Imperial Culture and the "Civilising Mission"

The British Empire was sustained not only by military force and economic power but by a pervasive ideology — a set of beliefs, assumptions, and cultural practices that justified imperial rule and shaped how both colonisers and colonised understood the imperial project. Central to this ideology was the concept of the "civilising mission": the belief that Britain had a duty to bring civilisation, Christianity, and progress to "less advanced" peoples.

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The Ideology of Empire

Racial Thinking

The nineteenth century witnessed the development of increasingly systematic racial ideologies that ranked human societies in a hierarchy with white Europeans at the top. These ideas had deep roots, but they were given pseudo-scientific authority in the Victorian period.