Disraeli's imperialism, 1866–1868: a question of timing

Abstract

Important landmarks, especially on the well-trodden ground of British history, sometimes appear to be so precisely delineated that they leave little room for re-interpretation. Yet if familiar episodes are looked at from perspectives which pose new questions and call for different evidence the result may well be unexpectedly illuminating. The making of the Second Reform Act is a good example. Though the subject of close scholarly investigation in terms of British parliamentary politics, it has not hitherto been viewed as only one of many closely linked domestic and foreign pressures which bore upon the British polity between 1866 and 1868 and which together exercised a decisive influence upon it. Reform, public order, economic recession, integration of the classes, concern about defence, and the challenge to Britain's international standing, were all components of the same crisis, and whether by chance or ingenuity it was the same power groups which had to handle them within the confines of time and circumstance.