Bigg-Wither, Frank Herbert 60 birth control 110–11, 115 Bismarck, Otto von 50 Bitter Cry of Outcast London, The 137 Blackburn Standard: Darwen Observer, and North-East Lancashire Advertiser 126, 129 Blackwood’s Magazine 100, 138 Blake, Robert 113 Blatchford, Robert 95, 101 Boadicea 96 Boadicea: a Cantata 96 Boers 6, 41, 50, 147, 150, 218n. 197 Bolshevik Revolution (1917) 162 Booth, Charles 101, 119, 136 Booth, William 138–9 Bostock, John 132 Boulton, Matthew 126 Boy Scout Movement 149 Boyd, C. E. 164 Brabazon, Reginald 54 Bracco, Rosa Maria 159 Bratton, J. S. 217n. 157 breeding 31, 90, 105, 110–11 ‘right’ breeding 8, 90, 104, 106, 111, 149 see also eugenics Bright, John 21, 89 Bristol Mercury and Daily Post 87 Britain’s Greatness Foretold 96 British Barbarians, The 83, 153

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British Empire 1, 3–4, 17, 37, 42, 44, 49, 51–3, 57–8, 59, 61–2, 64, 95, 113, 170, 180n. 23 civilizational model of 18–19, 20–1 and despotic methods of rule 32, 33, 39, 41, 43, 44, 46, 170, 176n. 22 see also Roman Empire, comparisons with the British Empire British Empire, The (1909) 54 British Empire, The (1915) 63–4, 111–12 British Empire League 54 British Genius 99 Britishness, vs Englishness 7–8, 69, 73, 83, 95–118 Britons 8, 21, 38–9, 40–1, 42, 44, 56, 61, 62, 64, 69, 82–3, 85, 88, 92–4, 97, 100, 102–3, 115, 116, 131, 143, 145, 163, 166, 168, 170 see also ancient Britons; Celts Brodribb, William J. 132 Brontë, Charlotte 15, 28, 70 Brown, Lucy 178n. 57 Brutus, L. Junius 135 Bryce, James 13, 47, 56, 59, 103, 191n. 280, 192n. 304 Buchan, John 14, 113–14, 159 Buckley, Arabella 46–7 Building of the British Empire, The 55 Buller, Charles 23–4 Bunbury, Sir Edward 84 Bunce, J. Thackray 14 Burke, Edmund 117 Bury, John Bagnell 45, 58, 102, 105, 145 Butler, Nicholas Murray 142 Butler, Samuel 47 Butler, William 96 Byron, Lord George Gordon 97 Caligula 34, 84 Campbell, R. J. 95–6 Caractacus 96 Carlyle, Thomas 23, 28, 71, 73, 77, 79, 97, 122, 123, 125, 174 Carmen Saeculare 141 Carrington, Charles 159 Carter, George 102 Carter, Mia 182n. 66 Carthage, fall of 32 Carton, Captain 26 Castle, Kathryn 13

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Index Cato, Marcus Porcius (Cato the Censor/ Cato the Edler) 103, 152, 164–5, 168, 212n. 45 Caucasian 30, 32, 70, 197n. 40 Cazamian, Louis 134 Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, The 81 Celt and Saxon 97 Celtic literature 74, 81, 197n. 44 Celtic revival 96–100 Celts 7–8, 69–70, 72–3, 74, 76, 77–8, 81–5, 86, 90, 100, 109–10, 115–16, 171, 197n. 40, 200n. 114, 201n. 117 of Cornwall 73–4, 82–3, 97 of Devon 82–3, 84, 200n. 114 of France 21, 25, 35, 51, 58, 78, 82, 83, 84, 87, 157, 191n. 298 of Ireland 8, 73–4, 77–80 of Scotland 73–4, 85 of Wales 73–4, 197n. 44 see also ancient Britons; individual entries Chadwick, Edwin 126, 130 Chamberlain, Joseph 44, 94, 136 Chartism 77, 125 Chartist Circular, The 125 Chesterton, G. K. 112, 153 cholera, spread of 127, 129, 133 Christian Hero 19 Christianity 34, 72 see also spiritualism Church, Alfred 21, 71, 76, 132 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 22, 56, 73, 74, 76, 140, 165–6 Cincinnatus 77, 140, 218–19n. 197 cities see garden cities; industrialization; urbanization civilizing mission 17–33 education 18, 22 emigration 23–5 of inferior subjects 18, 20–1, 40 and non-white subjects ruling 26–7 theories 27–33 class see elite; middle class; working classes classical education 3–4, 47–8, 129, 178n. 51, 190n. 276, 193n. 336 Classical Journal, The 56 Classical Review, The 59 Classics, knowledge of 3–4, 8, 13, 18–19, 20, 22, 40, 47–8, 55–6, 67–8, 76, 159,

