An Empress for an Empire British Imperialism and the Royal Titles Act of 1876

The study of the British Empire was once considered an essential part of the education of every child in Britain. It was as if no school in 1920s Britain was complete without the familiar imagery of a world coloured pink with British overseas possessions. However, the changing nature of British society over the last forty years has resulted in the empire being looked upon with a sense of embarrassment by many, and hostility by some. Nevertheless, by contrast to the apparent indifference of the public at large, the study of British imperialism by academic historians shows no signs of diminishing. Indeed, the last two decades have seen renewed interest in the topic, with no shortage of new theories emerging to add to the plethora of theories attempting to explain why Great Britain forged the largest territorial empire the world has yet seen, when for most of the time, the British government appears to have been rather reluctant to do so. This book focuses not on the military conquests and political horse-trading that resulted in the expansion of overseas possessions, for there are many excellent studies which already deal admirably with that. This book attempts to provide a fresh insight into how one decision, the move to make Queen Victoria Empress of India, resulted in the British population having to make sense of the fact that their nation was in possession of an empire in a fast changing world and that they had to decide just how to they could rationalise this with changes at home that were moving the country slowly towards a modern liberal democracy based upon the rule of law and a widening franchise. In particular, this book focuses on one word – IMPERIALISM - and the way the British at first derided the term and then slowly embraced it by defining its meaning in terms that were at ease with domestic political developments and the Victorian world-view. From our twenty-first century perspective, the word imperialism is in everyday use. However, in the mid-nineteenth century the word was relatively new and where it was used, its meaning was perhaps more in-tune with how many view the term today. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Imperialism was a term linked to tyranny, despotism, aggression, and the forceful assertion of the will of powerful nations over those deemed to be weaker. Indeed, to the Victorian of 1850, imperialism was not the British way of doing things, despite the uncomfortable fact that Britain possessed an empire. Imperialism was often described as the flawed policy of the despotism of Bonaparte’s France, or more in tune with the decadence of China’s dynastic emperors. By contrast, it was widely believed that the British Empire was a benign entity, intended to pass on the merits of Britain’s view of civilisation to people deemed to be in need of ‘civilising’. To the mid-Victorian, Britain’s empire was not something founded on the foreign culture of imperialism. Crucially, the British Empire was not ruled by an emperor.How then, would the Victorian look upon an act to bestow upon the British crown an imperial title, placing Victoria amongst those monarchs who proudly bore the title emperor or empress. Victoria was to be given a title previously held by a Mogul Emperor and given direct autocratic rule over two-hundred million people. How could this blatant act of imperialism be compatible with British benign rule? How could the fact that a British constitutional monarch would have direct control over a vast foreign army be rationalised with Britain’s liberal democracy? This book will follow the heated debate that ignited in the spring of 1876, when Disraeli announced the Royal Titles Bill, and argue that the Bill acted as a catalyst for the debate that shaped Victorian attitudes to imperialism. It shall do so by examining British newspapers and the debates that occupied their pages in the years leading up to and following the Act.