Bernard Porter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Newcastle. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Hull, Yale, Sydney, Stockholm and Copenhagen. He has published ten books before this one, many of them on imperial themes, including Critics of Empire, The Lionās Share and The Absent-Minded Imperialists. He also contributes regularly to the London Review of Books, the Guardian and other journals.
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āBernard Porter writes in a clear and engaging manner and does not hesitate to take on some of the most difficult and controversial issuesā
Wm. Roger Louis, Kerr Professor of English History and Culture, The University of Texas at Austin
āBernard Porter writes with the authority and verve one has come to expect from an author of a number of books on the history of the British Empire. This one is short, pointed, iconoclastic and highly readable. He makes the point that the āthe British Empire is misunderstood in popular mythologyā, and in clarifying why this is so, he succeeds wonderfully well. Porterās British Imperial is sure-handed and confident and his publication is to be welcomed and celebrated.ā
C. Brad Faught, Professor of History, Tyndale University College
Published in 2016 by
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Copyright Ā© 2016 Bernard Porter
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ISBN: 978 1 78453 445 5
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āIntroduction
The British Empire is so misunderstood. Not by serious students of it, necessarily, but in popular mythology. The idea for this book first came to me when I was once asked by a fellow guest at a party in Sweden, who had learned what I work on ā I usually try to keep it quiet, but she was insistent: āWhy on earth did youā ā she meant Britain, not me personally, I think ā āwant an empire?ā For a good Social Democrat that seemed difficult to understand. Of course it is, put in that way. I canāt remember exactly how I replied to her, except to regurgitate some of the research I had been writing up recently that seemed to show that people generally in Britain didnāt want one, particularly. That, however, didnāt answer the underlying question, which now became: if most of you were indifferent about your empire, why did it come about nonetheless? That deserved a fuller explanation than I was able to offer over sill and aquavit at a generally light-hearted occasion in a suburb of Stockholm. Hence this short book. The idea of it is to pre-empt future questions like my fellow guestās, which arise from a series of basic misconceptions of the subject. Of course Britain didnāt acquire her empire because she āwantedā one. It was more complicated than that.
That may be uncharacteristic of empires generally. This might be one of our problems: that the word āempireā immediately suggests comparisons with other historical empires, which tend to stick. The main ones in Britainās historical memory are the Roman, which she was part of, and the Napoleonic, which she successfully resisted. Both of those were the results of conquest by men ā āemperorsā ā who set out to conquer, deliberately. The word itself also has a strong and positive resonance, deriving as it does from the Latin imperium, which meant power or authority. Together, and encouraged by late-nineteenth-century imperialists who rather liked these analogies (the first one, at any rate; the second was too close for comfort), this puffed up the image of the British Empire into something quite different from the reality. Later the fault was compounded by left- and right-wing analyses of British imperialism which painted it, on the one hand, as an unconscionable evil ā capitalist, racist, even genocidal ā and on the other as the means by which Britain helped āciviliseā, or āmoderniseā, the world. That is generally what the popular British debate about imperialism focuses on today. My take on it is that both sides are mistaken, because they get the whole nature of the phenomenon wrong.
Here is my understanding of most other peopleās understanding of the old British Empire today. (I may be wrong; Iāve not talked to everyone.) It was big ā a quarter of the earthās land surface and a fifth of its population: or was it the other way around? ā and powerful. It was what made Britain a āGreat Powerā. It went back in time to the Elizabethans ā so it was pretty durable. It was accumulated by āimperialistsā, as a matter of policy. It was cheered on by the people. It either reflected, or else permeated, British culture and society. It sought to impose British ways on everyone it ruled; all who could benefit from them, that is, because it also tended to be racist, and so to exclude āinferior racesā, who were to be eradicated, or enslaved, or ā the best hope for them ā looked after for aeons like children. It was exploitative, often brutally so. In the end, however, it was dissolved voluntarily, calmly and mainly peacefully. Finally, it had a great and lasting impact on the world, either for good or for ill. As a consequence it should be a matter either of pride for us Britons today, or of shame. Is that fair? If not I may be setting up straw dolls. But it still may be worth examining the reality of British imperialism against them, using them as benchmarks or touchstones, for emphasis and clarity. They are not all entirely wrong, incidentally. That is not usually the way with historical analyses. It is why historians are so often and so infuriatingly equivocal when they are asked to adjudicate on areas of their expertise: āWell, yes, in a way, butā¦ā A number of my ideas will be along those lines; the point being, of course, that the ābutā is crucially important. And then, of course, there is the possibility that I might be wrong. (A number of scholars think I am on the subject of āpopular imperialismā.) That must always be borne in mind.
