It has been more than a half a century since Vladimir Halpérin's Lord Milner and the Empire and Edward Crankshaw's The Forsaken Idea: A Study of Lord Milner, both published in 1952, considered Alfred Milner and the British Empire. The following work addresses the intervening void and is also an outgrowth of research originally undertaken for a new biography. While writing this book, Forgotten Patriot: A Life of Alfred, Viscount Milner of St James's and Cape Town, it became apparent that there was also a need for a separate, and more in-depth, consideration of Milner's imperial career, reflecting both fifty years of scholarship and new archival sources, than possible in a life.

Tracing Milner's imperialism, from its genesis at Balliol to his death, is the aim of the following work. In addition to his official career, from Egypt to South Africa, to the Colonial Office and back to Egypt after the Great War, the book also considers such topics as Milner's ‘Kindergarten’ of young male acolytes of empire, and the later Round Table movement, whose ‘Cliveden set’ members link Milner to the later appeasement movement – which he almost certainly would have condemned. To these more famous supporters this work adds an overlooked female cadre of acolytes. During and after the Boer War these imperial ladies, including his future wife Violet, née Maxse, later Lady Edward Cecil, Violet Markham and Edith Lyttelton among others, gave staunch support to Milner in person, in published works, and by their activities in such groups as the Victoria League. The following chapters also consider anew several other issues, including Milner's relations with race in South Africa, which Milner called the ‘most important question’. No other work has given lengthy consideration to Milner's post- South African campaign for a ‘constructive’ brand of social imperialism before World War I, his intertwined efforts in support of imperial defence and preparedness, or his links to Lord Rosebery and the Liberal Imperialists.