The Fabians and the British Empire, Part I

In nearly all instances, however, historians assert that Fabians did not pay any attention to foreign affairs, including the British Empire, until the outbreak of the Boer War. While it is true that the Boer War was a pivotal moment in development of Fabian thought on the issue, one can find interesting perspectives on imperialism in the fifteen years before 1899 as well. And so, because of these early opinions on imperialism, and the lack thus far of any other historian to focus on these years and these opinions when discussing Fabians and imperialism, it is necessary to start there.

Footnotes:

[1] Bernard Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperialist Thought, 1895-1914, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), 2nd ed., pp. 15, 54-62, passim, and J.M. Winter, Socialism and the Challenge of War, (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 42, 50.

[2] Some of the historians who have dealt with this issue have included Elie Halévy in his History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century: Volume 5: Imperialism and the Rise of Labour, 1895-1905, (NY: Barnes and Noble, 1961 ed., orig. pub. in 1926); Bernard Semmel in his Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperialist Thought, 1895-1914, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968, 2nd ed.); Bernard Porter in his Critics of Empire: British Radical Attitudes to Colonialism in Africa, 1895-1914, (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1968); A.J. McBriar in his Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884-1918, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1962); J.M. Winter in his Socialism and the Challenge of War, (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974); Martin Wiener in his Between Two Worlds: The Political Thought of Graham Wallas, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); and Francis Lee in his Fabianism and Colonialism: The Life and Political Thought of Lord Sydney Olivier, (London: Defiant Books, 1988).

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