Empire

The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power

Niall Ferguson

Basic Books, 2002, 392pp

Introduction:

Mainly considers "British Empire, good or bad?" Arguments against can be summarized under 2 headings: negative consequences for colonized, and for colonizers. "In the former category belong both the nationalists and the Marxists ... In the latter camp belong the liberals, from Adam Smith onwards, who have maintained for almost as many years that the British Empire was, even from Britain's point of view, 'a waste of money' ... because imperialism distorted market forces ... it was not in the long-term interests of the metropolitan economy ... [ca. 1900] J A Hobson and Leonard Hobhouse were arguing along very similar lines; they in turn were in some measure the heirs of Richard Cobden and John Bright in the 1840s and 1850s. ... Adam Smith had [in 1776] expressed doubts about [imperialism] ... but it was Cobden who had originally insisted that the expansion of British trade should go hand in hand with a foreign policy of complete non-intervention ... the common factor is all such arguments ... [is] the assumption that the benefits of international exchange ... can be reaped without the costs of empire. To put it more concisely: can you have globalization without gunboats?" (xx-xxii).

1) Why Britain?

a. Pirates

"It should never be forgotten that ... the British Empire began [in the 17th century] in a maelstrom of seaborne violence and theft" (i.e. piracy, Henry Morgan one of the most famous, 4)

The Spanish and Portugese empires were at that time preeminent. The British were jealous, wanting a Protestant empire to match these "Popish" ones.

b. Sugar Rush

"The rise of the British Empire, it might be said, had less to do with the Protestant work ethic or English individualism than with the British sweet tooth" (14).

"In Defoe's time [mid 1600s], tea [India], coffee [Java], tobacco [Virginia] and sugar [Jamaica] were the new, new things" (14).

"What people liked most about these new drugs was that they offered a very different kind of stimulus from the traditional European drug, alcohol. Alcohol is, technically, a depressant. Glucose, caffeine and nicotine, by contrast, were the 18th century equivalent of uppers. Taken together, the new drugs gave English society an almighty hit; the Empire, it might be said, was built on a huge sugar, caffeine and nicotine rush" (16).

c. Going Dutch (ref. the Dutch East India Company)

Although founded around the same time, the Dutch EIC was more successful than the English one due to better financial structure.

"The DEIC was founded in 1602. It was part of a full-scale financial revolution that made Amsterdam the most sophisticated and dynamic of European cities. Ever since they had thrown off Spanish rule in 1579, the Dutch had been at the cutting edge of European capitalism. They had created a system of public debt that allowed their government to borrow from its citizens at low interest rates. They had founded something like a modern central bank. Their money was sound. Their tax system ... simple and efficient" (19-20). The DEIC was better-managed and larger-scale than its competitors.

"Between 1652 and 1674 the English fought 3 wars against the Dutch" mainly over commercial competition ... determined to achieve naval master, the English more than doubled the size of their merchant navy ... yet despite some initial English successes, the Dutch came out on top ... Literally cutthroat competition with the Dutch was spoiling the Restoration party. The solution turned out to be (as so often in business history) a ... political merger" (22-3).

In the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, English aristocrats and merchants staged a coup of English Catholic James II by Dutch Protestants William and Mary of Orange. Although "usually portrayed as a political event, the decisive confirmation of British liberties and the system of parliamentary monarchy ... it also had the character of an Anglo-Dutch business merger ... they needed no lessons from a Dutchman about religion or politics [both were Protestant and parliamentary] ... but what they could learn from the Dutch was modern finance" (24) (e.g. Bank of England founded 1694, national credit market introduced.

"A deal was done which effectively gave Indonesia and the spice trade to the Dutch, leaving the English to develop the newer Indian textiles trade. That turned out to be a good deal for the English company, because the market for textiles swiftly outgrew the market for spices" (25). Reflecting this change, England wound down Surat and established fortified trading posts at (what is now) Madras, Bombay and Calcutta.

After the Dutch threat was resolved, the next one was "interlopers" or employees who competed with the company on the side (and on the sly). The most famous of these was Thomas Pitt. They allowed trade to expand much faster than otherwise, and company leaders eventually realized their value.

"Both Dutch and English traders were minor players in a vast Asian empire. Madras, Bombay and Calcutta were no more than tiny outposts on the edge of a vast and economically advanced subcontinent ... political power continued to be centered in the Red Fort in Delhi, the principal residence of the Mughal Emperor, the Muslim 'Lord of the Universe' whose ancestors had swept into India from the north in the 16th century and had ruled the greater part of the subcontinent ever since ... [at this time, the Mughal empire's wealth and power] dwarfed the European nation states. In 1700 ... India's share of total world output has been estimated at 24% ... Britain's ... 3%" (29).

d. Men of War (ref. military support for the East India Company)

The next conflict was with France, and it would rage worldwide for a century [to 1815] and decide who would govern the world (i.e. about much more than merely market share as with the Anglo-Dutch conflict).

The French had always followed the top-down model of control. "Unlike its English counterpart, the French [East India trading] company was under firm government control. It was run by aristocrats, who cared little for trade but a lot for power politics. The form the French threat took was thus quite unlike that of the Dutch. The Dutch had wanted market share. The French wanted territory" (34).

"The Seven Years War [1757-1763] was the nearest thing the 18th century had to a world war. Like the global conflicts of the 20th century, it was at root a European war. Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Saxony, Hanover, Russia and Sweden were all combatants ... The question was simply this: Would the world be French or British?" (34-5).

"The man who came to dominate British policy [during this time] ... was William Pitt ... Thomas Pitt's grandson" (35). The key to British victory was naval superiority (dependent, in turn, on British public credit, learned from the Dutch). The French fleet was mostly destroyed by Sir Edward Hawke's naval force in 1759 off Brittany as they massed to invade England.

"The 7 Years War decided one thing irrevocably. India would be British, not French" (39). "And the Indians themselves? The answer is that they allowed themselves to be divided - and, ultimately, ruled" (42). "Once pirates, then traders, the British were now the rulers of millions of people overseas - and not just in India" (44).

India's initial conquest (done by 1764) was orchestrated by Robert/George? Clives, a violent, plundering and unscrupulous man. Later (1773), Warren Hastings was appointed Governor-General of Bengal. He was a scholar who deeply appreciated Indian culture (though he still became a very rich man, the point of the EIC, after all, not scholarship or miscegenation).

In review, "what had started as an informal security force to protect the [British East India] company's trade had now become the company's raison d'etre: fighting new battles, conquering new territory, to pay for the previous battles ... It was easy to see who got rich from the Empire. The question was, who exactly was going to pay for it?" (50).

e. The Taxman (ref. answer: the taxpayer)

"The magic mountain atop which British power stood, the National Debt, had grown in proportion with the new territories acquired ... the Excise [tax] ... raise[d] the money necessary to pay the interest ... ate up a substantial proportion of an ordinary family's income ... [and was paid to] a tiny elite of mainly southern bondholders, somewhere around 200,000 families" (51) (i.e. caution, class war approaching). "One of the great puzzles of the 1780s is therefore why it was in France - where taxes were much lighter and less regressive - rather than in Britain that political revolution finally came" (51).

