Official mind

The official mind is the ideas, perceptions, and intentions of those policy-makers who had a bearing on British imperial policies. The policy maker is a politician or civil servant who had influence over imperial policy.[1]

The official mind is extensively written about in Ronald Robinson's extraordinarily influential work, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, was co-authored with John Gallagher and Alice Denny and first published in 1961.[2] Historian John Darwin states that while the "local habitation" of the official mind is in Whitehall "its real field of operations lay in those diplomatic-strategic spheres where official control was greatest. In imperial terms that chiefly meant the Mediterranean and Near East."[3]

Bibliography

Notes

1. Heinlein 2002, p. 7
2. Robinson, Gallagher & Denny 1961
3. Darwin 1997, p. 622

References

• Darwin, John (June 1997). "Imperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of Territorial Expansion". The English Historical Review. Oxford University Press. 112 (447): 614–642. doi:10.1093/ehr/cxii.447.614. ISSN 1477-4534. JSTOR 576347.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Heinlein, Frank (2002). British government policy and decolonisation, 1945-1963: scrutinising the official mind (2002 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-5220-7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) - Total pages: 337
• Robinson, Ronald Edward; Gallagher, John; Denny, Alice (1961). Africa and the Victorians: the official mind of imperialism (1961 ed.). Macmillan.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) - Total pages: 491