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Gabriel LambertBritish 6 Empire and popularity How popular at home was British imperialism?One of the largest difficulties in both qualifying quantifying the popularity of empire in domestic Britain is that the definition of imperialism, along with the various social groups in Britain, was fragmented. Put bluntly, it meant different things to different people the historian has the challenge of trying to keep its definition broad enough to encompass a broad slice of society while not making i
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Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Empire and popularity
How popular at home was British imperialism?
One of the largest difficulties in both qualifying quantifying the popularity of empire in domestic Britain is that the definition of imperialism, along with the various social groups in Britain, was fragmented. Put bluntly, it meant different things to different people – the historian has the challenge of trying to keep its definition broad enough to encompass a broad slice of society while not making it so all-encompassing as to make the term redundant. In the early 19th century imperialism had connotations of the authoritarian government of Louis Napoleon. Since some British generals still called the French ‘the enemy’ in the Crimean war it is unsurprising that such connotations were pejorative. It was only later in the century, and especially with the advent of Disraeli’s appeal to imperial themes in his 1870s electoral speeches that the word came to imply a sense of pride in Britain’s overseas territories (with strong associated pride in the military, especially the navy) and a belief in the superior civilization of Britain and perhaps her duty to bring this to the ‘inferior’ peoples.1 It did not necessarily imply expansionism and could just refer to a commitment to the efficient organisation of the existing empire.
The presentation of imperialism varied with class and one’s reception and potential enthusiasm for the empire largely depended on one’s material position within society – a banker in the City of London would have a keen desire to maintain stability in Britain’s overseas territories to ensure a good return on his capital, a middle class professional may not have taken a direct role in empire but may have joined one of the pressure groups that emerged out of the 1880s while a working class man may have only had a peripheral interest via the pageantry of imperial celebrations and exciting reports of foreign wars (not to mention missionary involvement and the role of women). But the key difficulty with all of these examples is that it is very difficult to determine the extent to which their behaviour was a demonstration of specifically imperial popularity. The capital of the banker might have been more effectively employed in foreign countries, removing his material connection with empire, and the pride felt by the middle and working classes may have had much more to do with pride in Britain’s status in the world which was more a product of her economic status than her territorial possession of colonies. This difficulty means that several other questions have to be asked: why did Britain gain her empire? Was it a specific policy of the governments, was it agitated for by the domestic population or was it a mere reaction to local circumstances? To what extent was the empire primarily a construct for the furthering of Britain’s economic interest? Once constructed, was imperialism born out of propaganda and foisted on the population by an elite, or did it arise out of genuine concerns for Britain? Finally, did domestic concerns determine how the British felt about empire or vice versa?
One argument on the growth of empire rests on a belief that is was a deliberate policy of the ‘official mind’ of British politicians in response to socio-economic changes at the fringes of Britain’s ‘informal’ empire that led to formal rule after annexation in the name of ‘national interest’.2 It seems unlikely that there was ever a long-term strategic imperial policy in the form of an ‘official mind’, let alone that it could be successfully implemented in the face of changeable public opinion and local circumstances. Britain simply didn’t have the resources to enact anything greater than ‘informal’ empire in most places – in Peru in the 1840s the pressure exerted to encourage free trade was ignored and the state monopoly of guano was maintained in the face of domestic fiscal crisis, despite Britain’s opposition, alongside France and the US.3 Instead, expansion was initially driven by a great plurality of causes – missionary activity, settlers and traders being the most common three. Whether or not their ‘informal’ bridgehead was then transformed into formal rule did not depend on a grand ‘strategic’ plan as much the quality of the ‘bridgehead’ – whether it effectively exploited the local environment, whether it attracted European manpower, whether it had control over local
1 Thompson, Imperial Britain, p162 Darwin, Imperialism and the Victorians p6153 Ibid, p618
Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Empire and popularity
political resources for economic stability and future political penetration and whether there was a strong lobbying group in Britain defending the bridgehead’s status.4