It was in this context of increasing taxes (to pay for empire) that the American Revolution came (largely over taxes). Also, Warren Hastings got into deep trouble by allowing the stock of EIC to plummet on his watch (from its 1767 peak under Clive), aided no doubt by the 1773-4 Bengal famine, repatriation of English wealth earned in India and preference for British-made goods in India by those in a position to spend (Burke was prominent at Hastings' impeachment trial, he was later acquitted).

After Hastings, Cornwallis (defeated in America) was sent to clean things up in India. From then on, leaders in India wouldn't be merely company men, but appointed by the Crown. He reversed 'the old principles of Leadenhall Street economy' (low salary, high [illicit] perqs), raising salaries and establishing the foundations of the incorruptible Indian Civil Service, introduced strong property rights (reducing peasants to tenants and strengthening local landowning gentry). "Oriental corruption was out; classical virtue was in, though despotism remained the preferred political order ... One thing did not change, however. Under Cornwallis and Wellesley, British power in India continued to be based on the sword" (56).

"In 1615 the British Isles had been an economically unremarkable, politically fractious and strategically second-class entity. 200 years later Great Britain had acquired the largest empire the world had ever seen, encompassing 43 colonies in 5 continents ... They had robbed the Spaniards, copied the Dutch, beaten the French and plundered the Indians. Now they ruled supreme" (56). It may have been accidental at first, but later [from the reign of Elizabeth I onwards] it was a conscious campaign to usurp the empires of others. In addition to "commerce and conquest," colonization was needed too.

2) White Plague (ref. colonization)

"Between the early 1600s and the 1950s, more than 20 million people left the British Isles to begin new lives across the seas ... the biggest [migration] in human history ... to those on the receiving end ... these millions of migrants seemed little better than a white plague" (60).

a. Plantation (ref. in Ireland and Virginia)

"It was the Tudor queens, Mary and Elizabeth, who authorized the systematic colonization of Ireland" (62). The Jacobean "term for colonization was 'plantation' ... what today is known as 'ethnic cleansing'" (63). It began [mid 1500s] with Munster in the south and Ulster in the north, and spread to the 6 (northern) counties of Armagh, Coleraine, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Cavan and Donegal. The first of many Irish uprisings was in 1641.

Arriving in 1585-8, Sir Walter Ralegh named it Virginia both in honor of the Queen and because it was "virgin" territory. After the first (1585-6 at Roanoke, trouble w/supplies and Indians) and second (1587-90, led by John White, left his family there, all had vanished when he returned 1590 w/supplies) settlements failed, the 3rd at Jamestown (1606, led by John Smith) teetered on the edge for years, but eventually took root. Keys were Smith's leadership, free land for colonists and the 1612 discovery that tobacco could easily be grown.

But ballooning tobacco supply lead to a price collapse, nearly undoing Virginia. "the economics of British America were precarious; and by economics alone British America could not have been built. Something more was needed - an additional inducement to cross the Atlantic over and above the profit motive. That something turned out to be religious fundamentalism" (67).

"After breaking with Rome under her father [Henry VIII, King 1509-47], wholeheartedly embracing the Reformation under her brother [Edward VI, b. 1537, son of Henry and Jane Seymour, 'reigned' 1547-53], then repudiating it under her sister [Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, reigned only 6 yrs 1553-59], England finally settled on a moderately Protestant 'middle way' at the accession of Queen Elizabeth I [dau of Henry by Ann Boleyn, reigned 1559-?]. For the people who came to be known as Puritans, however, the Anglican Establishment was a fudge. When it became clear that James I [son of Elizabeth?] intended to uphold the Elizabethan order, despite his Scottish Calvinist upbringing, a group of self-styled "Pilgrims" from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire decided it was time to leave. They tried Holland, but after 10 years they gave it up as too worldly. Then they heard about America, and precisely what put other people off - the fact that it was a wilderness - struck them as ideal. Where better to found a truly godly society than amid 'a vast and empty chaos'?" (67-8). But "only around a third of the 149 people aboard [the Mayflower, landed 9 Nov 1620 at Cape Cod, founded Plymouth, 200 miles north of Virginia, in an area called "New England" by John Smith] were Pilgrims: the majority" (68) were seeking material gain.

Massachusetts quickly became a fishing center, and Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded 1629 (Gov. John Winthrop "cheerfully united in his person Congregationalism and capitalism" 69) and was, by 1640, booming due to fish, fur and farms. A key difference between North America and Latin America was that, in the north, whites married whites and were extremely fertile, "quadrupling their numbers [in New England] between 1650 and 1700" (69). By contrast, in Latin America, white men took native or slave wives, mixing races and altering their original culture.

"In Virginia alone there were between 10,000 and 20,000 Algonquian Indians ... The Powhatan chief Wahunsonacock ... 's daughter Pocahontas was the first native American to marry an Englishman: John Rolfe ... [later such] advances were rebuffed [by the chief, who] ... now [rightly] suspected that here was a design 'to invade my people, and possesse my Country'" (69-70).

"Colonization and cronyism [i.e. patronage] went hand in hand" (71). Charles I granted Maryland [in 1632] to the heirs of Lord Baltimore ... Charles II ... [gave] Carolina to 8 of his close associates ... New York acquired its name when, following its capture from the Dutch in 1664, Charles gave it to his brother James, Duke of York ... Charles II granted [William, admiral who'd captured Jamaica] Penn's son ownership of what became Pennsylvania ... [Penn] promoted emigration from continental Europe ... It worked: between 1689 and 1815 well over a million Europeans moved to mainland North America ... mainly Germans and Swiss" (71-2)

b. Black and White (ref. both flocked to America)

"Between half and two-thirds of all Europeans who migrated to North America between 1650 and 1780 did so under contracts of indentured servitude" (74). From Britain, there were more emigrants from the periphery (e.g. Scotland, Ireland, Wales) than from England. Also, the West Indies overshadowed North America in terms of both trade and immigration. The problem was, over time people learned that mortality was much worse in the West Indies. But they still needed laborers. The answer? Slaves from Africa.

c. Civil War (ref. the American Revolution)

"It was the moment when the British ideal of liberty bit back. It was the moment when the British Empire began to tear itself apart. On the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts, British redcoats exchanged fire for the first time with armed American colonists. It was 19 April 1775" (88)

As background, "from 1675 onwards, London sought to increase its influence over the colonies, which in their early years had been to all intents and purposes autonomous ... [but] these centralizing tendencies came to a halt when the Stuarts were driven from power in 1688 [in the 'Glorious Revolution'] ... but a fresh wave of centralizing initiatives from London [had begun around 1739]" (92). The reaction of the colonists needs to be understood in this context (and remembering Britain's heavy-handed methods and snooty attitude toward mere 'colonists'). "The first Continental Congress was held at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774 ... Lord North's government was now caught between two equally assertive legislatures ..." (93). Some, including Adam Smith, favored devolving some power to America and other colonies (into a kind of federalist empire), but Parliament wouldn't budge. Once the Declaration of Independence was signed (he claims 2 Jul 1776, not 4), the author claims a dramatic change occurred. "Before 1776 the debate ... had very largely been couched in terms familiar from the British constitutional wrangles of the previous century. With the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense (and the Dec. of Ind.) in 1776, however, an entirely new idea had entered the political debate, and with breathtaking speed carried the day: anti-monarchism, with the strong implication of republicanism ... in the terms of the Enlightenment ... natural rights" (94) and individualism vs. hierarchy.

