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

背景：1825年至1855年间，随着英国行政和信息国家在大英帝国世纪的上半叶迅速崛起，我的博士研究了权力的轨迹。史学文献(Porter，1999；Searle，2004，Hyam，2010)充满了领袖人物、“制度”和公务员制度的发展。然而，就国家知识和影响范围的扩展而言，我们几乎不知道权力是如何在提升的国家机构的较低级别被要求、分配、控制和使用的。希格2001年对英国信息国家崛起的权威分析承认，有必要研究这些较低级别的政府，以揭示“真正的”权力基础。目前还没有人提出。我的项目将通过大英帝国国内殖民管理的媒介来填补这一空白。我把重点放在殖民地办公室(1966年解散)，而不是其他可能更容易进入和广为人知的部门，因为尽管围绕帝国和殖民管理性质的流行和学术界讨论迅速增长，但很少有人注意到帝国管理在塑造和形成国内较低级别公务员的权力结构方面的重要性。与帝国对于国内信息国家项目的重要性相比，我们对信息、人员流动和殖民地管理者的了解要多得多。关键问题：权力与哪些关键个人和官员一起居住？7/22这些人之间存在什么关系？他们是如何个体和集体地寻求捍卫、积累和利用政治和行政权力的？这个过程和经验对现代英国政府机构有什么遗留下来的？方法：我的项目关注的是较低级别政府的个人行政人员。它使用殖民地管理者致同事、上级和下级的信件、私人日记、私人信件、政府行为和公报、会议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与政治和行政权力的关系。这项工作将采用Higg 2001年对“权力”(假设、下放、自由支配)的三条定义，并将对转录的数据进行编码，以识别与该定义相关的语言模式。我将使用NVivo来分析整个语料库，并用对个人、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，这些案例研究成为信息状态扩展中的方向标志。影响：有一种协调一致的尝试，试图将过去去殖民化，并(更广泛地)探索其故事被忽视或被压制的群体和个人。虽然看起来我的项目关注的是政治和治理方面的“传统”主题，但事实并非如此。在分析低层公务员的崛起时，我不仅会对有关治理和殖民主义的文献做出贡献，而且还会揭示那些政治精英以外的人从卑微的起点崛起成为政治精英的一部分的故事，包括到19世纪50年代的相当数量的白人和非白人移民。

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.