602 research
TRANSCRIPT
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Courtney MisichMay 2, 2023
HST 602Dr. de Boer
Empire as a Perspective
John Darwin discusses writing about empire stating, “Some historians of empire still feel
obliged to proclaim their moral revulsion against it, in case writing about empire might be
thought to endorse it. Others like to convey the impression that writing against empire is an act
of great courage...But they reveal something interesting: that for all the ink spilt on their deeds
and misdeeds, empires remain rather mysterious, realms of myth and misconception.”1 This
stems from the long history of studying empires. British historians have been exploring themes
of empire in history since the seventeenth-century with Edward Gibbon. The main themes that
were examined in imperial history were political, economic, and masculine aspects. Regarding
the masculine aspects, the historians would create empire that personified their idea of
masculinity focusing on men, their great deeds, and the public sphere. In the 1980s, there was a
shift in the study of empire that focused on more of the cultural and metropole-periphery aspects
of empire. This expanded the topics and interests for historians to study. After 2000, cultural
history intersected with gender, daily life, and class studies of empire that created new methods
and perspectives through which to explore empire. While the study into the metropole-periphery
relationship continues to be an area of examination, historians have begun to explore how the
peripheries interacted with each other. This expansion of the field of empire allows for historians
to uncover new perspectives and themes to understand how empire was experienced.
Historians have developed new methods of analyzing sources and re-conceptualized the
idea of empire. They have become creative in using empire as a perspective in order to analyze
1 John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain, (Allen Lane, London, 2012), XI.
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different layers of history and comprehend their larger impact. This expansion of perspectives
has allowed for historians to understand the various legal, economic, ideological, structural, and
personal aspects of empires. Historians reconstruct legal aspects of empire to show how the legal
culture of both the colonies and metropole created larger inner connected imperial structure.
Historians applied economic aspects of empires to observe the traditional commercial enterprises
of the empire regulated by the metropole and how commerce is utilized by empire for governing.
As for an ideological feature of empire, P.J. Marshall and John Darwin used this approach to
question how the ideas and imperial cultures built, sustained, and ultimately failed empire. The
structural perspective correlated with the ideological, economic, and legal aspects of empire by
focusing on how the relationships and daily functions of empire worked. Christopher Bayly
provided a thematic approach to the structural components of empire and how it dealt with the
crises that arose. Historians analyzed private aspects of empires that look at individual
experiences of empire and how it influenced individuals in both the metropole and periphery.
These are just a few new ways in which the British Empire has been explored in the recent
historiography. The various works will be grouped by the scale in which they analyze empire;
world history, imperial history, and micro-history. The various perspectives create new historical
understandings of the construction, function, maintenance, and experience of empire.
World Histories
A world history utilizes empire through a broad lens that contextualizes the components
of empire. These imperial components are used to compare contemporary empires not just to
provide imperial motivations in their colonies but situate how empires respond to problems.
Christopher Bayly and J. H. Elliot write world histories that compare empires and their impact
on the rest of the world. Bayly and Elliot argue that the structures of empire is significant in
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order to understand their impact on the world. Both historians focus on how the interactions
within empires affected their structures and societies. World history allows empires to be
explored through their larger structures and informal influences.
C.A. Bayly constructs a world history that argues for uniformities as a result of
globalization, which he frames with an American and European ‘core’ against the rest of the
world. By using an imperial framework for the history, Bayly uses empire as a method to
understand the long nineteenth-century. The imperial structure reinforces the difference between
the ‘core’ and the rest of the world in Bayly’s thematic analysis. His analysis of the Asian
revolutions between 1815 and 1865 discusses the events briefly and lists the common features
which all relate to the ‘core’. He writes, “these outbreaks were reactions to the worldwide
expansion of Western colonialism … internal problems of dealing with ethnic and religious
communities in these great polities were deepened by the expansion of new ideologies,
especially Christianity… [and] population growth and local economic imbalances, only very
indirectly related to the world system.”2 This intrusion of the ‘core’ with Asia shows how Bayly
uses an imperial framework to support his argument. The European perspective or influence is
used for context of the rest of the world, where the ‘core’ is the uniform factor for the world.
