Journal article
Investigating Empire: Humanitarians, Reform and the Commission of Eastern Inquiry
Zoe Laidlaw
JOURNAL OF IMPERIAL AND COMMONWEALTH HISTORY | ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD | Published : 2012
Abstract
In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, British debates about colonial rule and, in particular, the treatment of subject peoples brought practical, financial and religious concerns together. As a means of addressing these problems, the British government despatched a series of travelling commissions to survey and reform the governance of its empire. British-based humanitarians and abolitionists drew on anxieties about the corrupting influence of empire on metropolitan society to press for commissions as vectors of imperial probity; their colonial counterparts harnessed the commissions' authority to inform and persuade a metropolitan audience of the need for specific colonial reforms. This articl..
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