Historians

Points to the efforts of conservative imperialists to manufacture support for their cause as indictive of public opinion

JBM Mackenzie

Argues that the British working class were generally apathetic to imperialism and highlights the limitations in inferring popular opinion from what was promoted by the government and media

Richard Price

Argues that much of British policy from the 1880s focused on maintaining a pseudo-empire working to protect access to the Suez Canal

John Darwin

Argues the loss of Britain’s colonies in North America brought a ‘swing to the east’

Vincent Harlow

Argues the empire was split into the ‘formal empire’ and the ‘informal empire’

John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson

Argues ‘men on the spot’ played the crucial role in extending British control

John Galbraith

Argues imperialism in North Africa and Asia was accompanied by a narrative of ‘Orientialism’ defining ‘the West’ in opposition to the fixed and subordinate ‘Orient’

Edward Said