SOURCE: "Imperial Masquerade," in National Review, Vol. XLV, No. 8, April 26, 1993, pp. 48-50.

In the review below, Kelly blasts Said's representations of the British empire in Culture and Imperialism.

In the beginning was the word. Impérialisme was coined 150 years ago, during the period of the July Monarchy in France, as a label for the attempts being made within the country to reclaim Napoleonic ideas and to reimpose the former imperial system. Passing into English as "imperialism," it was employed by British political writers in the 1850s and 1860s to describe the principles, imperial rather than republican, upon which Louis Napoléon sought to organize the government of France after he assumed the title of Emperor in 1852. The word had no connection at the time with what was later to be known as "the British Empire." Indeed, even so scathing a critic of Britain's acquisition of overseas territories as...