Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination
Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain

"This is a profoundly important piece of scholarship, one that - to use a hackneyed but, in this case, absolutely accurate phrase - no one in the field can afford to ignore."
Richard Price, Journal of Modern History

"Theodore Koditschek has written an important book that goes a long way toward answering one of the most urgent and troubling questions about the nineteenth-century British Empire, namely, how such an avowedly and demonstrably liberal state could have maintained and justified such a patently illiberal empire for so long … It impressively explores and explains the contradictions of nineteenth-century liberal imperialism with subtlety, sophistication, and sensitivity, adding considerably to our understanding of the Victorian Empire."
Jeffrey Auerbach, Journal of British Studies

"Theodore Koditschek's Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination is an ambitious contribution to the debate over the ways in which liberal concepts of progress influenced the intellectual and political life of modern Britain and empire. Its achievements suggest we are, indeed, getting somewhere."
History Workshop Journal

"Koditschek, in scope and depth, achieves a masterful synthesis that should make this book the standard work for understanding liberal imperial thinking in the nineteenth century."
Karuna Mantena, Victorian Studies

"This incisive study combines vivid biographical sketches with acute readings of texts to offer a nuanced and revealing portrait of liberalism's troubled marriage to the nineteenth-century British Empire."
Jennifer Pitts, American Historical Review