Context: Victorian Science & Empire
H.G. Wells & The War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells published The War of the Worlds in 1898, at the height of the British Empire. Wells was not simply writing an adventure story — he used the Martian invasion as a vehicle to critique Victorian society’s arrogance, its faith in science and technology, and its brutal treatment of colonised peoples. The novel asks a devastating question: what would happen if Britain, the world’s greatest imperial power, suddenly became the victim of a superior force?
Wells came from a working-class background in Bromley, Kent. His father was an unsuccessful shopkeeper; his mother a domestic servant. He won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, where he studied biology under Thomas Henry Huxley, a champion of Darwinism. This scientific education profoundly shaped the novel. The Martians are not supernatural — they are a more evolved species applying the same logic of survival that Darwin described. Wells forces his readers to see humanity not as the pinnacle of creation, but as one species among many, vulnerable to extinction.
Wells was also a committed socialist, a member of the Fabian Society alongside George Bernard Shaw. He believed the British class system was unjust and that imperialism was morally indefensible. The War of the Worlds channels these beliefs into fiction: the invasion exposes the fragility of Victorian social structures and forces readers to question whether their comfortable world is as secure as they believe.
Wells critiques three aspects of Victorian society: (1) Imperial arrogance — Britain conquered other nations; now it is conquered. (2) Scientific overconfidence — Victorian technology is useless against the Martians. (3) Social Darwinism — the belief that “superior” races have the right to dominate “inferior” ones is turned against humanity.
The British Empire
By 1898, the British Empire controlled a quarter of the world’s surface and governed over 400 million people. Victorians believed their technological and military superiority gave them the right — even the duty — to colonise other peoples. This attitude was reinforced by Social Darwinism, the idea that some races were naturally “superior” and destined to rule. Wells deliberately reverses this dynamic: the Martians treat humans exactly as the British treated colonised peoples — as inferior beings to be conquered, exploited, and consumed.
The timing of the novel is significant. The 1890s were a period of fin de siècle anxiety — a widespread sense that the century was ending and that change was coming. The Boer War (1899–1902), which began just a year after the novel’s publication, would expose the weaknesses of the British military and shake public confidence in the Empire. Wells anticipated this crisis of confidence.
Wells makes the colonial parallel explicit in the novel’s opening chapter, referencing the destruction of the Tasmanians by European colonisers. He writes: “And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals … but upon its inferior races.” The word “inferior” is deliberately loaded — it echoes the language that Victorians used to justify colonisation. By applying it to humanity as a whole, Wells forces his readers to confront the horror of their own imperial logic.
Science & Technology
The late Victorian period was an era of extraordinary scientific progress. Railways, telegraphs, electric lighting, and new weapons gave Victorians confidence that technology could solve any problem and that human progress was unstoppable. Wells subverts this confidence completely. The British military’s best weapons — artillery, warships, even the Thunder Child — are destroyed by the Martians’ Heat-Ray. Technology, which Victorians worshipped as proof of their superiority, proves utterly inadequate against a genuinely superior civilisation.
Wells also draws on real astronomical discoveries. In the 1870s and 1880s, astronomers observed what appeared to be canals on the surface of Mars, sparking speculation about Martian civilisation. The astronomer Percival Lowell published hugely popular books arguing that intelligent beings had built an irrigation system on Mars. Wells takes this speculation and turns it into a nightmare: the Martians are not just intelligent — they are so far ahead of humans that our species is no more significant to them than insects are to us.
Wells references the Tasmanian genocide to draw a direct parallel between the Martian invasion and British imperialism. He forces readers to see the invasion from the perspective of colonised peoples — making the novel a sustained critique of empire, not just an adventure story. This reference appears in the very first chapter, establishing the political argument before the action begins.
In the exam you will receive a printed extract from The War of the Worlds and write about both the extract and the wider novel. Context is one of the three objectives assessed on this 40-mark question. Always link context to Wells’s methods and purpose — don’t just list facts about Victorian science or empire. The strongest responses will show how Wells uses the science fiction genre itself as a method of social critique.