The Transformation and Decline of the British Empire

Decolonisation After the First World War

Spencer Mawby

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137387509
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350307605
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The slow retreat of the British empire in the century after the First World War has had dramatic implications for Britain itself, its former colonies and the global balance of power.

The Transformation and Decline of the British Empire provides a broad-ranging and accessible introduction to the key debates and discussions about this process of imperial decline. Drawing on the lively scholarship which has developed over the last 25 years, it offers both new students and established scholars a guide to the existing literature on British decolonisation, including subjects such as the rise of anti-colonialism, the impact of empire on British politics and culture, the significance of migration, the wars and insurgencies which accompanied the end of empire and the role which capital and labour played in imperial decline. Mawby also examines the way in which the historiography has developed through conversations and debates between scholars, the impact which present day concerns have on historical writing, the significance of new documentary findings and the impact of theoretical considerations on current controversies.

1 Anti-Colonialism in the British Empire

It is impossible to write about the end of the European empires without giving some consideration to the emergence of anti-colonial ideas in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Yet the first thing which aspiring students of anti-colonialism are likely to notice is the absence of a general text devoted to the subject. Although at one time this historiographical oversight could be ascribed to the reluctance of modern historians to engage in large projects devoted to abstract political concepts, we are now awash with semi-popular investigations of notions such as internationalism, global government, environmentalism, human rights and the Third World. Vijay Prashad’s study of this last phenomenon comes closest to offering a broad overview of the non-European response to the decline of European imperialism [16]. Perhaps the negative connotations of the terminology play a part in explaining this omission, and the corollary neglect of non-alignment and the Non-Aligned Movement, whose history overlaps that of anti-colonialism, offers some corroboration for this supposition. There are difficulties in analysing a movement which is defined by what it is against, particularly when the concept against which it is defined is as large in scope and as contested as colonialism or imperialism.

Fortunately, in working on the forms which resistance to colonialism took in different territories, and in examining the lives of anti-colonial actors, historians have supplied the fragments which can be assembled to give a sense of the general significance of 20th century anti-colonialism. Recent historiographical work has emphasised the contribution made by rebels against British colonial authority to a transnational debate about what the postcolonial future should look like and how it could be obtained. Anti-colonialists took inspiration from each other and from beyond the frontiers of the British Empire. In doing so, they extended the 20th century political imagination by integrating race and culture into their critique of European supremacy and by adopting new techniques of political mobilisation. To take the three key figures examined in this chapter, Gandhi drew on both South Asian and European notions of spirituality in pioneering the tactics of non-violent resistance to authority; under the influence of his experiences in the United States, Kwame Nkrumah championed a form of pan-Africanism which resonated in Asia and the Americas; while Eric Williams utilised the expertise he had gathered in Britain, America and the Caribbean, to put history to work in the name of anti-colonialism in a way which influenced later global debates about the economics of dependency. To provide a framework for the analysis of these three influential figures the first portion of this chapter will offer a more general consideration of the themes which have emerged from recent literature on the origins, emergence and development of anti-colonial politics within the British Empire and, in particular, to the writings of the leaders of the anti-colonial movement, which constitute important source material for anyone wishing to write its history.

Historians and anti-colonialism

Historians are generally agreed that organised anti-colonial politics acquired much greater prominence in the inter-war years than before, but a bewildering number of paths are available to those wishing to trace the origins of anti-colonialism to an earlier period. The route chosen by Pankaj Mishra in a recent work of popular history entitled From the Ruins of Empire directs attention to the influence of men such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Liang Qichao. During the late 19th century they offered both a diagnosis which explained why Asia had become subject to European authority and a prognosis about the catastrophic effects which their inferior status would have upon the peoples of the continent unless remedial measures were taken. On their account, curing Asia of the disease of European subjugation required a confrontation with imperial power [54].

For al-Afghani, who was born in 1838 in northwest Iran, the brutal aftermath of the Indian Mutiny demonstrated the necessity for an intellectual rebellion against Western ideas and a new politics of resistance to European and particularly British incursions. He responded to the persecution of Muslims, which he witnessed during the course of his extensive travels, by articulating a new and influential critique of colonialism. Mishra attends to an essay published in 1879 entitled ‘The True Reason for Man’s Happiness’ in which al-Afghani attacked the humanitarian defence of imperialism and argued that improvements made by the British in transportation, such as the building of the railways, were simply means to exploit India more effectively, while the introduction of Western education for a minority was portrayed by al-Afghani as a way of facilitating effective colonial administration. Mishra suggests that ‘This was a sophisticated idea for its time, when Indian nationalists had barely begun to formulate it’ [54: 84]. It also set a precedent for later attacks on the notion of imperial humanitarianism such as those conducted by Williams in the Caribbean. Mishra acknowledges the inconsistencies in late 19th century anti-colonialism and suggests that, although in his early career al-Afghani assimilated Western progressive ideas such as constitutionalism and women’s rights, later in his life he reasserted the importance of Islamic self-strengthening and the obligation of Muslims to unite under the banner of the Ottoman Caliphate. Al-Afghani’s thinking thus demonstrated a tension between a conservative form of communalism, which looked backwards in upholding the paternalism and authoritarianism of precolonial societies, and the advocacy of individual rights against the impositions of the colonial state, which seemed to necessitate the transcending of older forms of political and social organisation. Similarly, another of Mishra’s subjects, Liang Qichao, sometimes urged his Asian audience to emulate the West and at others recommended the rejection of European ideas in favour of reliance on Asian traditions. While acknowledging this theoretical indeterminacy, Mishra’s analysis of the life and work of al-Afghani and Liang Qichao establishes the fact that new forms of anti-colonial philosophy were emerging in Asia long before the outbreak of the First World War [54].

