British Empire:Part 1

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The British Empire, which in the early decades of the 20th century covered nearly 30 million square kilometers with a population of 400-500 million people (roughly a quarter of the world's population), was the most extensive area under a single country's rule in history. The Empire had come about through a succession of phases of expansion by trade, settlement or conquest, interspersed with intervals of pacific commercial and diplomatic activity or contraction over 400 years. The territories under British influence were scattered across every continent and every ocean; it was said with some truth that "the sun never sets on the British Empire".

File:Britemp.jpg
Territories that have been under the control of the British Empire.

The Industrial Revolution greatly strengthened Britain’s ability to oppose Napoleonic France. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the United Kingdom was the most successful European Power, and its navy ruled the seas. Peace in Europe allowed the British to focus their interests on more remote parts of the world, and British colonial expansion accelerated during the latter part of the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). Victoria's reign witnessed the spread of British technology, commerce, language, and government throughout the British Empire. British colonies contributed to the United Kingdom's extraordinary economic growth and strengthened its voice in world affairs. Even as the United Kingdom extended its imperial reach overseas, it continued to develop and broaden its democratic institutions at home.

Contents

Background: English Colonialism

England initially supported William the Conqueror's (c.1029-1087) holdings in France. England's policy of active involvement in continental European affairs endured for several hundred years. By the end of the 14th century, foreign trade, originally based on wool exports to Europe, had emerged as a cornerstone of national policy.

The foundations of sea power were gradually laid to protect English trade and open up new routes. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 firmly established England as a major Sea Power. Thereafter, its interests outside Europe grew steadily. Attracted by the lucrative spice trade, European mercantile interests had spread first to the Far East. In search of an alternative route to the Spice Islands, John Cabot reached the North American continent in 1498. Sir Walter Raleigh organized the first, short-lived colony in Virginia in 1587, permanent English settlement following in 1607 at Jamestown. During the next two centuries, England, and, after 1707, Great Britain extended its influence abroad and consolidated its political development at home.

Colonization of the Americas

British colonial expansion overseas began in the age of mercantilism, an economic theory stressing competition between nations for a finite amount of wealth. The British Empire first took shape from the early 17th century, with the English settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, which would later become the original United States as well as Canada's Maritime provinces, and the colonisation of the smaller islands of the Caribbean such as Jamaica and Barbados.

These sugar plantation islands, where slavery became the basis of the economy, were at first England's most important and successful colonies. The American colonies providing tobacco, cotton, and rice in the south and naval materiel and furs in the north were less financially successful, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English immigrants.

England's American empire was slowly expanded by war and colonization. The growing American colonies pressed ever westward in search of new agricultural lands. Conflict arose with the Dutch over trade and empire, England gaining control of New Amsterdam (later New York in the Anglo-Dutch Wars. During the Seven Years War the British defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham and captured all of New France in 1760, giving Britain control over almost all of North America.

Later, settlement of Australia (starting with penal colonies from 1788) and New Zealand (under the crown from 1840) created a major zone of British migration. The colonies were quickly granted substantial self-government and became profitable exporters of wool and gold.

The British Empire in Asia

The victory of forces of the British East India Company at Plassey (1757) opened the great Indian province of Bengal to British rule, though later famine (1770) exacerbated by massive expropriation of provincial government revenues aroused controversy at home. The nineteenth century saw Company rule extended across nearly the whole of India. Following the Indian Mutiny of 1857 the Company's territories were placed (1858) under the administration of the Crown, and Queen Victoria (1837-1901) was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876.

Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma were added to Britain's Asian territories, which extended further east to Malaya and, from 1841, to Hong Kong following a successful war in defence of the Company's opium exports to China.

British interest in China began in the late 18th century as the UK became a large importer of tea. This trade created a balance of payments problem to which the British responded by exporting opium to China. Conflict over this trade resulted in the Opium Wars in which Britain decisively defeated China.

After the Opium Wars, British relations with China became complex. Although Britain annexed Hong Kong, most of its trade with China was regulated by treaties which allowed trade through a number of coastal ports. As a result, Britain was interested in maintaining an independent Chinese state since the collapse of China would cancel the treaties and open opportunities for territorial gains by other Western Powers. At the same time, Britain was opposed to a Chinese state that was too strong, because this would allow China to cancel or renegotiate its treaties. These interests were responsible for the two-sided nature of British policy in China. Britain provided the Qing dynasty with aid during the Taiping rebellion, but at the same time engaged in punitive expeditions against the Qing court.

In Tibet, expanding British influence in India resulted in the rulers of Tibet responding by claiming to be subordinate to and under the protection of China.

Free Trade and the Breakdown of Mercantilism

The old British colonial system began to decline in the eighteenth century. The empire became less important and less well regarded, until an ill-fated attempt to reverse the resulting "salutary neglect" provoked the American War of Independence (1775-1783), depriving Britain of its most populous colonies. This loss of the American colonies was coupled with a realization that colonies were not particularly economically beneficial. The predominance of Adam Smith and laissez-faire capitalism encouraged the British to grant their colonies self-government. This is sometimes referred to as the end of the "first British Empire", indicating the shift of British influence from the Americas between the 16th and 18th Centuries to the "second British Empire" of India and later also Africa from the 18th century.

The fight against Mercantilism and the old colonial system was led by a number of liberal thinkers, such as Richard Cobden, Joseph Hume, Francis Place and John Roebuck. The men and their disciples considered formal imperialism wasteful. It was realized that the costs of occupation of colonies often exceeded the financial return to the taxpayer. In other words, formal empire afforded no great economic benefit when trade would continue whether the overseas political entities were nominally sovereign or not. The American Revolution helped demonstrate this by showing that Britain could still dominate trade with the ex-colonies without having to pay for their defence and administration.

