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Courtney MisichMay 2, 2023

HST 602Dr. de Boer

Empire as a Perspective

John Darwin discusses writing about empire stating, “Some historians of empire still feel

obliged to proclaim their moral revulsion against it, in case writing about empire might be

thought to endorse it. Others like to convey the impression that writing against empire is an act

of great courage...But they reveal something interesting: that for all the ink spilt on their deeds

and misdeeds, empires remain rather mysterious, realms of myth and misconception.”1 This

stems from the long history of studying empires. British historians have been exploring themes

of empire in history since the seventeenth-century with Edward Gibbon. The main themes that

were examined in imperial history were political, economic, and masculine aspects. Regarding

the masculine aspects, the historians would create empire that personified their idea of

masculinity focusing on men, their great deeds, and the public sphere. In the 1980s, there was a

shift in the study of empire that focused on more of the cultural and metropole-periphery aspects

of empire. This expanded the topics and interests for historians to study. After 2000, cultural

history intersected with gender, daily life, and class studies of empire that created new methods

and perspectives through which to explore empire. While the study into the metropole-periphery

relationship continues to be an area of examination, historians have begun to explore how the

peripheries interacted with each other. This expansion of the field of empire allows for historians

to uncover new perspectives and themes to understand how empire was experienced.

Historians have developed new methods of analyzing sources and re-conceptualized the

idea of empire. They have become creative in using empire as a perspective in order to analyze

1 John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain, (Allen Lane, London, 2012), XI.

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different layers of history and comprehend their larger impact. This expansion of perspectives

has allowed for historians to understand the various legal, economic, ideological, structural, and

personal aspects of empires. Historians reconstruct legal aspects of empire to show how the legal

culture of both the colonies and metropole created larger inner connected imperial structure.

Historians applied economic aspects of empires to observe the traditional commercial enterprises

of the empire regulated by the metropole and how commerce is utilized by empire for governing.

As for an ideological feature of empire, P.J. Marshall and John Darwin used this approach to

question how the ideas and imperial cultures built, sustained, and ultimately failed empire. The

structural perspective correlated with the ideological, economic, and legal aspects of empire by

focusing on how the relationships and daily functions of empire worked. Christopher Bayly

provided a thematic approach to the structural components of empire and how it dealt with the

crises that arose. Historians analyzed private aspects of empires that look at individual

experiences of empire and how it influenced individuals in both the metropole and periphery.

These are just a few new ways in which the British Empire has been explored in the recent

historiography. The various works will be grouped by the scale in which they analyze empire;

world history, imperial history, and micro-history. The various perspectives create new historical

understandings of the construction, function, maintenance, and experience of empire.

World Histories

A world history utilizes empire through a broad lens that contextualizes the components

of empire. These imperial components are used to compare contemporary empires not just to

provide imperial motivations in their colonies but situate how empires respond to problems.

Christopher Bayly and J. H. Elliot write world histories that compare empires and their impact

on the rest of the world. Bayly and Elliot argue that the structures of empire is significant in

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order to understand their impact on the world. Both historians focus on how the interactions

within empires affected their structures and societies. World history allows empires to be

explored through their larger structures and informal influences.

C.A. Bayly constructs a world history that argues for uniformities as a result of

globalization, which he frames with an American and European ‘core’ against the rest of the

world. By using an imperial framework for the history, Bayly uses empire as a method to

understand the long nineteenth-century. The imperial structure reinforces the difference between

the ‘core’ and the rest of the world in Bayly’s thematic analysis. His analysis of the Asian

revolutions between 1815 and 1865 discusses the events briefly and lists the common features

which all relate to the ‘core’. He writes, “these outbreaks were reactions to the worldwide

expansion of Western colonialism … internal problems of dealing with ethnic and religious

communities in these great polities were deepened by the expansion of new ideologies,

especially Christianity… [and] population growth and local economic imbalances, only very

indirectly related to the world system.”2 This intrusion of the ‘core’ with Asia shows how Bayly

uses an imperial framework to support his argument. The European perspective or influence is

used for context of the rest of the world, where the ‘core’ is the uniform factor for the world.

