Institutions of Empire? The Foundation of the Queen’s Colleges and British Imperial Service, 1845–85

Abstract

This article traces the creation of the Queen’s Colleges, and the degree-granting Queen’s University, in Ireland, the British government’s aspiration in their establishment, and their relationship to the British Empire. It argues that obscured in the existing literature about the aspiration to create a Catholic university in Ireland—the so-called “Irish University Question”—is a story about the way the Queen’s Colleges embodied a desire for a post-sectarian future that trained Irish men for imperial careers. The article traces the development of the competitive examinations in changing the selection process for members of the Indian Civil Service, and it looks at the ways that the Queen’s Colleges used students’ successes in competitive examinations to defend their institutions from the onslaught of criticism by the Irish Catholic Church. The article concludes by exploring the demise of the Queen’s University, and its replacement by the Royal Irish University, and how even by the 1880s imperial service still formed a central pillar in the identity, ethos, and purpose of the Queen’s Colleges.