Additionally, the discussion over nationalism has colonial “patriots” using the language of
nationalism to assert individual rights or as a representative of their culture. Bayly’s example of
Ram Mohun Roy states that he “argued in London that the rights of the Mughal Empire, now
perceived as a state rather than as a universal polity, had been violated by the English East India
Company.”3 Roy’s argument that the Mughal Empire was a state and had rights reinforces
Bayly’s imperial structure and argument of uniformity. The Mughal Empire can have the same 2 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004), 151.3 Bayly, The Birth, 237.
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rights and status as ‘core’ states changes how the Mughals understood themselves. Roy places
them within the ‘core’ understanding of nationalism to combat imperial expansion in India.
Overall Bayly’s argument of growing uniformity is shown with the discussions between the
‘core’ and the world. This interconnected nature has the European state as the largest influence in
creating that uniformity from their empires.
Bayly’s structural aspect of empire has the uniformity that results from the interactions
and influences of European empires. His discussion of the architecture of cities around the world
has European-styles dominating the landscape.4 This not only has the world’s cities mirror each
other, but the influence on the world with the growth of uniformity from the European empires.
Bayly stresses this relationship consistently, demonstrating how the imperial relationship worked
globally. He has European interactions in Asia and North Africa creating global crisis through
warfare. While the European empires managed to survive, several in Asia and North Africa
crumbled.5 Uniformity resulted from the European empires expanding their imperial efforts. This
empire’s structural components provide the historical complexities and show how empires
utilized ideas and technology for their benefit, as well as how the periphery influenced the
structure of empire and dealt with the consequences of imperial actions and ideals.
J. H. Elliott explores the interactions and influences of empires like Bayly, however he
focuses on the cultural influences of emigrants on empire by comparing the English and Spanish
American colonies. He argues that the empires were interacting and influenced each other as
well as creating a cultural system in the creation and running of colonies in the Americas. Elliott
focuses on the structures and ideologies of the empires beginning with the foundations in the
Americas. He begins by focusing on Hernan Cortes and Captain Christopher Newport who
4 Bayly, The Birth, 384.5 Bayly, The Birth, 90-91
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founded the Spanish and English Empires respectively. The process of colonization described
has both countries colonizing neighboring territory but significantly Elliott shows how this
prepared them for overseas expansion. He describes their local colonization as “the process of
conquest and settlement helped to establish forms of behavior, and create habits of mind, easily
transportable to distant parts of the world in the dawning age of European overseas expansion.”6
The imperial mindset that Elliott describes is important to how the structures and ideologies of
empires function. The process of possession of the land demonstrates this mindset, beginning
with both England and Spain accepting the Roman legal principle of res nullius to justify their
possession. Then there was a ceremonial act to demonstrate the formal taking of possession.
Following this, the crown had to settle the land.7 The justification of overseas colonization in the
methods of national tradition solidifies the system of colonizing the world. Elliott shows how the
various ceremonial acts were influenced by each other, such as naming colonies either after
religious, royal figures or after their hometowns. The empires learned from each other in the
settling and justifications of their new territories, but their development was never contemporary.
However, the development of structural components to maintain an empire was learned
from the “multiplicity of micro-worlds” that challenged the imperial mindset.8 Elliott shows how
these challenges, specifically the native peoples, were confronted by the Europeans through
religion, civilizing, and exploitation of resources. This is where Elliott highlights one of the key
differences in the Spanish and American interactions; he focuses on incorporation versus
exclusion. The difference in the interactions with native peoples and colonists later on illustrates
the level of interaction and influence between the empires. Moreover, Elliott utilizes the formal
6 J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 17.7 Elliott, Empire of the Atlantic World, 30-31.8 Elliott, Empire of the Atlantic World, 57.