In the manner of many popular histories, Mishra generally avoids reflection on methodological issues. By contrast, Barbara Bush, in her treatment of resistance to imperialism in inter-war Africa, attends to the contrast between traditional approaches to the subject and new postcolonial perspectives, and finds problems with both. In her view, by employing concepts such as gender, race and culture, postcolonialism remedied the narrow concern with elites evident in traditional historiography. She interprets cultural artefacts, such as the book and film of Sanders of the River, as part of a cultural superstructure which helped maintain British hegemony in Africa. Although by drawing attention to the power of these representations, postcolonialism helped transcend official perspectives, Bush suggests that it became too preoccupied with abstractions and, as a consequence, ‘obscured or mystified real structures of economic exploitation, globalised western power and racial oppression’ [19: xiii]. She therefore devotes particular attention to the coercive measures employed by the imperial state and the emergence of resistance to it in West and South Africa. Bush also criticises the earlier historiography for focusing too narrowly on post-1945 African nationalism; such an approach fails to acknowledge that ‘the colonial authorities were faced with a mounting tide of popular discontent and protest during the inter-war years, which they tried to suppress through mechanisms of cultural imperialism, but also increasingly repressive policies’ [19: 127]. Bush concludes that these authoritarian politics proved counter-productive and were a key factor in stimulating anti-colonial resistance.

Some of Bush’s conclusions put her at odds with a more recent account of the same subject matter by Jonathan Derrick. Rather than focusing on the more coercive character of interwar colonialism, his work on those he describes in the title of his monograph as Africa’s ‘Agitators’ focuses on the importation of anti-colonial ideologies from outside Africa. On his account, the two most important of these were Marxism-Leninism and black nationalism. Large portions of the book are devoted to what Derrick describes as the ‘air of unreality’ which pervaded the African strategy of international communists, such as the Trinidadian George Padmore. Presented with the alternatives of a struggle on behalf of the global victims of imperial exploitation and economic oppression, as advocated by Marxists such as Padmore, or a confrontation with white colonialism and racial domination, on the basis of a new philosophy of black empowerment, Africans chose the latter. In doing so they adopted and then adapted the ideas of the Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey. Like al-Afghani’s travels around Asia, Garvey’s journeys around the Americas persuaded him that imperialism sapped the morale of the colonised and led them to collude in the politics of white superiority and black inferiority. Derrick suggests that ‘if Garvey was strongly contested in America, far away in Africa he became a legend’ [44: 88]. There is a certain tension in Derrick’s own argument because the space devoted to describing links between international communism and African nationalism seems at odds with his determination to demonstrate the marginality of Lenin’s legacy in comparison with that of Garvey. At various points he is forced to qualify the general argument by, for example, acknowledging communist influence in the politics of South Africa. Perhaps the most notable counter-example to Derrick’s attempt to marginalise the significance of class conflict is the West African Youth League in Sierra Leone which moved beyond narrow middle-class activism to mobilise workers in Freetown [44].

Despite their differences, Mishra, Bush and Derrick all rely to some degree on the autobiographical and semi-autobiographical writings of the anti-colonial activists they study. Questions concerning the reliability and utility of this kind of writing have been a particular concern for historians and the work of Carol Polsgrove, Judith Brown and Tony Stockwell offers a representative sample of different approaches. Polsgrove endorses the postcolonial thesis that the key element in the Western subjugation of the non-Western world was the presumption by Western writers that they could speak more authoritatively about the non-Western world than the people who lived there. It was by this means that imperial subjects were effectively silenced. On Polsgrove’s account, the participation by colonial subjects in the writing of their own history was a decisive moment because it changed their status: African writers of anti-colonial texts ‘who had once been objects, spoken about, looked down upon, pitied or maligned had become subjects’ [28: xii]. In this sense, the very act of writing and then of being published transformed these actors into ‘agents in their own history’. Among the books which Polsgrove identifies as significant in re-establishing the authority of colonial subjects to speak for themselves are George Padmore’s Pan-Africanism or Communism; Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya; the novels and memoirs of Peter Abrahams, including particularly A Wreath for Udomo; C. L. R. James’s Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution; and Nkrumah’s own autobiographical account of the struggle for independence, entitled simply Ghana, to which we will return [44]. In Windows into the Past, one of Gandhi’s biographers, Judith Brown, seeks to extend this argument for the significance of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical writing to a wider constituency in the context of South Asian history [1].

