that suddenly they all appear to come together and become relevant (Saggar 1992). Industrial expansion meant that the economic arguments against slavery could finally be proven. Enlightenment thinking became popular, and suddenly there were sound political arguments as to why slavery should be stopped. With the industrial revolution slave labour was no longer cost effective. As a result, in 1807 The Abolition of Slave Trade act was passed (Saggar 1992). The abolition of slavery however did not put an end to black settlement in Britain and it was estimated that there was a population of 10,000 black people at the end of the nineteenth century (Ramdin 1987). During the Victorian Era, the acquisition of territory and of further trading concessions continued; reaching its peak when Victoria, at Disraeli's instigation, had herself crowned Empress of India in 1876. Followers of Disraeli's imperialist foreign policies justified them by invoking a paternalistic and racist theory, which saw Imperialism, as a manifestation of what Kipling would refer to as "the white man's burden.” It could be argued that the implication behind this was that the Empire existed not for the economic benefit of Britain itself, but for the purpose of civilising primitive peoples, incapable of governing themselves and who could with guidance become civilised and christianised. (Saggar 1992). These views of racial superiority were further strengthened by the pseudo scientific writings of De Gobineau’s text The Essay on the inequality of the human races and Darwin’s Origin Of The Species these texts were to have an integral role in racial thinking in countries like France and Germany. Darwin’s works were taken as themes to be developed by the social Darwinists, and used in debates about race (Solomos & Back 1996). Colonial literature gives images of the differences between races and the notion of the ‘other’ who was primitive, uncivi...
