The effects that engineering in the empire had on the British engineering profession were particularly strongly felt in the public spheres. Imperial projects and connections gave engineers a range of new opportunities among the British public and brought about changes in public perceptions both of what it meant to be a British engineer in Africa and of the frontiers the engineers claimed to be taming. This chapter analyses the ways in which engineers made use of these opportunities and identifies the reasons they had for pursuing them. An issue of self-representation is involved here, and the way engineers fashioned themselves and their contribution to the British empire greatly differed according to their standing within the complex professional and social hierarchy that was in place in the profession by the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The position of individual engineers within this socio-professional hierarchy profoundly influenced the motives as well as the means they had for engaging with the public. Some engineers presented themselves as ‘explorer-engineers’, a term introduced in the first section of the chapter to label a cultural persona that rose to prominence as familiar images of ‘Smilesian’ heroic engineers fused with the vibrant late-Victorian cultures of empire and exploration.