Indhold: Frames (The dream machine : on liberalism and empire ; What is liberalism? ; Ideologies of empire). Themes (Escape velocity : ancient history and the empire of time ; The idea of a patriot queen? : the monarchy, the constitution, and the iconographic order of Greater Britain, 1860-1900 ; Imagined spaces : nation, state, and territory in the British colonial empire, 1860-1914 ; The project for a new anglo century : race, space, and global order). Thinkers (John Stuart Mill on colonies : International society in Victorian political thought : T.H. Green, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick ; John Robert Seeley and the political theology of empire ; Republican imperialism : J.A. Froude and the virtue of empire ; Alter Orbis : E.A. Freeman on empire and racial destiny ; Democracy and empire : J.A. Hobson, L.T. Hobhouse, and the crisis of liberalism ; Coda: (De)Colonizing liberalism)