GR: Crystal Palace resonances

[Mark Kohut]

"The election campaign of 1874--or, to fix the date exactly, Disraeli's
speech in the Crystal Palace in 1872--marked the birth of imperialism
as the catch phrase of domestic politics. [mostly re The Irish
Question]---J. Schumpeter, "Imperialism as a Catch Phrase", 1955.

There seems to be a consensus that the growth of the modern bureaucratic
state of the West, such an almost unique historical focus  [in fiction at
least] of Gravity's Rainbow,  happened because of the need to administer,
'manage', the colonies. England first then the US from around 1898.

in that mid-war year 1943, a year before GR is set, the Vice President of
the US gave a major-enough speech that declared that America would no
longer maintain, try to build, an empire, sez Louis Fischer, later
biographer of Gandhi, who was there, in a little book called Empire, 1944.
About that promise.........
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