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ABSTRACT
This article asks us to reconsider the impact of the issue of imperialism in electoral politics in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Using a corpus of around five million words of digitised campaign speeches from the years 1880–1910, it examines the language of the nine General Elections held in this period through computerised text-mining. This ‘big data’ analysis produces three conclusions, which in some cases nuance existing interpretations and in others directly challenge them. The first questions the prevailing consensus that elections in the high age of empire featured imperialism as a consistently central issue. The article argues that this interpretation relies too heavily on evidence from a minority of elections—especially the famous ‘khaki’ struggle of 1900—and that in the majority of campaigns in this period, imperialism was relatively unimportant as an election issue, including in the Unionist landslide of 1895. The second argument questions historians’ preoccupation with the ‘contested’ nature of discourses of imperialism and patriotism at elections, and contends that—insofar as the empire was an important campaign issue at all—the Conservatives were considerably more likely to champion it and connect it to politically charged and emotive appeals than were their Liberal opponents. Finally, the article maintains that the languages of imperialism and patriotism have often been unhelpfully conflated by historians, and argues that they could become politically synonymous only in the very specific circumstance of a ‘khaki’ election. In other contests, they could diverge, as is demonstrated by a case study of the campaign of 1906 when patriotism was reclaimed by the Liberals from a domestic, rather than imperial platform.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Ames, An ABC for Baby Patriots, 5–7. Similar books included Stevens, Babes of the Empire; Hassall, A Naval Alphabet.
2 MacDonald, Language of Empire, 7.
3 For the centrality of public speeches and meetings to electoral life in these years, see Lawrence, Electing Our Masters.
4 Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire; Mackenzie, Imperialism and Popular Culture; Ward, British Culture, 4.
5 Burton, ‘New Narratives’, 212. Subscription to the ‘maximalist thesis’ is, of course, not universal among cultural historians. The obvious ‘minimalist’ dissenter is Porter, Absent-Minded Imperialists.
6 Thompson, Imperial Britain, 39.
7 Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism, 163, 188; Roberts, ‘“Villa Toryism”’, 237, 242.
8 See Green, Crisis of Conservatism, ch. 2; Hamer, Liberal Politics, 231.
9 Matthew, ‘Rhetoric and Politics’, 49. McKenzie and Silver argue on similar lines, seeing Crystal Palace as the moment Disraeli ‘picked up the banner of imperialism’. McKenzie and Silver, Angels in Marble, 49–50.
10 Thompson, Imperial Britain, 15–16.
11 Shannon, Age of Salisbury; Rhodes James, ‘Conservative Party’, 511–17.
12 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, 54, 76. This view is also shared by Charmley, History of Conservative Politics, 6–8; Savage, ‘General Election of 1886’, 560.
13 Lloyd, Election of 1880, 38, 141; Parry, Rise and Fall, 290–92; Matthew, ‘Rhetoric and Politics’, 3–36.
14 Studies which focus exclusively, or predominantly, on the 1900 election include: Readman, ‘Conservative Party’; Price, An Imperial War; Sharpe, ‘Empire, Patriotism’; Schneer, London 1900, 229–60.
15 Readman, ‘Conservative Party’, 109–11; Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism, 182; Sharpe, ‘Empire, Patriotism’, 411; Schneer, London 1900, 229–60.
16 Price, Imperial War, 105, 120–28. Price argued that the war was the primary issue only in constituencies with a pro-Boer Liberal candidate and those with few working-class voters.
17 Porter, Absent-Minded Imperialists, 216, 238–39; Brodie, Politics of the Poor, 101–03; Feuchtwanger, Democracy and Empire, 240; Brooks, Age of Upheaval.
18 Readman, ‘Liberal Party’, 280–82; Rhodes James, ‘Conservative Party’, 515–16; Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism, 200–01.
19 Thompson, ‘Tariff Reform’, 1034–05, 1053–54.
20 Jackson, Popular Opposition to Irish Home Rule, chs 3–5; Thackeray, Conservatism for the Democratic Age, chs 2–3. The lack of interest in the imperial aspects of the elections of 1910 is reflected by the scant coverage in Blewett, Peers, where neither ‘empire’ nor ‘imperial’ appears in the 24-page index.