Additionally, the discussion over nationalism has colonial “patriots” using the language of

nationalism to assert individual rights or as a representative of their culture. Bayly’s example of

Ram Mohun Roy states that he “argued in London that the rights of the Mughal Empire, now

perceived as a state rather than as a universal polity, had been violated by the English East India

Company.”3 Roy’s argument that the Mughal Empire was a state and had rights reinforces

Bayly’s imperial structure and argument of uniformity. The Mughal Empire can have the same 2 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004), 151.3 Bayly, The Birth, 237.

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rights and status as ‘core’ states changes how the Mughals understood themselves. Roy places

them within the ‘core’ understanding of nationalism to combat imperial expansion in India.

Overall Bayly’s argument of growing uniformity is shown with the discussions between the

‘core’ and the world. This interconnected nature has the European state as the largest influence in

creating that uniformity from their empires.

Bayly’s structural aspect of empire has the uniformity that results from the interactions

and influences of European empires. His discussion of the architecture of cities around the world

has European-styles dominating the landscape.4 This not only has the world’s cities mirror each

other, but the influence on the world with the growth of uniformity from the European empires.

Bayly stresses this relationship consistently, demonstrating how the imperial relationship worked

globally. He has European interactions in Asia and North Africa creating global crisis through

warfare. While the European empires managed to survive, several in Asia and North Africa

crumbled.5 Uniformity resulted from the European empires expanding their imperial efforts. This

empire’s structural components provide the historical complexities and show how empires

utilized ideas and technology for their benefit, as well as how the periphery influenced the

structure of empire and dealt with the consequences of imperial actions and ideals.

J. H. Elliott explores the interactions and influences of empires like Bayly, however he

focuses on the cultural influences of emigrants on empire by comparing the English and Spanish

American colonies. He argues that the empires were interacting and influenced each other as

well as creating a cultural system in the creation and running of colonies in the Americas. Elliott

focuses on the structures and ideologies of the empires beginning with the foundations in the

Americas. He begins by focusing on Hernan Cortes and Captain Christopher Newport who

4 Bayly, The Birth, 384.5 Bayly, The Birth, 90-91

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founded the Spanish and English Empires respectively. The process of colonization described

has both countries colonizing neighboring territory but significantly Elliott shows how this

prepared them for overseas expansion. He describes their local colonization as “the process of

conquest and settlement helped to establish forms of behavior, and create habits of mind, easily

transportable to distant parts of the world in the dawning age of European overseas expansion.”6

The imperial mindset that Elliott describes is important to how the structures and ideologies of

empires function. The process of possession of the land demonstrates this mindset, beginning

with both England and Spain accepting the Roman legal principle of res nullius to justify their

possession. Then there was a ceremonial act to demonstrate the formal taking of possession.

Following this, the crown had to settle the land.7 The justification of overseas colonization in the

methods of national tradition solidifies the system of colonizing the world. Elliott shows how the

various ceremonial acts were influenced by each other, such as naming colonies either after

religious, royal figures or after their hometowns. The empires learned from each other in the

settling and justifications of their new territories, but their development was never contemporary.

However, the development of structural components to maintain an empire was learned

from the “multiplicity of micro-worlds” that challenged the imperial mindset.8 Elliott shows how

these challenges, specifically the native peoples, were confronted by the Europeans through

religion, civilizing, and exploitation of resources. This is where Elliott highlights one of the key

differences in the Spanish and American interactions; he focuses on incorporation versus

exclusion. The difference in the interactions with native peoples and colonists later on illustrates

the level of interaction and influence between the empires. Moreover, Elliott utilizes the formal

6 J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 17.7 Elliott, Empire of the Atlantic World, 30-31.8 Elliott, Empire of the Atlantic World, 57.