"Something like 1 in 5 of the white population of British North America remained loyal to the crown during the war" (96). But "for 2 reasons this was a war Britain simply could not win" (98; first, France's involvement in support of America and second, sympathy in Britain for the American cause (Samual Johnson was famously not sympathetic, but Boswell, Burke, Whig leader Charles Fox and many others were). After the British surrender at Yorktown, "around 100,000 Loyalists left the new United States bound for Canada, England or the West Indies" (101).

d. Mars (ref. Botany Bay penal colony in Australia i.e. "New South Wales")

"With its weird red earth and its alien flora and fauna - the eucalyptus trees and kangaroos - Australia was the 18th century equivalent of Mars" (103). Although begun as a way of getting criminals away from England, it soon developed a society of its own and actually became an attractive way for the down-and-out to make a new start. "In its transformation from dumping ground into reformatory a crucial role was played by the colony's governor between 1809 and 1821, Lachlan Macquarie ... an enlightened despot" (106). As in America, natives were often greated very badly (incl. genocide), although "the imperial power at the center ... restrain[ed] the generally far more ruthless impulses of the colonists on the periphery" (111).

"Here [how to handle Aborigines in Australia] was the very essence of the imperial dilemma. How could an empire that claimed to be founded on liberty justify overruling the wishes of colonists when they clashed with those of a very distant legislature? That had been the central question in America in the 1770s, and its ultimate answer had been secession. In the 1830s the question was posed again in Canada. But this time the British had a better answer" (111).

"Since the American War of Independence, Canada had seemed the most dependable of Britain's colony, thanks to the influx of defeated Loyalists from the US. But in 1837 French-speaking Quebecois ... and pro-Americans ... revolted [over lack of representation] ... there was genuine alarm in Britain that the rapidly growing US might ... [try to] annex [Canada] ... In 1812 the US had even sent a 12K-strong army into Canada, though it had been roundly defeated" (111-2). In response, Britain basically acknowledged [Durham Report] that the Americans had been right, that colonists are in fact entitled to representation. This headed off revolution in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. "By the 1860s ... the governors would play more of a decorative role, as representatives of a likewise increasingly decorative monarch; real power would lie with the colonists' elected representatives ... From now on, whatever the colonists wanted, they pretty much got" (113). There was, of course, regret that this realization had come too late to avoid the American war.

3) The Mission

"In the 18th century the British Empire had been, at best, amoral. The Georgians had grabbed power in Asia, land in America and slaves in Africa. Native peoples were either taxed, robbed or wiped out ... The Victorians had more elevated aspirations. They dreamt not just of ruling the world, but of redeeming it ... their goal was not so much colonization as 'civilization': introducing a way of life that was first and foremost Christian, but was also distinctly North European in its reverence for industry and abstinence. The Man who came to embody this new ethos of empire was David Livingstone ... [for whom] commerce and colonization - the original foundations of the Empire - were necessary, but not sufficient. In essence, he and thousands of [evangelical] missionaries like him wanted the Empire to be born again" (116).

a. From Clapham to Freetown (ref. "evangelical imperialism", to Christianize and civilize)

"What was going on to turn Britain from the world's leading enslaver to the world's leading emancipator? The answer lies in a fervent religious revival, the epicenter of which was, of all places, Clapham" (118). "It might be said that the moral transformation of the British Empire began in Holy Trinity church, on the north side of Clapham Common ... [the Clapham Sect, including Zachary Macauley, son of the Inverary minister and 'father of the greatest of Victorian historians', banker and MP Henry Thornton, 'dazzling Parliamentary orator' William Wilberforce, Anglicans Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp] combined evangelical fervor with hard-nosed political nous" (119). Their cause was abolition of the slave-trade.

"It is not easy to explain so profound a change in the ethics of a people ... [it was] a collective change of heart" (119). Precedents had been Quakers in PA as early as the 1680s, the American Great Awakening of the 1740s and 1750s and the rise of Methodism in Britain (the latter 2 serving to "spread such scruples into wider Protestant circles" 119). Others, like Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, opposed slavery based on Enlightenment teachings (i.e. ultimately more expensive than free labor).

"The campaign for abolition was one of the first great extra-Parliamentary agitations ... the birth of ... pressure group [politics] ... Support for the cause extended beyond Clapham to embrace the Younger Pitt, the ex-slaver John Newton, Edmund Burke, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and ... Josiah Wedgwood." Included were Anglicans, Quakers, Unitarians and others. There was formidable opposition by commercial interests, but they were "simply swept aside by the Evangelical tide" (121). "The Spanish and Portugese governments were bullied into accepting prohibitions on the trade ... The French rather half-heartedly joined" (122) but the Americans defied the ban.

Abolition "was only the first stage of a much more ambitious plan" (122). There was now to be a major effort to spread British culture, especially Christianity, to the Empire (i.e. converting and civilizing the heathen). Here was a "new, not-for-profit rationale for expanding British influence" (123). "To succeed, the missionary movement needed an army of young men - idealistic, altruistic adventurers, willing to go to the ends of the earth to spread the Word. There could not be a greater contrast between the missionaries' motives and those of previous generations of empire-builders, the swashbucklers, the slavers and the settlers" (124). There were thousands of martyrs of this "new evangelical imperialism" (125). "Behind every missionary - indeed, behind all the Victorian NGOs" were even more sponsors at home ("satirized by Dickens in Bleak House as Mrs. Jellyby, criminally neglectful of her immediate family but passionately devoted to good causes" 125).

b. Victorian Superman (ref. David Livingstone, Christianizing Africa)

"In Livingstone the two great intellectual currents of early 19th century Scotland met: the reverence for science of the Enlightenment, the sense of mission of a revived Calvinism" (126). He became a medical doctor, minister and missionary. He had "an iron constitution that was more than equal to the rigors of African life" (128). After struggling for years with very few conversions, he realized that the Africans were primarily interested in his practical (i.e. medicine, guns) knowledge. He decided that "some better way had to be found to penetrate Africa than simply preaching in the wilderness. The wilderness itself had to be somehow converted - to be made more receptive to British civilization" (129). How? By making an unspoken career change, missionary to explorer (in 1848). His expeditions "enthral[led] the mid-Victorian imagination" (131). "He had soon worked out a scheme that would not only open up Africa to God and civilization, but also dispose of slavery in the bargain. Like so many Victorians, he took it for granted that a free market would be more efficient than an unfree one" (133). His solution? Opening up a new trade route along the Zambezi river. Free enterprise and trade would triumph over slavery and ignorance (i.e. tribal superstition), starting with a cotton settlement at the Batoka Plateau (near Victoria Falls) and radiating outward "until the whole continent had been cleansed of superstition and slavery ... It was a bold, messianic vision that linked together not only commerce, civilization and Christianity but also free trade and free labor" (134-5). In 1856, he documented this vision is his best-selling book Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (Dickens was extremely impressed, citing Livingstone's acknowledgement of initial difficulty in gaining converts, independence of sectarianism and willingness to apply worldly wisdom in reaching the lost). Unfortunately, his plan was overshadowed by events in India "that would throw the whole strategy of Christianizing the Empire into question" (136).

