Ten Cities That Made an Empire

‘A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and I have not read of,’ was William Gladstone’s verdict on the Opium War and capture of Hong Kong.

Calcutta diarist William Hickey’s

imperialism was not just something ‘we’ did to other people overseas, but a long, complex process that transformed the culture, economy and identity of the British Isles.

Anna Monkland’s Calcutta novel Life in India,

Karl Marx called it ‘primitive accumulation’ – the initial influx of capital from the colonies which allowed the nations of Western Europe to kick-start the industrial revolution.

While Ireland had enjoyed relatively favourable terms with Great Britain herself and enjoyed extensive imports of colonial goods, many of its industries were barred from exporting to the colonies except through British ports. In addition, the Irish wool, glass and beer industries were wholly excluded from competing with British exports.

Within less than two years of the Treaty of Nanking, predicted the free-trade Friend of China, ‘the Tartar of Central Asia will trim his beard with Sheffield scissors, and every spinster in Peking must have a Coventry ribbon’.35