Sir C. P. Lucas, Greater Rome and Greater Britain, Oxford, 1912 (184 pp.).
(A vapid, pretentious, supercilious comparison of Rome and Great Britain, mostly in a superficial legal style. Only his contribution to the characterisation of imperialism is worth mentioning:)
65—Parts of Algeria were better cultivated (irrigation) in Roman times than now (Arnold, Roman Provincial Administration).
66—Artesian wells (dug by the British) in Australia (depth 5,000 ft)...
68—The fight against malaria in the colonies (English
doctors)... (Ronald Ross)
(Lord Lister)
(idem 70-71)
76-77: With the Romans, war went before trade. With the British vice versa (in the colonies) (peace, trade, etc.).
80: In the eighteenth century, however, there were wars, too (Canada, Australia)
| 86... | The old chartered companies | |
| East India Co. until 1858 | ||
| Hudson Bay Co. ” 1869 | } | |
| New companies | ||
| Royal Niger Co. (1880-1890) | ||
| South Africa Co. |
91: With us, slavery (West India) was an exception [banal nationalist bragging...]
94: The Romans took no account of race, they did not exclude Negroes.
96-97:“Coloured” people do not have equal rights in the modern British Empire: in India they do not have the franchise—they are not accepted as officials, etc., etc.
98: “In the self-governing provinces of the British Empire at the present day the coloured natives of the soil, though British subjects, are, more often than not, excluded from the franchise, as in Australia, for instance, or parts of South Africa, or British Columbia”....
99: Restriction of immigration of Negroes, etc.
| N.B. | 103: |
“In our own Empire where white workers and coloured workers are side by side, as in South Africa, it would be fair to say that they do not work on the same level, and that the white man is rather the overseer of, than the fellow-workman with, the coloured man.” |
107—In Australasia, the white workers are against the Negroes and yellow-skinned—as undercutters of wages....
142: Two parts of the British Empire:
1) sphere of rule (rule over “lower” races)
((India, Egypt, etc.))
2) sphere of settlement (British emigration to the
colonies: Australia, America, etc.).
175—On the question of free trade and protection, the author is for “imperial preference” (175), for a “wise opportunism” (176).
“Imperial preference is the goal to be aimed at. Little by little is the way to the goal” (176).
176-77... “The existence of these British dependencies may, and probably will, be found to supply the strongest of all motives to the self-governing Dominions for remaining within the circle of the British Empire”,— for all mature national states (Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, etc.) need colonies, but all are already occupied, mostly by Great Britain ((and they, too (Australia, etc.), he argues, benefit from our plunder of India, Egypt, etc.)).
Source References: Bampfylde Fuller, Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment, 1910.
Cromer, Ancient and Modern Imperialism.
[1] See present edition, Vol. 21, p. 243, and Vol. 22, p. 260.—Ed.
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