This is a story of landed aristocrats, Victorian politicians and nouveaux riches colonial entrepreneurs. It is about sudden death in 10 Downing Street; an obsessive relationship; the marrying of New World money with old world class; and social elevation from a poor Scottish croft to an historic stately home. It considers the impact on the old world of money made in colonial enterprises, and the cultural exchange resulting from colonial expansion; and it details the self-managed decline of a British upper class that had held power for almost a thousand years.This biography is of interest to scholars and general readers alike. It tells the previously untold story of two British aristocrats, detailing the drama of their personal lives and examining their rule in the two colonies, India and Australia, in which they served. It raises issues of population, immigration, social mobility, and the ethics of the British Empire, all of which are relevant to today’s debates. The Northcotes’ life in England is described in the context of a sweep of British political and social history, in which Harry Northcote directly participated: from the passing of the Third Reform and Redistribution Acts in 1884-5 to the bitter battles over female suffrage and the composition of the House of Lords at the close of the Edwardian era. The action during the couple’s colonial adventures in the early 1900s takes place in two different outposts of Empire: India under the Raj, where Harry wielded autocratic power in a Bombay devastated by plague and famine, and the new democratic settler colony of Australia following the federation of separate colonies on a huge yet sparsely populated continent. The transmission of the culture of the Mother Country to the Empire’s furthest reaches is studied through Alice’s contribution as Governor’s wife. The crucial part that women played in the maintenance of the British Empire in both locations is a key theme.
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