Darwin J. The Empire Project. The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970

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465 / Holding the centre, 1927–1937

with alacrity. This was the idea of an ‘All-India’ federation of the Indian

states (whose Princes acknowledged Britain’s ‘paramount’ power) as

well as the ‘British Indian’ provinces.

164

The seductive charm of this

scheme was its promise of a large conservative bloc of Princes and

Muslims (who would keep separate representation) in a new federal

government, antipathetic to Congress and anxious to keep the ‘British

connection’ as their political guardian for (at least) a long time to

come. In the federal assembly that the British envisaged – and to which

the Viceroy’s government would gradually become more and more

answerable as dominionhood arrived by instalments – one-third of the

seats would be ﬁlled by Muslims and one-third by the delegates sent by

the Princes. Even if Congress won all of the open seats that remained,

the most vociferous opponents of the British connection could never

command a majority.

But, leaving nothing to chance (and under the baleful eye of

the Die Hards), London piled up further defences against any unto-

ward weakening of the imperial interest in India. A mass of safeguards

entrenched the executive powers of the Viceroy against interference in

the army, in India’s external relations, or in the rights of minorities.

These were meant to continue even after India had become a domin-

ion. The Viceroy also had powers to set the level of spending on the

items of greatest interest in London: defence; the pension bill; and rail-

way expenditure. One Congress leader commented acidly that scarcely

one-ﬁfth of federal spending would pass under the scrutiny of the fed-

eral assembly.

165

However, what British plans really relied on was the

provincial dynamic towards which Simon had pointed. Giving provin-

cial autonomy would draw Indian leaders away from rhetorical politics

towards ‘real’ and ‘responsible’ political power, and make them far

more responsive to the needs of their voters. Provincial politics would

also come to reﬂect the wide variation in interests and attitudes in dif-

ferent parts of the sub-continent. Provincial government ministers, even

those in the Congress, would resist the demands of ‘All-India’ nation-

alists and wriggle free from their grasp. All-India politics would be

fraught with frustrations for those who aspired to drive out the British.

Boxed in by the rules, and by the careful design of the federal assembly,

they would ﬁnd very little had left the Viceroy’s control. Yet to struggle

against him by mass agitation would get harder and harder against the

indifference or hostility of provincial politicians, where control over the

party machine would soon come to lie.

466 / ‘The great liner is sinking’

But how realistic was this machiavellian scheme? Did the British

really have the power on the ground to make it work as they wished?

Could they hold on long enough to bend Indian politics in the direction

they wanted? There were certainly grounds for a positive view. One of

them was the resilience of the old ‘steel frame’, the so-called ‘Superior

Services’: the 800 or so members of the Indian Civil Service (ICS); the

150-strong Indian Political Service (still almost entirely British-born

166

)

that dealt with the Princes, and the 500 British ofﬁcers of the Indian

Police. Under the 1935 Act, the pay and conditions of the Superior

Services remained under London’s control. The Indian Civil Service

retained much of its cherished cohesion. It was, said the Viceroy (Lord

Willingdon, 1931–6), ‘the most powerful Trade Union that I know’.

167

In the late 1930s, despite uncertainties and under-recruitment, British-

born ofﬁcials still made up the majority of its ranks.

168

Nor was the

loyalty of its Indian contingent yet in serious doubt.

169

Faced with the

growth of Indian political activity, the ICS accepted the need to enlarge

provincial self-government and increase the shift towards federalism

originally envisaged before 1914. It learned from mass civil unrest and

the bursts of terrorism in Bengal, the risks of exposing its minute admin-

istrative manpower, the need to employ more indirect methods, and the

logic of retreat to the political centre both in the provinces and in India

as a whole. The Indian politicians would have to be guided, not gov-

erned. In keeping with this was a new political mantra put about by its

leaders. ‘The civilian who used to serve by ruling must learn to rule by

serving’, said an Old India Hand, Sir Edward Blunt.

