Conclusion

The precedent of Rome for Britain, France and the United States served alternatively as exemplar, ideal, object lesson or admonition. Circumstances dictated how and when it was used and what aspect of its trajectory from republic to empire was emphasised.

In contrast, the republican traditions of France and America meant that the founders of the republic in each case looked to the Roman republic as an exemplar of civic virtue and constitutional principle. Unlike the United States, France (and Britain for that matter) had a legacy of occupation by the Romans. For nineteenth-century France, this meant picking up that legacy as Latinite and, as heirs to Rome, re-creating the Mare Nostrum in the French civilising image. The interrupted nature of France’s republican tradition, interspersed as it was with the ideals and aims of a variety of other regimes, meant that any association with the Roman republic was not sustained. Rather it was the civilising concept of Rome’s empire that served as the primary point of comparison.

For the United States, on the other hand, the model of the Roman republic was kept alive in the way in which it lived its own republican tradition. It was only when this tra­dition appeared to be unravelling and an aggressive form of imperialism manifested itself that the references to Rome became strident.

In much the same way as Rome recast its history in the image of Greece, so too have recent Western empires—in this case Britain, France and the United States—recast theirs in the image of Rome. Rome was, after all, the longest-lasting Western empire and the most successful propagator of its civilisation to date, a reference that modern empires wished to emulate, even to surpass. In their attempts Britain and France fell by the way­side; can the United States fare better?

Notes

1 Ernest Frederick Lloyd, ‘Pax Americana: A Great Opportunity Seen to Prevent More Wars’, Ann Arbor Michigan, 26 February 1936, in New York Times, 1 March 1936. NYT online archive, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B06E4DC133BE33BBC4953DFB56 6838D629eDe (accessed 23 September 2012).

G.H. Stevenson, ‘“Pax Britannica”, Parallel with Ancient Rome. The Future Commonwealth of Nations', University College, Oxford, 30, in The Times, Monday 3 February 1936, Issue 47288, p. 13. See Patricia M.E. Lorcin, ‘France and Rome in Africa: Recovering Algeria's Latin Past', French Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2002), pp. 295-329.

A few examples: Mark Bradley, Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford, 2010); Muriel Evelyn Chamberlain, Pax Britannica? British Foreign Policy, 1789--1914 (London, 1988); Jan Morris, The Pax Britannica Trilogy: Farewell the Trumpets; Pax Britannica; Heaven's Command, 3 vols (London,

1992) ; Norman Vance, The Victorians and Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1997); Philip Wilkinson and Adam Hart-Davis, What the Romans Did for Us (London, 2000); Richard Hingley (ed.), Images of Rome: Perceptions of Ancient Rome in Europe and the United States in the Modern Age (Portsmouth, 2001); Asa Rountree, The Roman Republic: An Historical Parallel? ([S.l.], 2003); Thomas F.

1 (2012), pp. 76-101.

Richard Hingley, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen: The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeology (London, 2000), p. 31.

Elliot Evans Mills, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire: A Brief Account of Those Causes Which Resulted in the Destruction of Our Late Ally, Together with a Comparison between the British and Roman Empires; Appointed for Use in the National Schools of Japan. Tokio, 2005 (Oxford, 1905), p. iv.

Elliot Evans Mills, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, p. 60.

Francis Fletcher Vane, Pax Britannica in South Africa (London, 1905); Henry Shaw Perris, Pax Brit­annica; A Study of the History of British Pacification (New York, 1913); Bo Gabriel de Montgomery, Pax Britannica (London, 1928); Morris, The Pax Britannica Trilogy; F.A. Voigt, Pax Britannica (London, 1949); Muriel Evelyn Auteur Chamberlain, Pax Britannica? (London, 1988).

Perris, Pax Britannica, pp. viii-ix. Emphasis in the original.

Ibid., p. 2.

Ibid., p. 10.

The Scottish chieftain Galgacus in Tacitus' Agricola, quoted by ibid., p. 4.

Ibid., pp. 10-11. My emphasis.

(Viscount) James Bryce, The Ancient Roman Empire and the British Empire in India, the Diffusion of Roman and English Law Throughout the World; Two Historical Studies (London, 1914), pp. 1-2.

Bryce, The Ancient Roman Empire and the British Empire in India, p. 4.

Ibid., p. 10.

(Sir) John Robert Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (London, 1921 [1883]), p. 10.

Bryce, The Ancient Roman Empire and the British Empire in India, pp. 13 and 24.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., pp. 40 and 54.

Ibid., p. 79. See also, Richard Hingley, ‘An Imperial Legacy: The Contribution of Classical Rome to the Character of the English', in Hingley, Images of Rome, pp. 145-165.

Seeley, The Expansion of England, p. 282. Montgomery, Pax Britannica, p. ix.

Ibid., p. 165.

Voigt, Pax Britannica, p. 3.

Ibid., p. 6.

Andras Ban, Pax Britannica: Wartime Foreign Office Documents Regarding Plans for a Postbellum East Central Europe (Boulder, 1997); Chamberlain, Pax Britannica?; Morris, The Pax Britannica Trilogy.

Malick W. Ghachem, The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 71-72. Honore Jean Pierre Fisquet, Histoire de l'Algerie depuis les temps anciens jusqu'a nos jours: publie d'apres les ecrits et les documents les plus officiels (Paris, 1842), p. 7.

Paul Edison, ‘Latinizing America: The French Scientific Study of Mexico, 1830-1930', PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1999.

See, for example, Emde Francois Jomard, Description d’Antinoe (Paris, 1818).

See Patricia M.E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (London, 1999), pp. 35-75.

Lorcin, Imperial Identities, chaps. 5-7.

