Imperial Legacies

Contesting the Reputation of the British Empire

Jeremy Black

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781641770392
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Frühe amerikanische Geschichte

Britain yesterday; America today.The reality of being top dog is that everybody hates you. In this provocative book, noted historian and commentator Jeremy Black shows how criticisms of the legacy of the British Empire are in part criticisms of the reality of American power today. He emphasizes the prominence of imperial rule in history and in the world today, and the selective way in which certain countries are castigated. A wide ranging and vigorous assault on political correctness, it's language, misuse of the past, and grasping of both present and future.

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INTRODUCTION

Empire reflects power, its existence, and its use. Each, in itself, is morally neutral, but they all are criticized bitterly in the modern world and employed in order to decry Britain’s past and the United States’ present. Between 1750 and 1900, Britain became the foremost power in the world, both territorially and economically. An intellectual powerhouse, Britain also became a model political system for much of the world, as the United States would eventually do in the twentieth century. These changes were interrelated. Territorial expansion provided Britain and the United States with raw materials, markets, and employment, and, combined with evangelical Protestantism and national self-confidence, encouraged a sense in Britain and the United States as being at the cutting edge of civilization, with the last presented in Western and Westernizing terms. Indeed, empire was in part supported and defended on the grounds that it provided opportunities for the advance of civilization. This was seen not least by ending what were regarded as uncivilized, as well as unchristian, practices, such as widow burning and ritual banditry in India, and slavery and piracy across the world. In turn, these practices, and their presentation, helped to define British views of civilization. Moreover, as a different, but contributory, point, British exceptionalism was to be the godparent of its American successor, just as the two world systems succeeded one another with some, often much, uneasiness, but also in alliance at crucial points. The relationship between the reputation of the British Empire and that of American power has become a close one.

To treat these contemporary attitudes to empire (like also the social conditions then, or the treatment of women) as if Britain, and later the United States, could have been abstracted from the age, and should be judged accordingly, is unhelpful and ahistorical. Such a treatment is not a case of historical amnesia, but rather of amnesia about history and the process of change through time; or at least, and the distinction is important, the latter as approached in a scholarly, rather than polemical, fashion. Moreover, within the constraints of the attitudes and technologies of the nineteenth century, Britain was more liberal, culturally, economically, socially, and politically, than the other major European powers, just as the United States was to be in the twentieth century. Britain offered powerful support to the struggles for independence in Latin America and Greece, from Spanish and Turkish rule, respectively. Causes such as Greek independence and, later on, the Italian Risorgimento were genuinely popular in the nineteenth century, as was that of support for the Northern (Union), anti-slavery side in the American Civil War (1861–65).

In addition, as will be discussed in chapter 8, the British, although earlier the most active of the slave traders, were instrumental in ending the slave trade and slavery. This was despite the severe economic damage thereby done to the British colonies in the West Indies. Indeed, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1807) reflected the strength of the moral strand in British public life. This strand drew greatly on the world of public discussion in Britain that reached into every hamlet, through the press and public collections and meetings. For example, anti-slavery literature was prolific and struck evangelical, providential, and humanitarian notes, as well as those focused on economics, just as opposition to the slave trade had done.¹ Similarly, despite massive disruption in the shape of a destructive, as well as unpredictable, civil war, the U.S. Union states forced through the abolition of slavery in the United States, which hit the Southern economy hard.

The balance and character of moral concerns and engagement in the past may appear flawed through the perspective of hindsight, indeed very flawed (as ours of course also will be), but such concerns and engagement were strong. Furthermore, those who deploy hindsight might be better served directing their energy toward urgent present abuses, which include a continued slave trade and slavery; and both in Britain and elsewhere. A consideration of the past can lend urgency and energy to debate about the present, and valuably so, but applying hindsight is also far easier than correcting present abuses.

Blaming imperial rule, however, served, and to this day serves, a variety of cultural, intellectual, and political strategies at a number of levels. Domestically, aside from the “culture wars” and identity struggles, which, always vibrant, appear to be becoming far more active and potent, it is in part a strategy designed to create a new public identity. This is not least by integrating, or rather, claiming to integrate, immigrant communities as an aspect of a rejection of a past that could also be used to stigmatize an alternative present. This is a process that can serve various public (political) purposes, both overt and covert.

At the global level, criticism of empire serves a similar purpose. It is used repeatedly in order to try to ease political relations between one-time imperial powers and colonies, notably by appealing to public opinion in the latter, thus seeking to ground relations in a wider support.

Apologizing at the expense of the past costs little in modern Western culture. Indeed, as a result, it can appear glib, a diversion, and an abdication of any commitment both to lasting values and to serious debate, as well as helpful, or, at least, expedient. Perception of the process is very varied and, to a degree, important in its evaluation. Alongside more positive accounts, it can be an aspect of the “virtue signaling” of conspicuous morality. This signaling is a process that is highly important to individual and political assertion, and notably so given the emphasis on feelings as a way to validate attitudes and to justify policies: “I feel,” rather than “I think.”

