Review Article The British Empire, I

H.V. BOWEN University of Leicester

British Imperklism: Innovation and Expansion 1688-1914. By P. J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins. Harlow: Longman. 1993. xv + 504pp. €38.00 (hb), €16.99 W ) .

Ever since Sir John Seeley first set the historiographical ball rolling over a hundred years ago, the search has gone on for the causes of Britain’s imperial expansion. If the sheer scale of such a task is not enough to deter modern historians from continuing the search, then the warning signs posted alongside discredited theories and explanations of expansion might prompt doubts about the wisdom of continuing to pursue such a course of action. In addition, the proliferation of post-war historical literature and the ever-increasing special- ization of academic history have made it increasingly difficult to keep the big picture in sight. In the modern scholarly world, many ambitions are centred on painstaking archival research, the formulation of case studies, and the writing of detailed articles and monographs, and in such an environment few historians seem prepared to take risks and offer interpretations of the very largest themes. It is therefore a refreshing change to come across a book that not only takes risks but also offers a reinterpretation of one of the largest historical themes of all: the rise and fall of the British Empire. This is not to imply that Peter Cain and Anthony Hopkins have in any way abandoned the very best traditions of modern historical scholarship, but rather to applaud them for their bold and imaginative approach. Indeed, the risks have paid off handsomely, for in this first part of a two-volume study they have produced a thought-provoking book which will stand as a landmark in British imperial historiography for many years to come. The second volume (reviewed below) traces the course of British imperialism from 1914 to 1990, and while the two books are intended to ‘come fully into their own when read as one’, this first volume can to all intents and purposes be regarded as what the publishers call an ‘independent and self- sufficient’ study of British overseas expansion before the First World War.

Cain and Hopkins bring together, develop and extend lines of argument that were first deployed in a series of three articles in the Economic History Review, and the main thrust of the book centres on an attempt to establish links between Britain’s domestic economic development and its overseas presence. Of course, this approach is not in itself new for, as Cain and Hopkins themselves remind

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us, historians of different persuasions have over many years focused their atten- tion on a variety of metropolitan impulses in attempts to explain the pace and direction of overseas expansion. Indeed, in the early pages of the book classic Marxist and liberal theories of imperialism, as well as modem derivative ver- sions, are held up for close scrutiny and their flaws are exposed. What is new here is a concentration on the contribution made by the service sector to overseas activity during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the authors exploit to good effect many of the important developments made in the field of economic history over the last few decades. Indeed, perhaps Cain’s and Hopkins’s greatest achievement is through this focus on City finance and business to integrate imperial history into the mainstream of British historical writing. The Empire is not seen as a distant unconnected adjunct of metro- politan society, but rather as an extension and reflection of it, and the authors base their case on the argument that previous generations of historians have tended to ‘underplay or misjudge the relationship between the British economy and Britain’s overseas presence’. In particular, Cain and Hopkins argue, quite rightly, that it is no longer tenable to hold that there was a straightforward causal or chronological link between industrialization and overseas expansion. This is not simply because recent research has shown the process of industrial- ization to have been much slower than was once thought, but because the role of non-industrial forms of capitalist enterprise has not until recently been granted its proper place in interpretations of the developing course of modern British economic history.

Cain and Hopkins seek to move away from a framework of interpretation shaped by industrial growth alone, and they define capitalist enterprise in broad terms by highlighting interaction between agriculture, commerce, finance and industry. The whole process of imperial expansion is thus placed in a context provided by the long-term development of the service sector, and in particular they focus on what in their articles they have termed ‘gentlemanly capitalism’. This distinct form of capitalism is held to have been based upon an enduring alliance between land and finance that was forged as the City of London emerged after 1688 as the world’s leading financial centre. Not only did this alliance of mutual benefit manifest itself in a political context, it also allowed a wide range of domestic financial resources to be channelled into the wider world. While not denying that this powerful alliance was an uneasy one at times, Cain and Hopkins argue that bankers and landowners held a ‘common view of the world and how it should be ordered’, and that this gave coherence, purpose and direction to British overseas activity. Thus in the period after 1850 when a form of gentlemanly capitalism dominated by the landed interest and protectionism went into decline, it was replaced by a form based upon a ‘new meritocracy and free trade’, and the imperial torch was picked up and carried by those, based mainly in the southeast of England, who exerted the greatest influence in the City. The evolution of, and the shifts within, the gentlemanly order are documented in detail, and in the second half of the book a series of linked case studies of areas under formal and informal British control illustrate the extent to which the service sector was an engine of imperialism before 1914. While Cain and Hopkins stress throughout that they are not seeking to explain expansion as a form of crude economic determinism, a common theme within these case studies is the extent to which investment decisions taken in the City

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of London often helped to set the limits of British power and influence, and determined, as in the cases of Egypt and southern Africa, the vigour with which Britain pressed its claims.

