British-Israel: Racial identity in imperial Britain, 1870-1920

In the late-nineteenth century, a belief emerged in Great Britain which posited that the "Anglo-Saxon race" had descended biologically from the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. According to this creed, Britain's predominating position among nations was due to its identity as God's Chosen People. This belief spawned organizations throughout the British Empire dedicated to furthering this idea and informing the British people of their racial origin, identity, and destiny. By 1900, the British-Israel movement had earned the faith of nearly two million souls throughout the "Anglo-Saxon world." Its adherents included some of the most religious, most educated, and most socially and politically important persons in Britain. British-Israelism, though based on an unorthodox contention, was actually well-representative of much contemporary imperial thought. Like the broader imperial Anglo-Saxonism, British-Israelism suggested that Britain's vast empire was a natural outgrowth from the racial identity of its people. Furthermore, the unplanned and almost mystical growth of the empire indicated to many, including Benjamin Disraeli and Joseph Chamberlain, that a Power higher than mankind had designed this edifice and appointed the Anglo-Saxons as the caretakers and civilizers of humanity. British-Israelism offered a clearer enunciation of this widely-held belief.; This dissertation argues that British-Israelism, representative as it was of a more-commonly held imperial outlook, indicates that British racial identity during the height of the empire was founded primarily on the idea of racial origins and descent. Recently, scholars have suggested that the concept of the Other was the most potent factor in the creation of a national or racial identity. I argue that this concept was rarely used during the imperial period, and particularly within British-Israelism, to create a sense of identity. Rather, British-Israelites and other imperialists attempted to trace the source of British imperial "genius" back to racial forebears. While other imperialists suggested the Germanic peoples of northern Europe had spawned their race, British-Israelites were convinced that it was the House of Israel. Either way, racial identity emerged as a product of genealogical investigations not of the imposition of "Otherness" onto foreign peoples.