The end of the old colonial system was accompanied by the adoption of free trade, culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws and Navigation Acts in the 1840s. Free trade opened the British market to unfettered competition, stimulating similar action by other countries. During this period, Britain also outlawed the slave trade in the early 19th century and soon began enforcing this principle on other nations. By the mid-19th century Britain had largely eradicated the world slave trade. Slavery itself was abolished in the Britisg colonies in 1834, though the phenomenon of indentured labour retained much of its oppressive character.

Some argue that the rise of free trade merely reflected Britain's economic position and was unconnected with any true philosophical conviction. The period between the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 saw Britain as the world's sole industrialized power. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Britain was the "workshop of the world", meaning that its finished goods were produced so efficiently and cheaply that they could undersell comparable, locally manufactured goods in other markets. If political conditions in a particular overseas markets were stable enough, Britain could benefit its economy through free trade alone without having to resort to formal rule or mercantilism. Britain was even supplying a large share of the manufactured goods consumed by such nations as Germany, France, Belgium, and the United States.

Home Rule in White-Settler Colonies

But Britain's empire had already begun its transformation into the modern Commonwealth, as the white colonies of Newfoundland (1855), Canada (1867), Australia (1901), New Zealand (1907), and the newly-created Union of South Africa (1910) became self-governing Dominions. Nevertheless, they lacked independence with regard to foreign policy and defence, and Britain's declaration of war in World War I applied to all its dominions.

Imperialism and Monopoly Capitalism

Long-term economic trends led Britain to be more receptive to the desires of those with overseas investments, often backed by British intervention abroad. To a lesser extent other industrializing nations, such as the United States and Germany, followed a similar course of development.

During the First Industrial Revolution, the industrialist replaced the merchant as the dominant figure in the capitalist system. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the ultimate control and direction of large areas of industry came into the hands of financiers, industrial capitalism gave way to financial capitalism. The establishment of mammoth industrial empires and the ownership and management of their assets by men divorced from production were the dominant features of this third phase.

Amalgamation of industry, in the forms of larger corporations and mergers and alliances of separate firms, and technological advancement during the Second Industrial Revolution, particularly the increased utilization of electric power and internal combustion engines fueled by coal and petroleum, were mixed blessings for British business during the late Victorian era. The prior development of more intricate and efficient machines along with monopolistic mass-production greatly expanded output and lowered production costs. As a result, production often exceeded domestic demand.

Britain’s industrial sector arguably experienced relative decline due to the rise of finance. Amalgamation of industry and banks, enabled financiers to exert a great deal of control over the British economy and politics. During the period of cut-throat competition of the mid-Victorian era, producers became aware of the advantages of consolidation, in the forms of larger corporations, but also of mergers and alliances of separate firms, such as mass-production, lobbying power, and efficient union busting. To create and operate such industrial cartels required larger sums than the manufacturer could ordinarily provide, resulting in a new capitalist stage of development.

By the 1870s, London financial houses thus achieved an unprecedented control of industry, contributing to increasing concerns among elite policymakers regarding British protection of overseas investments, particularly in the securities of foreign governments and in foreign-government-backed development activities such as railroads. Although it had been official British policy for years to support such investments, with the large expansion of these investments after about 1860 and with the economic and political instability of many areas of high investment (such as Egypt), calls upon the government for methodical protection became increasingly pronounced.

The "cleaner" financial sector probably had an effect on the decisions taken by Britain's disproportionately aristocratic bureaucrats and parliamentarians. Late-Victorian political leaders, most of whom were stockholders, shared a common culture with the financial class. This prompted imperial critic J. A. Hobson to conclude that the finance sector was manipulating events to its own profit. Modern historians, such as Bernard Porter, P.J. Cain and A.G Hopkins do not downplay the influence of the financial interests of "the City" either, but contest Hobson's conspiratorial overtones and "reductionisms". Nevertheless, they often acted as repositories of the surplus capital accumulated by a monopolistic system and they were therefore the prime movers in the drive for imperial expansion, their problem being to find fields for the investment of capital.

Foreign Investment

International trade tripled in volume between 1870 and 1914, although (again) most of the activity occurred among the industrialized countries, or between them and their suppliers of primary goods or their new markets. In 1913, only 11 percent of the world's trade took place between primary producers themselves. Britain ranked as the world's largest trading nation in 1860, but by 1913 it had lost ground to both the United States and Germany: British and German exports in that year each totaled $2.3 billion, and those of the United States exceeded $2.4 billion. More significant was the emigration of their goods and capital.

As foreign trade increased, so in proportion did the amount of it going outside the Continent. In 1840, 7.7 million pounds of Britain’s export and 9.2 million pounds of her import trade was done outside Europe; in 1880 the figures were 38.4 million and 73 million. Investment followed, as business sought to improve overseas raw material supply, improve transport infrastructure and develop markets for metropolitan produce. In those non-industrial regions that lacked both the knowledge and the power to direct the capital flow, this investment served to colonize rather than to develop them, destroying native industries and creating in time the so-called "North-South divide".

But less developed nations with little surplus capital, such as Italy, participated in colonial expansion as well. So did the great Powers of the next century, namely the United States and Russia, which were both in fact, net borrowers of foreign capital. There are also many instances in which foreign rulers needed and requested Western capital, such as the hapless modernizer Khedive Ismail Pasha.

Continued at British Empire:Part 2

References

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