Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire

A collection of essays constituting the first comprehensive study of the relationship between classical ideas and British colonialism. The contributors demonstrate that ideas about the Greek and Roman world since the eighteenth century developed hand-in-hand with the rise and fall of the British Empire.

While the study of Classics in postcolonial worlds has received a great deal of recent attention, this is the first comprehensive study of the relationship between classical ideas and British colonialism. In this collection of essays, classical scholars and modern historians demonstrate that ideas about the Greek and Roman world since the eighteenth century developed hand-in-hand with the rise and fall of the British Empire. Beginning with the history of the British Museum and its engagement both with classical antiquity and with the opportunities provided by the British Empire, the contributors address the role of classical scholarship in understanding British colonization, the development of theories about race in Europe and beyond, the exploitation of individual classical texts as imperial discourses, ideas about imperial decline, and efforts to wrest ownership of the classical past from the dominating control of the British.