In Our Time - The British Empire

Episode Date: November 8, 2001

Melvyn Bragg examines the British Empire. It was officially created on 1st January 1877 when Disraeli had Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India, and it formally dissolved into the ‘Commonwealth’ in 1958. But imperial passions stirred in Britain long before Victoria’s investiture and the ethos of Imperialism lives on.At its height in 1919 the British Empire stretched from East to West, incorporating one quarter of the globe and included such diverse colonies as Canada, Australia, parts of South America, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and China, New Zealand, much of Africa and of course India. By 1960 it had all but vanished off the face of the earth. What drove Britain to build such an immense Empire, why did it all disappear so quickly and what kind of legacy was left behind? With Maria Misra, Lecturer in Modern History and Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, Peter Cain, Research Professor in History at Sheffield Hallam University and Catherine Hall, Professor of Modern Social and Cultural History at University College London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, the British Empire was officially sealed on the 1st of January 1877 when Israeli had Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India and it formally dissolved into the Commonwealth in 1958.

But imperial passions stirred in Britain long before Victoria, his investiture and the ethos of imperialism lives on. At its height in 1919, the British Empire stretched from east to west, incorporating one quarter of the globe and included such diverse colonies as Canada, Australia, parts of South America, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and China, New Zealand, much of Africa, and of course India. By 1960, it had all but vanished off the face of the earth. What drove Britain to build such an immense empire? Why did it all disappear so quickly, and what kind of legacy was left behind. With me to discuss British imperialism

is Maria Misra, lecture in modern history and fellow of Keeble College, Oxford. Peter Kane, research professor in history at Sheffield Hallam University, and Catherine Hall, Professor of Modern Social and Cultural History at University College London. Catherine Hall, the high water mark for British imperialism

is the early part of the 20th century. But the East India Company is registered as early as 1600. Is that when the British Imperial story began? Was there one thing that kicked off, as it were, British imperialism? No, I don't think so. I think there were a number of different ventures

across different sides of what were to become the empire, and those ventures were a very different kinds. So the Easternia Company started basically as a trading interest, whereas those colonizers who went to North America were interested in building a new. kind of society for themselves. There was religious inspiration for their ventures. Or we could take the

Caribbean, where buccaneers and pirates, Cromwell's troops were the first settlers in the Caribbean. So we're looking at very different pictures across the empire. So I would be reluctant to give a starting point.

Well, I'm not as reluctant as you. So what about the defeat of the Spanish Amada? Do you think that was a major factor in starting off the British Imperial Adventure? in that the Spanish and Portuguese had been, as it were, at it quite intensively before then, because of their sea power. We now had an ascendancy of sea power, and that enabled us to become much more of an imperial power. Is that a proposition? I'm sure that was a significant shift, yes.

I think one of the things I always think of is that what the British were interested in was trying to find another El Dorado somewhere. That was certainly one big element. They were very determined that, you know, they were going to try and emulate the Spanish, because that seemed to be, you know, the key to prosperity at the time was to find precious metals and so forth. And I think that certainly has a very big impact in the late 16th century. But did the British, in the early days, in the 16th centuries, did they, the way that they went for empire,

did differ from the Spanish and Portuguese in any significant ways, do you think? No, no, I don't think it did. I mean, I think that Peter's absolutely right. I mean, I think that what one finds an empire is a, competitiveness and that what's unique about Europe is a very competitive state system and not what you find in Britain in the late 15th and early 16th century is the desire to emulate the Spanish and I suppose someone like Drake you could see as someone who's actually trying to copy Corteth in a way but if there's any difference I suppose yes there is I think that

the British begin with this very strong idea of themselves coming from ideas with a sort of mixed pedigree that they are going to create some kind of empire of freedom, as opposed to the Spanish, who have been involved in an empire of conquest, conquest and pillage, they're going to be a free trading empire. I think that's something you find in the rhetoric of imperialism, even if not in the reality, in Britain, from very early on. But there are similarities, and in the sense, when the Spanish go, they also take their religion with them in a very proselytizing way. And as Catherine said, when the Brits go or the English go to America, first of all, they take a religion, which, you know.

