Milner's not uncomplicated personal life and tangled relationships are treated fully and sensitively in Forgotten Patriot. Its author, J. Lee Thompson, is an established American scholar of imperial Britain, with authoritative accounts of the press baron, Lord Northcliffe, to his credit. In this admirably wide-ranging assessment of Milner's life, Professor Thompson undoubtably makes him an intriguing and complex figure, a feriously hard-working imperialist who, if never quite losing his way, ended up paddling against the tide of twentieth-century history. His single-minded belief in pursuing the gradiose dream of permanent imperial dominion, whatever the cost in blood and money, was not merely flawed but bound to be swamped by the impact of events such as crisis in Ireland and the burden of world war. By the end of his life in the mid-1920s, the racial vision of an Anglo-Saxon imperial unity, "a single Power, speaking with one voice, acting and ranking as one great unity in teh society of states" (257), was already turning to dust. Others in the metropole, more perceptive or with a better grasp of realities, had already given up. Milner, dreamy, quioxtic, and fanatically patriotic, was too stubborn ever to lose faith.
In a comprehensive narrative that covers the full span of Milner's life and work, the author deals with a mass of information and a whole series of diverse imperial contexts. Some of the basic personal circumstances are known; but Professor Thompson has a nice nose for quirky detail to round out a picture.
The real virtue of Forgotten Patriot is that is is very well plotted, a multilayered biography that sustains an essential organizing focus.
Exhaustively researched, utilizing an enormous range of archival sources, well written, and containing fascinating material and careful judgments, this is an assured and highly readable study in the biography of "high politics." To savor the life of an obsessively interfering, plotting, bossy, and impassioned British imperialist, look no further.
|
