Ruling the World: Freedom, Civilisation and Liberalism in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire

by Alan Lester, Kate Boehme (Contributor), Peter Mitchell (Contributor)

Ruling the World tells the story of how the largest and most diverse empire in history was governed, everywhere and all at once. Focusing on some of the most tumultuous years of Queen Victoria's reign, Alan Lester, Kate Boehme and Peter Mitchell adopt an entirely new perspective to explain how the men in charge of the British Empire sought to manage simultaneous events across the globe. Using case studies including Canada, South Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, India and Afghanistan, they reveal how the empire represented a complex series of trade-offs between Parliament's, colonial governors', colonists' and colonised peoples' agendas. They also highlight the compromises that these men made as they adapted their ideals of freedom, civilization and liberalism to the realities of an empire imposed through violence and governed in the interests of Britons.

ebook

Published December 17, 2020

About the author

Alan Lester is an English historian, historical geographer and author who has worked for Sussex University since 2000. He was appointed Professor of Historical Geography in 2006. He is known for his research on imperial networks, colonial humanitarianism and imperial governance.

In Colonisation and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance he and co-author Fae Dussart analysed the ways in which men considering themselves humane oversaw the destruction of Indigenous societies. His book Ruling the World: Freedom, Civilisation and Liberalism in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire, he examined how imperial governance worked 'everywhere and all at once' across the British Empire at key moments during the nineteenth century.

Lester gave the Distinguished Historical Geographer Lecture at the 2022 Association of American Geographers annual conference. He is co-editor of the Manchester University Press's Studies in Imperialism research monograph series. Lester has been described as “the pioneer of the idea” of “a key concept much used in recent ‘new imperial history’ writing … that of the imperial network”.

Lester has written of his concern at the recent politicisation of imperial history, and critiqued British academic Nigel Biggar's representation of colonialism.