Thus Ugandan annexation was not as much about Salisbury’s concern for protecting the source of the Nile as a response to a lobbying campaign launched by Baring, the Consul-General of Egypt and to ensure the survival of the Imperial British East Africa Company as a bulwark against the German economic (and to some extent, political) interest in the surrounding area, particularly Zanzibar.5 Similarly, Indian annexation was stimulated by the unique ability of the bridgehead to fund its own military campaign due to its luck in capturing a steady revenue source in Bengal and the presence of available mercenaries in the Northern part of the country.6 Indeed, Ellenborough, the givernor-general of India 1842-4 was dismissed for annexationism showing that there was no central enthusiasm for expansion. There was no ‘official mind’ controlling which ‘informal’ territory to annex or not suggesting it was not ‘popular’ with the political elite – rather it was the quality of the bridgehead that had originally been established by British traders, settlers or missionaries. Of course permissive factors were needed too – superior weaponry, a weak local political environment, and (ideally) a low cost all helped annexation, particularly in the 1880s
If political concerns were not the fundamental cause of territorial expansion, were economic? It appears the economic benefits of empire were not as great as had been assumed at the time – even by 1914 only a quarter of imports came from the empire, none of which were unique and unavailable elsewhere and the peak percentage of exports to empire was only 39% in 1902 and was more regularly seen to fluctuate around a quarter to a third.7 But more importantly, private capital investment in Empire was only 19% of the total (including foreign and domestic) between 1865 and 19148 while returns fell from a good 9.7% between 1860-1884 to a comparatively low 3.3% between 1885-1912.9 More important than the lack of economic benefit of empire was the higher cost of military spending to support it – if levels of military spending had been reduced to French and German levels at the start of the 20th century and the formal empire had been disbanded then the tax burden would have dropped by an estimated 25% for domestic Britons.10 Moreover, by relying on steady colonial investments, the British economy was shielded from the growing intensity of German and American competition – this may have in fact been negative in the long term as it prevented the necessary industrial restructuring to adapt to the changing world economic situation (for instance, banks took no interest in financing new innovations that flourished in Germany such as chemical production and machine tools).
Does this mean empire was not popular with British people? It certainly doesn’t rule out popularity as the retrospective economic analysis presented above was not available to contemporaries. Thus regardless of the actual economic benefits of empire, it was perceived to be a necessary counter to German and American growth. Even if empire imposed a tax burden, there were some who felt it less than others – those who earned over £1000 gave only 8% of their income to the state, a group that represented 11% of the tax revenue, but produced roughly 40% of the national income.11 Moreover, those who invested in empire had a stake in it and regardless of the rationality or not of that decision (in terms of non-empire foreign investment being potentially more productive), that stake meant they were more likely to lobby for guarantees that their investment was safe. Furthermore, when states were being annexed, the economic returns were unknown – while the
4 Ibid, p6295 Ibid, p6386 Ibid, p6267 O’Brien, The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism, p1668 Ibid p1759 Ibid p17910 Ibid p19211 Ibid p195
Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Empire and popularity
potential for trade or for more stable trade may have been a strong driving motive, the actual comparative success of that trade would not have been known until years after the annexation. Whether or colonial investment represents ‘popularity’ of the empire is another matter – one would not have described France as ‘popular’ simply because large numbers of people invested in its businesses. Perhaps then empire was the material product of Britain’s commercial superiority and a word like ‘popular’ if applied to its foundations is unsuitable – with such an excess of capital, goods and demand for raw materials it was natural that Britain would need to reach out to other countries in the 19th century. Colonies could be seen as part of a wider effort to keep markets open to manufactured goods, capital markets open for investment, and raw material supplies high. Perhaps the City of London felt empire was ‘useful’ but not popular. Empire did not need popularity to keep it running as it was bound with the materialistic rather than idealistic outreaching of Britain.
If Empire started as a materialistic construct, what role did ideas about it play in its life? Were they used by politicians to justify foreign policy and whip up patriotic fervour? Or was there a deeper and more populist ideological appeal? The sparring between Gladstone and Disreaeli over these issues was quite revealing in answering these questions and reveals the plurality of different feelings over empire. According to Disraeli, during Gladstone’s 1870s ministry, Britain was embarrassed on the diplomatic field by the passive acceptance of Russia’s growing fleet, the payment of damages when the British built Alabama sunk the USS Hatteras on the Texas coast, and more would follow if Gladstone’s liberalism led to cuts in the military. Gladstone did repeatedly come under fire for his apparent ‘anti-imperialism’ when he initially refused to act on the ‘martyrdom’ of General Gordon in Khartoum in January 1885 and was labelled as indifferent to his death. Disraeli’s time in power reflected a very different approach to foreign affairs and the empire – he received great public praise for his conduct at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 where we finally got to tackle European politics from centre-stage, winning Cyprus for the empire in the process.
