BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

scaremongering. 6 But the obsession with myth also speaks volumes about the anxieties
associated with a highly moralistic, hierarchical, authoritarian conformist mentality. The
capacity of national myth for allowing a vicarious sense of self-worth, self-glorification or self-
justification through mere identification with a larger group explains its success as both a
propaganda medium and a means of establishing a moral basis for the perception of an orderly
world. Whether by virtue of the struggle against evil or the dispensation of Providence, the entire
British or Anglo-Saxon race and its imperial or national aims, or those of a particular subset
class, could be exonerated in comparison with rivals. The Arthurian legend, the myth of the
gentleman, and references to antiquity and race all supported an internal as well as external
hierarchy that represented one of the sinews of empire.
Victorian Mentalities, National Myth and Empire
The moralistic component of British nationalism, which found expression in the idea of a
providentially ordained mission, served both to justify British commercial and imperial
expansion and, at the same time, to vilify the growth of competing empires. The broader
implications of the Evangelical creed had established a moral basis for British acquisition of
wealth and power, “that sense of being an Elect People which, set to a more blatant tune, became
a principal element in Late Victorian Imperialism.” 7 This moralistic self-aggrandizement
6 Gay, Freud for Historians, 105-7, argues, in a somewhat different context, that selfinterest
rarely appears as a purely rational means to a material end, but ususally represents a
complex blend of materialism, narcissism, and altruism, defined not as a universal motive but by
the claims and actions of the individuals or groups in question.
7 Young, Portrait of an Age, 4. See also Houghton, Victorian Frame of Mind, 44-45.
Mid-Victorian notions of physical and moral superiority, marking the British as an elect or
chosen people, usually stood on comparisons with the French.
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