which they, in effect, not only want to have the freedom to express themselves in, want to impose as well. There's the religious... No, I don't think that they do, actually. I think that that is quite an important difference. I think that people now think that Protestantism doesn't generate any specific kind of imperialism, and that actually this sort of decentralisation of Protestantism and Protestant sects

means that you don't have that kind of missionary fervour that you get really from very early on with the involvement of the very centralised Catholic Church. I think Britain is different in that. When we talk about India, we talk about it as the jewel in the crown in Victoria's reign and so forth. But what was its status early on in the 17th and 18th century? A land of spice and wealth and luxury goods, a mysterious place governed by the great mogul

who was thought of as some kind of horrendous despot that one shouldn't tangle with. And the East India Company, along with the Portuguese and the Dutch and the French, had little toeholds. around the coastline. And so India was very much not seen as something that they were about to conquer. It was seen as a place that you traded with because it was very wealthy. Is there a sense in which the attitude of the first Governor General Warren Hastings typified the attitudes of the British of the Indians then?

It was an attitude of much more of equality, as I understand it, into marriage, the acceptance of a civilisation, if we can use that word in this instance on both sides, which was at least the equal and so on and so forth. Would that be the case then? I think that, being a boring historian, you can't generalise about attitudes. But Warren Hastings is interesting because he does represent a particular strand in British intellectual responses to the East, which is quite positive in the way that you describe. I think I probably would be prepared to say that in the mid to late 18th century,

there was a more relaxed attitude to race and racial difference than later developed in India, yes. But the East India Company played a unique role in the history of imperial. didn't it? I mean, how did its responsibilities develop in the 18th century? By accident. I think that what you see in India is a pattern that you see in a lot of the European empires, which is the dreaded man on the spot problem, you know, the ambitious soldier, the ambitious company man, the ambitious trader, who becomes involved in politics, partly because in India politics and trade were very, very involved already among Indians. and Clive, I suppose, partly through competitiveness with the French

and partly because of his scheming with the Indians, kind of lands the British with an empire in India, I would say, yeah. Was there a sense in these early days for all of you really, that there was a sense of cultural superiority? We seem to think that there was, maybe I'm wrong here, but you'll correct me, I'm certain, that there was in the French and Spanish versions of early imperial history. Was that there in the British version early on, you think, Catherine Hall?

Well, I certainly think it was in the Caribbean. If it's a question of the comparison between English, Scots and Africans, then there's absolutely no question that notions of cultural superiority come into it. But I think it is very important to look at the variations in thinking across the empire and that there is never one simple notion of race across the empire. It's very complicated and that attitudes to Indians are different from attitudes to Africans, for example. But then there is the idea of the noble savage

sort of knocking around. Well, the noble savage isn't knocking around in the Caribbean. Well, I think there is an idea of the noble savage in South America, certainly, isn't there, those sort of early French Huguenot settlements, generated ideas of, actually Jane Trey's a quite positive response to the people they found there. But if we're talking about the system of the slave trade and slavery, as it developed in the Caribbean in the 17th century,

we are not talking. I don't think about noble savages. We're talking about people who are defined as commodities, and that requires a very different way of thinking. No, I'm not denying that, and I'm sure that in the case of the West Indies, you're absolutely right, but I suppose the point I'm trying to make

is that there's quite a strong strand of response to cultures, even cultures without literacy, which I suppose is the big distinction that's made between India and these other places, which doesn't necessarily see them as inferior cultures. I mean, there is this idea, you know, going from more to utopia through Montaigne and onwards, of these people as being pure and of primitivism as being a positive quality. I think Africans tend to be viewed more as Catherine suggests,

