The empire, rolling from war to war, painting Africa as well as Asia red, now seemed to be in the hands of men like Lord Salisbury and Cecil Rhodes, who made no bones about ruling by the sword, making it clear to westernised natives that if they thought they'd have an equal share in law and legislation, they could think again.

It was no wonder, then, that those who in an earlier generation would still have hoped to see the Liberal dream realised, now turn their backs on it as a bankrupt fraud.

The Tories wouldn't give them prosperity, and the Liberals couldn't give them justice and self-government. It was time to fend for themselves.

In Britain, the working class finally had had enough of hand-me-downs from the conscience-stricken middle-class liberals. They created their own Labour Party.

In India, the writing was on the wall when militant Hindu nationalists adopted a campaign and a word that had begun its life in Ireland -- the boycott.

The entire premise of the Macaulay vision had been that subject peoples would yearn to join the world of the British consumer, and here they were saying "No thanks" to the travelling salesmen of the workshop of the world.

Self-sufficient handcrafts would challenge imperial commerce. That's why Gandhi put the spinning wheel at the centre of the Indian flag.

You wouldn't know this, perhaps, if you got a good seat at the last of the great durbars in 1911, actually featuring a King Emperor, George V, present and in person, held yet again on the dusty Delhi Ridge where the martyrs of the mutiny had held out.

Three years later, the empire would ask its loyal subjects to line up for king and country. Millions did from Ireland and from India.

Out of the carnage of world war came a reborn Islamic militancy.