British colonial administration in the mid-nineteenth century

For Great Britain the mid-nineteenth century was an age of expansion, not an interval of withdrawal sandwiched between two periods of aggressive overseas activity. Never, certainly. had the pace of commercial growth been more rapid than it was in the age of free trade, when British exports were in creasing six times in the thirty years after 1840, while the vol ume of foreign investment was turning over at a comparable rate. As their shipping lines thrived, as their railroads began to bite into the interior of India and the Americas, as their over seas trade boomed as never before, Englishmen saw no good reason to suppose that favorable conditions would not con tinue almost indefinitely. Relatively secure behind their yet im challenged naval and commercial supremacy the British sought primarily to enjoy the economic benefits of informal empire without unduly adding to the administrative and finan cial burdens of a formal one.

Despite the frequent wars and threats of broader conflict, despite occasional years of financial downswing, the middle decades of the nineteenth century were marked by an air of confidence. They were not a frantic time of "pegging out claims against a grim and uncertain future when those mar kets of the world that were not controlled directly by Great Britain might be shut tight against her. To be sure much terri tory was formally annexed: areas suitable for European coloni zation in Australia and New Zealand; extensions of existing co lonial boundaries in India, southern Africa, and the western region of British North America; commercial toeholds in China and West Africa.