and I think what you think about there more is people like American Indians, isn't it, and cultures of that kind, where that noble savage idea does appear to have a greater grip. And there does seem to be that distinction, isn't there, from very early days, between kind of India and China, for instance, as perceived from the West, because these are recognised to be very complex and, you know, interesting cultures with tremendous artistic tradition. And therefore you may, and the difference, especially in the 17th and 18th century,

the difference in technology, say, between us and them, is still pretty narrow, isn't it? So do we find a shift in our notion of empire towards the end of the 18th century, when, as it were, we lose out in the Americas and turn towards Africa and more intensively towards India? What's the shift there? Well, I suppose the first shift is to do with the sense of failure at the loss of the American Empire

and the anxieties that produces and the retreat from expansion and thinking, you know, perhaps empire isn't such a good idea after all. But that runs alongside, of course, at the very same moment, the development of the modern missionary movement. And the missionary movement becomes a key site of new kinds of colonial venture. Was there a sense, Catherine Hall, in which the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica in 1865 was a defining moment in views of empire? Could you just tell people what that was first and then comment on it? Yes.

There was a rebellion in Jamaica, in Morant Bay in 1865, which was a rebellion by black men and women against the power of the plantocracy. And this was in the wake of emancipation, which had taken place 1834, 1830, 1835, and had not brought the kinds of freedoms to black people that had been longed for and expected. So the continuing power of the Plentocracy, their control over their economic control, their political control, their judicial control, which was actually at the heart of the rebellion in 65, was what was at issue. But the impact of the rebellion was greatly increased because of it happening in the wake of the so-called Indian mutiny. of 1857 and consequently the fears across the empire and in the minds of colonial officials

and white settlers that something similar was going to happen somewhere else that there was going to be a major outbreak of black people against white people. So Morant Bay was interpreted immediately by white people in Jamaica as a racial war which would lead to their extermination for their massacre and so on. And that meant that it was repressed very brutally by the then governor of Jamaica, Edward Eyre. And the news started coming back to England as to what had happened. And it began to be debated between liberals and more conservative figures in England as to what the meanings of this rebellion was.

And to what extent Air's repression had been legitimate. And it was a major divisive issue in Britain. It was a major political issue for two years, which was widely debated. So rather differently from the reaction to India in 57 where the vast majority of the British public there were always always voices saying, no, it wasn't all right, but the vast majority of the British public

agreed with the forms of repression which followed the rebellion in India. But opinion was much more divided in relation to Jamaica, in 65, 66. Can we link that with the Indian mutiny, Maria and see if the two together made the British think differently and how they did differently. Well, I don't know how similar they are.

I mean, I'm not sure it can be just boiled down to race. I mean, there obviously is a race issue there, and I think there obviously is a sort of hardening of racial attitudes to Indians after the mutiny. But I think the analysis of the mutiny and why it happened had more to it than that. I mean, I think what people were interested in was what the way the British had been conducting themselves in India before the mutiny in terms of, I suppose you might say, their cultural policy, their economic policies, which one might broadly say had been, you know, done in the spirit of supposed improvement, of liberal improvement. And I think that one of the lessons that came from the mutiny was that it was inappropriate to try and transfer Western-style institutions and Western conceptions of law and also Western religion, Christian religion, to a society which had its own culture and law and religion.

And I don't think that's entirely about race. I think that's a slightly different issue which begins to develop about whether these other civilisations are fundamentally different, not racially different, but culturally different. And that therefore the role of the empire is not to try and make them into Western societies,

but to actually keep them as they are. I think what happens in India after the mutiny is there's a retreat from the ambitious ideas of progress that you see in the early 19th century. And what replaces it is a much more conservative desire simply to preserve stability. And preserving stability means preserving the old order because that's what Indians know.