170

In the provincial arena, the Indian politicians were bound to

rely heavily upon the expertise and advice of the ICS men. They were

also bound to observe the constitutional rules that the governors would

enforce. The governor could dismiss ministers, dissolve the assemblies

and call fresh elections. He could also insist on attending cabinet

meetings.

171

Where party competition was ﬁerce, party organisation

fragile or factionalism rife, these were formidable powers – the reason

why Congress tried but failed to secure a promise not to use them.

They were deployed with the aim of weaning Congress leaders in the

provinces away from their deference to the Congress ‘high command’

and encouraging ‘local’ initiative.

172

After 1935, of course, British and

ICS power was concentrated at the centre, in the government of India.

There, the Viceroy and his ICS staff exercised almost unchecked author-

ity, and would continue to do so long after (and if) the federal assembly

467 / Holding the centre, 1927–1937

came into existence. Indeed, the Viceroy, not London, now held most

of the reserved powers that were meant to slide slowly into the hands

of responsible federal ministers. His control of the budget was almost

absolute. More to the point, the centre had grabbed the lion’s share of

the most buoyant revenue sources, leaving the rind to the provinces: the

rigid, costly and inﬂammatory land revenue.

173

Financially, at least, the

centre was stronger than ever, and provincial politicians would need its

goodwill. But, if all else failed politically, the Viceroy’s ultimate weapon

was his command of armed force, the police and the army. Here, too,

it seemed, the British had little to fear. Apart from the British con-

tingent (the 50,000 or more men from the British army at home), the

Indian army appeared almost untouched by two decades of politics. Its

British ofﬁcer corps (around 20 British ofﬁcers in each of the army’s

120 regiments

174

) was scheduled for ‘Indianisation’ at the pace of the

snail, and Indian applications for ofﬁcer training (in contrast with the

ICS) slumped badly in the 1930s.

175

The army’s colonial structure, with

its heavy reliance on ‘martial races’ and hill peoples, expressly excluded

most of the elements that might have been drawn to the Congress.

An army mutiny designed to bring Gandhi to power was absurdly

improbable.

All this would have counted for less had the British in India

faced a united nationalist movement that could grant or withhold its

cooperation at will. But the reverse was the case. Since the glory days

of the ﬁrst non-cooperation movement in 1920–2, unity had collapsed.

Although Muslims themselves were far from united (and some remained

loyal to Congress), their provincial leaders were deeply opposed to

the Congress desire for a strong central state which they saw as the

instrument of the Hindu majority. In the Muslim majority provinces of

Bengal, Sind and Punjab (the North West Frontier Province was a spe-

cial case), they were determined to hold on to the widest autonomy, and

to cling to the privilege of separate electorates. When Congress staged

its second civil disobedience campaign in 1930–1, the Muslims took no

part.

176

The Congress itself was prey to divisions. The moderate non-

Gandhian wing, led by Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal’s father, would have

settled for ‘Dominion Status’ within the Empire, parliamentary-style

government at the Indian centre and an end to separate electorates.

177

But their chances were wrecked by Muslim opposition, the Gandhians’

impatience and the tactics of the British. When civil disobedience was

suspended (by the Gandhi–Irwin pact), Gandhi went as the Congress’

468 / ‘The great liner is sinking’

sole representative to the (second) Round Table Conference convened

by the British in late 1931 to consider the federal scheme. But Gandhi

gained little. Civil disobedience had been noisy, but was a political

failure. The Round Table Conference (attended by Muslims, Sikhs,

Princes, untouchables and Eurasians, among others) belied his grand

claim that the Congress alone represented India. The new constitution

was drawn up in London while the stuttering attempt to restart civil

disobedience was crushed by a vigilant Viceroy. When the India Act

was passed, Congress faced a dilemma. Would it boycott the reforms

that Jawaharlal Nehru called ‘a charter of slavery’? Would it ﬁght the

elections, now to be fought on a far larger franchise including millions

of women? Would it take ofﬁce in the provinces where its support-

ers won a majority? Would it risk being trapped in the constitutional

labyrinth the British had constructed around it?

