Stephanie Barczewski has shown in her fascinating study Country Houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930 how the global history of empire is woven into the history of our most famous houses, with around 1,100 individual landed estates in Britain being purchased by men who ‘made their money in the empire between 1700 and 1930’, accounting, depending on whose numbers you choose and how you define imperial wealth, for between 6 and 16 per cent of all the country houses in Britain.