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253

169–70, 173, 178n. 51, 180nn. 11, 17, 22, 189n. 226 Classics Transformed 3 Claudius 35, 41, 57, 96, 131 Clay, Sir William 129 Clive, Robert 102 Close, W. H. 160, 161 Clouston, Thomas 90 Cobbett, William 122, 165 Cobden, Richard 23, 42–3, 51, 70, 127 Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici 70–1 Cohen, Stanley 175n. 6 Colley, Linda 69, 182n. 75, 199n. 91 Collingwood, R. G. 115–16, 162–3, 164 Collins, Wilkie 26 Colls, Robert 106–7 Colonial College at Hollesley Bay 47 colonies/colonization 5–6, 15, 20, 23–5, 43, 47, 61, 66, 94, 139, 182n. 55 and ancient colonies/colonization 25, 26–7, 30–1, 38–9, 140, 170, 182–3n. 75 Combe, George 70, 195n. 10 Committee on Public Instruction 22 Congreve, Richard 7, 35–6 Considerations on Representative Government 33 Cooper, Helen 184n. 103 Coote, Henry Charles 13, 86–7, 144 Corn Laws 123, 127 corruptive influence of imperial subjects on Britons 6, 30–1, 47, 51, 101, 102 on Romans 51, 92–3, 101–3 see also intermarriage Cramb, John A. 56 Cranford 28 Craster, H. H. E. 164 Crawfurd, John 13, 30–1, 81, 88 Creasy, Sir Edward 21–2, 25 Crimean War 96 Criminal Man, The 90 Crisparkle, Rev. Septimus 184n. 96 Croham Hurst School 160 Cromer, Earl of 4, 59–60, 62 cross-class appeal of the press 14 Curzon, Lord 48, 54 Daily Mail, The 116 Daily News, The 129, 131 Dalhousie, Lord 17, 25 Daniel Deronda 15, 32, 141

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254

Index

Daniels, Stephen 208n. 303, 222n. 268 Danson, J. T. 134 Darwin, Charles 29–30 Darwin, Leonard 111 David Copperfield 195n. 10 de Certeau, Michel 2 de Grey, Thomas, Lord Walshingham 142 De rerum natura 29 decline and fall of Britain and Empire 11, 16, 96, 101, 139, 158, 170 importance of race in understanding 39–40, 91, 93, 101, 171 as a result of competition with other nations 50–1 of the Roman Republic 2, 16, 35, 38, 57, 93, 96, 101, 115, 131–2, 139–40, 150–1, 158, 170 DeLaine, Janet 177n. 38 democracy British 11, 17, 66–7, 68, 76, 104, 113, 117 Roman 19–20, 35, 37, 77 demographic shift 119–20, 210n. 4 Dent, J. M. 67 Deserted Village, The 140 despotism British 7, 30, 32, 33, 39, 41, 43, 46, 62, 135, 170, 176n. 22 Roman 6, 34–5, 37, 44, 54, 57, 62, 125 Dickens, Charles 15, 26, 28, 70, 122–3, 134, 135, 137, 184n. 96, 195n. 10 Dilke, Sir Charles Wentworth 32, 81, 83, 187n. 179 Disraeli, Benjamin 12, 15–16, 42, 69, 113, 179n. 64, 187n. 177 Dixon, Hepworth 130 Dombey and Son 122 domestication of Englishmen 112, 113, 208n. 308 of Romans 117 of British and Roman Empires 7, 171, 177n. 25 Doyle, Brian 190n. 276 Dr. Thorne 138, 141, 195n. 10 Dwelling House, The 131 Early, Thomas C. 41 Early Britain, Roman Britain 13, 87, 144 East India Company 20, 27, 30 Eastern Counties Herald 27

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Eccleston, James 20–1 Eclogues 39, 143, 165, 186n. 157, 271n. 155 economic disparity in Britain 69, 74–5, 124 Economist, The 73 Edinburgh Review 70, 179n. 6 Edwards, H. J. 55 Egypt 6, 30, 33, 49–50, 55, 60, 64, 92, 184n. 96 Eliot, George 15, 32, 70, 77, 141, 180n. 22, 184n. 96, 195n. 10 elites 2–3, 8–10, 13, 17, 20, 52, 72, 77, 86, 128, 159, 166, 169–71, 177n. 38, 180nn. 10, 17 Ellis, Henry Havelock 99, 108 Emigration: Its Advantages to Great Britain and her Colonies 24 emigration 15, 23–5, 30, 44, 63, 94, 127, 139, 142, 153, 172, 193n. 335, 213n. 63 Empire and family, comparisons made between 61–2, 65, 66 Empire Day 54, 61 Enclosure Acts 119–20, 124, 148, 169, 195n. 3 Engels, Frederick 120, 122, 136, 219n. 221 England in Egypt 49 English and Their Origin, The 81 English intellectual tradition 4, 11, 68, 170, 172 English nationalism 9, 49–118 English-Speaking Nations, The 66 Epodes 134, 151 Erewhon 47 Essay on the Principle of Population 123 Essex Standard, The 123 eugenics 8–9, 40, 91, 99, 104, 110–11 Evans, John 41 Expansion of England, The 6, 43, 44–5, 139 Exploitation of Inferior Races in Ancient and Modern Times 53 Eyre, John 27 Faber, Richard 181n. 30 Factory Acts, nineteenth century 126, 137 Falkener, Edward 18–19 Fall of the Republic, The 34 Fall of Rome, The 27, 139 Family and Social Life 164 Farr, William 129, 133