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empires of Spain and England to show the battle to maintain their empires. This use of a

structural aspect of empire allows Elliot to show the interactions and expectations not just of the

state but how the cultural, societal, and political realities of the colonies differed from the

metropole. Elliot uses the aftermath of the Seven Years War on the American colonies to show

the breakdown of this structure. As a result of implementing colonial administrative and fiscal

reforms, the relationship between the colonies and crown became increasingly strained. England

struggled to maintain its colonies and lost the North American ones in 1781, while Spain was

still expanding. Spain would face similar problems to those of the British fifty years later. The

life span of the structural components of empires in the Americas provides historians with new

views of empire and Elliott illustrates how comparison of empires offers new analysis and

questions to be explored.

World history provides a broader scope to analyze empire and understand the context in

which it develops. C.A. Bayly and J.H. Elliot argue that the structures of empire in order to

understand their impact on world history. Both historians focus on the effects of the metropole-

periphery relationship by explaining how the colonies impacted the metropole. This concept

from post-colonialism has the imperial structure being challenged and altering the metropole,

which is an important new perspective to understand the empire. Bayly and Elliot provide

important insight into empires and how their structures influenced the world.

Imperial Histories

The imperial histories focus on the history of one empire in contrast to a global

perspective. These histories show the complications of empire and how it was used in specific

regions. John Darwin’s Unfinished Empire and Anthony Webster’s The Debate on the Rise of the

British Empire both discuss how the ideological and structural components are created and

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maintained. Darwin focuses on the first British Empire, in which he argues empire was a hybrid

and unplanned political entity. While Webster’s empire uses the historiography of the British

Empire, he argues that understanding the rise of British imperialism needs the context of the

historiographical debate to understand the changing structures of empire. Finally, Jonathan

Eacott and P. J. Marshall discuss the relationship between India, the Americas, and Britain.

Eacott asserts that there is an economic aspect of empire that informs imperial policy and builds

relationships between colonies. Marshall argues to understand the development and of the British

Empire from the first to second empire, an understanding of India and the Americas is needed.

He uses the structural aspects of empire in order to display the contradictions and how rhetoric

plays into the imperial structure. An imperial scope of an empire focuses on one empire from

various perspectives, which can be metropole and peripheries or comparison of several colonies.

John Darwin argues that the British Empire was an unfinished and hybrid construction.

He explains the problems of the uniform and structural aspects of empire that is traditionally

represented with the British Empire. His three main problems are the multiple versions of

empire, the differences in command and control, and intraimperial activities that had external

influences.9 In the context of these questions, Darwin explores the three centuries of British

Imperial expansion to study historical empire-building. Beginning with his first problem, Darwin

address how it appears there are two types of colony during the First British Empire, a settler and

trade colony. These apparently different types of colonialism, Darwin argues, are similar in their

initial contact with their new environment. Both types of colonies had to decide on what to trade

with the locals, how adapt within the local environment, and how to settle there. Darwin

describes the problems, saying “the beginnings of contact followed a similar pattern and posed

similar problems for the English intruders. They had to decide in advance how to deal with the 9 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, XIII.

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local inhabitants and hope they had guessed right about their political systems and commercial

desires.”10 This problem of empire grew as the colony types diverged and created clear Atlantic

and Asian empires. These competitive versions of the British Empire were shown in the

ideologies and structures used by England to govern them. This builds into Darwin’s second

problem, the command and control of the empire which is clearly shown in their ruling methods

in India. The method of command has British officials appointed at home and using unrestrained

power in India.11 This illustrates how the planning of initial contact had changed in Asia,

differing from the settler colonies like Canada and America which both had aspects of self-

government. Darwin utilizes the first two problems of multiple versions of empire and the lack

of consistent command and control to demonstrate that the structures and ideologies of the

British Empire were unplanned.