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empires of Spain and England to show the battle to maintain their empires. This use of a
structural aspect of empire allows Elliot to show the interactions and expectations not just of the
state but how the cultural, societal, and political realities of the colonies differed from the
metropole. Elliot uses the aftermath of the Seven Years War on the American colonies to show
the breakdown of this structure. As a result of implementing colonial administrative and fiscal
reforms, the relationship between the colonies and crown became increasingly strained. England
struggled to maintain its colonies and lost the North American ones in 1781, while Spain was
still expanding. Spain would face similar problems to those of the British fifty years later. The
life span of the structural components of empires in the Americas provides historians with new
views of empire and Elliott illustrates how comparison of empires offers new analysis and
questions to be explored.
World history provides a broader scope to analyze empire and understand the context in
which it develops. C.A. Bayly and J.H. Elliot argue that the structures of empire in order to
understand their impact on world history. Both historians focus on the effects of the metropole-
periphery relationship by explaining how the colonies impacted the metropole. This concept
from post-colonialism has the imperial structure being challenged and altering the metropole,
which is an important new perspective to understand the empire. Bayly and Elliot provide
important insight into empires and how their structures influenced the world.
Imperial Histories
The imperial histories focus on the history of one empire in contrast to a global
perspective. These histories show the complications of empire and how it was used in specific
regions. John Darwin’s Unfinished Empire and Anthony Webster’s The Debate on the Rise of the
British Empire both discuss how the ideological and structural components are created and
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maintained. Darwin focuses on the first British Empire, in which he argues empire was a hybrid
and unplanned political entity. While Webster’s empire uses the historiography of the British
Empire, he argues that understanding the rise of British imperialism needs the context of the
historiographical debate to understand the changing structures of empire. Finally, Jonathan
Eacott and P. J. Marshall discuss the relationship between India, the Americas, and Britain.
Eacott asserts that there is an economic aspect of empire that informs imperial policy and builds
relationships between colonies. Marshall argues to understand the development and of the British
Empire from the first to second empire, an understanding of India and the Americas is needed.
He uses the structural aspects of empire in order to display the contradictions and how rhetoric
plays into the imperial structure. An imperial scope of an empire focuses on one empire from
various perspectives, which can be metropole and peripheries or comparison of several colonies.
John Darwin argues that the British Empire was an unfinished and hybrid construction.
He explains the problems of the uniform and structural aspects of empire that is traditionally
represented with the British Empire. His three main problems are the multiple versions of
empire, the differences in command and control, and intraimperial activities that had external
influences.9 In the context of these questions, Darwin explores the three centuries of British
Imperial expansion to study historical empire-building. Beginning with his first problem, Darwin
address how it appears there are two types of colony during the First British Empire, a settler and
trade colony. These apparently different types of colonialism, Darwin argues, are similar in their
initial contact with their new environment. Both types of colonies had to decide on what to trade
with the locals, how adapt within the local environment, and how to settle there. Darwin
describes the problems, saying “the beginnings of contact followed a similar pattern and posed
similar problems for the English intruders. They had to decide in advance how to deal with the 9 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, XIII.
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local inhabitants and hope they had guessed right about their political systems and commercial
desires.”10 This problem of empire grew as the colony types diverged and created clear Atlantic
and Asian empires. These competitive versions of the British Empire were shown in the
ideologies and structures used by England to govern them. This builds into Darwin’s second
problem, the command and control of the empire which is clearly shown in their ruling methods
in India. The method of command has British officials appointed at home and using unrestrained
power in India.11 This illustrates how the planning of initial contact had changed in Asia,
differing from the settler colonies like Canada and America which both had aspects of self-
government. Darwin utilizes the first two problems of multiple versions of empire and the lack
of consistent command and control to demonstrate that the structures and ideologies of the
British Empire were unplanned.