And it leads to a paradox, isn't it? Because on the one hand, you've got this constant wave of economic innovation taking place. And at the same, which is disrupting all the traditional society at the same time trying to maintain the political and social structure. And it has tremendous knock-on effects into Africa as well because indirect rule and all that is really a sort of outcome of all that thinking that's been done in India. But just to bring,

we've talked about Jamaica and India, but to bring Africa into the equation now, what pushes the British expansion into Africa? Catherine mentioned the sort of missionary view we're taking. Yeah, well that is certainly an element. I tend to think of the partition as being

something which in a sense is forced upon the British by the increasing competition of Europe. I mean, it's very much a part of the globalisation that it's taking place at that time. It's fundamentally an economic globalisation. mobilisation process. It's also reflection of the extreme competitiveness of the European state system.

Absolutely, which is all part and part of that. Which is rather unique to Europe. Yeah. Because we're not all along. I mean, one unspoken conflict that's been going on while we're talking has been the competition in the English and the French all the time for territory, for influence. While they're fighting each other in Europe, they're also fighting each other around the world. And then in the late 19th century, there are a whole load of new nations who become involved

and for whom empire is almost a sort of, you know, a sign of nationhood, isn't it? the French are definitely regarded by the British as the biggest problem in Africa. And certainly in West Africa, I mean, you can see the way in which the map develops as being a kind of permanent conflict between the British over who controls what. And in fact, the British, as it turns out, actually, because of their prior knowledge to a large extent, and the fact that they have deeper economic routes there already, actually do tend to acquire those parts. They know which bits to grow up. Which are actually viable.

We get the West Coast, they get the Saharan desert. And they get, and then hoping that they'll stub their telegraph. on diamonds or something when they get there, but it doesn't turn out that way, I'm afraid. But at this time, in the late 19th century, there's a feeling around that there's this massive empire, and the British are very special for having this massive empire and so on.

It's an interesting remark from Gladstone, who says that the British were not superior in terms of their mental capacity or their artistic accomplishments, but they had the energy to enable change and progress. How would you unravel that, Peter Cohn? Well, I remember this statement that Gladstone made about India. I think this is a clear.

classic British liberal sort of perspective, which is they're not racist in the sense that they think that people are permanently inferior. What they tend to do when they're thinking about Indians and Chinese is that this is a wonderful civilisation. These people are mentally equipped as well as we are. They're artistically superb. But they've stopped. They literally have stopped. They're not going anywhere. They haven't had an industrial revolution. Yeah. Well, and they also haven't got the enlightenment, if you like, in general terms. I think it's more about political institutions. I I think the energy comes from the uniqueness of European institutions. But I think that's a form of racial thinking.

I think that gets interpreted as a form of racial thinking. And that notion that other peoples are stuck in the past and need British energy and initiative and adventurous spirit and all of that to help them forward. I mean, that is a way of defining superiority. I think some people racialised it. I think some people racialised it. But I think that there's a continuing liberal strand in the thought,

which doesn't entirely racialise it, but which attributes it to institutional problems. And, of course, the key idea here is the idea of the Oriental Despot and the ideas of property hadn't developed in the East, and this is why these societies weren't dynamic. You know, they hadn't developed merchant companies, they hadn't developed banking. And I actually don't think everybody thought that was racial.

But why, I mean, the language of Oriental Despotism is hardly a language without racial inflection. I think that the institutional analysis, it's never, of course it's never only racial, It's the ways in which race, culture, politics intersect and the ways in which the British think that their institutions, their forms of civil society, their political life, etc. They're just, they are more civilised, they're more advanced.

Yeah, but that's a cultural argument. A racial argument is one that says that, I mean, what I mean by race, perhaps it's not what you mean by race, is the set of ideas that develops in the later 19th century, which tries to tie, people's characteristics to their biological natures. Which begins to have a big influence across thinkers in the late 19th century, doesn't it? Yes.