c. The Clash of Civilizations (ref. the attempt to Christianize India, the 1858 Mutiny)

The author sees the Victorian Age as also being the "Evangelical Age," during which the British decided to try to Christianize the Empire. "Until the first decades of the 19th century, the British in India had not the slightest notion of trying to Anglicize India, and certainly not to Christianize it. On the contrary, it was the British themselves who often took pleasure in being orientalized" (136). "This atmosphere of mutual tolerance and even admiration was the way the East India Company liked it, even if it practised religious toleration more out of pragmatism than principle" (137). "In 1813, however, the company's charter came up for renewal, and the Evangelicals seized their chance to end its control over missionary activity in India. The old orientalism was about to clash head-on with the new evangelicalism" (138, preceding the coming much larger clash between Christian Europe and Hindu/Muslim India). Like abolition, this battle was won via pressure politics by the same agitators To the evangelicals, this was a spiritual battle "in which they, as soldiers of Christ, were struggling against the forces of darkness. 'Theirs is a cruel religion,' Wilberforce had bluntly declared" (140).

"Almost as important as the Evangelical project [Christianization] was the [secular Liberal one of] ... Angliciz[ation]" (140). While "the 18th century classical liberals, notably Adam Smith, had been hostile to imperialism ... the greatest of the Victorian Liberal thinkers, John Stuart Mill," (140) were not. They called for more secure property rights, moderate taxes, reduction in superstitions (which interfere with industry) and more foreign capital. "Like Livingstone, Mill saw the cultural transformation of the non-European world as inextricably linked to its economic transformation. These twin currents of Evangelical desire to ... [Christianize] and the Liberal desire to convert it [India] to capitalism flowed into one another, and over the entire British Empire" (141). Like modern NGOs which campaign against child labor or female circumcision, the Victorians particularly hated the Indian practices of female infanticide (due to high dowry costs), thagi (thuggee, the cult of assassin-priests) and sati (burning of widows on husband's funeral pyre). As the British increasingly cracked down on these practices, a few "old India hands" warned of possible rebellion.

When the rebellion broke out in 1857, there was widespread dissatisfaction among the native soldiers over pay, conditions and politics (also, some were fighting to reclaim territory recently annexed by the British, whose leaders had been deposed for the typically evangelical reason that they were "excessively debauched" 150), but at root it was over relgious conflict (a reaction by the Hindu and Muslim to British attempts to Christianize/Anglicize). "The mutineers complained: 'The English tried to make Christians of us.' Whether they called their rulers the Europeans, the Feeringhee (hmmm, Star Trek's Feringe?), the kafirs, the infidels or the Christians, this was their central grievance" (147). Once it began (at Meerut [Mirath] near Delhi), the mutineers went crazy, "killing every European they could find" (149). It is little remembered that Indians were split, fighting on both sides. The British at home saw it as "a revolt of (racial AND moral [evil/good, heathen/Christian]) black against white" (150). Once stories of mistreatment of white women began to circulate, the British response turned truly brutal. "Now the Victorians revealed the other, harsher face of their missionary zeal ... [sermon themes turned] from redemption to revenge ... Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon issue[d] what amounted to a call for holy war" (151). The military result was "an orgy of slaughter and plunder" (151). Macaulay the historian wrote that "it was a fearful paroxysm to behold - the vengefulness of the Evangelicals" (152). Accounts of military barbarism were "read with delight by people who 3 weeks ago were against all capital punishment" (152). The author concludes that "sanctimony bred a peculiar cruelty" (152). "The project to modernize and Christianize India had gone disastrously wrong; so wrong that it had ended up barbarizing the British" (152). [is this fair, to blame it wholly on the evangelicals? Part of the blame surely was ripening Indian desire for independence in any case and secular British hardline imperialism/militarism] The Evangelicals saw the reason for this conflict as having begun the Christianization of India too late.

d. In Livingstone's Footsteps (ref. the British give up on Christianizing India, install Viceroy to govern it, Henry Morton Stanley)

Following the mutiny, British policy makers turned away from the evangelical view and "explicitly renounced 'the right and the desire to impose Our convictions on any of Our subjects'" (155). Henceforth, India was to be ruled not by the EIC (which was ended), but by the crown via a Viceroy. Missions were allowed there only if they agreed not to interfere culturally or politically.

India notwithstanding, Livingstone pressed ahead with his Christianizing/Anglicizing plans for Africa. Unfortunately, both prongs of the plan proved unworkable (at least in his time) after most missionaries died there (malaria, natives) and the Zambezi river proved non-navigable. Amazingly, Livingstone continued to his death to believe it was possible, turning his attentions back to "the roots of the Evangelical movement: anti-slavery" (158), though some thought he had lost his senses. The last years of his life were spent "in strange, almost mystical wanderings around Central Africa. At times he seemed to be conducting research on the slave trade; at times obsessively seeking the true source of the Nile, the Holy Grail of Victorian exploration; at times just trudging through the jungle for its own sake" (158). He died in 1873 a disappointed man. Today, Africa is arguably more Christian than Europe, due to quinine-based anti-malarial drugs and the conquests of Livingstone's successor, Henry Morton Stanley [Hmm, is this another case of a modern obscuring the real spiritual/Christian cause with secular/materialist ones (cf. M. Stanton Evans' "Liberal History Lesson")?].

"Livingstone had believed in the power of the Gospel; Stanley believed only in brute force. Livingstone had been appalled by slavery; Stanley would connive at its restoration. Above all, Livingstone had been indifferent to political frontiers; Stanley wanted to see Africa carved up. And so it was ... Commerce, Civilization and Christianity were to be conferred on Africa, just as Livingstone had intended. But they would arrive in conjunction with a 4th 'C': Conquest" (161).

4) Heaven's Breed (ref. How did 900 British civil servants and 70K British soldiers manage to govern >250M Indians?)

a. The Annihilation of Distance (ref. technological advance)

Marvelling how "900 British civil servants and 70K British soldiers manage[d] to govern upwards of 250 million Indians" (164), the author notes 3 major technological developments that helped shrink the world (to allow for more efficient and effective Victorian British control): steam power and steamship route networks, telegraph communication and railway networks.

The [Indian produced] opium trade was a major contributor to East India Co. profits. Also, Indian ["Hindoo"] troops were increasingly used to fight British battles. He notes that Englishment stationed in India experienced much higher mortality rates (69 vs. 10 per 1000) due to illness, etc, necessitating continued use of natives, even after the Mutiny. Producing accurate maps was a strategic part of the "Great Game" of power politics, a prime competitor being the Russian Empire just to the north of India's northern mountains (the British lion vs. the Russian bear, according to Punch cartoons).