Darwin’s approach to empire is showing how the structures and ideologies were a result
of many changing interests that drove the empire without a clear plan or goal. His problems with
empire clearly deconstruct the traditional view that the empire was concisely planned,
commanded, controlled, and driven by Britain. However, Darwin provides numerous examples
of how the empire was composed of many competitive interests, such as the East India Company
or Caribbean planters. Additionally he shows that the British had to compromise to control and
command the empire with local elites like in India and China to manage trade. Finally Darwin
breaks down the last of the imperial structures and ideologies by providing evidence that
imperial activities were driven by extra influences. He does this with the English policy towards
imperial violence during the first empire because of the views of the Spanish Empire’s
violence.12 He also discusses how attitudes towards British Asia changed in the early twentieth-10 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, 34.11 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, 202.12 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, 30.
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century due to the need to compete with other European empires.13 Overall, Darwin provides a
method to break down the imperial structures and ideologies through the contradictions in their
policies.
Darwin’s breakdown of the imperial structure and ideologies fits well with Anthony
Webster’s The Debate on the British Empire. Both historians attempt to understand the
underlying ideologies and structures of the empire; however Webster does so through the
historiography of the empire. This is similar to Darwin’s first problem of the multiple versions of
the empire because Webster addresses how the empire’s historical historiography affects the
current changes in historiography and views of imperialism. The first large change to the British
Empire was a result of the Napoleonic Wars, where Webster argues that the British became
secure in their imperial might. Then during the late Victorian period, he uses J.R. Seeley’s
writings on empire to demonstrate how the imperial project was changing: the idea of “absent-
minded imperialist” may have formed the empire but strengthening the empire would ensure
Britain’s place in the changing world.14 Webster demonstrates that the outside influences on the
British Empire at the end of the Victorian period shaped the imperial ideologies of Seeley and
others. This grew during the end of the nineteenth-century with the debate over capitalism by
Atkinson Hobson, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, V.I. Lenin, and A. M. Eckstein. The debate
focused on the relationship between capitalism and imperialism to understand empire. The focus
of this debate has Webster’s structure of empire being uncertain and unstable. However he
demonstrates that empire’s flexibility allows for reinterpretation such as in John Gallagher and
Ronald Robinson’s thesis on free trade imperialism.15 This new view of an informal imperial
13 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, 89.14 Anthony Webster, The Debate on the Rise of the British Empire, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 36-37.15 Webster, The Debate, 68.
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empire allows for the previous debates and views to be challenged but also for new
interpretations of empire. The criticism of informal empire has brought new ideas about empire,
such as Andre Gunder Frank’s integrated global capitalist system method of exploring empire.
The criticism allowed for other interpretations to reconstruct empire, such as postmodernism and
especially cultural history.
The perspective of cultural history after the 1980s brought new life into the field of
imperial history. Webster discusses Linda Colley and these new perspectives stating, “that the
explosion in interest in imperialism and culture in the 1980s helped her overcome her rather
negative undergraduate experience of imperial history as a ‘comprehensive masculine enterprise’
preoccupied with the affairs of conquering power.”16 This trend has continued with expansion of
culture into areas of race, gender, and class. Moreover Webster states that the future of the
expanding field of empire, “what is striking is not merely the geographical breadth and depth of
scholarship in discussing the effects of empire on so many parts of the world, but also the range
of different approaches- economic, social, cultural, and environmental.”17 He views the
expanding imperial field as having a renewed intensity.
Imperial Comparisons of India and America
Imperial history has explored the relationship between the metropole-periphery but there
has been a new shift into examining how the peripheries interacted with each other. These
studies still include the metropole but place their attention on how the peripheries react and
interact with each other and based on the metropole’s imperial decisions. The main focus for
historians has been to compare India and the North American colonies. The decision to unite
these two colonies often correlates to the period between the Seven Years War and the end of the
16 Webster, The Debate, 105.17 Webster, The Debate, 181.
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American Revolution. This has been acknowledged as a decisive turning point in the British
Empire; specifically the British expansion of territory, loss of the American colonies, and the
shift of their imperial focus east. P.J. Marshall and Jonathan Eacott study the imperial
relationships between India and America.