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Index Farrar, Frederic William 13, 28 Feldman, David 206n. 228, 208n. 290 Felix Holt 180n. 22, 184n. 996 Fenianism 80 Ferguson, Adam 17–18 fictional narratives, importance of 14–15 Fielding, Henry 180n. 16, 215–16n. 125 Financial Times, The 154 First World War 14, 63, 110, 117, 158–9, 191n. 298, 208nn. 290, 303, 209n. 321 Firth, J. B. 49, 56 Fisher, L. 155 Fitzroy, Sir Almeric 148 Fletcher, C. R. L. 55, 99, 100, 108, 153, 190n. 272 Flower, William Henry 41 Ford, Ford Madox 107, 112, 207n. 274 France 24, 50, 78, 82, 100, 129, 157, 181n. 46, 191n. 298 French Revolution 23, 78, 125, 147, 189n. 244, 212n. 45 Francis, Sir Philip 34 Frank, Tenney 57 free trade 16, 23, 43, 125 Freeman, Edward Augustus 71, 76, 81 French Revolution, The 23, 181n. 41 Frere, Sir H. Bartle 40 Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers 124 Frontinus, Sextus Julius 14, 177n. 38 Froude, James Anthony 31, 44, 91–2, 93, 94, 139, 142, 144 Future Roman Empire, A 46 Fyfe, W. Hamilton 201n. 138 Gallic war 48 Gallo-Roman invasion 86 Galton, Francis 40–1, 90–1, 104 garden cities 11, 153–7, 161–2, 163, 168, 172, 178n. 40 see also Romano-British towns Garden Cities of To-morrow 154 Garden Cities and Town Planning 160 Garden City Movement 10, 153, 154 Gardiner, Samuel 55, 102, 192n. 323 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 85 Gaskell, Elizabeth 15, 28, 75, 134, 136, 198n. 65 Gaskell, Peter 121, 133 Gaul/Gauls see Celts, of France

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255

Geikie, Archibald 152 General History of Rome 140 Georgics 134, 151–2, 165, 209n. 321, 219n. 210 Germania 70, 76 Germany 50, 63, 71, 88, 133, 171, 189n. 240, 191n. 298, 201n. 122 Gilley, Sheridan 199n. 79 Gladstone, William 12, 24–5, 27–8, 60, 74–5, 97, 135, 136 Glasgow Herald 125–6 Glover, T. R. 101–2, 209n. 321, 209n. 324 Goldberg, David Theo 176n. 22 Goldsmith, Oliver 140 Gooch, George Peabody 47 Goschen Report, The 203n. 181 Gosse, Edmund 141–2 Gracchus, Tiberius and Gaius 48, 77, 120, 123, 125–6, 135, 145, 185n. 136, 198n. 63 Grandeur that was Rome, The 57 Granville, Earl 20, 60 Great Exhibition in 1851 127 Greater Britain 32, 81, 187n. 179 Greater Rome and Greater Britain 61–2, 64 Greek colonies 6, 25, 26–7 Greek language 8, 20, 22, 48, 76, 153, 180nn. 11, 22, 181n. 37, 190n. 276, 193n. 336 Greeks 25, 28, 30, 58–9, 60, 76, 85, 97, 101, 102, 111, 117, 155, 165, 182n. 75, 183n. 77 Grey, Albert 4th Earl 53 Grey, Charles 2nd Earl 34 Grover, John 130 Growth of the British Empire, The 61 Guide to the Antiquities of Roman Britain, A 164 Gurney, Ivor 158 Gwilt, Joseph 132 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 34 Hack, Maria 33 Hall, Catherine 177n. 24, 179n. 65, 186n. 148, 187n. 179, 198n. 68, 199n. 86, 200n. 110, 202n. 145, 207n. 288 Hall, Edith 17, 182n. 62 Hall, F. W. 164 Hallam, G.H. 193n. 336 Hamilton, Sir Ian 55, 109, 111

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256

Index

Hammond, Mason 189n. 244 Hampstead Garden Suburb 157 Hampton, Mark 13 Hard Times 123, 134, 135, 138 Hardie, Kier 152 Harding, Jane 177n. 39 Hardwick, Lorna 178n. 44 Hardy, Thomas 15, 141–2 Harkness, Margaret 138 Harris, George 132 Harvey, W. A. 220n. 234 Hastings, Warren 102 Haverfield, Francis 4, 10, 13, 58–60, 98, 155–7, 161, 163, 191n. 303, 192n. 304 Hawthorne, J. 181n. 41 Headlam, Sir James 48 Hearnshaw, F. J. C. 65 Heart of Empire, The 50, 148 Heart of England, The 158 Heitland, W. E. 151, 164, 165 Henty, G. A. 96 Herbert, Henry Earl of Carnarvon 40 Highways and Byways in Devon and Cornwall 97 Hingley, Richard 3, 176n. 22, 187n. 187, 201n. 132, 204n. 194 Historians’ History of the World, The 55, 99 Histories, The (Polybius) 115 Histories, The (Tacitus) 57 History of England (Carter, G.) 102 History of England (Macaulay, T. B.) 18 History of England for Beginners 46 History of European Morals 92, 140 History of Jamaica 31 History of Julius Caesar 86 History of the Romans under the Empire 37 History of the World 56 Hobhouse, Leonard T. 119 Hobsbawm, Eric 12, 204n. 186 Hobson, J. A. 49–52, 54 Hogarth, D. G. 4 Holmes, Thomas Rice 44–5, 98, 99–100, 201n. 124 Holt, Richard 188n. 215 Homer 30, 67, 193n. 336 Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus 12, 14, 48, 67, 89, 92, 93–4, 96–7, 101–2, 104, 105, 134, 141, 143–4, 146, 151, 159 Horsman, Reginald 196n. 24