Darwin’s approach to empire is showing how the structures and ideologies were a result

of many changing interests that drove the empire without a clear plan or goal. His problems with

empire clearly deconstruct the traditional view that the empire was concisely planned,

commanded, controlled, and driven by Britain. However, Darwin provides numerous examples

of how the empire was composed of many competitive interests, such as the East India Company

or Caribbean planters. Additionally he shows that the British had to compromise to control and

command the empire with local elites like in India and China to manage trade. Finally Darwin

breaks down the last of the imperial structures and ideologies by providing evidence that

imperial activities were driven by extra influences. He does this with the English policy towards

imperial violence during the first empire because of the views of the Spanish Empire’s

violence.12 He also discusses how attitudes towards British Asia changed in the early twentieth-10 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, 34.11 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, 202.12 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, 30.

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century due to the need to compete with other European empires.13 Overall, Darwin provides a

method to break down the imperial structures and ideologies through the contradictions in their

policies.

Darwin’s breakdown of the imperial structure and ideologies fits well with Anthony

Webster’s The Debate on the British Empire. Both historians attempt to understand the

underlying ideologies and structures of the empire; however Webster does so through the

historiography of the empire. This is similar to Darwin’s first problem of the multiple versions of

the empire because Webster addresses how the empire’s historical historiography affects the

current changes in historiography and views of imperialism. The first large change to the British

Empire was a result of the Napoleonic Wars, where Webster argues that the British became

secure in their imperial might. Then during the late Victorian period, he uses J.R. Seeley’s

writings on empire to demonstrate how the imperial project was changing: the idea of “absent-

minded imperialist” may have formed the empire but strengthening the empire would ensure

Britain’s place in the changing world.14 Webster demonstrates that the outside influences on the

British Empire at the end of the Victorian period shaped the imperial ideologies of Seeley and

others. This grew during the end of the nineteenth-century with the debate over capitalism by

Atkinson Hobson, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, V.I. Lenin, and A. M. Eckstein. The debate

focused on the relationship between capitalism and imperialism to understand empire. The focus

of this debate has Webster’s structure of empire being uncertain and unstable. However he

demonstrates that empire’s flexibility allows for reinterpretation such as in John Gallagher and

Ronald Robinson’s thesis on free trade imperialism.15 This new view of an informal imperial

13 Darwin, Unfinished Empire, 89.14 Anthony Webster, The Debate on the Rise of the British Empire, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 36-37.15 Webster, The Debate, 68.

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empire allows for the previous debates and views to be challenged but also for new

interpretations of empire. The criticism of informal empire has brought new ideas about empire,

such as Andre Gunder Frank’s integrated global capitalist system method of exploring empire.

The criticism allowed for other interpretations to reconstruct empire, such as postmodernism and

especially cultural history.

The perspective of cultural history after the 1980s brought new life into the field of

imperial history. Webster discusses Linda Colley and these new perspectives stating, “that the

explosion in interest in imperialism and culture in the 1980s helped her overcome her rather

negative undergraduate experience of imperial history as a ‘comprehensive masculine enterprise’

preoccupied with the affairs of conquering power.”16 This trend has continued with expansion of

culture into areas of race, gender, and class. Moreover Webster states that the future of the

expanding field of empire, “what is striking is not merely the geographical breadth and depth of

scholarship in discussing the effects of empire on so many parts of the world, but also the range

of different approaches- economic, social, cultural, and environmental.”17 He views the

expanding imperial field as having a renewed intensity.

Imperial Comparisons of India and America

Imperial history has explored the relationship between the metropole-periphery but there

has been a new shift into examining how the peripheries interacted with each other. These

studies still include the metropole but place their attention on how the peripheries react and

interact with each other and based on the metropole’s imperial decisions. The main focus for

historians has been to compare India and the North American colonies. The decision to unite

these two colonies often correlates to the period between the Seven Years War and the end of the

16 Webster, The Debate, 105.17 Webster, The Debate, 181.

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American Revolution. This has been acknowledged as a decisive turning point in the British

Empire; specifically the British expansion of territory, loss of the American colonies, and the

shift of their imperial focus east. P.J. Marshall and Jonathan Eacott study the imperial

relationships between India and America.