P.J. Marshall argues that India and the American colonies are linked by the British
presence, assumptions, and objectives. Marshall explores how the interactions between the
British, India, and Americas explain why there were differences between America and India. The
focus of Marshall’s study is on the years between 1750 and 1783. He explains that these years
are critical in studying the British Empire because after the Seven Years War British imperial
ambitions change. There is a new system of direct control and reforms over the colonies than
before the war which creates tensions. Marshall compares the differences in the colonies by
chapters and time frames. The chapters the ‘Old’ Empire and the ‘New’ Empire best represent
this comparison and divergence between India and America in the British Empire. Marshall
describes the ‘old’ empire as “the proposition that the British Empire was Protestant,
commercial, maritime, and free was rarely contradicted in mainstream eighteenth-century
political discourse. It was a slogan that encapsulated for contemporaries the dynamic expansion
of trade and the diffusion of British culture and ideals.”18 The ideological component of the
British Empire being a commercial, maritime, and free were the aspects that the British
propagated in the Americas. Marshall holds this ideology in conflict with the growing
significance of the sovereignty of parliament. The British parliament was encroaching on what
the Americans viewed as the free component of the British imperial ideology, which the
Americans regarded themselves in that British tradition.
18 P. J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America, C.1750-1783, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 160.
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The differences in perspectives resulted in the break between America and Britain.
Marshall demonstrates how this ideology was thrown into crisis from the British victory in the
Seven Years War. He states, “The long-established legal doctrine throughout the British Empire
was that Christian people conquered by the British crown, such as the French in Canada and
Grenada, kept their own laws until the king chose to introduce other laws. Infidel peoples, a
category that presumably included the Native Americans and the Indians brought under
Company rule, immediately forfeited their right to their own laws.”19 The difference in policy
towards focuses on the various new territories in their empire. Marshall states that this change in
ideology went further in India and describes it as “the total antithesis of all ideals for a British
empire that was characterized in freedom. It was a deeply rooted stereotype of nearly all
European notions over many centuries about government in Asia that it was despotic.”20 The
British treatment of India was based in their stereotypes that contradicted the ideology of the old
empire that is symbolized by their rule in America. The disparate treatment of the colonies by
Britain provides Marshall with methods to explore the India and American relationship.
The British Empire was established as a commercial enterprise. Jonathan Eacott
examines commerce as the connecting factor of the empire, not only to the metropole but
connecting the colonies to each other separately from Britain. His approach uses the India trade
to demonstrate this idea of trade fostering imperial ties and expansion. The Calico Acts
demonstrate this connection of empire; he argues “between 1695 and 1700, the government
appointed governors to enforce laws prohibiting pirates from returning to the Atlantic colonies…
and established special courts and commissions of oyer and terminer in the Atlantic colonies and
Company factories in India.”21 This development of government enforces connections between 19 Marshall, The Making and Unmaking, 184-185.20 Marshall, The Making and Unmaking, 197.21 Jonathan Eacott, Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830, (UNC Press, 2016) 89.
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the colonies that benefits commerce as well as creating the relationship between India and the
Atlantic. Eacott develops this idea to continue after the American Revolution showing the
relationship between India and Americas remained. The link of commerce rebuilt relationships
between America, India, and Britain after the war and allowed for the redefining of them.
However Eacott addresses that the redefinition stating, “Many of the British participants in the
nominally American trade had gained their experience in India working for the Company, and
they traded with Company representatives in Company colonies. This trade was extralegal, but it
was a part and product of the British Empire.”22 The new relationship created codependency
among the three nations based on the importance of commerce.
Eacott demonstrated how empire combines both economic and political aspects. This
empire is not solely political but the combination of politics and economics informs the
conditions of empire and how imperial influence continues after empire’s death. The method of
combination between India and America provides new ideas about how empire functions, if the
effects of the empire are not only by the metropole but are informed periphery to periphery the
study of empire can be expanded to the relationships of colonies. The commercial relationship
between the colonies recognizes that the colonies were informed and interacted with each other
outside of the imperial structure. This relationship creates new questions to ask of the empire but
also address the impact of empire on colonies’ relationships to each other. Eacott shows this with
India and America, where they learn from each other’s relationship to England but also
commercial connections that are vital for how the colonies define themselves. In this aspect, the
colonies learn from each other, America learned how to utilize commerce while protecting itself.