Loud voices were raised against any compromise. Nehru

(elected Congress president 1936–8) ﬁercely opposed the acceptance

of ofﬁce. The Congress should not share responsibility with ‘the appa-

ratus of imperialism’, he told its meeting at Lucknow in April 1936.

178

If it did so, the ‘narrowest provincialism [will] rear its ugly head’.

179

But, the following year, the vote went against him. This was partly

because of the hunger for power after long years in the wilderness. But

it was also inspired by the scale of the victory in the provincial elections.

Congress had won a clear majority of seats in ﬁve of the eleven provinces

and was the largest party in a sixth (Bombay). It had crushed the ICS

hopes that provincially based parties would attract the voters’ support.

Its success was a tribute to organisational strength,

180

and its appeal to

the peasants as the scourge of the landlords. The landlord party in the

United Provinces (to the dismay of the governor) was roundly defeated.

But what would Congress leaders do once in ofﬁce? They proclaimed

the intention of using their powers to smash the new constitution. But

the British clung to the hope that, once its local leaders were engaged

with ‘the great mass of provincial interests’, this would quickly slacken

the grip of Congress’ ‘central organisation’.

181

The early pattern of politics seemed inconclusive. The cohesion

of the Congress was certainly strained and its inclusive appeal began

to fray at the edges. Provincial leaders resented ‘supervision’ by the

‘high command’s’ triumvirate.

182

Faced with peasant unrest in Bihar

and labour unrest in Bombay, Congress ministers applied repression

with vigour.

183

The Congress Socialist party had been formed in 1934.

469 / Holding the centre, 1927–1937

Nehru himself proclaimed the virtues of socialism and admired Stalin’s

Russia. But Sardar Patel, Gandhi’s ‘enforcer’, dismissed socialism as

‘nonsense,’

184

and other voices were raised against Nehru’s ‘destruc-

tive and subversive’ doctrine.

185

The ‘high command’ intervened in

provincial affairs to defend Indian businessmen against radical or left-

ist opinion in Congress.

186

Subhas Chandra Bose, Nehru’s main rival

as the radical voice of the Congress, pressed for more recognition of

regional and cultural autonomy (reﬂecting the Bengali Hindu dilemma)

and urged Congress support for a federal republic, not a unitary state.

187

The Congress old guard engineered his removal. Amid so much divi-

sion, it was perhaps hardly surprising that Nehru should have thought

‘the sooner we are out of ofﬁce the better’.

188

But, despite all the strain,

the Congress did not fragment. Its three-man committee, with Gandhi

behind them, imposed a tight central rein. There were also clear signs

that the growing strength of the Congress would deter the Princely

states from agreeing to join the federal system, and that federation

itself might remain a dead letter.

But in the last year of peace it was too early to tell. The Congress

had eluded the trap that the British had set. Whether it could stage an

early advance to the All-India centre and expel the British from India in

the foreseeable future was far more uncertain. The strict central control

that the high command had maintained had saved the Congress from

splits. But its veto on coalitions and monolithic authority had further

antagonised both Muslims and Princes. For the moment at least, in the

trial of strength, stalemate had set in, the prelude perhaps to a new

round of adjustments. But, before that could happen, an external crisis

of colossal intensity transformed the whole pattern of Indian politics.

Holding the centre

Despite their travails in India and East Asia, the growing tension in

Europe and the sense of economic and ﬁnancial strain after 1930,there

was little to show that the British had abandoned their claim to be a

world power. Nowhere, perhaps, was this clearer than in the Middle

East, the cross-roads of Eurasia and of what Mackinder had called the

‘world-island’. Across a vast arc of territories, including the Sudan,

Egypt, Cyprus, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf statelets,

the Hadramaut and Aden (the ‘southern gates of Arabia’), British

470 / ‘The great liner is sinking’

inﬂuence circa 1930 was ﬁercely exerted through a wide range of

regimes: a condominium, a crown colony, three mandates, several pro-

tectorates, and a ‘veiled occupation’ in Egypt, while Aden remained an

outpost of Bombay until 1937.

