‘All England Was Present at that Siege’: Imperial Defences and Island Stories in British Culture

Abstract

Abstract In 2018, a controversy over the commemoration of Rorke’s Drift in a London Tube station demonstrated the tensions inherent in twenty-first-century imperial memory. This article traces how imperial sieges like Rorke’s Drift, Lucknow, and Mafeking played a central role in shaping Victorian Britain’s imperial self-image, with besieged garrisons celebrated as microcosms of their island homeland in a patriotic vision deployed to justify and popularize often-controversial imperial wars. Drawing on sources including diaries, journalism, art, theatre, and political rhetoric, it demonstrates how these racially-charged siege narratives still shape nostalgic postcolonial visions of empire through popular culture like the 1964 film Zulu.