ABSTRACT

The idea of ‘Greater Britain’ has been associated with the later Victorian era, but it was anticipated in most important particulars. This article examines perhaps the most ambitious single text on the British empire produced during the first half of the nineteenth century: Robert Montgomery Martin’s five-volume, 3,000 page History of the British Colonies. Published in 1834-5, in the midst of seminal debates over imperial administrative and commercial policy, Martin’s opus offered the first comprehensive account of Britain’s overseas possessions. Read in context, the History emerges as a political clarion call. It sought not only to awaken the British to the worth and unity of their allegedly undervalued foreign dependencies, but also to intervene in specific controversies about the workings of imperial government, and to reveal the Divine purpose that lay behind Britain’s ascent to global power. Martin’s History, it is suggested, was a monumental and in some ways path-breaking attempt to fuse religion and statistics with arguments about the future of the empire.

摘要

“大不列颠”的概念与维多利亚时代后期有关，但它在最重要的细节中是预料之中的。本文考察了 19 世纪上半叶关于大英帝国的最雄心勃勃的单一文本：罗伯特·蒙哥马利·马丁 (Robert Montgomery Martin) 的五卷、3,000 页的《不列颠殖民地历史》。出版于 1834-5 年，在关于帝国行政和商业政策的开创性辩论中，马丁的作品提供了对英国海外财产的第一个全面描述。在上下文中阅读历史作为政治号角出现。它不仅试图唤醒英国人意识到他们所谓的被低估的外国附属物的价值和统一性，而且还试图介入有关帝国政府运作的具体争议，并揭示英国崛起成为全球权力背后的神圣目的。有人认为，马丁的历史是将宗教和统计数据与关于帝国未来的争论融合在一起的具有纪念意义且在某些方面具有开创性的尝试。