Let us return to where we started: Lecky's 1893 talk at the Imperial Institute, which emphasised how two islands on the fringe of Europe had shaped the world. Towards the end of his address, ironically in a building supposedly symbolising ‘unity of empire’, Lecky hinted at the problems that lay ahead for the British Empire. Intensified imperial and commercial competition and the possibility of war with a European rival might prove too much for a Mother Country overburdened with imperial responsibilities and in need of ever more resources to keep rival powers from snapping at her heels. Despite its vast expanse, many contemporaries regarded the late-Victorian British Empire as ‘under siege’; underlying Britain's jingoistic self-assertion was a ‘feeling of vulnerability’. While Lecky did not mention it, closer to home, a nationalist revival was beginning to gather momentum around this time which would later pose a significant challenge to imperial unity. Less than ten years after his address, following the outbreak of the Boer War, the anti-imperial attitudes of Britain's junior ‘partner’ had hardened considerably.

Writing in Ireland and the Empire, as war raged in South Africa and Boer fever gripped nationalist Ireland, the Liberal Unionist politician T. W. Russell observed:

Although Russell could not understand this Anglophobic anti-imperial sentiment, he believed it had to be addressed.