P.J. Marshall argues that India and the American colonies are linked by the British

presence, assumptions, and objectives. Marshall explores how the interactions between the

British, India, and Americas explain why there were differences between America and India. The

focus of Marshall’s study is on the years between 1750 and 1783. He explains that these years

are critical in studying the British Empire because after the Seven Years War British imperial

ambitions change. There is a new system of direct control and reforms over the colonies than

before the war which creates tensions. Marshall compares the differences in the colonies by

chapters and time frames. The chapters the ‘Old’ Empire and the ‘New’ Empire best represent

this comparison and divergence between India and America in the British Empire. Marshall

describes the ‘old’ empire as “the proposition that the British Empire was Protestant,

commercial, maritime, and free was rarely contradicted in mainstream eighteenth-century

political discourse. It was a slogan that encapsulated for contemporaries the dynamic expansion

of trade and the diffusion of British culture and ideals.”18 The ideological component of the

British Empire being a commercial, maritime, and free were the aspects that the British

propagated in the Americas. Marshall holds this ideology in conflict with the growing

significance of the sovereignty of parliament. The British parliament was encroaching on what

the Americans viewed as the free component of the British imperial ideology, which the

Americans regarded themselves in that British tradition.

18 P. J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America, C.1750-1783, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 160.

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The differences in perspectives resulted in the break between America and Britain.

Marshall demonstrates how this ideology was thrown into crisis from the British victory in the

Seven Years War. He states, “The long-established legal doctrine throughout the British Empire

was that Christian people conquered by the British crown, such as the French in Canada and

Grenada, kept their own laws until the king chose to introduce other laws. Infidel peoples, a

category that presumably included the Native Americans and the Indians brought under

Company rule, immediately forfeited their right to their own laws.”19 The difference in policy

towards focuses on the various new territories in their empire. Marshall states that this change in

ideology went further in India and describes it as “the total antithesis of all ideals for a British

empire that was characterized in freedom. It was a deeply rooted stereotype of nearly all

European notions over many centuries about government in Asia that it was despotic.”20 The

British treatment of India was based in their stereotypes that contradicted the ideology of the old

empire that is symbolized by their rule in America. The disparate treatment of the colonies by

Britain provides Marshall with methods to explore the India and American relationship.

The British Empire was established as a commercial enterprise. Jonathan Eacott

examines commerce as the connecting factor of the empire, not only to the metropole but

connecting the colonies to each other separately from Britain. His approach uses the India trade

to demonstrate this idea of trade fostering imperial ties and expansion. The Calico Acts

demonstrate this connection of empire; he argues “between 1695 and 1700, the government

appointed governors to enforce laws prohibiting pirates from returning to the Atlantic colonies…

and established special courts and commissions of oyer and terminer in the Atlantic colonies and

Company factories in India.”21 This development of government enforces connections between 19 Marshall, The Making and Unmaking, 184-185.20 Marshall, The Making and Unmaking, 197.21 Jonathan Eacott, Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830, (UNC Press, 2016) 89.

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the colonies that benefits commerce as well as creating the relationship between India and the

Atlantic. Eacott develops this idea to continue after the American Revolution showing the

relationship between India and Americas remained. The link of commerce rebuilt relationships

between America, India, and Britain after the war and allowed for the redefining of them.

However Eacott addresses that the redefinition stating, “Many of the British participants in the

nominally American trade had gained their experience in India working for the Company, and

they traded with Company representatives in Company colonies. This trade was extralegal, but it

was a part and product of the British Empire.”22 The new relationship created codependency

among the three nations based on the importance of commerce.

Eacott demonstrated how empire combines both economic and political aspects. This

empire is not solely political but the combination of politics and economics informs the

conditions of empire and how imperial influence continues after empire’s death. The method of

combination between India and America provides new ideas about how empire functions, if the

effects of the empire are not only by the metropole but are informed periphery to periphery the

study of empire can be expanded to the relationships of colonies. The commercial relationship

between the colonies recognizes that the colonies were informed and interacted with each other

outside of the imperial structure. This relationship creates new questions to ask of the empire but

also address the impact of empire on colonies’ relationships to each other. Eacott shows this with

India and America, where they learn from each other’s relationship to England but also

commercial connections that are vital for how the colonies define themselves. In this aspect, the

colonies learn from each other, America learned how to utilize commerce while protecting itself.

