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Importance Of The British Empire

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The Cultural Importance of the British Empire During the reign of Queen Victoria, Great Britain was the centre of a global empire, controlling nearly one-quarter of the Earth. Although only a small minority of the population of the Empire was actually British, British bureaucrats directly administrated it. Moreover, Victorian age is often referred to as the period of the Pax Britannica, since the territories controlled by the British Crown lived under a relative peaceful kingdom. Especially the motherland enjoyed peace and prosperity; the only wars of this period were the sporadic rebellions in the distant colonies, which, however, did not trouble the British citizens on the island (Greenblatt 1636-1640). Through the Empire, British people …show more content…

For instance, Thomas Babington Macaulay in his Minute on Indian Education argues that a ruling Indian class should be educated in English, rather than Sanskrit and Persian, because only by knowing English they would be able to enjoy the most advanced literature in the world and in turn educate the rest of the country. He believed that: “all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgment used at preparatory schools in England” (Macaulay 1641). Macaulay’s words reflected the Victorian perception that British culture was the most valuable, not because it was the most ancient of the world, but because it was the widest. He adds: “Whoever knows that language, has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations” (Macaulay 1641). He does not see the promotion of a foreign language as an imposition, but rather as a wonderful tool that the British are donating to the

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