London and the south-east of England loom large throughout the book. This is not surprising, given the capital‘s command of financial, commercial and political power and resources, but at times it does narrow the context within which the gentlemanly capitalist evolved and moved. Moreover, it also serves to impose a uniformity of religion, education, manners, culture and values upon the gentlemanly elite, and it does not leave much room in the story (particularly before 1850) for the members of powerful provincial elites or the members of ethnic or religious minorities, all of whom brought their own distinct influence to bear upon the development of British overseas activity. Many of these groups, who were notably conspicuous in the eighteenth century, were indeed absorbed, like the great Jewish banking families, into the gentle- manly elite by 1850, but throughout the period under review the creation of the modem state and the expansion of the Empire provided opportunities for people drawn from across the United Kingdom and beyond, and many of those who provided their own different types of imperialist impulses at both core and periphery were neither gentlemen nor capitalists. It is important that their contribution is not overlooked, even if they did increasingly play a minor and subordinate role in funding and sustaining British expansion.

The issue of whether or not the service sector was the engine of imperialism will undoubtedly provoke heated debate, not least because since the Second World War a whole range of ‘peripheral’ factors, most notably those associated with the work of Gallagher and Robinson, have been identified as playing a critical part in the timing and direction of British expansion in the nineteenth century. Cain and Hopkins recognize this, and they insist that their interpreta- tion is not intended to deny the importance of peripheral factors, but rather that they are seeking to emphasize the extent to which ’the generic causes . . . have their origins at the centre’. In other words, while they are interested in the actions of the man on the spot, they are more concerned with the processes which led him to be there in the first place. This means that the reasons behind the decisions that took British influence and Britons to particular parts of the world have to be identified and Cain and Hopkins argue that in this context gentlemanly capitalism ‘provides the crucial link between the economy and the process of decision-making since senior officials [and politicians] were recruited from the service sector and were invariably infected by its perspectives and its values’. The problem here is that while the general links between the worlds of high politics and high finance can be established with some degree of certainty, some of the decisions which determined the direction of British activity can never be recovered from a gentlemanly world in which a gentleman’s word was his bond and in which informal deals were struck over dinner in London clubs. Given the extent to which politicians were investors and investors were politi- cians, it is often difficult to establish specific links between politics, finance and grand strategy because many decisions did not emerge from any formal decision-making machinery, and hence the reasons behind such decisions were often not left behind for posterity in the form of a written record. Indeed, if the British Empire had any degree of informality about it, that informality was not to be found on the periphery but at its very heart in the gentlemanly world

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of London. Thus it is often not possible to give a final verdict on whether or not particular British actions in the wider world were based on self-interest or the national interest, but it can be argued in general terms that self-interest and national interest were inextricably bound together for many of the gentlemanly elite. Cain’s and Hopkins’s verdict on Gladstone’s attitude towards intervention in Egypt at a time when he held a substantial amount of Egyptian stock perhaps points the way towards a reasonable conclusion that might be held to be appli- cable to most nineteenth-century British ministers and politicians: ‘This is not to say that Gladstone was motivated by crude self-interest; but it does suggest that he was likely to see the creditors’ point of view with some clarity if it could be presented as an issue of principle, and especially one that was in the wider public interest.’

With any work that crosses several centuries and continents, it is inevitable that critics will be able to pick holes in the general interpretation on offer. It is because of this that Cain and ’Hopkins have not only based their work on prodigious labour in the secondary literature but have also attempted to disarm as many critics as possible by providing a lengthy historiographical and methodological preamble which both sets the scene and traces the evolution of gentlemanly capitalism from 1688. While this is understandable and wise in the context of a historical discipline that has been dogged over the years by endless debates on terminology and definition, Cain and Hopkins state their case with such vigour that one cannot help feeling that they have used up most of their ammunition by the time the reader arrives at page 99. This is not to say that the chapters on the wider world are in any way redundant, but they are set to run at a slower pace. Even so, the authors continue to question orthodox views. They make a strong case for reinterpreting the course of British imperialism in India, and the partition of Africa is seen in a new light. In both cases expansion is held to have been promoted by ‘gentlemanly’ forces, and the connection between decisions at the core and events at the periphery is firmly established.

The general reader will find many of his or her assumptions about British history challenged by this splendid book, and even those specialists who dis- agree with parts of the interpretation on offer will have to acknowledge that Cain and Hopkins have constructed a new framework of explanation that future generations of imperial historians will be unable to ignore. Above all, the importance of this book is such that teachers of imperial history will have to ensure that for many years to come students are not only in possession of notes on ‘Hobson and Lenin’ and ‘Gallagher and Robinson’, but of notes on ‘Cain and Hopkins’ as well.

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