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Household Words 26 Howard, Ebenezer 153–5, 161 Howard, F. H. 48 Howe, Irving 215n. 109 Howkins, Alun 206n. 260, 215n. 117, 219n. 216, 220n. 228, 221n. 261, 222n. 268, 222n. 273 Hull Phrenological Society 70 Huntingtower 113 Hutchison, Robert 105 Huxley, Aldous 110, 192n. 308 Huxley, Thomas 47–8, 82–3, 85, 200n. 114 hybridism 32, 103 Hyde Park Riot 103, 135 Iberian 82, 84 immigration into Britain see Alien’s Act; corruptive influence of imperial subjects Imperial Rome achievements of 16 change in attitude to 4, 11, 35–8, 44, 170–1, 176n. 23 despotic nature of 6 ideology of 4, 6–7 method of colonization 55, 57 negative portrayal of 11, 34–5, 51, 53–4 positive portrayal of 8, 16, 37–9, 51–2, 56–60, 61–2, 67, 68, 93–4, 105–6 reputation as a civilizing force 45–7, 64 and urban planning 10, 129–31, 132–3, 145–7, 166–8, 172, 177n. 38 see also Romano-British towns; individual entries of Roman emperors imperial subjects, negative images of 25–6, 27–8, 30–3, 54, 60–1, 75 see also individual entries Imperialism 49 Imperium et Libertas 42, 64 India 5, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 27, 31, 33, 43–5, 47, 55, 58, 59, 60–1, 64, 66, 68, 81, 184n. 98 indigenous population 18, 32, 49, 53, 54, 55, 59 Indian Mutiny (1857) 7, 25–7, 182nn. 62, 66 industrialization 1, 83, 119–21, 126, 136, 141, 147–8, 169 Anti-Corn Law League and 122 and demographic shift 119–20

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Index negative effects of 23, 119–23, 126–7, 133–5, 136, 141, 147, 150–1, 158, 195n. 3, 211n. 13, 215n. 109 see also rural depopulation; urbanization Inge, William Ralph 45, 93, 101, 105, 108, 110 Innes, Arthur 102 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, An 23 integration of Britain’s ‘others’ see Celtic Revival and working classes Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration 148 intermarriage 97, 103 in Britain 97–8 see also Galton, Francis; eugenics with British imperial subjects 103 in Roman Empire 92–3, 93–4, 115–16 Introduction to English Antiquities, An 20 Ireland/Irish 8, 24, 73–4, 77–84, 88–90, 97–8, 99–100, 101, 107, 108–9, 117, 125, 127, 171, 196n. 31, 199nn. 79, 90, 200nn. 110, 114, 201n. 117, 202n. 145, 205n. 210, 207nn. 282, 288, 213n. 63 see also Celts Jackson, Alan 221n. 261 Jackson, Edith 54–5 Jackson, John W. 32, 184n. 106 Jackson’s Oxford Journal 119–20 Jaffir, Mir 102 Jamaican rebellion (1865) 6, 27–8 Jane Eyre 15, 28, 195n. 10 Jenkyns, Richard 176n. 15, 181n. 30, 213n. 70 Jewsbury, Geraldine 123 Johnson, Robert 184n. 98, 188n. 213 Jones, David 159 Jones, Ernest 88, 125 Jones, William 22 Journey’s End 159 Jude the Obscure 15, 141–2 Judson, H. P. 11, 46, 112 Julius Caesar 34–5, 37–9, 45, 48, 56, 57, 67, 71, 74, 78, 83–4, 97, 111, 116–17, 118, 132, 146, 167 Juvenal, Decimus Junius Juvenalis 82, 143–4, 168

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257

Keats, John 97 Kemble, John Mitchell 70–1, 77 Kerr, Philip Henry 61 Kestner, Joseph 183n. 82, 197n. 40 Kiernan, V. G. 177n. 29 King Arthur 116 King, Kelburn 39–40 Kingsley, Rev. Charles 8, 15, 75, 77, 79–80, 89–90, 91, 93, 122, 124, 126–8, 130, 137 Kipling, Rudyard 14, 55, 99, 100, 107–8, 153, 159, 190n. 272 Knight, Robert 204n. 182 Knox, Robert 13, 28, 31–2, 33, 72, 74, 78, 181n. 46, 183n. 81, 198n. 68 Kumar, Krishan 96, 204n. 189 Labour Leader 152 laissez-faire 65, 126, 211n. 13 land-and-people spirit 107 Lansdowne, Marquis of 34 Last, Hugh 115, 164, 165–7 Latin 8, 12, 20, 22, 60, 76, 85, 87–8, 115, 153, 163, 180nn. 11, 22, 181n. 37, 190n. 276, 193n. 336, 209n. 321 Law, Andrew Bonar 63 Lawrence, D. H. 97 Lawrence, Sir Henry 77 Lawrence, Sir John 77 Lays of Ancient Rome 18 League of the Empire 54 Lecky, W. E. H. 92, 140 Legacy of Rome, The 164 Leicester Chronicle and the Leicestershire Mercury 38 Letchworth 154, 157, 160, 161 Lethaby, William 64, 161–2, 164 Levin, Michael 179n. 4 Levine, Philippa 1, 180n. 23, 189n. 240, 213n. 63, 224n. 1 Liddon, Henry 91 Life and Labour of the People in London 101 Lifted Veil, The 195n. 10 Light, Alison 7, 177n. 25, 209n. 316 Lillo, George 19, 180n. 16 Liverpool, 1st Earl of 18 Lloyd’s Weekly London Paper 25, 135 Lloyd George, David 159, 160 Lombroso, Cesare 90

