The Expansion of England

The Expansion of England is a book by an English historian John Robert Seeley about the growth of the British Empire, first published in 1883. Seeley argued that the British expansion was based on its defeat of Louis XIV's France in the 18th century, and that the Dominions were critical to English power. He also stated that holding onto India may not be beneficial to England in the long run. The book was a popular success and received a strongly positive response from British politicians and nobility, and several historians have stated that it had great impact upon British thinking.

Seeley was a professor of modern history at the University of Cambridge from 1869 to 1895.The Expansion of England consists of two lectures Seeley delivered at the University in autumn 1881 and spring 1882, that were substantially modified and published in book form eighteen months later. It was written at a time when British imperialism was on the rise. Seeley's view was that the true function of history was "to exhibit the general tendency of English affairs in such a way as to set us thinking about the future, and divining the destiny which is reserved for us". History had no existence independent of politics: "Politics and history are only different aspects of the same study".

Seeley famously remarked that "We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind". In Seeley's view, the British victories over Louis XIV's France in the early eighteenth century were the foundations of Britain's major expansion. He wrote that the eighteenth century should be seen as a struggle between European nations for the possession of the New World, rather than a struggle for liberty between the king and the parliament.

Seeley noted that it was possible for the Dominions to become independent of Britain: "Such a separation would leave England on the same level as the states nearest to us on the Continent, populous, but less so than Germany and scarcely equal to France. But two states, Russia and the United States, would be on an altogether higher scale of magnitude, Russia having at once, and the United States perhaps before very long, twice our population". However, he also stated that; "The other alternative is that England may prove able to do what the United States does so easily, that is, hold together in a federal union countries very remote from each other. In that case England will take rank with Russia and the United States in the first rank of state, measured by population and area, and in a higher rank that the states of the Continent".

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