21 Thompson, ‘Language of Imperialism’, 147–50; Macdonald, Language of Empire; Readman, ‘Liberal Party’, 271; Taylor, ‘John Bull’, 126; Green, Crisis of Conservatism, 59–60, 67; Otte, ‘“Avenge England’s Dishonour”’, 422–24; Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism, 54–83; Lynch, Liberal Party, 156–57, 166–67; Roberts, Political Movements, 103.
22 Thompson, ‘Language of Imperialism’, 147—’0.
23 Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism, 164; Roberts, Political Movements, 103.
24 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, 67; Readman, ‘Liberal Party’, 272; Cunningham, ‘Language of Patriotism’, 8–33.
25 For example, Craig and Thompson, eds, Languages of Politics; Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism, chs 2–3 (both titled ‘Electoral Languages and Discourses’); Readman, ‘Liberal Party’, 301. A recent influential conference held at Durham University in April 2009, featuring many scholars in this field, was also titled ‘The Languages of Politics Conference’.
26 See Thompson, ‘Language of Imperialism’, 164.
27 Green, Crisis or Conservatism, 76; Price, Imperial War, 128; Roberts, Political Movements, 103.
28 Potter, ‘Empire, Cultures and Identities’, 60; Thompson, Imperial Britain, 190–94.
29 See Blaxill, ‘Quantifying’, 313–41.
30 Speeches were not, of course, the only contemporary tool of political communication. Others included posters, cartoons and handbills, but speeches were seen by contemporaries (and subsequently by historians) as overwhelmingly the most important, certainly until 1918. See Jephson, The Platform; Matthew, ‘Rhetoric and Politics’, 40–46; Meisel, Public Speech, ch. 5; Lawrence, Electing Our Masters, 71–95.
31 See Lynch, Liberal Party, 11–21; Lawrence, Speaking for the People.
32 See Blaxill, ‘Joseph Chamberlain’; Blaxill, ‘Language of Electoral Politics’.
33 While contemporary newspaper speech reporting (although comprehensive and often verbatim) is not a perfect proxy for political discourse in general, newspapers can nonetheless be used to assess broad questions of the prevalence of key themes in electoral language. See Blaxill, ‘Language of Electoral Politics’, 44–46.
34 A regional case study provides enough text to compile a large corpus featuring speeches from a range of constituencies, while also being small enough to make a parallel investigation of qualitative evidence feasible. East Anglia was chosen because it is the only regional corpus of political language in this period currently available. For a justification of its original selection, see Blaxill, ‘Language of Electoral Politics’, 23–24.
35 This corpus is compiled from speeches delivered across a wide range of constituencies (at least 40 per election subsample) selected by the current availability of newspapers through the British Newspaper Archive. It is designed to be as representative as possible of Great Britain as a whole, featuring an equal borough-to-county mix, proportional weighting for England, Scotland, and Wales, and proportional weighting for the six constituency categories (‘Urban predominantly middle-class’, ‘Urban mixed class’, ‘Urban predominantly working class’, ‘Mixed urban/rural’, ‘Rural’ and ‘Mining’) defined in Blewett, Peers, 488–94. See Blaxill, ‘Language of Electoral Politics’, 227–29, for the full list of constituencies used.
36 That is, speeches delivered by the leading lights of the two parties (cabinet and shadow cabinet members).
37 See Blaxill, ‘Quantifying’; Blaxill, ‘Language of Electoral Politics’.
38 ‘Flag’ also includes synonyms, e.g. ‘Union Jack’.
39 For example ‘India’ and ‘Boer’ are words which might intuitively have been included in the taxonomy, but neither correlated reliably with imperialism throughout the whole period, so they were excluded. Both were reliable correlates in certain elections (e.g. 1880 and 1900) but to keep comparisons fair across the whole period, it was essential to compare only like with like through a diachronically robust set of keywords.
40 KWIC analyses list all words in their parent sentences, allowing each ‘hit’ to be manually checked and potentially categorised.
41 The technicalities of keyword selection and text-retrieval itself are complex and detailed processes, and there is not space for an exhaustive methodological description here. For more detail, see Blaxill, ‘Language of Electoral Politics’, 46–49.