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258

Index

Londinium: Architecture and the Crafts 164 London Garden School 160 London Labour and the London Poor 75, 128 Long, Edward 31 Lonsdale, James 56, 151–2, 217n. 155 Lorimer, Douglas 90, 186n. 161, 195n. 4, 199n. 83 Love of Nature Among the Romans, The 152 Lowe, Robert 12, 42 Lowry, Donal 147, 189n. 242, 218n. 197 Lucan, Marcus Annaeus 78 Lucas, Sir Charles 61–4, 65–6, 111–12, 193nn. 326, 327 Lucian 56, 92, 185n. 120 Lucretius, Titus Lucretius Carus 12, 29–30, 102, 152, 192n. 308 Lugard, Sir Frederick 64 Lyra Celtica 97 Lyttelton, Alfred 54 Lyttelton, Lord George 24 Macaulay, Thomas Babbington 18, 22, 25, 94, 127–8, 143, 179n. 6, 196n. 31, 197n. 44 McDaniel, Walton Brooks 164 MacDaugall, P. L. 24 MacDougall, Hugh 196n. 18 Macfadyen, Rev. Dugald 155, 161–2 Mackail, J. W. 56, 114–15, 152, 165 Majeed, Javed 183n. 77, 184n. 101 Malchow, H. L. 184n. 108 Mallock, W. H. 192n. 308 Malthus, Thomas 90, 123–4, 211n. 13 Manchester Guardian, The 73, 109, 158 Manchester Shirtmaker, A 138 Mandler, Peter 117, 180n. 10, 181n. 46, 196n. 16, 198n. 69, 208n. 308, 210n. 5 Mangan, J. A. 18 Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward 142 Mansbridge, Albert 193n. 336 Mansfield Park 15 Manufacturing Population of England, The 121 Marian Withers 123 Marshall, Professor Alfred 154 Martindale, Charles 165, 176n. 17 Mary Barton 75, 198n. 65 Mason, Philip 195n. 3 Masson, J. 192n. 308

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Masterman, Charles 50, 148 Matless, D. 223n. 308 Maxse, Leopold 109 Mayhew, Henry 75–6, 128, 198nn. 53, 54, 213n. 66 McClelland, Keith 179n. 65, 199n. 86, 202n. 145, 203–4n. 182, 207n. 288 McGeorge, Colin 193n. 325 Mearns, Rev. Andrew 137 Meath, Earl of 54–5 Meredith, George 97–8, 99, 205n. 210 Merivale, Rev. Charles 31, 34–5, 37, 92, 132, 140, 165 Meyer, Sir William 56 middle class 9, 20, 48, 74, 89, 91, 95, 112, 127–8, 136, 139, 149, 169, 180n. 22, 187n. 187 Middlemarch 15, 77 Mill, John Stuart 2, 4, 6, 9, 14, 19, 25, 33, 79, 170, 175n. 7, 176n. 14, 176n. 22, 184n. 106, 191n. 303, 199n. 85 Mill, Harriet Taylor 215n. 114 Milligan, J. Lewis 109–10 Milner, Viscount 14, 49–50, 61, 152 Milton, John 81 Minute on Indian Education 18, 25 mixed origin myth 8, 9, 81–95, 171 Mommsen, Theodor 217n. 165 Mongan, R. 143–4 monogenists 28, 183n. 82, 184n. 103 Montégut, Jean-Baptist Emile 134 Montagu-Douglas-Scott, Walter Francis 24 Monthly Review 19 Morning Post, The 125, 129 Morris, Guy Wilfrid 66–7, 194n. 358 Morris, William 15, 152–3, 202n. 142, 219n. 221, 220n. 234 Morrison, Arthur 138 Mouat, F. J. 138 Mumford, Lewis 221n. 263 Munro, John 97 Murray, Gilbert 53–4, 59, 60, 101, 209n. 321 Myers, Charles 88, 201–2n. 138 Mystery of Edwin Drood, The 184n. 96 names, study of 83, 109 Napier, Sir Charles 77 Napoleon 78 Napoleon III 86

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Index National Life and Character 93, 138 National Review, The 108 nationalism see English nationalism native Americans 32, 33, 75 Natural History 132 natural selection 29, 91 Need for Eugenic Reform, The 111 negative stereotyping 28 Nero 14, 35, 57, 132, 145 ‘new’ imperialism 33–49 comparison with Imperial Rome 37–9, 42, 43–4, 47, 48 and importance of racial composition 39–41 promotion of 46–7 training of administrators 47–8 New Statesman, The 160 New Zealand 28, 61, 83 News from Nowhere 152–3, 202n. 142, 219n. 221 Newsome, David 212n. 40 newspapers, importance of 13–14 Nicholas, Thomas 81 Nicholls, J. F. 87 Nightingale, Florence 215n. 114 Nineteenth Century and After, The 109 non-white subjects 1, 6, 13, 20, 26–8, 30–1, 32, 33, 73, 77, 124, 126, 170 Normans 65, 71, 78–9, 82, 86–7, 100, 107–8, 117, 173–4 North and South 134, 136 Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser, The 123 Northern Star and National Trades’ Journal 125 Norway, Arthur 97 Notes for the People 125 novels, imperial attitude in 15 see also fictional narratives Oceana 31, 139 O’Connell, Daniel 125–6 O’Connor, Feargus 125, 127 Odes 67, 89, 93–4, 134, 146 Odyssey 67 On Aqueducts 14, 177n. 38 On Architecture 132 On England 67, 113 On Liberty 33 On the Nature of Things 102