To the casual eye, such administrative chaos had an impro-

vised look, as if the British presence was temporary (‘temporary’ had

been the notorious adjective applied to the British occupation of Egypt

in 1882). In fact, in the inter-war years, far from becoming redun-

dant, the Middle East countries assumed growing imperial value for

two different reasons. One was the steady rise in their output of oil,

mainly from Anglo-Persian’s concession in Southwest Iran and its port-

reﬁnery at Abadan, but with the promise of new ﬁelds in Iraq and

the Gulf. Although Middle East oil supplied only 5 per cent of world

product as late as 1939, it reduced British dependence on Ameri-

can oil and was conveniently close to the imperial ‘trunk route’ to

Suez and India. The second reason was strategy. The old threat from

Russia was dormant, but the risk of a clash with Japan was much more

immediate. That meant the rapid despatch of a naval task force from

Europe to defend British interests in the Asia-Paciﬁc from the Singapore

base. Hence the vital importance of the Suez Canal as the wind-pipe

of Empire was notched up still further. Nor was it only a matter of

sea-power. The value of air routes to bind the Empire together, and

of air-power as a means of internal control and external defence, were

well understood. Half of Britain’s air strength stationed overseas was

in Egypt, Palestine and Iraq. Cairo had already become the hub of air

transport, through which ﬂights to Africa, India and the Paciﬁc had

to pass. With other bases and airports in Palestine and Iraq and along

the Arab coast of the Gulf, the British had constructed an air route to

India to which they attached great importance.

189

‘The Gulf is becom-

ing’, wrote a Times correspondent breathlessly, ‘the Suez Canal of the

air, an essential channel of communication with India, Singapore and

Australia.’

190

Since the early 1920s, the British had preferred to make their

regional presence as unobtrusive as possible, for ﬁnancial as much as

for political reasons. They had come to terms with the two main state-

builders, Kemal Ataturk in Turkey and Reza Pahlavi Shah in Iran.

Having installed Feisal in Iraq as the strong-man who would hold

its disparate parts together with his ‘Shariﬁan’ followers (the Sunni

elite who formed the administrative caste and the ofﬁcer corps), they

471 / Holding the centre, 1927–1937

were keen to exchange their Mandatory role for a treaty of alliance

that gave Iraq independence – a change carried through between 1930

and 1932. With the air bases they wanted, and with Iraqi dependence

on British support against the ‘old enemy’ Turkey (not to mention

Iran), there was no conﬂict of interest between their imperial system

and the ruling group in Baghdad.

191

London also looked kindly on

the state-making ambitions of Ibn Saud in what became Saudi Ara-

bia, and forced its Hashemite clients in Trans-Jordan and Iraq not

to encourage his tribal opponents.

192

Thus the British imperium was

intended to function by indirect means, through a form of hegemonic

diplomacy, not old-fashioned rule. As the only great power in the

region (for the French offered no challenge), they would be arbiters

of its conﬂicts and quarrels, patrons – or not – of its rulers’ ambi-

tions, regulating the affairs of the region in its best interests and their

own.

The heart and centre of British regional inﬂuence was, as it had

been since 1882, to be found in Egypt. Egypt had the largest popula-

tion of any Arab country, and the region’s most developed economy.

Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque was the greatest centre of learning in the

Islamic world. With the Suez Canal, the port of Alexandria, its air-

ports and railways, its agrarian resources and its large pool of labour,

Egypt was a uniquely valuable asset to Britain’s defence system: the

‘swing door’, as one minister put it, between East and West. Having

rejected the prospect of direct control at the end of the War, the British

would have liked to enshrine their special position in the form of a

treaty. But, as they insisted that the terms should include the right to

maintain troops there, to require Egyptian conformity with British for-

eign policy, to be the sole guardian of foreign interests and persons,

and to keep effective control of the ‘Anglo-Egyptian’ Sudan (Egypt’s

great colony), no Egyptian politician who valued his name and his

health could be persuaded to sign. After several abortive attempts,

the British had all but decided by late 1934 that further effort was

futile.

193

Their situation in Cairo was not so uncomfortable. Despite

ofﬁcial insistence that the British Residency played no part in Egyp-

tian political life, successive high commissioners interfered with a will.

It was widely assumed that no Egyptian prime minister could survive

their displeasure. Since 1930, in fact, the British had simpliﬁed mat-

ters by allowing the king to repress the Wafd, the main popular party,

and rule by decree through his nominee minister. Their rationale was

472 / ‘The great liner is sinking’

straightforward. If the British disowned him, said a Foreign Ofﬁce ofﬁ-

cial, the king’s position would be precarious if not untenable.

194

When

the High Commissioner Lampson went to bully King Fuad (r.1917–

36) on an occasion in 1935, he told him that failure to comply would

raise ‘issues of the gravest kind . . . including . . . his continued capacity

to rule and the whole future of his dynasty’.

195

‘J’accepte’, said King

Fuad. Since the Qasr el-Nil barracks, where the British garrison was

stationed, was ten minutes’ drive from the king’s Abdin Palace (and ten

minutes’ drive from the Wafd party headquarters), and since the British

had removed his predecessor but one, Fuad’s discretion was wise.

Nevertheless, in the mid-1930s, the British ability to exploit the

political rivalry between the Wafd and the Court was no longer enough

to safeguard their interests. Part of the reason was their troubles in

Palestine, the one Middle East state where their favoured retreat to

indirect rule was thoroughly barred. Under the terms of their Mandate,

the British had to provide a ‘national home’ for the immigrant Jews.

But it had been obvious from the beginning that the Arab majority was

deeply opposed to Jewish land settlement and still more resentful that

it had denied them self-rule. Since a shared legislature was out of the

question, the British practice had been to deal with Arabs and Jews sep-

arately through the Supreme Muslim Council and the Jewish Agency.

But this had not prevented ﬁerce communal tensions and recurrent out-

breaks of violence. The violence was fuelled by rising rural unrest. By

1930, nearly one-third of Arab peasants were totally landless and more

than three-quarters had less than the level of subsistence required.

196

The Palestine peasants, reported a British commission, were ‘probably

more politically minded than many of the peoples of Europe’.

197

Their

resentment was probably aimed as much at the Arab notable class (who

were selling the land) as at the Jewish intruders. The problem was com-

pounded by the bitter divisions among the Arab elite, between ‘Hus-

seinis’ (the Husseini family were the hereditary muftis of Jerusalem),

198

and ‘Nashashibis’, who were supported by larger landowners and busi-

nessmen. When rural violence burst out into the open with the murder

of two Jews in the spring of 1936, bringing reprisals, a general strike

and a state of emergency, armed peasant bands began to appear in the

highlands. Amin al-Husseini called for the non-payment of taxes and

denounced the police presence in Palestinian villages. The British were

forced to deploy some 20,000 men (a tenth of their army) to try to

restore their control.

473 / Holding the centre, 1927–1937

This was not the only anxiety. From late 1935, and the break-

down of the Anglo-French plan to surrender Ethiopia to Italy, the

British had to court the risks of a Mediterranean war and suffer the pro-

paganda bombardment from Italian radio. Almost at the same moment,

the High Commissioner in Cairo, Sir Miles Lampson, detected an omi-

nous shift in the political climate. All the main parties formed a ‘United

Front’ to demand restoration of the 1923 (parliamentary) constitu-

tion, and treaty negotiations with London.

