Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Agents and the problem of agency: the context
- 2 Why Africa needs Europe: from Livingstone to Stanley
- 3 Kipling's “Law” and the division of bureaucratic labor
- 4 Cromer, Gordon, Conrad and the problem of imperial character
- 5 T. E. Lawrence and the erotics of imperial discipline
- 6 Resurrecting individualism: the interwar novel of imperial manners
- Conclusion: work as rule
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Agents and the problem of agency: the context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Agents and the problem of agency: the context
- 2 Why Africa needs Europe: from Livingstone to Stanley
- 3 Kipling's “Law” and the division of bureaucratic labor
- 4 Cromer, Gordon, Conrad and the problem of imperial character
- 5 T. E. Lawrence and the erotics of imperial discipline
- 6 Resurrecting individualism: the interwar novel of imperial manners
- Conclusion: work as rule
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Mother, far, oh far from me
Is the land of my first years,
Is the land of my first tears,
Where your love and charity,
Where your faithful mother's heart
Lavished care upon your boy,
Shared all with him, tears and joy,
Prompt in healing every smart …
Folk might think Fate cruelly tore
In two the bond that made us one …
True, I stand on a strange shore
With myself and God, alone …
But yet, whatsoe'er the grief,
Pleasure or pain I may have had,
Mother hold to your belief
In the love of your own lad!
Edouard Douwes Dekker, Max HavelaarMiddle-class Victorians were, to put it mildly, of two minds on the subject of “bureaucracy.” While the term itself was always used in a pejorative sense (it was principally associated with inefficiency, the suppression of individual freedom, and what would come to be called economic “irrationality”), Victorian Britons were nonetheless mightily proud of the accomplishments of both their efficiently-managed businesses at home and their well-drilled armies abroad. By 1871, many had also been greatly impressed by the German military machine, which seemed to have demonstrated through its rapid but crushing victory over France that large-scale organization and efficiency were not necessarily incompatible things.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- British Imperial Literature, 1870–1940Writing and the Administration of Empire, pp. 9 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998