‘There are Races, as there are Trees’: Challenges to Domestic Empire in Late Victorian Politics

Abstract

The splitting up of mankind into a multitude of infinitesimal governments, in accordance with their actual differences of dialect or their presumed differences of race, would be to undo the work of civilisation and renounce ail the benefits which the slow and painful process of con-solidation has procured for mankind... There are races, as there are trees, which cannot stand erect by themselves, and which, if their growth is not hindered by artificial constraints, are ail the healthier for twining round some robuster stem.