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Orientalists 22, 197n. 44 Orientals 6, 57, 92–3, 101–2, 114, 191n. 303, 209nn. 321, 324 Origin of the Species 29 Otis, Laura 178n. 51 Our Empire Past and Present 54–5 Our Island Story 96 Outline of English History 55 Outline of History 67 Outlines of British History 173 Outlines of Roman History 11, 46, 145–6 Ovid, Publius Ovidius Naso 12, 21, 115, 152 Owen, Wilfred 158, 222n. 269 Pacifico, Don 20 Pall Mall Gazette 83, 84 Palmerston, Viscount 12, 20, 122, 127 Panem et Circenses 150 Parkin, George 46–7 Patrick, David 216n. 125 Patriotism and Empire 50, 104 Pax Britannica 21, 51, 181n. 30 Pax Romana 21, 51, 74, 181n. 30 Pearson, Charles 92–3, 100, 138 Pearson, Karl 104 Pedigree of the English People, The 81 Pelham, Henry 11, 12, 45–6, 47, 93–4, 101, 145–6, 147 Pepler, George 161 Perils of Certain English Prisoners, The 26 Peterloo massacre 125 Pfautz, Harold 133 phrenology 69–70, 89, 195nn. 5, 10 physical degeneration see working classes physiognomy 69, 195n. 5 Picton, James Allanson 38–9, 144 Pigou, A. C. 137 Pike, Luke Owen 81 Pinkerton, John 70 Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus 45, 129, 132, 177n. 38 Pliny the Younger, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus 45, 152 Pollard, A. F. 54 Polybius 56, 105, 115 polygenists 28 Pompey, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus 38, 48 Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 123–4, 128, 203n. 181 Poore, George Vivian 131

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Index

Porter, Bernard 184n. 98, 193n. 335 Postgate, J. P. 190n. 276 Principles of Political Economy 79 pro-imperialism 6–7, 23, 42, 52, 54, 58, 63, 170–1 Proceedings of the British Academy, The 98 progressivism 126 in Britain 18, 19, 20–1, 77, 79, 126, 127, 131, 169 in Empire 18, 20, 22, 23, 40–1, 64, 189n. 242, 198n. 53 in Rome 6, 19, 44, 64 Public Health Acts 126, 137 Public Libraries and Literary Culture in Ancient Rome 164 Puck of Pook’s Hill 14, 107–8, 153, 159, 220n. 226 Purdom, Charles B. 154–5, 158 Putnam, G. P. 56 Quintilian, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus 45, 56 race 7, 8 and civilization 28 need for an historical analysis 39–40 nomadic peoples 33, 75–6, 198n. 54 race-suicide 104, 115 racial degeneration 8, 9, 92, 94 racial hierarchy 13, 20, 69 racial mixing 31 racial purity of the English 7–8, 90, 171 racial purity of the Germans 71 and science in the study of 13, 28–30, 31–2, 39–40, 41, 59, 72, 88, 183nn. 81, 82, 195nn. 5, 10, 200n. 114 see also assimilation; Celts; hybridism; imperial subjects, negative images of; individual entries on imperial peoples; intermarriage; Orientals; Romano-Britons; working classes Races of Britain 84–5 Races of Men, The 72 railways 128–9, 141, 177n. 38, 216n. 143 Ramsay, George Gilbert 57–8, 191n. 298 Ransome, Cyril 46 Rawsley, Canon 158 Rebecca Riots 124 Reflections on the Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain 56

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Reform Act (1832) 17, 20, 180n. 22, 197n. 45 Reid, G. A. 105 Reid, J. S. 155 Remedies suggested for some of the evils which constitute The Perils of the Nation 120 Rendall, Jane 179n. 65, 199n. 86, 207n. 288 Representation of the People Act (1918) 110–11, 164, 171 residuum 89–90, 94 return to the country 147–68 ‘Review of A. Weigall, “Wanderings in Roman Britain”’ 117 Rhodes, Cecil 14, 43, 48 Richardson, Eleanor 55 Rider Haggard, Henry 15, 99, 113, 141, 148, 153 Riley, H. T. 132 roads in British colonies 31, 62, 64 and Rome 16, 46, 62, 97, 111, 131, 146, 163, 164, 173–4 Robbins, Keith 187n. 179 Robertson, J. C. and H. G. 67, 117, 167–8 Robertson, J. M. 50, 52–3, 104 Roman Britain 115, 162, 164 Roman Empire 6–7, 16, 36–8, 40, 44–6, 47, 54, 57–8, 67, 92–3, 101–2, 117, 159 comparisons with the British Empire 19–21, 40–1, 42, 43, 51, 52, 53–4, 58–63, 64–6, 68, 100–1, 103, 149–50, 171, 176n. 19 and despotic methods of rule 6, 34–5, 37, 44, 54, 57, 62 see also decline and fall Roman Essays and Interpretations 114 Roman Officers and English Gentlemen 3 Roman Private Life and its Survivals 164 Roman Republic 6–8, 10, 19–20, 35, 37, 38, 44, 45, 47, 49, 56, 58–9, 89–90, 92–3, 95, 101–2, 103, 105, 106, 115, 123, 125–6, 139–40, 142–3, 145, 146–7, 150–2, 168, 170, 171–3, 176nn. 14, 23, 185n. 136, 204n. 183, 212n. 45 positive portrayal of 4, 19 see also decline and fall; Rome, city of; working classes, comparisons with Romans Romanisation of Roman Britain, The 58, 98 Romanization of Britain 21, 98, 116, 162–3

