Imagining the empire: Political and non-political empire societies and the vision of a united empire

Imaging the Empire examines some of the societies that attempted to advance the cause of imperial unity during the interwar period. The heritage of the imperial federation movement, the ideology of imperial unity, and the methods through which imperialists pursued their goals are considered in the context of two different types of societies. The first group includes the British Empire Producers\u27 Organisation, the Empire Industries Association, and the Empire Economic Union, and other associations that sought to advance imperial unity through tariff reform. The second group of societies attempted to further the cause of imperial unity through activities that can be considered essentially non-political. The Royal Colonial Institute, the Victoria League, the Overseas League, the British Empire League, and the British Empire Union nurtured the sentimental and cultural bonds between individuals of British descent through activities directed toward sustaining familial ties between British subjects throughout the empire. These activities included promoting imperial education, migration, and trade but also included a host of minor endeavors that could be carried out informally without government support. The ideology of imperial unity is described in this dissertation as a version of nationalism. The rhetoric used by imperialists such as Leo Amery, Henry Page Croft, W. A. S. Hewins, C. P. Lucas, H. E. Egerton, and others, employed ideas and logic frequently associated with the nationalist world-view. This study makes use of the characterization of the nation, developed by Benedict Anderson, as an imagined community and employs the analogy made by historians who view nationalism as a type of religion. These ideas are used in order to understand the nature of these societies, why they found the vision of imperial unity compelling, and how the religious nature of the imperialist vision enabled them to cling to a spiritualized version of the empire that sustained imperialists and allowed them to believe that it would survive despite the forces of dominion nationalism and international change that made true political federation implausible