India gained trade and exploitation but ultimately saw there was a path out of empire. Eacott

utilizes a concept that allows for empire to be re-constructed as a concept away from only 22 Eacott, Selling Empire, 274.

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metropole-periphery by beginning to look at how periphery-periphery interact and are informed

by the metropole.

Imperial history provides for a focus on one empire by focusing on certain imperial

aspects such as periphery-periphery, economic, or structural. These histories show the

complications of empire and how it was used in specific regions. John Darwin and Anthony

Webster demonstrate how the ideas and aspects of empire evolve and represent the contemporary

interests. Darwin contributes the unplanned British Empire that was motivated by individual

interests and local situations rather than from London. Webster examined the individual

contributions and interests of historians in their discussion of empire. The development of new

imperial studies by Webster shows the expansion of perspectives accepted in the study of

empire. Finally Jonathan Eacott and P. J. Marshall discuss the relationship between India, the

Americas, and Britain. Eacott contributes to the awareness between colonies about their

treatment by the metropole. Their awareness stems from trade and political relationship decided

by the metropole. Marshall demonstrated how to use the treatment of India and America to

understand the shift in the British Empire and why the two colonies were treated differently. He

uses the structural aspects of empire in order to display the contradictions and how rhetoric plays

into the imperial structure. An imperial scope of an empire focuses on one empire from various

perspectives, which can be metropole and peripheries or comparison of several colonies.

Collective Histories

By using a smaller scale to observe empire, historians have been able to understand the

daily experiences of empire. Through collective histories, the impact of empire becomes more

accessible to those who lived in the empire. Mary Bilder uses the legal approach to empire

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through the case study of the colony of Rhode Island. Her use of anecdotes to create a collective

history about the impact of the English common law on the colony demonstrates how colonists

experienced the empire. Emma Rothschild explores personal aspects of empire through one

family’s collective history. This personal aspect of empire extends to both the metropole and

periphery but demonstrates how the metropole was changed by the imperial experience. The use

of collective and micro-histories by both historians emphasize that new perspectives on empire

can be explored in different components of society.

Mary Bilder constructs the legal structures of empire that envelope the political and

structural components of empire. She frames her legal approach to empire as one where the

balance of empire was in flux. By focusing on the legal aspect empire, Bilder incorporates both

the metropole and periphery through colonial appeals to the Privy Council. The empire becomes

one where the legal discrepancies are the focus; the differences between the metropole and

periphery are what make the empire. Bilder’s focus on the discrepancies is what makes this

version of empire different from other versions. The development of the legal aspects of empire

is key in Bilder’s analysis moving from the larger context of the empire then demonstrating how

the legal aspects such as inheritance cases and appeals to the privy council. The larger imperial

context of the British view of the Americas is “myth of the seventeenth-century colonies as being

a world of ‘law without lawyers’ has maintained a powerful hold.”23 Bilder uses this idea and

demonstrates how it is implemented in the difference between the laws of England and Rhode

Island. This inheritance in the legal structure of the empire is shown through England’s scrutiny

of Rhode Island’s charter. The debate over the charter represents how the legal components of

empire worked, England set the terms but while the periphery could deviate to accommodate

23 Mary Sarah Bilder, The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 15.

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their situation. However, England’s acceptance to the toleration was conditional that it did

interfere with the terms. The legal aspect of empire that Bilder constructs in Rhode Island has

greater implications for the study of empire; the legal realm of empire goes beyond laws and

politics. She argues that it allowed for the conditions of the colonies and later independent states

to function politically and culturally. Bilder shows that the formal structure of the transatlantic

constitution ended in 1776, but the legal and political culture in Rhode Island remained similar.