42 Across all nine elections, in all three corpora, the Conservatives’ net score is 3499, the Liberals’ 2085.
43 Across all nine elections, in both grassroots corpora, the Conservatives’ net score is 2273, the Liberals’ 1190.
44 For historians’ interpretation of imperialism in 1895, see notes 8–15 above.
45 Ensor, England, 1870–1914, 221.
46 A five-word taxonomy for local veto in 1895, consisting of ‘Local Veto’, ‘beer’, ‘drink’, ‘public house’ and ‘publican’ scores 64 among East Anglian Conservatives and 51 among Liberals. Outside East Anglia, it scores 62 among Conservatives and 36 among Liberals. On the national stage, it scores 44 among Conservatives and 37 among Liberals. The combined 1895 local veto score between both parties across all three corpora is thus 294, whereas the 1895 imperialism equivalent score is just 248.
47 Readman, ‘1895 General Election’, 483. ‘House of Lords’ (in the context of reform) registers corpus scores of 44 and 112 respectively for Conservatives and Liberals in East Anglia, 72 and 97 outside East Anglia, and 121 and 97 on the national stage. Comparing these readings with shows that the imperialism taxonomy is outscored in every corpus for 1895 except East Anglian Conservatives.
48 Readman, ‘1895 General Election’, 493.
49 National Union of Conservative Associations for Scotland, The Campaign Guide, 544–58.
50 The combined scores between the parties for direct mentions of the Malt Tax (tracked with ‘malt’, checked with KWIC) in East Anglian county divisions came to 81, and 91 for the Game Laws (tracked with ‘game’ and similarly checked). This compares to 75 for all five imperial lemmas combined.
51 The cross-party aggregates for the issue of church disestablishment in 1885 (tracked via the lemmas ‘church’ and ‘disestablishment’ and checked with KWICS) are 263 in East Anglia and 293 outside. For Land Reform (tracked with ‘land’ and similarly checked) the scores are 288 in East Anglia and 180 outside. For free education (tracked with the lemmas ‘school’, ‘education’ and ‘child’) the scores are 309 in East Anglia and 353 outside. This compares to scores (for all five of our imperial lemmas combined) of 95 in East Anglia and 54 outside.
52 This issue, tracked with the lemmas ‘council’, ‘district’, ‘parish’ and ‘local government’, registered 181 mentions between the parties in East Anglia, 122 outside and 90 on the national stage. The five imperial lemmas combined totalled 75, 119, and 224 in 1892 in each corpus respectively.
53 In January 1910, simply the lemma ‘pension’ registered (among Liberals) 133 mentions in East Anglia and 56 outside. This compares to equivalent scores of 48 and 38 for the five imperial lemmas respectively. For the Conservatives, the opposite was true, and ‘pension’ registered 41 mentions in East Anglia and 36 outside, compared with equivalent respective scores of 172 and 134 for the imperialism taxonomy. For December 1910, the lemma ‘referendum’ alone scores (for Conservatives and Liberals respectively) 27 and 35 in East Anglia, 35 and 32 outside and 64 and 58 on the national stage. The scores for the lemmas ‘empire’ and ‘imperial’ combined (for Conservatives and Liberals respectively) are 55 and 18 in East Anglia, 54 and 15 outside and 54 and 23 on the national stage.
54 Lawrence, Speaking for the People; Lynch, Liberal Party.
55 ‘Word-span’ is the closeness of a collocate to a keyword. For example, a word-span of five includes all words which appear up to five words to the right or left of the designated keyword.
56 ‘Lexical attraction’ is how likely two words are to appear within a given word-span, relative to average chance throughout the text. The closer the words typically appear to each other, the higher the lexical attraction. For example, ‘House’ is very strongly lexically attracted to ‘Lords’ and ‘Commons’ and ‘Tariff' to ‘Reform’, while ‘Kruger’ is attracted to ‘Boer’ (albeit more loosely). The degree of lexical attraction can be measured by the mutual information (MI) score. For methodological discussion on collocation theory, see Sinclair, Corpus, 109–22.
57 Synsemantic: words that are meaningful only when accompanied by other words.
58 Savage, ‘General Election of 1886’, 560.
59 The aggregate scores are 278 mentions for the Conservatives and 110 for the Liberals in East Anglia, and 230 and 150 respectively in constituencies outside and 192 and 209 respectively on the national stage.
60 In 1895, the totals for these five lemmas for both parties were: 15 (East Anglia); 25 (outside East Anglia); 21 (national). In 1900, the equivalent totals were: 200, 197 and 164 respectively.
61 In addition, the average score for ‘war’ in the four previous elections in East Anglia was 83. Even in 1880 (the last previous election which might reasonably have been described as ‘khaki’) its tally of 216 in East Anglia is still less than half that of 1900. On the national stage, ‘war’ increased from 16 mentions among the two parties in 1895 to 389 in 1900. Outside East Anglia, the equivalent respective scores were 27 and 472.
