This chapter analyses connections between the British engineering profession and Britain's empire through a study of the ICE in London. During this period the institution was reformed to encompass a membership that increasingly consisted of engineers spread across the British colonies. The analysis demonstrates that imperial factors deeply influenced developments in the Westminster-based institution and thus directly impacted in the centre of the British engineering profession.

The line of argument pursued is, however, more complicated than this. The architects of the reforms in the ICE were the Westminster-based consulting engineers whose networks and imperial platform were analysed in the preceding chapter. This chapter argues that the way in which ‘the empire struck back’ in the ICE was shaped profoundly by the agenda of the consulting engineers of the Great George Street Clique. One side of this agenda was to make the ICE the imperial centre of the British engineering profession by strengthening ties with the growing communities of engineers in colonial diasporas. When pursuing this agenda a main concern was, however, the retention in Westminster of the ability to control how, and on what terms, these ties were to be forged. Metropolitan control of the ICE was a key issue for the Westminster consulting engineers.

By exploring the dynamics of this agenda, insights are gained into the ways that colonial regions and the engineers' centre in Westminster interacted reciprocally.