Birth of an Idea

Brexiteers’ historical and nostalgic elucubrations coincide with a concrete, albeit utopian, political project: that of Global Britain. Bringing this to fruition entails rekindling old friendships in the Commonwealth, rediscovering the special relationship with America, and intensifying links with Asian economies. This chapter shows how the debate concerning Great Britain’s global role is nothing more than the culmination of an intellectual dispute that has lasted for more than 150 years—since the late Victorian era when the British Empire’s global pre-eminence was slipping as a result of combined internal and external fractures. It all started in 1873 at the Oxford Union, with a debate on how to reorganize and modernize Pax Britannica. Since then, plans have differed in detail, but they have all sought to unite the Anglosphere behind a common purpose. Some have called for the creation of a British imperial federation or a multi-national commonwealth, while others would have liked to see a more formalized Atlantic Union, or even a new Anglo-American state. Hardcore Brexiteers simply continued this project. All the institutional arrangements proposed over the years were intrinsically nostalgic and utopian. They attempted to creatively preserve a past that was falling apart by promoting Britain’s political and economic interests to the detriment of increasingly more assertive colonies. Unsurprisingly, none of these proposals has ever amounted to anything. Nostalgia, which tends to oversimplify reality, hardly makes for enlightened politics and effective policies.