Victorian Heroes, Empire, and Moral Imprimatur

I recently published a chapter on two heroic figures of the late-Victorian era entitled “Queen Victoria and General Gordon: Heroes in the Age of Empires.”[1]
 
Here are a few excerpts to temp you to track down the entire chapter.

​As the contemporary toppling of statues of historical figures indicates, heroes are culturally manufactured icons whose appeal waxes and wanes according to the zeitgeist of the age. Referring to how Lytton Strachey in his Eminent Victorians (1918) ridiculed the Victorian pantheon of heroes such as Gordon, Lawrence James states, “Yesterday’s heroes and prophets [can] became today’s figures of ridicule.”[2] Yet in the late-nineteenth century western distain for imperial personages was marginal, and few in the British world questioned the heroic figures of General Gordon and Queen Victoria.
 
Two of the larger-than-life figures within the British empire’s late-nineteenth century panoply of heroes were Major-General Charles George Gordon (1833-1885), often referred to as Chinese Gordon for his involvement in suppressing a rebellion in China, and Queen Victoria (1819-1901), who reigned from 1837 to her death in 1901. 
 
Upon his death General Gordon was described as “the nearest approach to that one Man, Christ Jesus, of any man that ever lived.”[3]
 
Vying for accolades of divinity was Queen Victoria. Upon her death it was stated “were we in the habit of deifying monarchs, we would not, in Queen Victoria, have the worst example of history for such exaltation.”[4]
 
Both Gordon and Queen Victoria were heroic figures in the age of empires, a period coinciding with the New Imperialism, and it is the intersection of heroes, religion, gender, and empire that is the focus of this research. This research will detail the devotion of Baptists to such heroes but will also delve into the role such heroes played in Baptist life. More specifically, it addresses the role those two heroes played in the imagination and discourse of the churches living in the age of empires.
 
Both Gordon and Queen Victoria were deemed to have embodied the ideals of Christian citizenship and imperial virtues. Their godly conduct was understood to have stemmed the tide of societal moral decay as well as the corruption of imperial ideals. The didactic purpose behind the coverage of the Jubilees and funerals, and ensuing memorializing, seems obvious, with idealized notions of male and female codes fused to Christian virtues and imperial aims writ large. In an empire believed to be doing the work of God, such purity was considered to be necessary for God’s continued blessing.
 
But more was going on than just teaching the faithful about godly living. It is also the argument of this research that the heroic lives of Gordon and Queen Victoria acted as a salve to the conscience by demonstrating the Christian virtues of the most prominent imperial leaders of the age. The New Imperialism was just that – new – and its intensity led to doubts, ambiguity, uncertainty, and criticisms. Yet reminders of the Christian identity of the empire’s leaders acted as a moral imprimatur for the empire. Consequently, with such godly heroes whose virtue had allegedly shaped the very essence of the empire, the empire – despite its manifold faults – could legitimately be supported with a good conscience.
 
 
[1] Gordon L. Heath, “Queen Victoria and General Gordon: Heroes in the Age of Empires” In Baptists and Gender, edited by Melody Maxwell and T. Laine Scales (Macron: Mercer University Press, 2023.), 68-101.  https://www.mupress.org/Baptists-and-Gender-Papers-for-the-Ninth-International-Conference-on-Baptist-Studies-P1245.aspx
[2] Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997), 429. Brad Faught, among others, claims that Strachey’s work was a “misinformed polemic.” See C. Brad Faught, Gordon: Victorian Hero (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2008), x.
[3] John M. MacKenzie, “Heroic Myths of Empire,” Popular Imperialism and the Military, 1850-1950 edited by John M. MacKenzie (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1992), 127.
[4] Rev. A. Carman, “The Empire’s Noble Queen,” Christian Guardian, 30 January 1901. Immediately following this statement Carman noted that the Queen would have fought such exaltation of herself.