Table of Contents:
Introduction. Historiography and methodology
Plan of the chapters
1. Imagining Great Britain : Union, Empire, and the burden of history, 1800-1830. Maria Edgeworth's romance of Anglo-Irish Union
Edgeworth, Owenson, and the burdens of history
The border crossings of Walter Scott
The Waverley romances of Anglo-Scottish Union
The reception of Scott's British Unionist romance
Conclusion : from British to imperial Union
2. Imagining a British India : history and the reconstruction of Empire. Orientalism, old and new
Scottish orientalism and the romance of British India
John Malcolm and the romance of British India
Mountstuart Elphinstone and the project of Indian modernization
James Mill and the British assault on Indian history
Rammohun Roy's Union of Anglo-Indian history
Conclusion
3. Imagining a Greater Britain : the Macaulays and the liberal romance of Empire. The first Macaulay and the second British Empire
The second Macaulay and the historian's Empire
Frustrations in Whig politics
Encounter with colonial India
Progressive (English) history as liberal (imperial) politics by other means
The historical romance of the British center
Peripheral nightmares : the Indian and Irish centers do not hold
The reception of Macaulay's History
Conclusion
4. Re-imagining a Greater Britain : J. A. Froude : counter-romance and controversy. Froudian whips
Henrician flips
Victorian anxieties and Elizabethan adventures
Protestantism and the British Union
Froude's Greater British Victorian vision
Froude revises Anglo-Irish history
W.E.H. Lecky's Anglo-Irish counter-history
Ethnic evolution and Froude's imperial scheme
Racial exclusion and Froude's oceanic dream
The race against Froudacity
Conclusion
5. Greater Britain and the "lesser breeds" : liberalism, race, and evolutionary history. The advent of evolution and longue duree history
John Lubbock and the evolution of "savagery"
Empire and the classification of racial and evolutionary others
The evolution of Aryanism : Henry Maine and imperial racial divergence
R.C. Dutt : evolution and the liberal middle-class other
E.A. Freeman : the rise of the Anglo-Saxon in racial and evolutionary history
E.A. Freeman : the triumph of Anglo-Saxonism in the nineteenth century
The failure of hybrid evolutionism : a tale of two Greens
William Stubbs and the evolution of the English Constitution
The English Constitution and Anglo-Indian history
6. Indian liberals and Greater Britain : the search for union through history. The Calcutta bhadralok and British racial ideology
Keshub Chandra Sen and the quest for spiritual history
Brahmo Samaj and the evolution of spirituality
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the contradictions of imperial history
Surendranath Banerjea and the Indianization of Macaulay's constitutional romance
Dadabhai Naoroji : imperial mis-government and the history of the "drain"
R.C. Dutt and the riches of ancient Hindu civilization
R.C. Dutt and the history of modern Indian poverty
Conclusion : liberal imperialism's reappearance on the periphery
Epilogue. From liberal imperialism to Conservative Unionism : losing the thread of progress in history. Gladstone's progress : from youthful reactionary to aging radical
Midlothianizing India : evolutionary objects or historical agents?
Midlothianizing Ireland : conquered colony or Celtic "Home Rule"?
Chamberlain and Seeley : Unionism, history, and progress in the high imperial age
The strange death of liberal imperialism.