Imperialism: The Storyand Significance of a Political Word, 1840-1960

Professor Koebner’s comprehensive study, published in 1961, of the changing concepts of Empire ended at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At his death he collected several thousand excerpts and notes. Mr Schmidt has compiled them and adding some chapters of his own to bring the inquiry up to the beginning of the 1960s. Mr Schmidt first carries the study of Empire to the political debates of the nineteenth century. He describes the various early meanings of imperialism, how it developed as a party slogan originally directed against Disraeli, and then how, towards the end of the century, it began to assume an assertive, positive tone. Mr Schmidt shows the further change the word in the Boer Wars, World War I and World War II. This study is not simply the biography of a word, but a history of political consciousness, important to historians and political scientists alike.