Ferguson next illustrates the reach of the British/Indian military in covering the 1867 Abyssinia (in present-day Ethopia and at that time the only Christian monarchy in Africa) incident, in which a number of British hostages were taken and Britain responded with force (at Magdala, the remote mountain fortress of the Emperor Theodore [Tewodros]). The expedition, led by General Sir Robert Napier, was a successful "surgical strike" (at that time called a "butcher and bolt") operation, proving vast British "superiority in logistics, firepower and discipline" (179). Napier had earlier defended the British Garrison at Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny, noting how hard it was to hold flat land, and later proposed methodical changes (garrison outside the city, many in-city military posts, wide streets to allow rapid troop movements) at Lucknow to maintain order (approximating "Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris for Napoleon III" 181). "Napier's re-engineering of Lucknow illustrates a basic and inescapable fact about the British Raj in India. Its foundation was military force ... Yet British India was not ruled solely by the mailed fist. As well as martinets like Napier, it also had its mandarins: the civilian administration which actually governed India [dealing with myriad details] ... Though it was a thankless and sometimes hellish job, the elite who did it gloried in their nickname: 'the heaven born'" (181).

b. The View from the Hills (ref. to escape summer heat in India, British retreat to the Himalayas, Darjeeling to the east, Ootacamund in the south, Simla)

Simla especially became the effective seat of Indian government for 7 months a year. "Perched on its mountaintop [7000 feet], Simla was a strange, little hybrid world - part Highlands, part Himalayas; part powerhouse, part playground" (183). Rudyard Kipling (b. 1865 in Bombay), who preferred living in India to England, commented on wives living merrily (flirting, garden parties, etc.) at Simla while their husbands sweated out service down in the plains, and that the latter were doing the real work of the Raj. He believed independence would never happen, but that it was a nice-sounding goal for which many Englishmen were willing to work and even die. Despite his dim picture of Indian Civil Service (ICS) duty, there was intense competition for these limited positions (The author notes that there were only around 1400 Civil Service personnel for India's (in 1947) 400M population, 1200 for Africa's 43M and 220 for Malaya's 3.2M). "Only in 1853 was [EIC] patronage replaced by meritocracy" (186) in filling ICS positions. Though the Victorians wanted academic top achievers ("the ultimate academic elite: impartial, incorruptible, omniscient" 186) to apply, those who actually did tended to be "those whose prospects at home were modest" (186). In addition to ICS staff, many thousands of natives were hired to help implement its policies.

"The key to the emergence of a pro-British Indian elite was education" (189). Though many Brits were dubious about educating the natives, the evangelicals pushed it and the upper-caste Indians themselves saw its value to them. "In 1835 the great Whig historian and Indian administrator Thomas Babington Macaulay" (189) explained that, while not all Indians could practically be educated, a mediating elite could be grown to have English taste, opinions, morals and intellect. "By the 1870s, Macaulay's vision had been in large measure realized" (189) through the operation of seminaries, higher schools, and eventually a thriving English-language local publishing industry. In 1863 the first Indian passed the entrance exam and was admitted to the ICS (it had always been open to applicants regardless of skin color, as promised by Queen Victoria) and this was followed by others. But here arose "the great imperial dilemma of the Victorian era - and on its horns not just India but the entire British Empire was to be impaled" (191). For "administrators sent from London saw no alternative but to co-opt an elite of natives. But this was precisely what the British who were actually resident in India ruled out. The men on the spot preferred to keep the natives down: to coerce them if necessary, but never to co-opt them" (190-1).

c. Races Apart (ref. racism, Jamaican revolt)

The author discusses 1860s Jamaica (which "had once been the center of the most extreme form of colonial coercian: slavery" 191), where drought and economic stagnation had prevailed but, against this bleak background, a religious revival blending Baptism and the African relgion Myal now swept across the island, producing a "heady millenarian mixture" (191) (hmmm, Baptists appealing to the lower end and encouraging social discontent, typical?). "A classic revolution of rising expectations was in the making. It began in the town of Morant Bay in the parish of St. Thomas in the East on Saturday 7 October 1865" (192). The rebels were led by Paul Bogle, active Baptist and small farmer, who had raised an armed militia, incited a mob and sought black power and death to whites. This was just the latest of many revolts, the most recent in 1831 having been "suppressed ferociously" (193) by the British. Again in this case, Governor Edward Eyre brutally put down the rebellion with, "to say the least, ... scant regard for due legal process" (193-4). While this crackdown was applauded by local white planters and initially by London, in an odd twist Eyre was later called to account by those [in London] "who still kept the old flame of abolitionism burning" (194), "the old ladies of Clapham" (194) one Eyre defender called them (David Livingstone was among Eyre's detractors). This may have been so initially, but the campaign against him soon spread to "some of the great liberal intellectuals of the Victorian era, including Charles Darwin and John Stuart Mill" (194-5). Eyre also had powerful friends, however (including Carlyle, Ruskin, Dickens, Tennyson), and was eventually allowed to retire with his pension intact. Yet this marked the end of planter-rule in Jamaica.

Ironically, "here was a step back to the old days before 'responsible government' had devolved political power [from London] to British colonists; but it was a step taken in a progressive rather than a reactionary spirit" (to limit planters, empower blacks) (195). Oddly, no one suggested empowering blacks via proper political representation and continued decentralization (ah yes, liberals, and their ostensible wish to empower the weak while actually empowering themselves with increasingly centralized power). "This was to become a fundamental feature of the later British Empire ... liberal ideas were in the ascendant [in London], and that meant the rule of law had to take precedence, regardless of skin color" (195), imposed if necessary on colonial assemblies. Meanwhile, Brits on the scene dug in, insisting on their own legal and even biological superiority to natives. "Sooner or later, these two visions - the liberalism of the center and the racism of the periphery - were bound to collide again" (195).