62 This taxonomy consists of: ‘Boer’, ‘Kruger’, ‘war’, ‘Transvaal’, ‘ammunition’, ‘gun’, ‘army’, ‘soldier’, ‘military’, ‘traitor’, ‘battle’, Roberts, ‘troop’, ‘defend’, ‘fight’, ‘victory’, ‘Africa’, ‘enemy’, ‘diplomacy’, ‘peace’, ‘opponent’, ‘Majuba’ and ‘navy’.
63 For analysis of Ireland in 1886, see Blaxill, ‘Language of Electoral Politics’, 97.
64 Norwich Argus, 29 Sept. 1900; Eastern Evening News, 8 Oct.1900.
65 Lynn Advertiser, 28 Sept. 1900. For further examples, see Norfolk Argus, 29 Sept. 1900 (Norwich) and 13 Oct. 1900 (Mid-Norfolk).
66 Norfolk Argus, 29 Sept.1900; East Anglian Daily Times, 29 Sept. 1900.
67 East Anglian Daily Times, 29 Sept. 1900.
68 Lloyd, General Election of 1880, 38, 141; Parry, Rise and Fall, 290–92.
69 Lynn Advertiser, 5 Oct. 1900.
70 See Blaxill, ‘Joseph Chamberlain’.
71 These were: Colomb (Yarmouth), Follett (North-Norfolk), Pretyman (Woodbridge), Gibson-Bowles (Lynn), Priorleau (East-Norfolk), Mann (South-Norfolk), Hare (South-West Norfolk), Boyle (Mid-Norfolk). Military candidates were also important elsewhere; Windscheffel notes that six of the 12 new London Unionist MPs in 1900 had connections to the army or navy, and Lynch demonstrates that Major Stuart-Wortley, who initially seemed a weak candidate for South Oxfordshire, swiftly became an asset. See Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism, 182–83; Lynch, Liberal Party, 159.
72 Norfolk Argus, 29 Sept. 1900.
73 Lynn Advertiser, 28 Sept. 1900.
74 The equivalent average scores across all elections (1880–1910) were 228 (Conservative) and 172 (Liberal).
75 Norfolk Argus, 29 Sept. 1900.
76 Lynn Advertiser, 25 May 1900; Norfolk Argus, 13 Oct. 1900.
77 Lynn Advertiser, 28 Sept. 1900.
78 Lynn Advertiser, 28 Sept. 1900.
79 Tosh, Dudink and Hagemann, Masculinities, 55.
80 Good, ‘“Quit Ye Like Men”’, 158–60.
81 East Anglian Daily Times, 28 Sept. 1900; Norfolk Argus, 29 Sept. 1900; Norfolk Chronicle, 6 Oct. 1900.
82 Norfolk Argus, 29 Sept. 1900, Mann (South-Norfolk); East Anglian Daily Times, 29 Sept. 1900, Eastlagh (Lowestoft).
83 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, 60; Hamer, Liberal Politics, 270–71, 287; Sykes, Rise and Fall, 134–36. For the shifting semantic meanings of the word ‘imperialism’ in late-Victorian politics, see Koebner and Schmidt, Imperialism, ch. 6; Parry, Politics of Patriotism, 387–99.
84 See Cunningham, ‘The Conservative Party and Patriotism’, 283–307. This thesis has been influential, and is often cited by scholars in other fields. See Readman, ‘Liberal Party’, 270.
85 Otte, ‘“Avenge England’s Dishonour”’, 423; Thompson, ‘Language of Imperialism’, 156–59; Hamer, Liberal Politics, 263–77.
86 Readman, ‘Liberal Party’, 272.
87 The parties were tied at 13 mentions in East Anglia. In constituencies outside, the Liberals trailed the Conservatives slightly by 17 to 19. But on the national stage, the scores were 41–14.
88 Lynn News, 29 Sept. 1900; East Anglian Daily Times, 28 Sept. 1900.
89 See, for example, reports of meetings in Ipswich Journal, 6 Oct. 1900; Cambridge Express, 29 Sept. 1900; Eastern Evening News, 16 July 1895.
90 Lynn News, 29 Sept., 26 June 1900.
91 Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 26 Sept. 1900; Sheffield Independent, 4 Oct. 1900.