199

To stand in their way,

argued the key British expert on internal security, might mean a return

to the massive uprising of 1919. London accepted the case. By May

1936, the Cabinet was debating the prospective treaty in detail. The

main attraction on offer was an Anglo-Egyptian alliance, to defend

Egypt ‘jointly’. The main stumbling block was the demand by Nahas,

the Wafd leader, that the British renounce their claim to occupy the

Canal Zone indeﬁnitely, and accept League of Nations arbitration if

the two sides disagreed over the treaty’s renewal.

200

The thought of the

backbench reaction to a fresh imperial ‘scuttle’ made some ministers

quake. But, by the middle of June, that midsummer of madness, they

had steeled themselves for it. A treaty was ‘indispensable’, said Neville

Chamberlain, a previous critic, now a key convert. They should accept

the twenty-year term on Britain’s military rights in the Canal Zone.

201

Not to settle with Egypt, said Baldwin, would mean locking 30,000

men in the country ‘during the very critical ﬁve or six years immedi-

ately in front of us’.

202

Nahas, too, was eager to win the great treaty

prize. He offered a perpetual alliance (only its terms to be varied in

future) and unlimited British reinforcements in an ‘apprehended inter-

national emergency’.

203

It was enough. At a further Cabinet meeting on

23 June, Baldwin summed up the argument. ‘The immediate reasons

for the early conclusion of a treaty’, he told his Cabinet colleagues,

were the reactions of failure on the Arab area. The situation

in the Near East was one of considerable gravity. There was

also danger of disturbance in Egypt . . . Failure to conclude

a treaty would add a disorganized Near East to the existing

disturbed state of Europe. It was essential therefore to

obtain a treaty . . . [H]e hoped that in twenty years

time . . . our position in the Eastern Mediterranean would

be very much stronger than it was today, with troops near

the Canal.

204

474 / ‘The great liner is sinking’

Baldwin’s remarks were intended, no doubt, to quieten the crit-

ics. But it would be wrong to assume that even the treaty’s most ardent

British supporters saw it as marking a real British retreat. The British

had agreed to withdraw their troops from Egypt’s main cities. But (as

the map to accompany the treaty revealed) their Canal Zone ‘training

grounds’ conveniently extended to within a few miles of Cairo.

205

for Nahas, within twelve months of the treaty he had been driven from

ofﬁce by the new king, Farouk. He ‘relied too much on British inﬂuence

to keep him in power’, said Lampson.

206

The old game was renewed.

‘With tact and ﬁrmness’, he reassured London, ‘British inﬂuence should

remain the governing factor . . . under the new conditions of the post-

treaty regime.’

207

In Palestine, meanwhile, a Royal Commission had

come and gone, and its plan for partition considered and scrapped.

More British troops fought the Arab insurgents. Far away in the south,

the frontier of control in the Aden protectorate was pushed gradually

forward. By adjusting their tactics and searching for allies, the British

meant to hold their ground in the region they regarded as indispens-

able strategically, and imperially ‘central’. What really mattered was

whether they could hold the ring. Whatever the treaty terms, Lampson

told London in May 1936, ‘in twenty years time Egypt would be just

as dependent on us as now if we were still the power we now are’.

208

The British meant to hold the centre, but would the centre hold?

Dog days of Empire

In 1937, the omens were unclear. With hindsight, of course, it is easy

to see the tensions and strains to which the British system was subject.

Economic resentments, nationalist fervour, racial antipathy, religious

antagonism and the appeal to class hatred: together they threatened

to pull the system apart at the seams. On this diagnosis, the chance

of survival was slim. Swift devolution might stave off a crisis but not

for too long. Crippled economically by the end of free trade, sapped

internally by the growth of separatist feeling in the dominions and

India, assaulted externally by new and more ruthless imperialisms, the

British world-system could only decline, and eventually fall. It was just

a matter of time.

Yet, as we have seen, to many contemporaries (both observers

and actors), that was not how it seemed. The economic upheaval was