The decades that spanned the turn of the twentieth century marked the apogee of the British imperial system, whose institutional framework had been set after 1857. At the same time, these decades were marked by a rich profusion and elaboration of voluntary organizations; a surge in publication of newspapers, pamphlets and posters; and the writing of fiction and poetry as well as political, philosophical, and historical non-fiction. With this activity, a new level of public life emerged, ranging from meetings and processions to politicized street theatre, riots, and terrorism. The vernacular languages, patronized by the government, took new shape as they were used for new purposes, and they became more sharply distinguished by the development of standardized norms. The new social solidarities forged by these activities, the institutional experience they provided, and the redefinitions of cultural values they embodied were all formative for the remainder of the colonial era, and beyond.

Yet it was only to be in the 1920s that the British began to recognize the hollowness of their long-held assumption that self-rule for India would be pushed off into an indefinite future. The viceroys who presided over the final decades of the century – Dufferin (1884–8), Lansdowne (1888–94), and Elgin (1894–9) – were, in Percival Spear's phrase, ‘imperial handymen’ all. Unshaken by the fissures revealed in the Ilbert Bill controversy and imagining a future like the past, they endeavoured to secure the economic interests of empire, establish secure borders, and provide a government of limited responsibilities. Curzon, as viceroy from 1899 to 1905, by his driven brilliance in seeking those very same ends, precipitated a public furor that energized the till then quiescent Indian National Congress, which was to lead India to independence. The succeeding decade was one of public action and government response, including, under Minto as viceroy (1906–10), a modest expansion of Indian participation in governing councils. Through the First World War, however, the Indian role in governing was limited to providing manpower almost exclusively at the lower levels of government, to service in the army, and to consultation on the part of loyal elites. This continuity with the earlier colonial period sat uneasily on a society experiencing change in every dimension of social, political, and cultural life, while increasingly convinced that imperial rule did not further India's interests.