Basket
0 Items
The Commonwealth, 1897 H. S. Holland and J. A. Hobson
Ralph Norman
Serious thought about social Christianity and international affairs at the fin de siècle cannot ignore our contemporary, sometimes sharply contested, debates over empire and colonialism. At the end of the nineteenth century, European imperial competition continued to push forward at a time of political, cultural and technological change; it was often accompanied, to differing degrees with both help and harm done to others, by European Christian missionary activity. Whatever their successes and failures, many socially aware white Christians attempted to respond to the developing challenges of their time, and as they struggled with what was happening around them did not always turn their backs on the poor and marginalised. Some of them were more acutely attentive to the situation than others. The scholarly literature on this period is, of course, extensive and enormously varied, and it is not necessary to account for it here. For present purposes, all I want to do is provide a study in miniature of two white Englishmen responding differently to these circumstances. And although this may seem to place strict limits on the value of this essay, it must needs be said that the issues that arise from this miniature are not theologically insignificant: what I want to discuss here, through attention to a little-noticed historical source in a Christian periodical, is the early groundwork of what was later to become an influential critique of imperialism.
Subscribe now for full access or register to continue reading
To continue reading subscribe to gain full access or register to read one article free this month.
Subscribe now for full access or register to continue reading
To continue reading subscribe to gain full access or register to read one article free this month.