Race was now becoming an issue throughout the British Empire, but while Jamaica's economy was in decline, India's was booming. British business owners in India (like the Maxwell family) "felt threatened by the growth of an educated Indian elite, not least because it implied that they themselves might be dispensable" (197). For their part, the elite (supported by liberals back in London) sought to climb the social, political and industrial ladder. This tension led to segregation, both physical and mental (similar to the American South). When the new (Liberal) Gladstone government in 1880 named the very progressive Catholic George F. S. Robinson, Marquess of Ripon, as Viceroy, the local Indian conservatives were outraged (even the Queen was concerned). Sure enough, Ripon (being, like Gladstone, an earnest Liberal, inexperienced, but not hesitating to put principle before experience) proposed in the 1883 Ilbert Bill that (about 20) native ICS judges be newly allowed to preside over criminal trials involving white defendants. Maxwell and other "Anglo-Indians" reacted hostily. Ripon was shocked by this reaction (sometimes called "The White Mutiny"), but pressed on (Ferguson says Ripon was right here, the other side being racist and selfish). Ripon eventually backed down, but the damage had been done (educated Indians saw the contempt of the Anglos). "Quite unintentionally, Ripon had brought into being a genuine Indian national consciousness ... Just two years after the White Mutiny, the first meeting of the Indian National Congress was held [1885] ... attended by stalwarts of the educated class who served the British Raj, men like Janakinath Bose and an Allahabad lawyer named Motilal Nehru. The latter's son Jawaharlal would be the first Prime Minister of an independent India. Bose's son Subhas Chandra would lead an army against the British in the Second World War. It is not too much to see the White Mutiny as the fount and origin of their families' alienation from British rule" (202-3). Now that the Anglicized elite in India had been alienated, the only hope for Britain was to find another segment of Indian society to prop up the Raj. Thus the attempt to export to India the British class system.

d. Tory-entalism (ref. those stuck in India imagined England unchanged)

"Theirs was a nostalgic, romantic vision of an unchanging rural England, of squires and parsons, thatched cottages and forlock-tugging villagers. It was an essentially Tory vision of a traditional, hierarchical society, ruled by landed aristocrats in a spirit of benign paternalism" (203).

LIBERTY DOES NOT DESCEND TO A PEOPLE.
A PEOPLE MUST RAISE THEMSELVES TO LIBERTY.
IT IS A BLESSING THAT MUST BE EARNED
BEFORE IT CAN BE ENJOYED.

[condescending] inscription at Viceroy's Palace in New Delhi

By 1900, "it could be argued - pace Curzon - that India had ceased to be the indispensable jewel it had been back in the 1860s, the be all and end all of British imperial power. Elsewhere in the world, a new generation of imperialists was coming of age, men who believed that if the Empire was to survive, it had to ... drop the pomp and return to its pre-Victorian roots: to penetrate new markets, to settle new colonies and - if necessary - to wage new wars" (219).

5) Maxim Force (ref. Hiram Maxim's machine gun)

a. Cape to Cairo (ref. Cecil Rhodes' conquest of Africa)

b. Greater Britain (ref. the zenith of British Empire)

c. Overkill (ref. the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan)

d. Mafeking (ref. the Boer War)

6) Empire For Sale (ref. within 1 lifetime [Churchill's], the Empire unravelled)

"By the time Churchill became PM in 1940, the most likely alternatives to British rule were Hirohito's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Hitler's Thousand Year Reich and Mussolini's New Rome. Nor could the threat posed by Stalin's Soviet Union be discounted ... It was the staggering cost of fighting these imperial rivals that ultimately ruined the British Empire ... It did the right thing, regardless of the cost ... [its] why the ... heir of Britain's global power was not one of the evil empires of the East, but" America (296).

a. Weltkrieg (ref. WWI)

The German strategy (under Kaiser Wilhelm II) was to help the Turkish regime foment Islamic Jihad against Britain. In response, Britain (via T E Lawrence) fomented nationalist rebellion against Turkey and other Arabic regimes. The latter was more powerful, victorious and lasting.

At first, Britain didn't get mass warfare, but once they figured out "proper coordination of infantry, artillery and air power" they won quickly. The German defeat "was the inevitable result of trying to fight a global conflict without being a global power. Considering the vast differential between the resources of the two empires [Britain and Germany], the only real puzzle is that it took the British Empire so long to win" (310).

Although Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric and intentions were idealistic at Versailles, the reality was "to the victor the spoils. As the historian H A L Fisher put it, the peace treaties draped 'the crudity of conquest' in 'the veil of morality'" (310).

"No combatant power spent as much on the war as Britain, whose total expenditure amounted to just under 10 billion pounds [not to mention the 750M lives lost from the British Isles alone] ... Before 1914, the benefits of Empire had seemed to most people, on balance, to outweigh the costs. After the war the costs suddenly, inescapably, outweighted the benefits" (313).

b. Doubts (ref. about the goodness of the Empire)

After the war, there was a general malaise or loss of faith about the worthiness of Empire (often accompanied by loss of faith in God). Also, defense expenditures fell during the interwar years as they focused on social spending so that, when WWII arrived, the British Empire (renamed the Commonwealth by the 1931 Statute of Westminster) simply could not afford it.

"The creeping crisis of confidence in Empire had its roots in the crippling price Britain had paid for its victory over Germany in the First World War ... the death toll for the British Isles alone was around three quarters of a million ... the economic cost was harder to calculate ... [but] the great [global financial] machine that had once worked so smoothly now juddered and stalled ... [due to huge war debts, in Britain a 10-fold increase in the national debt], the failure of the American and French central banks to abide by the gold standard 'rules of the game' as they hoarded scarce gold in their reserves [and] ... the main problem ... was that economic policy, once predicated on the classical liberal tenets that budgets should be balanced and banknotes convertible into gold - was now subject to the pressures of democratic politics. Investors could no longer be confident that already indebted governments would have the will to cut spending and put up taxes; nor could they be sure that, in the event of a gold outflow, interest rates would be raised to maintain convertibility, regardless of the domestic squeeze that implied ... debt consumed close to half of total govt spending by the mid-1920s ... the decision to return to the gold standard at the now over-valued [due to American and French noncompliance] 1914 exchange rate condemned Britain to more than a decade of deflationary policies ... increased power of the trade unions ... meant that wage cuts lagged behind price cuts. Rising real wages led to unemployment" (319-21), yet Britain's depression was less severe than America's or Germany's.

"Time and again, in the interwar period, this was a pattern that would repeat itself. A minor outbreak of dissent, a sharp military response, followed by a collapse of British self-confidence, hand-wringing, second thoughts, a messy concession, another concession. But Ireland was the test case. In allowing their very first colony to be split in two, the British had sent a signal to the Empire at large" (325). "In previous centuries the British had felt no qualms about shooting to kill in defence of the Empire. That had started to change after Morant Bay [Jamaica slave revolt]" (328).

Hitler admired the Empire and wanted to create a German one. Although he said he'd like to preserve the British one, his later actions proved he thought it unsustainable in terms of power politics. He offered England to keep most of her Empire if she'd give Hitler Europe and return Germany's pre-WWI colonies. In any case, Churchill wanted no compromise.

c. From Masters to Slaves (ref. as Japanese POWs)

The December 1937 "Rape of Nanking" showed the brutality of Japanese imperialism. Due to poor military planning and overestimation of Japan's power (and against Churchill's 'desperate exhortation' 334), the British surrendered to Japan at Singapore on 15 Feb 1942 (130,000 British troops, who made that decision?). The Japanese treated the British brutally (e.g. Bridge on River Kwai), and around 9000 died (about 1/4 of those captured).

"[Despite an awesome effort] the Empire alone could not have won the Second World War. The key to victory ... [was America] and that turned out to mean ... that the 'prize of victory [would] not be the perpetuation, but the honorable intermint of the old system" (341).

