‘The Organized Selfishness of Empire’

Abstract

This essay examines T. H. Green’s evolving ideas on empire. Professor of moral philosophy in Oxford until his death in 1882, Green was the most prominent and respected philosophical idealist in Victorian Britain. The influence of his personal example and of his ideas has been traced by Jose Harris and other historians of the welfare state down to the 1940s. Initially enthusiastic for the civilizing mission of empire, Green came to see that any political system or relationship imposed by force, or dependent on coercion or control, was intrinsically incompatible with the ideals of citizenship, voluntarism, and solidarity that define the good community and make possible the self-realization of individuals within it. The essay opens up a new field for discussion and research: the relationship between idealist welfare thinking and imperialism. It argues that empire had a major impact on idealist notions of social welfare.