The official mind is the ideas, perceptions, and intentions of those policy-makers who had a bearing on British imperial policies. The policy maker is a politician or civil servant who had influence over imperial policy.[1]
The official mind is extensively written about in Ronald Robinson's extraordinarily influential work, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, was co-authored with John Gallagher and Alice Denny and first published in 1961.[2] Historian John Darwin states that while the "local habitation" of the official mind is in Whitehall "its real field of operations lay in those diplomatic-strategic spheres where official control was greatest. In imperial terms that chiefly meant the Mediterranean and Near East."[3]
Bibliography edit
- Notes
- ^ Heinlein 2002, p. 7
- ^ Robinson, Gallagher & Denny 1961
- ^ Darwin 1997, p. 622
- References
- Darwin, John (June 1997). "Imperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of Territorial Expansion". The English Historical Review. 112 (447). Oxford University Press: 614–642. doi:10.1093/ehr/cxii.447.614. ISSN 1477-4534. JSTOR 576347.
- Heinlein, Frank (2002). British government policy and decolonisation, 1945-1963: scrutinising the official mind (2002 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-5220-7. - Total pages: 337
- Robinson, Ronald Edward; Gallagher, John; Denny, Alice (1961). Africa and the Victorians: the official mind of imperialism (1961 ed.). Macmillan. - Total pages: 491