This brings us to the flip-side of the "so-called 'special relationship' between Britain and the United States ... the special ambiguity, at the heart of which lay the Americans' very different conception of empire. To the Americans ... formal rule over subject peoples was unpalatable. It also implied those foreign entanglements the Founding Fathers had warned them against ... [their preferred strategy was teaching self-government] at gunpoint if necessary ... anything but take over, which would [be] the British solution" (343). The Americans made it emphatically clear in 1942 that they were NOT fighting to maintain the British Empire, which they saw as exploitative (and, of course, a challenge to American leadership). The feeling at the time was that the age of imperialism is over. Roosevelt wanted temporary trusteeships leading to independence, overseen by a new international authority.

"Without American money, the British war effort would have collapsed. The system of Lend-Lease ... was worth $26 billion dollars to Britain ... [the Brits] found themselves in the position of humble supplicants [in Washington, negotiating w/creditors] ... a position that did not come naturally to the leading figure in the British delegation, John Maynard Keynes" and the feeling of distaste was mutual (345) (hmmmm, interesting thought, Keynesianism later nearly killed the American economy, leading to the 1970s 'stagflation' ... was this in any way foreseen or intentional?). "These were ... typical reactions to the rapidly changing balance of power ... the British political elite, unlike the mostly socialist intellectual elite, found it extraordinarily hard to accept that the Empire had to go as the price of victory ... but Britain's own bank account made it clear that the game was up. Once Britain had been the world's banker. Now she owed foreign creditors more than $40 billion. The foundations of empire had been economic, and those foundations had simply been eaten up by the cost of the war. Meanwhile, the 1945 Labor government had ambitions to build a welfare state, which could only be afforded if Britain's overseas commitments were drastically reduced. In a word, Britain was bust - and the Empire mortgaged to the hilt" (346). The result could be seen as being analogous to a bankrupt firm (logically) handing over assets to its creditors, "but could the British bring themselves to sell? And ... could the Americans bring themselves to buy?" (346) (without agreeing, one can easily understand how this would fan the flames of hatred toward 'Jew-bankers' and their supposed effort to destroy 'white' civilization).

d. The Transfer of Power (ref. from Britain to America, the Suez crisis)

After Colonel Gamal Abdel-Nasser and his fellow army officers seized power in Egypt in 1952, they pressed England to remove her 80,000 troops from the Suez Canal military base (which was done between 1954-6). However, when Nasser tried to nationalize the Canal, the British (w/French and against American opposition, who feared Arab alliance w/Soviets) sent a military force. When the Egyptians blocked the canal (sunk ships), investors bailed out of pounds, creating a crisis for the Bank of England. Only after England agreed to leave Egypt unconditionally did America (Eisenhower) arrange a billion-dollar IMF bailout for Britain. Nasser's later cozying w/Soviets prompted Eisenhower to accuse him of trying to dominate oil in order to destroy the Western world. "Suez sent a signal to nationalists throughout the British Empire: the hour of freedom had struck. But the hour was chosen by the Americans, not by the nationalists" 348). After this, the breakup of the Empire happened very quickly (like dominoes, sometimes leading to chaos).

In India, independence was achieved 15 Aug 1947. The last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, openly favored the Hindu-dominated Congress Party (led by Jawaharlal Nehru, who had an affair w/Mountbatten's wife) over the Muslim League. This caused at least 200,000 deaths and countless refugees as India and the newly created Muslim Pakistan fought over the contested Punjab borderland.

"In Palestine too the British cut and ran, in 1949, bequeathing to the world the unresolved question of the new state of Israel's relation with the 'stateless' Palestinians and the neighboring Arab states" (350).

"[Though derided by Churchill as a small-minded man] the first post-war PM, Clement Attlee ... [was] the more realistic of the two about Britain's future. He recognized that the new military technologies of long-range air power and the atomic bomb meant that 'the British Commonwealth and Empire is not a unit that can be defended by itself ... The conditions which made it possible to defend a string of possessions scattered over 5 continents by means of a fleet based on island fortresses have gone" (351). He argued in 1946 that Britain should be considered an "easterly extension" of an American-centered strategic arc rather than itself a center. There was some cooperation. "In Cyprus, Aden, Malaya, Kenya and Iran, British rule was essentially 'underwritten' by the US. This reversal of policy reflected the Americans' growing awareness that the Soviet Union posed a far more serious threat to American interests and ideals than the British Empire" (351). Though some in Britain hoped for more inter-dependence (vs. one-way dependence upon the USA), it didn't happen, due to American hostility to imperialism.

Hitler had been right that decolonization would be fueled more by rival empires than indigenous nationalists. During the hottest phase of the Cold War (the 1960s), the US and USSR "vied with one another to win the support of independence movements in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean ... Tragically [these winds of change] often blew away colonial rule only to replace it with civil war ... nationalist insurgency and new military technology made imperial defence much more expensive than before" (352). Amazingly, the last installment of the $3.75 billion debt that Britain owes America (from 1945 loan, after Lend-Lease had ended) is due in 2006!

By 1973, Britain's per-capita GDP had been overtaken by Germany, France, and nearly Italy. Its trade with Europe grew as that with Commonwealth countries declined (drastically after British entrance into the EEC, which mandated European protectionism). "Originally just Britain and the white dominions [Canada, Australia, New Zealand, ?], the Commonwealth was joined by India, Pakistan and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1949. By 1965 there were 21 members and 10 more joined in the following 10 years. [It] currently has 54 members and has become little more than a subset of the UN or IOC ... the English language is the one thing [still shared]" (354-5).

So, instead of being taken over in 1945 (being for sale), the Empire was broken up (liquidated).

Conclusion

"The imperial legacy has shaped the modern world so profoundly that we almost take it for granted ... liberal capitalism [free trade, capital movements, labor] ... parliamentary democracy ... (e.g. India's elite schools, universities, civil service, army, press, parliamentary system) ... the English language" (358). It defeated much worse (even evil) German and Japanese empires. [Witness] "the catastrophic consequences of the global descent into protectionism as Britain's imperial power waned in the 1930s" (359). "For all these reasons, the notion that British imperialism tended to impoverish colonized countries seems inherently problematic" (360). Most former colonies have fallen behind where they were (with respect to Britain in terms of GDP) under colonialism.

Where the British conquered already sophisticated, urbanized societies (e.g. China, India), there were more negative results, "as the colonizers were tempted to engage in plunder rather than to build their own institutions" (361). Britain was forced to do the latter in America, vs. Spain's looting of Mexico and Peru.

"A recent survey of 49 countries concluded that [18] 'common-law' countries [those based on British system] have the strongest, and French-civil-law countries the weakest, legal protections of investors" (361).

Also, remember that British administration was strikingly "cheap and efficient ... [and] non-venal" (361). Think of the "demonstrable correlations today between economic under-performance and both excessive government expenditure and public sector corruption" (361).

a. A New Imperialism?

b. Bearing the Burden


Is it possible that the urge to Empire was part of the fallen (and out-of-control) male drive to dominate? (think of Keillor's This Rebellious House and biblical warnings against mankind's tendency to lord it over others and dominate them by force). If so, God brought good things from it, but it was, at root, male rebellion against God.