Repugnancy, an act in opposition to the law, was continued from the transatlantic constitution as

Bilder shows Chief Justice John Marshall using in Marbury v. Madison.24 The legal aspect of

empire can be expanded beyond laws and legal precedent to be used to study how the empire and

its actions affected the people of the colonies.

The personal aspect of empire is central in The Inner Life of Empire by Emma Rothschild,

who bases her argument around one Scottish family, the Johnstones. Rothschild demonstrates

how the changes and expansion of the British Empire affected those back in Britain. For the

Johnstones, the empire provided a means of redemption since the family was consistently in

debt. John, a younger son, went to India and became the financial supporter of five siblings. This

personal aspect of empire is based on a family being both in the metropole and periphery, which

allows for new insight into how the empire ran and how it was experienced back in Britain.

Rothschild also discusses the influences of commercial aspect of empires and enlightenment on

the Johnstones through their experiences, such as the East India Company with John, a middle

son rather than one of the four girls, going into the empire. As for the women, Rothschild

enforces their role as masters of the family network and maintained the information that

determined the family’s fortune. The women were the center of the personal component of

empire and maintained communication between family members, especially due to the family’s 24 Bilder, Transatlantic Constitution, 194.

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unstable finances. This is important due to the family’s sense of financial uncertainty with the

empire, whether it stemmed from shipments of foreign goods, income, or the loss of a job abroad

due to the changes within the imperial complex.25 The Johnstones would sell foreign goods to

supplement their income while John was a merchant in India. Additionally, Rothschild uses

historical understanding in interpreting empire, where she compiles the sources to understand

how the Johnstones understood the empire and their role in it. She also uses historical

understanding to inform the personal aspect of empire of the Johnstones, as she states “an

exercise in moral observation, or in moral imagination.”26 The notion of ‘personal empire’ has

allowed Rothschild to explore the implications of empire through individuals’ experiences, such

as how it affected familial relationships and their perspectives. The differences between William

and John over the matter of slavery serve as an example of this; William owned property in the

East Indies and supported the slave trade. When John returned from India, he was an opponent of

slavery. The difference was that William remained in Britain and gained his wealth through

marriages and John earned his money by working hard in the East India Company. This analysis

of empire allows for the stresses on the people to be shown, as well as how the larger structural

and ideological aspects of empires are functioning.

A smaller scale allows for historians to understand the daily experiences of empire.

Collective histories show how the individual interacted with empire. Mary Bilder created a legal

structure of empire that had individuals shaping their colonial world based on the metropole’s

laws. This created a legal culture that persists and shows the lasting impact of the empire on

America. Rothschild’s family collective history demonstrates how people of the metropole used

the empire to improve their situation at home. She shows that the metropole was also changed by 25 Emma Rothschild, the Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 24.26 Rothschild, The Inner Life, 301.

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the colonial relationship through the experiences of those like John, who worked in the empire,

and the sisters who experienced the new ideas that empire brought back. The use of collective

history by both historians emphasizes that the empire relationship changes both cultures involved

through its many aspects, both legal and personal.

Conclusion

Historians have developed new methods of analyzing sources and re-conceptualized the

idea of empire. They have become creative in using empire as a perspective in order to analyze

different layers of history and comprehend their larger impact. Moreover by examining how

historians have expanded their study of empire, the studies are allowing for new and interesting

methods to understand empire. Global histories incorporate empires as a shaping force in the

world has changed to create a multiple perspective view of the empire that breaks away from the

traditional political and economic view. This correlates with imperial histories as well, first by

arguing for an incomplete and unplanned empire. Then historians focus on the relationship

between peripheries demonstrates that the empire can be explored with minimal attention to the

metropole. The interest in non-traditional perspectives is truly explored in the smaller scale with

micro-histories and collective histories. They allow historians to show the motivations of

individuals and how the empire truly functioned. The study of empire has continued to adapt and

expand with changes in the historical theories. However empire has managed to persist within

the historical conversations and continue to grow.