Chapter 4

Empire, migration and race in the British parliament (1803–2005)

The chapter studies the intertwined topics of Empire, migration and race in the Hansard Corpus (1803–2005). The British Empire emerges as a prominent topic from the mid-nineteenth century, but rapidly recedes into insignificance in the two decades following World War II. Emigration dominates in the nineteenth century, whereas immigration takes over in the twentieth century. References to race remain frequent throughout, though in the context of two contrasting discourses. Older uses show a broad range of adjective + noun combinations classifying the ‘human race’ on the basis of geographical or physical characteristics (e.g. English race, Indian race, white/black/brown/yellow race) or evaluating groups within a colonialist ideology of white supremacy (e.g. backward/advanced races). Recent and contemporary use of the term is dominated by high-frequency nominal compounds belonging to the vocabulary of identity politics (e.g. race relations). The study situates itself at the interface of historical linguistics, colonial history and cultural studies. Methodologically, it raises the question of the future relationship between corpus linguistics and the Digital Humanities.