Yet there is again a risk of labelling a sense of patriotism as ‘imperialism’. Gladstone was criticised not because he was apparently indifferent to colonies per se but because he appeared to be unmoved by the death of a British hero and because he did not take care to preserve Britain’s international status. Of course empire and British status were linked, but it did not have to be so – Gladstone was attacked as much over purely foreign affairs (over the Alabama) as for his imperial attitude and Disraeli was praised more because of his rousing rhetoric on British greatness than because of his specific praise for the empire. Indeed he told his Colonial Secretary Carnarvon to ‘do what you think wisest’ in all colonial affairs and his lack of interest in them arguably led to Sir Bartle Frere and Lord Lytton feeling that they were entitled to seize the initiative and ultimately brought on the failures at Isandlwana and Kabul respectively. Gladstone and Disraeli therefore characterised very different forms of popular feeling and provoked censure or praise amongst different groups – Gladstone’s Christian moral outrage at Disraeli’s characterisation of the Bulgarian atrocities as ‘coffee house babble’ won him the support of the Christian public and his commitment to fiscal responsibility was popular amongst those most concerned with the costs of empire. Disraeli on the other hand worked best at exciting pride in Britain’s status as a powerful nation through diplomatic gesturing while his irresponsibility in was characterised by Lord Derby – ‘the main thing is to please and surprise the public by bold strokes and unexpected moves: he would rather run serious national risks than hear his policy called feeble [a dig at Gladstone] or commonplace’.
So far we have dealt with ‘top down’ imperialism – the economic motor of informal and then formal empire and the lack of consistent political commitment to it, as well as the arousal of a form of a form of nationalism by Disraeli and the quite different moral excitement exercised by Gladstone. But there were imperial ‘grass roots’ organisations too, many of which were especially interesting in their inclusion of women. For instance, missionary activity grew rapidly around the end of the century - by 1899 there were around 10,000 British missionaries across the world by various societies whose total annual expenditure totalled £2 million, or 2% of the government’s yearly
Gabriel Lambert British 6 – Empire and popularity
budget.12 But while missionaries might occasionally appeal to government support in the face of danger, they were not ‘imperialists’ in the sense we have used so far in the essay – there were times when missionaries directly attacked colonial governments – William Carter, Bishop of Zululand 1891-1903 opposed the Glen Grey Act of 1894, the cession of Swaziland to the Transvaal, of Zululand to Natal and criticised the legislation on African land holdings.13 The arguments that they were ‘cultural imperialists’ are more valid, and most were keen to bring a form of ‘civilization’ to the native populations even if in 1895 the Reverend Charles Maples, bishop of Likoma argued that ‘the European missionary must become an African to win Africans. He must...assimilate himself to them.’14 They certainly believed in the importance of their work which might be considered ‘imperialistic’ and their efforts were praised, even by non-believers as helping to extend British rule – Sir Harry Johnston wrote ‘they strengthen our hold over the country they spread the use of the English language, they induct the natives into the nest kind of civilization and in fact each mission station is an essay in colonization.’15 Thus, missionaries and their supporters at home were an example of popular ‘imperialists’ provided one takes the term to be fairly broad and inclusive of ‘cultural’ colonization.
Clearer cases of popular groups are the single-issue groups such as the Tariff Reform League, the Navy League and the Emigration Committee of the Royal Colonial Institute. All achieved high membership and subscription levels with the TRL recording yearly attendance of 925,000 people at its meetings in its second annual report.16 They provided an outlet for many from party politics which was seen to be too short termist to construct responsible imperial policy and thus transcended party divides. Interestingly, they incorporated women to an unprecedented extent – the Women’s Organising Committee was a separate branch of the Navy League who collected their own subscriptions and, when finally merged with the NL in 1909 won female seats in the central executive body. However, while all three groups tried to extend their membership into the working classes with lectures and pamphleteering focusing on, dockyards in the case of the NL, their membership remained primarily middle class. Moreover, women’s involvement paled in comparison with the numbers involved in the suffrage movements, demonstrating that other domestic political issues could and did take precedence over imperial ones.
Ultimately, while there was certainly popular involvement with imperialism in the form of the grass roots organisations mentioned above, in the literature on empire (though much of it was aimed at the future imperial ruling class) and through missionary activity, domestic concerns probably aroused the most interest by British people in the 19th century. The pace of social, economic and political change was unprecedented and the fragmentation of society into classes prevented any kind of ‘one nation’ popular imperialism developing. Indeed even the political elite were often ambivalent about its cost and importance to Britain. It is often tempting to confuse issues that were predominantly British with imperialism. Thus not every nationalist had to be an imperialist, not every supporter of the monarchy did so with a mind to Empire (especially India) and simply because capitalists invested in Empire does not mean they necessarily had an ideological or emotive commitment to it.
12 Porter, A.N., ‘Religion and Empire: British Expansion in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1780-1914’, p37213 ibid, p42414 ibid, p38315 Ibid, p32216 Thompson, Imperial Britain, p42