India gained trade and exploitation but ultimately saw there was a path out of empire. Eacott
utilizes a concept that allows for empire to be re-constructed as a concept away from only 22 Eacott, Selling Empire, 274.
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metropole-periphery by beginning to look at how periphery-periphery interact and are informed
by the metropole.
Imperial history provides for a focus on one empire by focusing on certain imperial
aspects such as periphery-periphery, economic, or structural. These histories show the
complications of empire and how it was used in specific regions. John Darwin and Anthony
Webster demonstrate how the ideas and aspects of empire evolve and represent the contemporary
interests. Darwin contributes the unplanned British Empire that was motivated by individual
interests and local situations rather than from London. Webster examined the individual
contributions and interests of historians in their discussion of empire. The development of new
imperial studies by Webster shows the expansion of perspectives accepted in the study of
empire. Finally Jonathan Eacott and P. J. Marshall discuss the relationship between India, the
Americas, and Britain. Eacott contributes to the awareness between colonies about their
treatment by the metropole. Their awareness stems from trade and political relationship decided
by the metropole. Marshall demonstrated how to use the treatment of India and America to
understand the shift in the British Empire and why the two colonies were treated differently. He
uses the structural aspects of empire in order to display the contradictions and how rhetoric plays
into the imperial structure. An imperial scope of an empire focuses on one empire from various
perspectives, which can be metropole and peripheries or comparison of several colonies.
Collective Histories
By using a smaller scale to observe empire, historians have been able to understand the
daily experiences of empire. Through collective histories, the impact of empire becomes more
accessible to those who lived in the empire. Mary Bilder uses the legal approach to empire
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through the case study of the colony of Rhode Island. Her use of anecdotes to create a collective
history about the impact of the English common law on the colony demonstrates how colonists
experienced the empire. Emma Rothschild explores personal aspects of empire through one
family’s collective history. This personal aspect of empire extends to both the metropole and
periphery but demonstrates how the metropole was changed by the imperial experience. The use
of collective and micro-histories by both historians emphasize that new perspectives on empire
can be explored in different components of society.
Mary Bilder constructs the legal structures of empire that envelope the political and
structural components of empire. She frames her legal approach to empire as one where the
balance of empire was in flux. By focusing on the legal aspect empire, Bilder incorporates both
the metropole and periphery through colonial appeals to the Privy Council. The empire becomes
one where the legal discrepancies are the focus; the differences between the metropole and
periphery are what make the empire. Bilder’s focus on the discrepancies is what makes this
version of empire different from other versions. The development of the legal aspects of empire
is key in Bilder’s analysis moving from the larger context of the empire then demonstrating how
the legal aspects such as inheritance cases and appeals to the privy council. The larger imperial
context of the British view of the Americas is “myth of the seventeenth-century colonies as being
a world of ‘law without lawyers’ has maintained a powerful hold.”23 Bilder uses this idea and
demonstrates how it is implemented in the difference between the laws of England and Rhode
Island. This inheritance in the legal structure of the empire is shown through England’s scrutiny
of Rhode Island’s charter. The debate over the charter represents how the legal components of
empire worked, England set the terms but while the periphery could deviate to accommodate
23 Mary Sarah Bilder, The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 15.
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their situation. However, England’s acceptance to the toleration was conditional that it did
interfere with the terms. The legal aspect of empire that Bilder constructs in Rhode Island has
greater implications for the study of empire; the legal realm of empire goes beyond laws and
politics. She argues that it allowed for the conditions of the colonies and later independent states
to function politically and culturally. Bilder shows that the formal structure of the transatlantic
constitution ended in 1776, but the legal and political culture in Rhode Island remained similar.
