“The Foreign Element”: Newcomers and the Rhetoric of Race, Nation, and Empire in “Oxbridge” Undergraduate Culture, 1850–1920

Abstract

The Oxford and Cambridge man has long inspired fascination both in Great Britain and abroad. Many have, in fact, acquired an illusory understanding of these enigmatic university students through various caricatures and representations created in literature and film. Yet, despite an apparent level of popular interest, relatively few attempts have been made to understand the culture of male undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge in a systematic and scholarly way. With the exception of Sheldon Rothblatt's work on student life in the early nineteenth century, J. A. Mangan's skillful exploration of the cult of athleticism's impact on the ancient universities, and some select studies of individual student societies and organizations, we know very little about the ways in which undergraduates lived their lives, saw their worlds, and viewed those who were traditionally excluded from these milieus. We know even less perhaps, despite the existence of Richard Symonds's examination of the relationship between Oxford and empire, about the ways “Oxbridge” undergraduates saw themselves as Britons and leaders of an imperial and “superior” English race. The conflation of English and British is intentional here. Applying English attributes to Britons did not generally present many problems for university men, even those from Scottish, Welsh, and Anglo-Irish backgrounds. “Britishness” and “Englishness” were often applied interchangeably by Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates although, as others have observed, uses of the term “English” tended most often to refer to the admired attributes or “personal” and “communal” traits of Britons, particularly those among the elite.