Despite the repeated cycles of promise and disappointment that littered its history, the seemingly contradictory idea of a ‘liberal empire’ was not empty nor, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was it historically moribund. The fact that Lloyd George could initiate dramatic change, in wartime, at the head of a coalition in which most of the key positions were occupied by Tories, is testament to imperial liberalism’s renewed relevance in an age of dramatic global transition.