Repugnancy, an act in opposition to the law, was continued from the transatlantic constitution as
Bilder shows Chief Justice John Marshall using in Marbury v. Madison.24 The legal aspect of
empire can be expanded beyond laws and legal precedent to be used to study how the empire and
its actions affected the people of the colonies.
The personal aspect of empire is central in The Inner Life of Empire by Emma Rothschild,
who bases her argument around one Scottish family, the Johnstones. Rothschild demonstrates
how the changes and expansion of the British Empire affected those back in Britain. For the
Johnstones, the empire provided a means of redemption since the family was consistently in
debt. John, a younger son, went to India and became the financial supporter of five siblings. This
personal aspect of empire is based on a family being both in the metropole and periphery, which
allows for new insight into how the empire ran and how it was experienced back in Britain.
Rothschild also discusses the influences of commercial aspect of empires and enlightenment on
the Johnstones through their experiences, such as the East India Company with John, a middle
son rather than one of the four girls, going into the empire. As for the women, Rothschild
enforces their role as masters of the family network and maintained the information that
determined the family’s fortune. The women were the center of the personal component of
empire and maintained communication between family members, especially due to the family’s 24 Bilder, Transatlantic Constitution, 194.
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unstable finances. This is important due to the family’s sense of financial uncertainty with the
empire, whether it stemmed from shipments of foreign goods, income, or the loss of a job abroad
due to the changes within the imperial complex.25 The Johnstones would sell foreign goods to
supplement their income while John was a merchant in India. Additionally, Rothschild uses
historical understanding in interpreting empire, where she compiles the sources to understand
how the Johnstones understood the empire and their role in it. She also uses historical
understanding to inform the personal aspect of empire of the Johnstones, as she states “an
exercise in moral observation, or in moral imagination.”26 The notion of ‘personal empire’ has
allowed Rothschild to explore the implications of empire through individuals’ experiences, such
as how it affected familial relationships and their perspectives. The differences between William
and John over the matter of slavery serve as an example of this; William owned property in the
East Indies and supported the slave trade. When John returned from India, he was an opponent of
slavery. The difference was that William remained in Britain and gained his wealth through
marriages and John earned his money by working hard in the East India Company. This analysis
of empire allows for the stresses on the people to be shown, as well as how the larger structural
and ideological aspects of empires are functioning.
A smaller scale allows for historians to understand the daily experiences of empire.
Collective histories show how the individual interacted with empire. Mary Bilder created a legal
structure of empire that had individuals shaping their colonial world based on the metropole’s
laws. This created a legal culture that persists and shows the lasting impact of the empire on
America. Rothschild’s family collective history demonstrates how people of the metropole used
the empire to improve their situation at home. She shows that the metropole was also changed by 25 Emma Rothschild, the Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 24.26 Rothschild, The Inner Life, 301.
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the colonial relationship through the experiences of those like John, who worked in the empire,
and the sisters who experienced the new ideas that empire brought back. The use of collective
history by both historians emphasizes that the empire relationship changes both cultures involved
through its many aspects, both legal and personal.
Conclusion
Historians have developed new methods of analyzing sources and re-conceptualized the
idea of empire. They have become creative in using empire as a perspective in order to analyze
different layers of history and comprehend their larger impact. Moreover by examining how
historians have expanded their study of empire, the studies are allowing for new and interesting
methods to understand empire. Global histories incorporate empires as a shaping force in the
world has changed to create a multiple perspective view of the empire that breaks away from the
traditional political and economic view. This correlates with imperial histories as well, first by
arguing for an incomplete and unplanned empire. Then historians focus on the relationship
between peripheries demonstrates that the empire can be explored with minimal attention to the
metropole. The interest in non-traditional perspectives is truly explored in the smaller scale with
micro-histories and collective histories. They allow historians to show the motivations of
individuals and how the empire truly functioned. The study of empire has continued to adapt and
expand with changes in the historical theories. However empire has managed to persist within
the historical conversations and continue to grow.