The cult of the victim is also pertinent, and not least to the discussion of empire and imperial legacy. While working on the last section of this book, I relaxed by reading A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George, an American novelist who has written extensively about Britain, where she lives part of the year. A passage that struck me comes from the end: “‘I think she found injustice in places where other people simply found life,’ Deborah told him. ‘And she couldn’t manage to get past the thought of that injustice: what had happened.’”² This describes the culprit, who essentially stages the murder in order to frame someone else, a classic instance of the over-the-top anger transferring, as well as denying, responsibility that appears all too common in the topic under discussion.

Presentism is an inevitable aspect of historical understanding, be it popular, governmental, or scholarly, for it is the concerns of the present that help explain why topics are undertaken and how they are perceived. And so also for the empire. Presentism explains the focus on the subject, as well as the standard way in which it is treated; the two being closely linked.

In a sense, indeed, the style and tone of attention have been transformed, and from one problematic perspective to another. There was a culture of imperialism in which the fact and process of imperial rule (or rather of Western imperial rule, for, conspicuously, there was generally not Western praise for that by non-Western powers, such as China and the Ottoman Turks) was believed and proclaimed to be valuable. This value, it was argued, was the case both for the imperialists and for those who experienced their attention. Each supposedly benefited from character building, albeit of a very different form. Moreover, the teleology expressed in the language of imperialism fed into the imperialists’ belief that it had a normative and necessary character and, as such, took a key role in historical development.

To a considerable extent, the treatment of Ireland (see chapter 4), notably the seizure of land, and the quest for profit, as well as security, helped set the pattern for English imperialism in the seventeenth century, particularly in the West Indies and North America. There was a clear sense, with England (from 1707, Britain) as of other empires, of superiority to lesser societies and of the value, both to England and in world-historical terms, of bringing them under control and, through the plantation system of establishing settlers, of using the land in a more fruitful fashion. Indeed, imperialism was an aspect of “progressive” analyses and narratives, not only of national betterment, but also of those of civilization as a whole. The would-be victors, and especially so when they had won, of course, defined the latter. There was a clear attempt to present Western civilization as not only superior to other civilizations, but also as defining the allegedly de-civilized nature of these civilizations. Thomas Jefferson’s view of the necessary and inevitable future for Native Americans, a choice between assimilation as “civilized republicans and good Americans” or being driven into remote fastnesses, reflected similar values.³

The extent to which imperialism could be presented and defended as a progressive agenda, however misleadingly, underlines the degree to which justifications for it were not solely offered in terms of national and sectional self-interest. Instead, this agenda was seen as late as the 1950s, with the efforts then by Britain to bring economic growth to colonies and to “prepare” them for independence within the context of the (newish) Commonwealth. Less positively, Soviet totalitarianism, which proved to last longer, was defended on developmental grounds.

Looking to the past, these ideas are generally underrated, if not neglected, today, but they were of significance at the time. Indeed, the effort involved in imperialism was often considerable, not least in thwarting and fighting other imperial powers, both European and non-European. The justification of this effort drew on the specifics of winning this competition, but also on more general alleged benefits for Britain and for those who were ruled. Again, comparing Britain with the United States is instructive: it was believed, and not necessarily without reason, that it would be better if territory was ruled by the Americans, rather than by Spaniards, Mexicans, Britons, or Native Americans.

At the same time, it is incorrect to think of one single type of imperialism, and therefore one sole rationale for it. Indeed, part of the problem with the modern debate over imperialism, and an aspect of the way in which empire can be, indeed frequently is, stereotyped, is that there is frequently just such a simplistic approach to the concept of empire, which is presented, in past or present, as “good” or “bad,” “progressive” or “negative,” and usually the latter of each, respectively.

In practice, however, imperialism ranged, and still ranges, widely. This point is underlined by an understanding of the extent to which it did not necessarily entail territorial rule. The assumptions, goals, and forms, bound up in concepts such as “informal empire” and “soft power,” concepts applied to both Britain and the United States, underline the extent to which there was a gradient of presence involved. This gradient was linked not just to the response in the areas affected but also to very different goals; and it is unhelpful if critiques are read from one to another as if there were few “essential” contrasts between different types of imperialism.

Their empire was presented by British commentators, or at least most of them, until there was a significant shift of perspective in the mid-twentieth century, as the apogee of the historical process. This process was supposedly founded on the ancient civilizations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean, which were described as the “cradles of civilization,” and also looking back to the Holy Land, the two overlapping. This linkage implied a powerful theme of continuity, indeed another version of the medieval translatio imperii in which the transfer of rule kept the dream and example of Classical Rome alive.

The linkage was also part of a diffusionist model of cultural history, with Classical Rome and modern Britain each shaping their world, and to positive purposes. This was an approach that was to be adopted much later by American commentators in order to describe themselves. In an 1862 essay on colonies published in the Rambler, a Catholic monthly, Sir John Acton (1834–1902), then a Liberal MP, later, as Lord Acton, a prominent historian, presented colonialization as a necessary prelude to the spread of Christian civilization: “We may assume (as part of the divine economy which appears in the whole history of religion) that the conquest of the world by the Christian powers is the preliminary step to its conversion.” As a child, I was taught history at school in a process that twice began with the Classical world, albeit a world of the Middle East and Europe, starting with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but totally excluding India and China.

