Hugh Edward Egerton

Hugh Edward Egerton (19 April 1855 – 21 May 1927) was a British historian.

Life He was the second son of Edward Christopher Egerton, Member of Parliament for Macclesfield and East Cheshire, and his wife Lady Mary Frances Pierrepont, daughter of Charles Pierrepont, 2nd Earl Manvers. He was educated at Rugby School and matriculated in 1873 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he gained a First Class degree in literae humaniores in 1876, graduating B.A. and M.A. in 1881. In 1880 he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple and worked on the North Wales and Chester Circuit.

In 1885 Egerton was appointed assistant private secretary to Edward Stanhope, who became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1886. Stanhope appointed Egerton to the managing committee of the Emigrants Information Office and one of its tasks was to write a handbook on Britain's colonies, to which Egerton contributed. It became a standard work and reached a sixth edition by 1920. It was the first comprehensive survey of British colonial history in relation to the political ideas that had shaped it. He defended British Empire on the basis of a civilizing mission, arguing that the British had no choice but to bring Asians and Africans into contact with European civilization for the betterment of the natives.

Mountfield Court had been left with a lifetime to his mother by his father, who died in 1869: she died in 1905. It then passed to his elder brother Charles Augustus Egerton (1846–1912), a barrister.