See Lorcin, ‘France and Rome in Africa', pp. 297-306.

Nabila Oulebsir, ‘Rome ou la Mediterranee', in Marie-Noelle Bourguet et al. (eds), L’invention scientifique de la Mediterranee: Egypte, Moree, Algerie (Paris, 1998), p. 245.

Gustave Boissiere, L’Algerie romaine (2nd edn), 2 vols (Paris, 1883 [1878]), Vol. I, p. xvii. Boissiere, L’Algerie romaine, p. xvi.

Gaston Boissier, Roman Africa, Arabella Ward (trans.) (New York, 1899), p. 100.

Boissier, Roman Africa, pp. 24-25.

Ibid, pp. 135-136.

Ibid, p. 137.

Lorcin, Imperial Identities, chap. 9; ‘Decadence and Renascence: Louis Bertrand and the Concept of Rebarbarisation in Fin de Siecle Algeria', in Kay Chadwick and Timothy Unwin (eds), New Perspectives on the Fin de Siecle in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century France (London, 2000), pp.

Louis Bertrand, Le sang des races (Paris, 1899); Louis Bertrand, Pepete, le bien-aime (Paris, 1909); Louis Bertrand, Les villes d’or: Algerie et Tunisie romaines, le cycle africain (Paris, 1921); Louis Bertrand, Le livre de la Mediterranee (Paris, 1923); L. Bertrand and M. Ricord, Terre de resurrection (Paris, 1947). R.N. Cust, ‘Tunisia in 1885', Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, VIII (1886), pp. 522-524, 523.

Frank Edward Johnson, ‘The Greek Bronzes of Tunisia', The National Geographic Magazine (January 1912), pp. 89-104, 89-90.

‘Lettre de M. Alfred Merlin. Directeur des Antiquites de Tunisie, sur les fouilles de Bulla Regia', Tunis le 20 octobre, 1906, in Academie des Inscriptions & Belles Lettres. Comptes Rendus des Seances de l’Annee 1906 (Paris, 1906), pp. 547-563, 563.

Edith Wharton, In Morocco (New York, 1920), p. 46.

Berbrugger was a graduate of the Ecole des Chartes, a Fourierist by philosophical inclination and an Arabist. He was a high-profile figure in the colony, becoming a member of a wide range of academic and non-academic societies and civic groups. He was editor of the Moniteur Algerien, which chronicled the colony's major events, and was elected to the Royal Geographical Society (London). His prestige in Algeria was such that when he died he lay in state at the national library he had founded and was given an official funeral presided over by the governor-general at the time, Field Marshal MacMahon.

For an analysis of post-First World War developments and Camus' role, see Lorcin, ‘France and Rome in Africa', pp. 323-327.

Ibid., p. 327.

Susan Ford Wiltshire, ‘Introduction', in Robert J. Rowland (ed.), Vergil’s Rome and the American Experience: Papers of a Public Program ‘Novus Ordo Seclorum: Vergil’s Rome and the American Experience’ (College Park, MD, 1987), pp. 1-4, 1.

Meyer Reinhold, ‘Roman Virtues and the American Experience', in Robert J. Rowland (ed.), Vergil’s Rome and the American Experience, pp.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., p. 15.

Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York, 2004), p. 16.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2000).

Quoted by Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, p. 71.

Ferguson quoted in Timothy Parsons, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall (Oxford, 2010), p. 3.

Charles Krauthammer, 5 March 2001, quoted by Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, p. 68.

Ashley Dawson and Malini Johar Schueller, Exceptional State: Contemporary U.S. Culture and New Imperialism (Durham, NC, 2007), p. 11.

Monte L. Pearson, Perils of Empire: The Roman Republic and the American Republic (New York, 2008), p. 5.

62 Ibid; p. 61.

63 Ibid, p. 274.

64 Ibid., p. 273.

65 Murphy, Are We Rome? p. 14.

66 Ibid., pp. 197-198.

67 Ibid., p. 206.

68 Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, p. 285.

69 Ibid., p. 71.

70 Ibid., p. 291.

71 Ibid., p. 285.

Further reading

Dawson, Ashley, and Malini Johar Schueller, Exceptional State: Contemporary U.S. Culture and New Imperialism (Durham, NC, 2007).

Hingley, Richard (ed.), Roman Officers and English Gentlemen: The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeology (London, 2000).

Hingley, Richard (ed.), Images of Rome: Perceptions of Ancient Rome in Europe and the United States in the Modern Age (Portsmouth, 2001).

Kumar, Krishan, ‘Greece and Rome in the British Empire: Contrasting Role Models', Journal of British Studies, Vol. 51, No. 1 (2012), pp. 76-101.

Lorcin, Patricia M.E., ‘France and Rome in Africa: Recovering Algeria's Latin Past', French Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2002), pp. 295-329.

Louis, William Roger, ‘The Pax Americana: Sir Keith Hancock, The British Empire and American Expansion', in Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire Suez and Decolonization (London,

2006), pp. 999-1,027.

Madden, Thomas F., Empires of Trust: How Rome Built—and America is Building—a New World (New York, 2008).

Malamud, Margaret, Ancient Rome and Modern America (Oxford, 2009).

Morley, Neville, The Roman Empire: Roots of Imperialism (New York, 2010).

Murphy, Cullen, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (Boston, 2008).

Pearson, Monte L., Perils of Empire: The Roman Republic and the American Republic (New York, 2008).

Perris, Henry Shaw, Pax Britannica: A Study of the History of British Pacification (New York, 1913). Seeley, John Roberts, The Expansion of England (Chicago, 1971).

Vance, Norman, The Victorians and Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1997).