![]() The Victorians wrestled with this schizoid legacy of industrialism. Liverpool's status as a World Heritage City is fitting testament to a period when Britain did indeed 'rule the waves'.ĭesperately poor housing conditions, long working hours, the ravages of infectious disease and premature death were the inevitable consequence. One has only to walk along Liverpool's waterfront and view the exceptional 'Three Graces', (the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, Royal Liver and Cunard buildings) planned and erected in the decade or so after Victoria's death, to understand the centrality of commerce and overseas trade in making Britain the world's greatest power during the 19th century. That said, there is no gainsaying the fact that both many colonial administrators and Christian missionaries took on their colonial duties with a fierce determination to do good.īritain's status as the financial capital of the world also secured investment inflows which preserved its immense prosperity. It would be a gross exaggeration to claim, as many contemporaries did, that those living in a British colony felt privileged to be ruled by a people anxious to spread the virtues of an ordered, advanced and politically sophisticated Christian nation to those 'lesser breeds' previously 'without the law'. ![]()
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