Well, I would argue that racial thinking is both connected to notions of biological difference and connected to notions of cultural superiority. So I think racial thinking is about culture quite as much as it's about biology. So we obviously do disagree in our definition of racial thinking. But I think there is a spectrum, isn't there, whereby, you know, if you take someone like Gladstone, and he does seriously believe that the Indians, you know, have got the capacity, at any rate, to improve out of all recognition. A lot of European, a lot of English people thought that Indians were cleverer than they.

Yes, absolutely. They thought that the Indians had great mental capacities, and that was actually what stimulated quite a lot of the dislike. But nevertheless, they should rule them. Nevertheless, the British should rule them. Because they have their institutions. Can I put in a point for which I maybe screamed down as politically incorrect, but the fact is that the British did rule India,

the fact is that the British did. They did it with Indians. They did. All right, fine. Any qualification? I know I'm saying something about that the three of you were spitting. But it's actually something that has, we can't just pussyfoot around and run away from these things.

There was an industrial revolution. There was a political revolution. There was a democratic movement in European countries. And a great deal that happened in our country, the country in which we are living now, if I'm sitting now, which did not happen in other countries. Now, therefore, are we to despise what Gladson says and reinterpret it now in terms of our present thinking,

are we to say that at the time what he was saying, you look around and there were certain, one dare say, certain truths in it? Well, there are some historians who would say the problem with the British, as far as India, in places like that was concerned, is they didn't go far enough. You know, they didn't actually try to really bring democracy and industry and liberty to these peoples. you know, that they would have been better if they had pushed it a lot harder. And in fact, it's that ambivalence in the British attitude, which is regarded by many historians as being the biggest weakness of impure. But I think what Melvin is getting at is that somehow these societies don't have the capacity to innovate themselves.

I'm not getting out of time. No, you are. You are. Just a second. I know what I'm getting at. You've had a lot of say, and that's fine, and it's good, you know. Don't tell me what I'm getting at. I know. I'm not saying you're racist. I'm not saying something. I'm not saying you're racist. I'm trying to say something which is quite difficult to say in this country today,

which is that there was a time when this was felt by very intelligent, well-meaning people. Gladson did a lot of extremely good things, extremely fine things. He was also terrible hypocrites. Well, lots of people are terrible hypocrites. You know, he did, at his time, in his moment, he did some very fine things. I don't think it's without, and I'm not saying that he said, or I would say, that the Indians weren't capable. We know it Indians did in mathematics and so and so forth,

At that time, there was a sense of technological advance. There was a sense you yourself said earlier that in the European debating cockpit, and now you're nodding, but people can't see you nodding. What they can hear you is just taking this political exception. You know, come on. Was there something going on that you could say, look, well, this was a more powerful force. Let's drop the word civilisation. Yes, it was.

And it had advantages, which the advantages have turned out to run through to the modern, and world. In fact, they've created the modern world. I think you're right that we have to understand why those things happened. But that doesn't mean that we also have to say Gladstone was a very good thing in every respect. We need a critic... No, no, I didn't say you did say that. But we, I mean, we can have a critical relation to that thinking whilst at the same time trying to understand exactly what people are saying and what people did believe and giving them, taking them seriously. I mean, that seems to me tremendously important that we shouldn't be patronising about the past.

We should try and grasp it. They're people just like we're people. They're trying to deal with a very complicated world, just as we are. Think of this, Marie. I mean, Empire does depend on the end on collaboration. This is the famous Robinson Insights, isn't it? Now, what collaboration means is that people feel that they are gaining something very serious from this encounter.

Well, some people are gaining. Yes, of course they are. And an awful lot of people are losing. But the problem we've got is that we're into counterfactuals here because we don't know what would have happened if these places hadn't been colonised, but we do have a few examples of places that weren't, and Japan, I suppose, is the best one. But there is work on late 18th century India,

even in West Africa, on the Ashanti in West Africa, which suggests that these societies were dynamic, that they were beginning to develop the kind of institutions which might have produced nation states, as Japan did, which would have competed with European nation states. But even Japan was colonised to some extent, in the sense that, you know, they were forced into a free trade system in the 19th century.

