British Imperial Identities: An Analysis of the Upper and Lower Classes in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper and The Times, 1892 and 1899
Abstract:
This composition is a comparative study of the Imperial content of two newspapers, The Times and Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, each having an upper and lower class readership respectively in late nineteenth century London. In order to make a judgment on the character and existence of British Imperial identity, this analysis focuses only on Imperial content pertaining to the British Empire. Rather than judge how deeply saturated or prevalent a single British Imperial identity was, this composition will postulate that a single uniform imperial identity did not exist. Instead, separate identities were being constructed, conditioned by differentiations in class membership. These imperial identities, while sharing certain foundational similarities also possessed different and distinctive characteristics, which this study explores.