Viscount Milner

Constructive Imperialism (Dodo Press) Viscount Milner

Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, KG, GCB, GCMG, PC (1854-1925) was a controversial German-born British statesman and colonial administrator. He was noted for Milner's Kindergarten, a group of young men he mentored and who in some cases became important figures in running the British Empire and for his key influence on South African history, through the pursuit of British hegemony. He was educated first at Tubingen, then at King's College London and under Jowett as a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford from 1872 to 1876. In 1881 he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple and joined the staff of the Pall Mall Gazette under John Morley, becoming assistant editor under W. T. Stead. In 1885 he abandoned journalism, and became the Liberal candidate for the Harrow division of Middlesex in the general election, but was defeated. It was by Goschen's influence that in 1889 he was made under-secretary of finance in Egypt. In 1910 he became a founder of The Round Table - A Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Empire, which helped to promote the cause of imperial federation.