What I aim to do in this book is to examine the phenomenon of British imperialism critically, by, firstly, contextualising it, against the background of contemporary British society, the situation of the world, and rival or complementary historical forces; and secondly, deconstructing it, in the sense of breaking it down into its constituent components. All this needs to be done in order to counter the common trend today to lump so many disparate things together under the name of imperialism, and then to account for them simply in terms of that word, as though the notion of āimperialismā contained a sufficient explanation on its own without any further examination being necessary. (āOh, thatās American imperialism.ā Full stop.) Some years ago I suggested at a conference that we imperial historians agree to a moratorium on the āeā, āiā and ācā words ā āempireā, āimperialā, ācolonialā, and so on ā for, say five years, forcing us to see if we couldnāt understand our subject more, or at least differently, without them. No one, so far as I can tell, took any notice of this, and in any case the five years is now up, so I wonāt be following my own advice in this book; but I shall endeavour to delve behind the āeā, āiā and ācā words whenever I can. A disadvantage of this approach may be that it complicates things ā itās much easier if we put them all in one āimperialā basket ā but isnāt that, after all, one of the purposes of serious history? And complex doesnāt necessarily mean difficult. Iāve aimed for a clear exposition and approachable style in what follows ā it wasnāt difficult; itās how I usually write before po-faced editors come in to ācorrectā me ā with even a few jokes. Iām sure Iāll get some stick for the latter. One of my previous books was once banned by a southern American state school board for one; it made light fun of Christianity. But Iām too old and unambitious now to care.
Because itās mainly an āideasā book, and pretty short, there wonāt be much narrative in it ā just a bit, to give the bare outlines of the story, and for flavour. This is partly to make the ideas stand out more clearly; and partly because I have already written my narrative account, in The Lionās Share, now in its fifth edition, to which readers are of course directed if thatās what they want. They might also take a look at my Empire Ways, a collection of essays to be published at roughly the same time as this, which is even more flavoursome. Or, if they prefer something more up-to-date and (I think) better, to a couple of quite recent books by others, which are the first to be cited in the Bibliography.
The other caveat, or warning, I should issue at the start ā a more important one ā is that this is a very one-sided view of British imperialism. By that I donāt mean that it is judgementally biased ā I think that readers will find it is far from that ā but that it deals with the subject from a metropolitan British point of view, rather than that of Britainās colonial subjects. It is, in other words, an account of British imperialism ā its sources, motives, methods, and so on ā rather than of the British Empire as such. The latter would have required far more detail and analysis of how colonial peoples were affected by imperialism, how they lived under the British flag in the Gold Coast or Bengal or New Zealand, for example, or without the British flag in places that were merely informally dominated by Britain, which ā although I have read plenty of the secondary literature about this, and have kept that in mind in what follows ā I have never researched to the extent that would make me feel confident about generalising in this area. A colonial view of the Empire at any time was bound to diverge from a metropolitan one, while being, of course, just as valid. The same is true of its history. But these are complementary perspectives, not alternatives. They can inform each other. If you are at the barrel end of a gun, it is useful to know what is happening at the butt.
Lastly, readers may be puzzled by the references to Sweden here. Sweden was not one of the leading European imperial powers in the period covered by this book, which may make this seem anomalous. My excuses are that I live there much of the time, and was started off on this enterprise there, as I explained at the beginning of this Introduction; but also that it never does any harm to look at even narrow national histories from a wider perspective. āWhat should they know of England who only England know?ā asked Kipling once. He meant something entirely different ā he was complaining about...