Joseph Chamberlain

Joseph Chamberlain was a British politician, reformer and imperial advocate of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His career included municipal reform in Birmingham, Liberal Unionist politics and a major role in debates over empire and tariff reform.

Joseph Chamberlain also held the offices or ranks of Leader of the Opposition, Secretary of State for the Colonies, President of the Board of Trade, and President of the Local Government Board. Joseph Chamberlain was born in London.

David Gilman’s The Last Horseman places Joseph Chamberlain’s imperial policy in the background to a fictional father’s search for his son during the Second Boer War, where British assumptions about South Africa are tested by a costly conflict. Lawrence James’ Empires in the Sun sets Chamberlain within the high-imperial politics that tied southern Africa to Britain’s larger African ambitions. Thomas Pakenham’s The Boer War treats him directly as Colonial Secretary, following his confrontation with Paul Kruger and Alfred Milner and the political choices that preceded war. James’ The Rise and Fall of the British Empire places Chamberlain’s career within the wider argument over imperial expansion, federation and the costs of maintaining British power overseas.