Classical Greco-Roman education shaped British imperial governance

Evidence

Arabic and Persian were taught as dead classical languages by Nicholson and his academic contemporaries. At first sight this sort of approach was not useful for Britain’s proconsuls, diplomats and adventurers in the Middle East. But then consider that the proconsular mentality was formed by a deep familiarity with Greek and Latin. Lord Curzon, Sir Ronald Storrs, T. E. Lawrence and most of the rest of them were steeped in the Greek and Rome classics. Readings of Thucydides, Herodotus and Tacitus guided those who governed the British empire. Lord Cromer, the proconsul in Egypt, was obsessed with the Roman empire and its decline and fall. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 371

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider argument of the book about Orientalism serving empire, and to how colonial administrators thought through Roman exempla.

Related

• British classics dominance crowded out Oriental studies at universities (similarity 0.82)