The failure of imperial citizenship

Abstract

This chapter discusses the failure of imperial citizenship in Britain. The efforts of late Victorian and Edwardian imperial ideologues to articulate a concept of citizenship which could unite Britons at home and in the Empire ended in frustration because broader the public was not convinced of the necessity of a clearly defined imperial citizenship. All the imperial ideologues considered in this volume saw the social idea of citizenship as more important than the political idea and this was not acceptable to most Britons. It offended the prevalent belief in the superiority of the British race and it rejected the consensual notion of identity upon which contemporary ideas of citizenship were based.