Woolf and Cain and Hopkins

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British Imperialism

By the 19th century , Britain was the undisputed world power . It boasted of an empire where the sun never sets ' as she had colonies or overseas possessions in almost all the continents around the world Like the other rival colonial powers then , the British were driven primarily by two of the three G 's ' They were in it primarily for the gold , glory followed but not so much interested in promoting God in their colonies . What made them different from the others was

they were very much concerned or interested in political prestige in material wealth and did not send out missionaries unlike the Catholic powers such as Spain , Portugal and France . Economic motives was what made the British jump on the imperialist bandwagon as the island-nation did not have a lot of natural resources to sustain its then nascent industry and needed raw materials to feed it as well as seek markets for their finished products . This came at the time when mercantilism was giving way to capitalism

Whereas other colonial powers exploited their colonies , the British employed what

.G . Cain and Anthony Hopkins called , gentlemanly capitalism ' According to the authors , the very core of British imperialism or what gave it its heart and soul ' was not the British crown itself (at the beginning , but by the landed gentry (aristocracy that consolidated their power after the Revolution of 1688 (66-67 Another factor was the financial revolution ' of 1690 as the appropriate institutions...