Books by Niall Ferguson (1964-2xxx, named Hoover Senior Fellow in 2004):

1 Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation (1897-1927), 1995
2 Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, 1997 (ed.)
3 The Pity of War: Explaining World War One, 1998
4 The World's Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild, 1998
5 The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000, 2001
6 Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, 2002
7 Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, 2005
8 The War of the World: 20C Conflict and the Descent of the West, 2006 (see br-wow)
9 The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, 2008 (br-wow)
10 High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg, 2010
11 Civilization: The West and the Rest, 2011
12 The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, 2013



In the July 2007 CT, Philip Yancey's backpage editorial "It's Not About the Crusades" cites Gambia-born Muslim-turned-Christian Lamin Sanneh offering Christians some interesting advice. On Western guilt over colonialism, he says it "did more to aid Islam than all jihads put together. Queen Victoria's representatives in Africa saw local imams and muftis as a socially stabilizing force and built up their power, even to the extent of passing laws against conversion to Christianity." On Western guilt over the Crusades, he claims Arab historians give them little notice, since these incursions (which they call 'the wars w/the Franks') "were mostly rebuffed by the Muslims [and] pale in comparison to the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan ... Although the worldwide % of Christians has declined only slightly, from 35% in 1800 to 33% today, the geographical shift has been immense. While Christianity lost 800M adherents in the 20C - mostly in Europe and the former USSR - explosive growth in places like Africa and China (Asia) replaced them (Sanneh ack's that this explosive growth occurred only after colonialism ended [i.e. after the West lost its nerve, meanwhile, Islam regained theirs]) ... Sanneh cautions [Islam] to consider lessons learned by the medieval Christian church. Ally religion too closely to the state, and you open your faith to corruption and abuse of power. Chr experiments w/church-state blending, whether in Geneva under Calvin, Britain under Cromwell, or Spain and Latin America under the [RCC] Inquisition, may have worked for a time but inevitably provoked a backlash. In fundamentalist Iran, a similar backlash is already in motion ... young people [conform outwardly since required by law] ... but inside their hearts are hollow and cynical."

6/17/10: I recently finally read Benjamin Schwarz' rvw of David Cannadine's book Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire in The Atlantic Monthly ('A Bit of Bunting' Nov 2001). BS says "the greatest books on the largest empire in history were written in a 17yr period, from 1959-76" (126):

- Eric Stokes The English Utilitarians and India
- R E Frykenberg Guntur District 1788-1848
- A P Thornton The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies
- Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher Africa and the Victorians (best, he thinks)

BS says Cannadine is probably the most popular serious historian of Britain in the US, tho not quite at the level that J H Plumb, A J P Taylor, and Hugh Trevor-Roper reached in the 60s and 70s. BS says DC's bk takes the 'romantic imperialist' line of Churchill in claiming Brits in the 19C deliberately replicated the 'deeply conservative and layered, ordered, hierarchical society of Britain itself ... sympathetic to tradition and aristocracy ... they sought to nurture, sustain and celebrate native elites ... Burkean wisdoms and customary conservative modes". Tho DC is countering (which is good) Edw Said's 'imperialism is evil' theme (cf 1978 Orientialism) which still reigns in academia, BS believes DC erroneously embraces its methods, approach, and vocabulary. BS says DC is too abstract i.e. the brits ran the empire in a way that benefited them economically, not just to xfr their culture abroad! They were facing increasing competition from Germany and America and used the empire to support their 'national greatness' [esp. economic growth] v. these other rising powers. Even Disraeli, who largely invented the image of a romantic 'ornamental' empire, admitted that a primary purpose of it was to enhance Britain's position among the great powers. But they did exploit the fact that 'the further E you go, the greater becomes the importance of a bit of bunting' (i.e. natives love seemingly small distinctions, pomp, titles, ...). They used local elites not for romantic reasons but for pragmatic ones (i.e. to avoid having to conquer them, too expensive and dangerous). "In Uganda during the 1890s, 25 British officials asserted authority over 3M people ... w/collaboration from the local Ganda aristocracy". Amazing efficiency. Tho they often viewed local elites as brutal and ineffectual, they wished to avoid expensive and time-consuming conflict (e.g. the famous british muddle). Its also misleading to characterize their imperial efforts as 'conservative, traditional', since during the 19C their individualist, competitive, industrial society and economy were regarded as the most innovative, progressive, and dynamic on earth, and their expansion was an astonishingly efficient and pitiless agent of 'social reform', as Marx himself noted in 1853. The spread of its tech, commerce, industry, values, religion, laws, admin and fiscal standards of order and efficiency broke up the native communities, industries and elites (hmmm, traditional or revolutionary!?). These results weren't mere unintended consequences, as DC asserts, but 'part of the plan'. Even Britain itself became far less hierarchical and more liberal over time e.g. 1832 and 1867 Reform Bills greatly expanded the franchise, fostering and manifesting a democratic, anti-hierarchical ethos. BS says that until the end of the 18C, the main purpose of the empire was revenue, and expediency and thrift dictated non-interference w/native customs, laws, and institutions as much as possible. But later they came to see a vast market for British goods, and so sought to mold the natives into more civilized consumers (but also w/the evangelizing motive)! Both liberals and evangelicals believed in the power of ideas and education to transform human nature, and both set out to engender a revolution, attracted talent e.g. Thomas Macaulay, his b-in-l Chas Edw Trevelyan, and James and John Stuart Mill. But the Mutiny of 1857 put the kabosh on those plans, as native elites rose up in defiance of their new masters (i.e. brits and brit-trained natives, i.e. here's the familiar 'social war' theme again, elites v. bourgeois). BS says this shook the mid-Victorian mind even more than Darwin's 'Origin of Species', destroying the 'confident, careless idealism of Victorian liberals' (and upsetting the liberal/evangelical co-project, shook their confidence, 'can dogmatize no more', hmmm, leading to the progressive movement and fundie/modernist split?). After that, as British rule became less liberal in India (appeasing locals), it paradoxically became more tolerant. The cold vision of the financier and administrator replaced the heady optimism of the political philosopher i.e. White Man's burden, stoic duty, dirty job but somebody's gotta do it.

Also on the topic of the rise of the British Empire, read/rvw:

6 Aug 2013: Hmmm, it seems like Niall is casting about for the 'formula' for successful modern civilization. In 'Cash Nexus' he discusses the 'square of power' i.e. the 4 basic supports of the institutional framework of modern governments: tax bureaucracy [more efficient than local property owners or private tax farmers], parliament [increased revenue AND added legitimacy], national debt [costs of war could be spread over time, smoothing taxation], and a central bank [to manage debt issuance AND exact seigniorage from issuance of paper money, which it monopolized]. Then in 'Civilization' he covers the 6 'killer apps' of modern civilization; competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism and the work ethic (hmmm, I thot then and still think he's short-changing our Christian heritage i.e. cf VoR subtitle 'how Chr led to freedom [i.e. political = democracy], capitalism and western success [science]'). Now in his latest (tGD) he boils down the 'big 4' as representative govt, the free market, the rule of law and civil society. Hmmm.