British policy makers did not speak of “imperial defence” before the 1850s. By the end of the century, the phrase was on everyone's lips—and not just among those who reckoned the Royal Navy would not be peerless for much longer. During this period, a new bout of empire boosterism began: why not consolidate our territories, the best of them at least, into a (con)federation? Though arguments for such a project were complex and variegated, they were generally united by two common threads: culture, usually interchangeable with “race,” and technology, usually referring to new communications and transport technologies.

Though the imperial federation never materialized, chatter about it had lasting effects in many areas. In his new monograph, John C. Mitcham focuses on its reverberations in the realm of defense. An introduction, seven chapters, and a short conclusion make up the book, in which Mitcham examines the racial origins of an imperial security community between the “Mother Country” and “the self-governing colonies to the exclusion of Ireland” (7): Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Mitcham argues that these polities came to share a certain British identity in the fin de siècle, and that this identity caused them to sacrifice so much in the Great War.

Building on the latest imperial and military historiography and the associated methodologies, Mitcham executes his analysis admirably. In addition to visiting twenty archives in five countries to collect materials on the “official mind” of policy makers and administrators, he also covers a massive amount of mass discourse—a small mountain of penny press dailies and other periodicals, some of them quite obscure, for a total of about three hundred publications. The benefits of this dual focus are evident in chapter 2, where Mitcham juxtaposes the discursive production of institutions such as the Colonial Defence Committee with that of the popular press to show that the race-based vision of Greater Britain was in fact vertically shared.

Mitcham's targets vary. Chapter 3 engages the semiotics of the South African War. Chapter 4 deals with public spectacles such as the Diamond Jubilee and the Quebec Tercentenary and the associated mobilization of both colonial troops and the Royal Navy to symbolize imperial unity. Chapter 5 considers rhetorical somersaults performed to demonstrate the essential complementarity between the new colonial navies of Australia and Canada on the one hand and the Royal Navy on the other. Chapter 6 outlines what can be called the imperial militarization of childhood: the Boy Scouts, for example. Chapters 6 and 7 both detail the promise and limits of imperial conferences, culminating in the construction of the Britannic Kriegsverein in time for the guns of August 1914.

Mitcham's narrative is convincing but may leave readers wanting more. Given his expressed interest in the “ontological nature of race, empire, and identity” (2), one might expect to see at least some discussion of the history of ideas about the existence of separate human species or “races.” In light of this omission, consider his assertion that a racial British identity—“like all collective identities” (26, 36)—emerged in response to external threats, starting with the Crimean War and what he calls the Indian Mutiny/Rebellion. Yet one might also say that the term “British” was invested with at least proto-racial meanings already during the seventeenth century, namely through the colonization of Ireland and the expansion of chattel slavery in the Americas. From this perspective, Charles Dilke, James A. Froude, John Robert Seeley, George Parkin, Alfred Milner, Richard Jebb, and others who pushed for “Greater Britain” could be seen as reflecting and reinforcing multiple traditions of British race thinking, not just those associated with Victorian science or imperial competition.

Looking forward in time, we can readily agree with Mitcham that the partnership between the adult British lion and its increasingly fierce cubs “survived the grueling test of two world wars” (216, 231). What happened next? British race patriotism surely shaped ideas about “defence of the realm” even in the 1950s—think of the work on the British nuclear deterrent dubbed “the Empire bomb.” One might further argue that some Victorian-era notions of imperial defense survived decolonization by enmeshing themselves into an emerging Cold War security architecture centered on the United States. Even today, those closely following the news of the spy chiefs from the Five Eyes intelligence network campaigning against the Chinese communications technology giant Huawei will likely know that said network has been in continuous operation since 1956, when Australia and New Zealand formally joined it. Five Eyes nations have cooperated in defense for almost as long: in 1963, the Australian Army joined the American, British, and Canadian Armies to work on what today we call “interoperability.” The same logic of cooperation has since the 2000s spilled over to numerous domains of both defense and security, from border control to cyber to “space force.” Most interesting of all, we now have a small network of politicians, journalists, and thought leaders arguing that Brexit provides a welcome opportunity to bring these five nations much, much closer together—just look at search engine results for the “Anglosphere” and “CANZUK.” That Mitcham's book opens up all these discussions is a testament to its quality and timeliness. It should have a wide audience, from scholars on race and empire to students at all levels.