'Britannia Pacificatrix': Re-Imagining a post-Armistice Empire

The centenary of the Armistice in 2018, and the eventual realisation of Brexit in
2020, each stimulated a widespread resurgence of interest in the United Kingdom’s relationship with the Great War, the European Union, and its own imperial history. A glance at some recent headlines in the popular press offers a diversity of views: ‘How the First World War inspired the EU’,² ‘The Imperial Myths Driving Brexit’,³ and ‘The EU is the true successor of the British Empire’.⁴
If George Orwell had foreseen that Britain without its empire would be a ‘cold and unimportant little island’,⁵ then European Council President Donald Tusk went the distance and declared Brexit to be ‘the true end of the British Empire’ and anticipated a new status for the UK as ‘outsider, a second-class player in an area occupied by China, the USA and the EU’.⁶ Danny Dorling has warned accordingly that ‘if the British really want to “take back control” they will need to reassess their recent history. Knowledge is power’.⁷