In turn, and notably in recent decades, has come a strong hostility to imperialism as a process that supposedly distorted the imperialists and the “imperialized,” and, in particular, exposed the latter to the toxicity of imperial rule. Conquest alone was not bad enough. Being imperial subjects was presented as bad, if not worse. The clear-cut rejection of imperial rule that influences the presentation of the past can also lead to a misleading division between “collaborators” and “resisters.” This is a division that totally fails to grasp the contingencies, compromises, and nuances of the past, not least the way in which people then understood their position and adapted to it.⁴

Each of these approaches is, to a degree, highly questionable and ahistorical, but is also rooted in its time. The move from one approach to the other raises questions about historical method and the conceptual tools available for discussing the past and our relationship with it. The assumption that it is essentially the past that constructed myths, or, rather, in which myths were constructed, is all too convenient. Instead, just as past views and practices attract valuable critical scrutiny, so the same should be the case for the situation today, as we will, in turn, face what E. P. Thompson, with reason, termed the “enormous condescension of posterity.”⁵

Moreover, there are dangers in misrepresenting and misunderstanding past attitudes. In presenting people, both the colonizers and those colonized, the British (and Americans) themselves, as the victims of imperialism, they are robbed of agency and instrumentalized. In addition, when criticizing those who applauded, aided, and accepted imperialism, from the British (and American) working classes to colonial inhabitants, the charge of false consciousness is a concept that is easy, but also too easy, to deploy in this context. This is the case whether assessing the past or the present. The charge offers the reductionism and instrumentalism of those discussed in order to underline the criticism. Doubtless, this also will be the case when the present is considered in the future.

Historians of empire and decolonization, whether in imperial homelands or in former colonies, whether for the British Empire or for all others, and whether or not including the United States, are very much taking part in the process they discuss. The difficulty is not that there are intellectual, literary, and professional strategies propagating partisan, somewhat narrow, often ideological, and frequently angry views, for that is always the case with politics, and frequently is the case with history, notably with national history, public history, and the history of memory. The difficulty, instead, is that many, maybe most, writers do not accept that that is what they are doing.

Moreover, as a related but different point, writers can and will tend to argue by the assertion of their views, and by the omission or misrepresentation of those of others. Writing in a political and/or theoretical mindset, or “bubble,” as most do, can accentuate this approach. This, indeed, is a particular problem with many of the “postcolonial” stereotyping and criticisms of imperial rule and, indeed, American power. They are as inappropriate as the unthinking praise for empire, which is rightly and, more frequently, criticized.

These are far from the sole conceptual, methodological, and historiographical issues involved, indeed frequently at stake. Among the many that are significant are the strong, even insistent, tendencies to focus on the last 150 to 200 years of empire, and certainly so in the case of Britain, France, and the United States. But this does not apply to the likes of China, Turkey, Portugal, and Spain. For India, the emphasis is on the last 170 years, when India was under British rule, and not on earlier periods when India, or at least part of it, was the basis for imperial power, notably, but not only, under the Mughals, the key dynastic power in northern India from 1526 to 1857. For India and for other countries, this chronological focus is at the expense of both a longer time span⁶ and of what can be gained from such a time span and comparative consideration accordingly. Indeed, imperial history is too significant, too interesting, and too complex for it to be helpful if it is defined and described simply, and solely, in terms of such “end-loaded” coverage and analysis; however convenient, indeed highly convenient, such an approach might appear in academic or political terms.

There is, moreover, the tendency to focus on a linear narrative, notably, but not only, of success or failure,⁷ and on a teleology accordingly. The rise and fall of empires has become a narrative that adds epic interest and moral notes to the cyclical patterns beloved by so many writers. This cycle is particularly observed in the treatment of the British Empire and the (“would-be”) treatment of the United States, even if the process can be subliminal (for writer and readers) as much as it can be explicit.

Separate to such narratives, the bitter identity politics of empire and even more “ex-empire” lead to claims and assertions about collective memories, amnesia, and forgetfulness.⁸ These often-angry politics, encourage the deployment of empire, especially the British Empire, as a case study for modern intellectual concerns, notably, but not only, about race and gender; this is a process that is repeated with the United States. In turn, these concerns become the way for many to study and present empire, especially the United States. All interesting (or wearily predictable), and certainly for many, causes for commitment to, or about, the subject, but scarcely a rounded account.

So also with the focus on the impact of globalization as a dominant approach. Globalization is employed as a setting for the discussion of a range of cultural and identity topics, particularly those focused on race and migration. In contrast to a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Competing Histories
• 3 Why Empire?
• 4 British Rule and Foundation Accounts: India and Ireland
• 5 China and the United States
• 6 Australia, Canada, and New Zealand
• 7 Responding to the World that Empire Made
• 8 The Slave Trade and Racism
• 9 The View from Britain
• 10 Conclusions
• Notes
• Index