Abstract

This essay is concerned with the philosophical, ethical, political and other forms of criticism directed at Western European imperialism after the First World War. By concentrating on the British case it looks at the structural and individual critique coming from members of the British political and academic elite as well as from media representatives. Debates about imperial rule and the right of conquest confronted the very nature of European empires and questioned their continuation if they were not ready for reform. While anticolonial arguments from the colonial “peripheries” in times of the “Wilsonian moment” were the rule and globally organised, “metropolitan” sceptics of empire were not only in the minority but also somewhat out-dated because they often connected to Victorian understandings of imperialism. Thus, they need to be seen both in nineteenth-century intellectual traditions and in their own right at a crucial time after the First World War when questions of the global order needed to be negotiated.