Moments of empire : perceptions of Kurt Lasswitz and H.G. Wells

"To nineteenth-century imperialists, empire was a fine thing. It enabled the continuance of a European expansionism, increased trade, and boosted economic and social prosperity. It built railways and bridges and roads; constructed massive navies, commissioned works of art, and brought the Christian religion and the great European languages to those unfortunate enough to be without such things. For these unfortunates who now lived in a land no longer theirs by the law of the imperialists, empire was not so glorious, nor such deeds of accomplishment so great. The colonised of empire were usually without choice and often the most basic of freedoms; their power of self-determination replaced by the imposition of an extrinsic power-over-others. Views from the imperial pathway were only available through the singular focus of conditioned knowledge; things perceived only as they had been learned, or taught, to be seen. The irony of this education of the colonised bourgeoisie meant that they saw, as Edward Said notes, "truths about history, science, and culture [ ... ] millions grasped the fundamentals of modern life, yet remained subordinate dependants of an authority based elsewhere than in their lives." The merit of empire was, and is, an endlessly subjective binary."--p. 69