Although most historians writing today acknowledge the importance of incorporating the view from the periphery, autobiographical accounts written by anti-colonial activists are vulnerable to accusations of partiality and inaccuracy. This is most evident from the singular case of Chin Peng’s intervention in the historiographical debate about the Malayan insurgency. His role in directing the insurrectionary forces of the Malayan Communist Party during the period 1948–1960 made him one of the most wanted men in the British Empire at a time when he was still in his mid-twenties. In the aftermath of the war he disappeared from view but in 1989 he re-emerged and set about reversing the usual procedure by which historians criticise and analyse the writings of historical actors. Chin Peng’s autobiography, which was published in 2003 as Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History, provided a forum for him to comment unfavourably on much of the extant historiography on the basis of his own experiences and research. For example, he asserted that, contrary to the consensus in the secondary literature, the decision to launch the insurgency was a defensive one which was taken reluctantly: ‘We feared walking into a British trap. The CPM [Communist Party of Malaya] leadership was convinced, and I think rightly so, that any move on our part to confront gangsterism with gangsterism would only provide Government with the tailor made excuse necessary to suppress and ultimately ban the Party.’¹ Historians were intrigued by this unprecedented intervention and many of the leading scholars of the insurgency, including Stockwell, were able to talk to him during a workshop in Canberra in 1999. Stockwell judged Chin Peng’s performance during the discussions to be ‘impassive, measured and generally consistent’ [65: 283].

In examining the autobiography, Stockwell is cautiously sceptical about Chin Peng’s revisionist enterprise and suggests that the arguments he deploys are already familiar and largely discredited. In particular, Chin Peng’s portrayal of a British colonial elite determined to retain control over their Malayan patrimony at whatever cost strikes Stockwell as wholly inconsistent with the documentary record which demonstrates that the British ‘were looking for a way to escape from the burdens of empire by transferring power to a reliable Malayan regime as soon as was feasible’. Stockwell suggests: ‘...one is tempted to conclude that in the struggle for Malaya, Chin Peng has come second with the pen as he formerly did with the sword’ [65: 297]. Stockwell’s judgement of Chin Peng’s testimony poses meaningful questions for postcolonial theorists who would tend to privilege such accounts on the grounds that they challenge the complacency of much traditional imperial history; but any return to orthodox methods and to an exclusive engagement with the vast archive of the imperial power raises the troubling possibility that the less easily recorded voice from the periphery will remain silent. In those circumstances the view from the metropolis will prevail by default. Many historians have taken to a critical examination of the ideas and actions of those who led rebellions against colonialism in Asia, Africa and the Americas as a means of navigating between these scholarly perils.

Mohandas Gandhi

In his book The Un-Gandhian Gandhi, Claude Markovits described the ‘extremely rich posthumous trajectory’ of the most famous 20th century critic of colonialism. After his death, the possibility of misreading Gandhi greatly added to his influence because, on a generous reading, it allowed him to be adapted to different contexts and, on a more cynical one, it allowed for the appropriation of his moral capital by the leaders of other causes. Markovits notes that there are several genuine difficulties in studying him as a historical figure rather than a legend. He lived a long life, from 1869 to 1948, and between the young Gandhi and the old Gandhi there are great differences. His intellectual biography is marked by at least two epiphanies: in the first, which occurred at some point between 1906 and 1920 depending on one’s reading of his career, he lost confidence in the possibility of reforming British imperialism and, in the second, at the very end of his life, his faith in his own vision of the reform of Indian society was shattered by the violence which accompanied partition. The answer to the question of what Gandhi thought therefore depends on which part of Gandhi’s life one is considering. Furthermore, although he denigrated his own abilities as a writer and celebrated the virtues of withdrawal and silence, his collected works still run to ninety-eight volumes. The process of editing this material began in 1956 and was not completed until 1994. The status of a later, revised edition of his complete works caused controversy due to the excision of some significant material. The original is an invaluable but exhausting resource which is accessible online via the GandhiServe Foundation.²

If the primary source base is extensive then the secondary commentary on Gandhi gives the illusion of unlimited scope. Book-length additions to this literature published in the West since 2010 include an orthodox biography by Jad Adams, an unorthodox and contentious analysis of Gandhi’s tactics of non-violence by Faisal Devji, a mildly revisionist account of his early life in Britain and South Africa by Ramachandra Guha and a defence of his achievements which recognises his many eccentricities by Joseph Lelyveld [33; 45; 46; 49]. Vigilant Gandhi scholars have difficulty maintaining any sort of mastery over this continuous literary flow and the task is impossible for those whose primary field of expertise lies elsewhere. Such problems are compounded by the fact that any serious effort to engage with Gandhi must also acknowledge the radically different cultural context in which he operated. This is most obvious when decoding his political vocabulary. Even a preliminary reading of Gandhi’s writings will yield a confounding sense that the terms he used, such as satyagraha, ahimsa and swaraj, lose much...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Anti-Colonialism in the British Empire
• 2. Britain and Britishness
• 3. Migration
• 4. Counterinsurgency, Intelligence and Propaganda
• 5. Capital and Labour
• Conclusion
• Chronology
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index