Topic: Western Imperialism (exemplified by the apogee of the British Empire) and the Classical Tradition

My thesis is yet decided, but so far I’ve found great support for the inherent link between 19th-century British politicians and scholars who viewed the status of the British Empire as a continuation of the legacy left from early Greece, particularly from Alexander of Macedon, and Roman Imperialism, a subject of great contest in the 19th-century oration between skeptical politicians commonly drawing upon the references of pro and anti-imperial critiques of western antiquity. The British, at the apogee of their power, saw themselves as being in the direct lineage of these empires, attributed greatly to the Classical emphasis of statesmen of that period. This idea was articulated exactly by John Stuart Mill, claiming, about the battle of Marathon,”If the result had been different, Britons and Saxons might still be wandering the woods” (Vance 257). Mill’s claim loosely elucidates that the British Empire’s supremacy was contingent upon the single victory between the confederate Greek city-states (of the west) and the Persian east, neglecting the greater span of history between that time and the present (a common theme of this period.)
As the British Empire expanded its network into the East Indies, a diplomat in the employment of the East India Company, Mountstuart Elphinstone, who was also appointed for the purpose of compiling ‘detailed intelligence reports on the politics, geography, economy, and culture of Afghanistan,’ drew much of the content later published in his reports from the volumes of Quintus Curtius, written two-thousand years prior, entitled History of Alexander the Great (Hagerman 345). Concurrently, from Elphinstone’s readings of Curtius’ volumes, he thoroughly convinced himself and his countrymen that they were following in the wake of ‘Alexander’s explorations, conquests, and ultimately even his world-historical mission.’ (Hagerman 352) What is meant by this term, ‘world-historical mission,’ is not specified further in Hagerman’s journal, but from the words of Plutarch’s On the Fortunes of Alexander,which includes the concept Greek ‘Universalism,’ he states, “Alexander desired to render all upon earth subject to one law of reason and one form of government and to reveal all men as one people, and to this purpose he made himself conform. [If not for Alexander’s death] one law would govern all mankind, and they all would look toward one rule of justice as though toward a common source of light.” (Perry 91-92)  Perhaps this was simultaneously the view held consciously or subconsciously of British colonizers in their interactions with the Near East.

Hagerman, Christopher A. “In the Footsteps of the ‘Macedonian Conqueror’: Alexander the Great and British India.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, vol. 16, no. 3/4, 2009, pp. 344–392., www.jstor.org/stable/40388969.

Perry, Marvin. Sources of the Western tradition. Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning: n.p., 2014. Print.

VANCE, NORMAN. “Anxieties of Empire and the Moral Tradition: Rome and Britain.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, vol. 18, no. 2, 2011, pp. 246–261., www.jstor.org/stable/41474705.