Though Fabianism and the Empire was quickly forgotten and extra copies had to be remaindered the following year, the issues brought up within it continued to reverberate. Two years after Shaw wrote his tract, H.G. Wells - though not yet a Fabian [1] - popularized Fabian ideas of efficiency in his Anticipations. Focusing much of his attention in Anticipations on future scientific and technological advances, he nevertheless talks about imperialism, if in an off-handed way. Toward the end of the book he argues that imperialism as was then known was anachronistic, as was the idea, exemplified by the Roman Empire, of empires eventually disintegrating. Rather he maintained:
- On such a supposition all the current imperialism is the most foolish defiance of the inevitable, the maddest waste of blood, treasure, and emotion that man ever made. So, indeed, it might be-so, indeed, I certainly think it would be-if it were not that the epoch of the post-road and sailing-ship is at an end. We are in the beginning of a new time... [2]
This "new time" would require closer and closer unity until the World State was created. Although he wrote in a letter to Elizabeth Healey on July 2, 1901 that Anticipations was "designed to undermine and destroy" among other things "the British Empire" it seems clear that Wells took a position similar to that of Shaw in Fabianism and the Empire. [3] Both were harshly critical of what currently existed in the first decade of the twentieth century, but focused much more attention on the future when a socialist world state would eventually come about. The existing edifices may have been distasteful, but they were necessary for the inevitable progression to socialism to occur. It was for this reason, historian Warren Wagar argues, that H.G. Wells "was particularly fond of the idea of a federation of the English-speaking peoples" which could "act as the possible nucleus of a world union." [4] Though not ideal in the long-term, a British empire or commonwealth was better than none at all. Again, this idea was shared by Shaw, who argued that in absence of a world state which could "internationalize" the gold and diamond mines of the South African Rand, the mines could just as easily be "British-Imperialized." [5] Although empires would eventually become anachronistic as well, they would be a necessary step in the inevitable march toward international socialism.
