Institutionalizing a New ‘Imperial’ in Turn-of-the-Century Britain

Abstract

The first institution devoted to the study of the history of the Britain’s empire was founded at Oxford in 1905, twenty-two years after the appearance of the Expansion of England, and ten after John Seeley’s death. The Beit Chair of Colonial History took root at a moment of pitched activism by self-professed imperialists then engrossed in debates over defense, trade, intra-imperial emigration, and national fitness.