Yeah, but my God, when they responded, they responded. Yes, they responded because of the stimulus to a large income from outside. I mean, that is a very arguable point. Yeah, but Europe responded to the stimulus of Arab texts and Renaissance texts, didn't it? I mean, that's how much is advanced. They respond to one another. That fits in with a point that has been made, that, you know, there is something good here, which is being done.

Well, yes, except that was it good. I mean, I suppose the real question is worthy, I mean, I'm sure that they thought that they were doing good. I'm sure the economic and institutional changes that were introduced were thought to be good. But were they appropriate in the long run, if we look at the way Africa and the nation and Latin American societies have developed, can we actually say, hand on heart, that actually they have been improved for the good? Well, let's just take the last few minutes to talk about that. What good came out of it? As we sit here, some people would say, for instance, look, we've got the greatest democracy in the world, which is India. And some people would say, and a lot of that is to do.

with the British influence in India. Now that's a starting point. From you three historians on the empire, what good would you say came out of the empire? Well, I'd say that one of the things, I don't know whether I'd wanted to put it quite in those terms, but the kind of mixing of cultures that was involved in the expansion of empire, I think,

has an enormous amount to be said for it. And so those early patterns of what we now think of as globalization, the development of just movement, mixing, interconnection, the dynamic relations between cultures, that's been, I think, very important. But I would want to put next to that, absolutely right next to it, that at the heart of that relation across empire was the relation between coloniser and colonised, and that's a relation of power. And even though there are collaboration between some bits of, you know, those who are colonised and those who are colonizers, there are many instances in which that's not the case.

just as I'd want to say in relation to the contemporary world system that globalisation has lots of good aspects to it but it also has a relation of power at the heart of it which divides north from south in ways that are deeply disturbing Can I ask the same question you Pete again and bring in this collaborative thing is that anything positive? Yes I think so I think for instance if you look at the way in which sort of many post-colonial you know in the decolonisation phase

for instance after 1945 when you look at the leadership of lots of of African countries and India itself and the rest of it, they are attempting to adopt a kind of very secular approach to things like economic development and the role of the state and also, at least in some parts, at least some idea of having some kind of democratic institutions and so forth. Some of these have failed in Africa for all kinds of complex reasons. But also the other thing I would like to mention,

I think it's how much we've learned from actually that episode in a sense that I think if you'd like, a lot of the relativism of modern life has actually come from the encounter with the other out there. That it's impossible to conceive of the kind of questioning of the Enlightenment, I think, in the kind of Western Europe at the present moment of it wasn't for the fact that we'd

had to encounter all this huge variety of difference out there. And in a sense, it's undermined our confidence, but it's also at the same time created a very fertile sort of new kind of thinking. Finally, Maria, what do you think goods come out of it? You're winding up this. I think that, yes, the transference of ideas

is obviously good, though whether that needs empire in order to accomplish it. know. Yes, these places have now acquired states and clearly they need states and you could say that that's a good thing. On the other hand, you could also say that do they have the right kind of states? That what's happened is that Europe has projected onto the rest of the world its idea of undiluted state sovereignty and it's not clear that that is a good way for these highly ethnically diverse societies to run themselves. And I think anybody looking at Asia and Africa and Latin America now can see that there are great crises in the policies of those places,

not all caused by colonialism, but some of it, certainly. I think in the African case, I think the great problem with the state was that it was, if you think of the state as the imagined community, it's much easy to think of it in the Indian case where you have that history of empire and of India, whereas in Africa, you don't, in the prehistory of imperialism, have that kind of notion because it's much more fragmented and therefore it's much more difficult to bring a kind of state together. and the state in that sense is imposed by Europeans in a very fundamental way, and I do agree with you in that sense.

But I think in India, I think it is rather different. Well, thank you very much to Maria Misra, Catherine Hall and Peter Cain. And thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.com.