Imperial Statesmen: Who Truly Ran the British Empire and What is Their Legacy?

内容：我的博士学位涉及“权力”的轨迹，因为英国的行政和信息国家在1825年至1855年之间的英国“帝国世纪”的上半年迅速增长。史学文献（Porter，1999; Searle，2004; Hyam，2010）充满了领导人物，“系统”和公务员制度的发展。然而，就国家知识和影响力的扩展而言，我们对当时上升的国家机器的较低级别如何主张、分配、控制和行使权力几乎一无所知。希格在2001年对英国信息国家崛起的分析中承认，有必要研究这些较低级别的政府，以揭示“真实的”权力所在。我的项目将通过大英帝国的国内殖民管理来填补这一空白。我专注于殖民地办公室（1966年解散），而不是其他，也许更容易接近和广为人知的部门，因为尽管围绕帝国和殖民地管理的性质的流行和学术话语迅速增长，很少有人注意到帝国管理在塑造和正式化国内公务员较低级别的权力结构中的重要性。我们对信息、人员流动和殖民地管理者的了解要比我们对帝国对国内信息国家项目的重要性的了解多得多。关键问题：权力掌握在哪些关键个人和官员手中？7 /22这些人之间存在什么关系？他们是如何以个人或集体的方式捍卫、积累和使用政治和行政权力的？这一过程和经验对现代英国政府机构的影响是什么？方法：我的项目侧重于较低级别政府的个别管理人员。它使用殖民地行政人员给同事、上级和下级的信件、私人期刊、私人信件、政府法案和公报、会期文件和机密备忘录来重建他们对政治和行政权力的个人和集体理解以及关系。这项工作将采用希格2001年的三股定义的“权力”（假定，下放，自由裁量权）和转录数据将被编码，以确定语言模式与此定义。我将使用NVivo来分析整个语料库，并通过对个人、特定时间段和特定事件的详细案例研究来补充这一广泛的分析，这些案例在信息状态的扩展中作为标记出现。影响：有一种协调一致的尝试，试图去殖民化过去，并（更广泛地）探索其故事被忽视或压制的群体和个人。虽然我的项目似乎侧重于政治和治理的“传统”主题，但事实并非如此。在分析较低的公务员制度的崛起，我将作出贡献的文献治理和殖民主义，但也揭示了那些以外的政治精英的故事，他们已经上升到成为它的一部分，往往从卑微的开始，包括一个显着数量的白色和非白色移民的19世纪50年代。

Context: My PhD addresses the locus of 'power' as the British administrative and information state grewrapidly in the first half of Britain's 'Imperial Century', between 1825 and 1855. The historiographicalliterature (Porter, 1999; Searle, 2004, Hyam, 2010) is replete with leadership figureheads, 'systems', andthe development of a Civil Service. Yet in terms of the extension of State knowledge and reach we knownext to nothing about how power was claimed, distributed, controlled and wielded at lower levels of thenascent State apparatus. Higg's magisterial 2001 analysis of the rise of the British information stateacknowledged the need to study these lower levels of government to uncover the 'real' seat of power.None has been forthcoming. My project will fill this gap through the medium of the British Empire'sdomestic colonial administration. I focus on the Colonial Office (disbanded 1966) as opposed to other,perhaps more easily accessible and widely known, departments because although popular and academicdiscourse around the Empire and the nature of Colonial administration has grown rapidly, very littleattention has been given to the importance of the administration of empire in shaping and formalisingthe power structures at the lower levels of the domestic Civil Service. We know much more aboutinformation and people flows and Colonial administrators in situ than we do about the importance ofEmpire for the domestic information state project.Key Questions:With which key individuals and officeholders did power reside?7 / 22What relationship existed between these individuals?How, individually and collectively, did they seek to defend, accrue and use political and administrativepower?What is the legacy of this process and experience for modern British government institutions?Method: My project focuses on individual administrators at lower levels of government. It uses (seeoffsite activities) letters by Colonial administrators to colleagues, superiors, and subordinates, privatejournals, personal letters, government acts and gazettes, sessional papers, and confidential memorandato reconstruct their individual and collective understandings of and relationships with political andadministrative power. The work will adopt Higg's 2001 three strand definition of 'power' (assumed,devolved, discretionary) and transcribed data will be coded to identify linguistic patterns in relation tothis definition. I will use NVivo to analyse the whole corpus and supplement this broad analysis withdetailed case studies of individuals, particular time periods and particular events that emerge aswaymarkers in the extension of the information state.Impact: There is a concerted attempt to decolonise the past and (more widely) to explore groups andindividuals whose stories have been either ignored or suppressed. While it may seem that my projectfocuses on 'traditional' themes of politics and governance, this is not the case. In analysing the rise ofthe lower Civil Service I will both make a contribution to the literatures on governance and Colonialismbut also uncover the stories of those outside the political elite who have risen to become a part of it fromoften humble beginnings, including a significant number of white and non-white immigrants by the1850s.