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Index Roman Britain 13, 87–8, 98, 99–100, 116–7, 144–5, 162, 164 Romano-British towns 10–11, 132, 144–5, 155–7, 161, 162–4, 172 Romano-Britons 8, 86–8, 98, 100, 115–7, 163 Romans and the family 62, 114, 115, 117, 158, 165–6, 167–8 and non-racial ties to Englishmen 3–4, 72, 76–7, 85, 178n. 51 and racial ties see Romano-Britons and women 167 Romans of Britain, The 13, 86–7, 144, 164 Rome, city of 128–33, 145–7, 151, 177n. 32, 213n. 70 Rome’s Fall Reconsidered 115 Rose, Jonathan 224n. 2 Rosebery, Lord 46, 138 Round the Empire 46 Rowntree, B. Seebohm 150 rural depopulation, effects of in Britain 10, 119–20, 126, 135, 136, 141, 142–3, 144, 148, 150, 169, 172, 177n. 32 in Italy 10, 102–3, 139–40, 143–4, 145, 146 see also industrialization; urbanization Ruskin, John 18, 75, 122 Rutherford, Jonathan 51, 187n. 187, 215n. 115 Ryle, John 94 Said, Edward 14–5, 73, 175n. 5, 178n. 50, 179n. 65, 185n. 116, 195n. 1 St George’s Kerri School 160 Samuel, Raphael 181n. 39, 208n. 303, 222n. 275 Sanders, Andrew 16, 179n. 64 Sandwich, H. 131 Santayana, George 160 Sassoon, Siegfried 158 Satires 143 Saturday Review, The 84 Saxons 7–8, 15, 69, 70–2, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84–5, 86–8, 90, 97, 100, 107–8, 116–7, 171, 195n. 12, 196nn. 17, 18, 197n. 44, 201n. 117 see also Anglo-Saxons/Saxonism; Teutons/Teutonism

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Sayce, A. H. 87–8 Scarth, Rev. H. M. 13, 87, 144–5, 163 School History of England, A 55, 99, 108, 153, 190n. 272 School Review 48 Scots 8, 74, 81, 83, 85, 88, 97, 99, 100, 107, 108–9, 117–18, 199n. 90, 207n. 288 Scott, C. P. 109 Scouting for Boys 149–50 Second Reform Act of 1867 80, 88–9, 135, 137, 200n. 110, 203n. 182 Seeley, Sir J. R. 6, 12–13, 37–8, 40, 43–5, 48, 93, 101, 139, 177n. 24, 186n. 148, 187nn. 179, 183, 187 Self Help 79, 124 self-government 18, 44, 54, 60, 66, 80 Sellar, William Young 30, 48, 96–7, 143 Shakespeare, William 81, 97, 175n. 12 Sharp, William 97, 204n. 196 Shaw, Charles 24 Shaw, George Bernard 104, 137, 148 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, The 129, 130 Shepard, William 45 Sheppard, J. G. 27, 36, 40, 139–40 Sherriff, R. C. 159 Shorey, Paul 56 Short, John 222n. 287 Short History of England, A 46 Shuckburgh, Evelyn 57, 105–6, 115, 151 Silchester 145, 155, 156–7, 163, 217n. 162 Simkhovitch, Vladimir 115 Sims, George 94–5 Sketches by Boz 122 Slaughter, M. S. 114, 165, 209n. 321 slavery/slaves 31–2, 34–5, 36, 42, 45, 53–4, 84, 92, 102–3, 106, 112–13, 122, 135 slums 94, 105, 123, 129, 139, 141, 149, 153, 155, 158, 161, 166, 213n. 70 small-town urbanism 147–68 see also garden cities Smiles, Samuel 79, 124, 126, 211n. 36 Smith, Adam 23, 25, 26, 97 Smith, Goldwin 36–7, 44, 125 Smith, R. A. 164 Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero 151 social reform in Britain 1, 10, 50–2, 119, 126, 135, 148, 155–6, 173 in Rome 105, 145–6

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socialism 125, 127–8, 152–3, 219nn. 216, 221 Society in Rome under the Caesars 45 Soliloquies of England 160 Soloway, Richard 8, 95 Some Signs of the Times 95 Spa Fields riots 34 Sparta 135, 176n. 14 Spectator, The 84 ‘Spirit of the Age’ 2, 175n. 7 Spirit of the People, The 107 spiritualism 64, 72, 78, 92, 97, 107, 109, 112 see also Christianity sport 47, 188n. 215 Squire, Sir J. C. 67 Stanley, Lord 131 Stapleton, Julia 208n. 303 Stepan, Nancy 147, 183n. 77, 183n. 82, 195n. 5, 195n. 10, 208n. 290 Stevenson, Deborah 178n. 40, 210n. 4, 214n. 98, 214n. 99, 216n. 143 Stevenson, Robert Louis 143, 194n. 358 Stobart, John Clarke 57, 106, 151 Stoicism 166–7 Stones of Venice, The 122 Stopes, Marie 110–11 Story of the British Race, The 97 Story of Greece and Rome, The 67, 167 Strachan Davidson, J. L. 4 Stray, Christopher 3, 180nn. 11, 17, 22, 189n. 226 Strong, Josiah 9–10 Students History of England 102 Studies of Roman Imperialism 55 Suetonius, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus 57 Swing Riots 124 Sybil 69 Symonds, John Addington 27 Tacitus, Cornelius Tacitus 21, 42, 57–8, 61, 70, 71, 76, 82, 87, 88, 93, 132–3, 196n. 16, 203n. 173, 218n. 197 Taigel, Anthea 177n. 39 Tales of Mean Streets 138 Tancred 15–16 Tarner, George Edward 46 Taylor, William Cooke 120–2, 123 Tennant, Edward Wyndham 158 Tennyson, Lord Alfred 27