92 The Times, 27 Sept. 1900.
93 Readman, ‘Liberal Party’, 280–82.
94 The Times, 6 May 1899.
95 Lynn News, 26 June 1900; Suffolk Chronicle, 21 Sept. 1900; East Anglian Daily Times, 26 Sept. 1900. Speeches of Winfrey (South-West Norfolk), Stevenson (Eye) and Buxton (Ipswich) respectively.
96 Lynn News, 26 June and 26 Sept. 1900. Speeches of Winfrey (South-West Norfolk) and Handel-Booth (Lynn) respectively.
97 Samuel cited in Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats, 61.
98 Freeden, ‘Liberal Passions’, 145.
99 Lynn News, 16 June, 29 Sept. 1900; Eastern Daily Press, 29 Sept. 1900.
100 Justice, 20 Oct. 1900.
101 Yarmouth Mercury, 1 Jan. 1906.
102 Club Life, 6 Oct. 1900.
103 Norfolk Chronicle, 6 July 1895.
104 Bury Free Press 8 Sept. 1900, speech of Councillor Hooper (Stowmarket). For similar criticisms, see Diss Express, 5 July 1885 (Councillor Nudd); Eastern Evening News, 3 July 1895 (G. Lee); Lynn News, 13 July 1895 (T. Cozens-Hardy and Miss Veness).
105 See Hamer, Liberal Politics; Parry, Rise and Fall; Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform.
106 Matthew, ‘Rhetoric and Politics’, 51–52.
107 Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, 35–36.
108 Freeden, ‘Liberal Passions’, 136; Hobson, Psychology of Jingoism.
109 Kebbel, ‘The Spirit of Party’, 378–88; Haldane, The Liberal Creed, 464, 472.
110 Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain, 583–86.
111 See Russell, Liberal Landslide, 65, 79, 83. The difference in emphasis between speeches and addresses almost certainly arises on account of the fact that the latter were very different political texts, about what candidates thought would be important in campaigns, rather than what actually transpired to be.
112 Thackeray, ‘Rethinking’, 191–213; Thackeray, Conservatism for the Democratic Age; Trentmann, Free Trade Nation.
113 Thompson, ‘Tariff Reform’, 1034–35, 1053–54, has also suggested that the imperial dimensions of 1906 have been underestimated.
114 Analysis includes all grassroots speakers in and outside East Anglia in 1906. Because this analysis concerns just one election, the word-span is expanded to seven, and minimum frequency threshold to three.
115 Eastern Evening News, 20 Jan. 1906.
116 Stowmarket Post, 11 Jan. 1906; Norwich Argus, 6 Jan. 1906.
117 Russell, Liberal Landslide, 87–90.
118 Green, ‘Radical Conservatism’, 667–92, 686–88; Jay, Joseph Chamberlain, 301–02; Judd, Radical Joe, 241–42; Garvin and Amery, Life of Joseph Chamberlain, 795; Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain, 626.
119 Readman and Blaxill, ‘Edwardian By-Elections’, 239–40.
120 Readman, ‘Liberal Party’, 300–01; Readman, Land and Nation, 34–35.
121 Campbell-Bannerman, The Khaki Government, 9.
122 Thirty-four mentions to eight between both grassroots corpora.
123 East Anglian Daily Times, 2 Jan. 1906.
124 Yarmouth Mercury, 13 Jan. 1906.
125 Western Times, 16 Dec. 1905.
126 Derby Daily Telegraph, 11 Jan. 1906.
127 Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, 81–133.
128 The Times, 1 Jan. 1906.
129 East Anglian Daily Times, 12 Jan. 1906.
130 Bentley, Climax of Liberal Politics, 109.
131 See Blaxill, ‘Language of Electoral Politics’, 199.
132 West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, 16 May 1907.
133 East Anglian Daily Times, 2 Oct. 1900; Lynn Advertiser, 5 Oct. 1900 and 28 Sept. 1900.
134 The Liberal attempt to redefine imperialism in their terms after 1906 was evident in speeches given to the Colonial Conference of 1907, for example by Churchill. See Morning Post, 20 May 1907. See also Jebb, The Imperial Conference, ch. 13. Indeed, a pamphlet issued by the influential Cobden club in 1910 argued that empire was a noble cause, but ‘to use Empire sentiment … for party gain ought to be judged a great offence’. See Pulsford, Empire Aspect of Preference, 24.
135 See Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, which does not contain a single reference to the election of 1900.