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territorial expansion and the effects of in the British Empire 1, 6, 17, 41–2, 44, 50, 52, 58, 60, 169, 187nn. 177, 183 in the Roman Empire 35, 38, 58, 60, 140, 145, 182n. 74 of other modern nations 6, 50 Teutons/Teutonism 7, 9, 70–1, 73, 75–6, 79–80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86–7, 90, 171, 174, 196n. 16, 197n. 40, 200n. 114, 201n. 122, 202n. 141 see also Anglo-Saxons/Saxonism; Saxons Third Reform Act of 1884 100 Thomas, Edward 158 Thompson, Andrew 182n. 55, 195n. 2, 199n. 90 Tickner, Frederick 173 Times, The 2, 14, 20, 22, 24, 25–6, 41–2, 48, 61, 73–4, 77, 85–6, 99, 107, 125, 127, 128–9, 130, 131, 148, 149, 150–1, 153, 154, 157, 158, 193n. 336, 203n. 182 Tippet, Mary Orde 60–1, 206n. 250 To-morrow: Peaceful Path to Real Reform 154 Tocqueville, Alexis de 127 town-planning see urbanization Town Planning Act 1919 160–1 Toynbee, Arnold 67 Trade Union Acts (1871 and 1875) 137 Trade Union movement 51, 203n. 182 translations of ancient texts, importance of 4, 12–13, 15, 28, 169–70, 176nn. 19, 22, 178n. 51, 191n. 280, 193n. 336 Trevelyan, G. M. 126, 213n. 70, 216n. 143 Trevelyan, Marie 96 Trollope, Anthony 70, 76, 138, 141, 195n. 10 Troutbeck, G. E. 96 Unwin, Raymond 161 urbanization 1, 9, 119–47, 148, 169, 210n. 4 see also garden cities; Imperial Rome, and urban planning; industrialization; Romano-British towns; Rome, city of; working classes utilitarianism 123, 124, 137, 211n. 37 Vance, Norman 3, 174, 175n. 12, 179n. 6, 189n. 226, 213n. 70, 217n. 152, 218n. 182, 222n. 269

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Index Varro, Marcus 152 Vasunia, Phiroze 176n. 19, 181n. 37 Verney Committee on Land Settlements 158 Vespasian 60 Victorians and Ancient Rome, The 3 Virgil, Publius Vergilius Maro 12, 39, 45, 48, 56, 67, 96–7, 101–2, 114–15, 134, 141, 143, 151–2, 159, 165–6, 209n. 321, 217n. 155 Virgil and his Meaning to the World Today 165 Vitruvius, Marcus Virtruvius Pollio 129, 132 Wallace, Alfred Russel 29–30 Wanderings in Roman Britain 116–17, 163 Ward, Paul 187n. 177 Warde Fowler, William 103, 114, 150–1, 157–8, 193n. 326, 209nn. 321, 324 Warren, Sir Herbert 165 Watkins, John 123 Watson, Foster 193n. 336 Watson, Rev. John Selby 29 Webb, Beatrice 211n. 37 Webster, Anthony 185n. 116, 211n. 13 Webster, Jane 182–3n. 75 Weigall, Arthur 9, 116–17, 163 Welldon, Rev. J. E. C. 47 Wells, H. G. 67, 100–1, 104, 110, 112, 113, 150, 152, 157, 206n. 257, 208n. 309 Welsh 7, 8, 73–4, 82, 83, 87, 88, 99–100, 108, 109, 117–18, 119, 124, 160, 197n. 44, 199n. 90, 201n. 117, 207n. 288 Welwyn Garden City 154, 160 West, Shearer 69, 202n. 143 West Indies 25, 26, 28, 73 Westminster Gazette 44 Wickham, E. C. 105, 143, 151 Wilberforce, Samuel 29–30 Wilberforce, William 22 Wilkinson L. P. 219n. 210 Williams, Aneurin 148 Williams, Henry Smith 55, 56, 99 Williams, Raymond 177n. 32, 213n. 66, 214n. 98, 216n. 134, 217n. 152, 217n. 155, 217n. 159

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Windle, Sir Bertram 164 Wintle, Sarah 107, 207n. 277 Wiseman, Cardinal 128–9 Wiseman, T. P. 176n. 23 Wolseley, Garnet (Visocunt wolseley) 147–8 Wood, Leonard S. 66–7, 194n. 358 working classes comparisons with Romans 10, 52, 92–4, 95–6, 103, 105, 106, 114, 115, 118, 129–31, 136, 142–7, 149, 152, 157–8, 159, 162, 165–8 see also Romano-British towns; Roman Republic and decline in family life 75, 157–8, 166–7 and education 79–80, 193n. 336, 199n. 86, 203n. 182, 224n. 2 and emigration 23–4, 94, 127, 139–40, 153 see also colonies/colonization and moral degeneration 75–6, 95–6, 128, 138, 148 oppression of 123–5, 126, 135 and the ‘other’ 8, 69, 74–5, 88–9, 110, 124, 208nn. 290, 308 and physical degeneration 121–7, 133–47, 149–50, 172 and racial degeneration 8–9, 52, 89–92, 93, 94–5, 96, 101, 104–5, 110–11, 115 and unrest 9–10, 23–4, 77, 79, 80, 94, 100–1, 110, 124–6, 127–8, 135–6, 154, 161–2, 198n. 65, 212n. 40, 215n. 114 see also Celts; Corn Laws; garden cities; industrialization, negative effects of; intermarriage; Poor Law Amendment Act; residuum; rural depopulation; urbanization; utilitarianism Wright, Thomas 81–2 Yeast 75, 79, 89, 124, 126, 128 Yonge, Charlotte 39 Young Folks’ History of the Roman Empire 45 Young, Robert 9, 195nn. 5, 12, 196nn. 13, 17, 31, 201nn. 117, 122, 135, 202n. 141

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