Darwin J. The Empire Project. The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
555 / The price of survival, 1943–1951
Commonwealth as an informal alliance against the communist threat.
Even Nehru agreed that ‘Commonwealth countries must be prepared to
resist military and political aggression by the Soviet government’.
112
It
vindicated Attlee’s willingness to reinvent the Commonwealth, recog-
nising that ‘dominion’ was no longer favoured as a title (it was being
discarded even in New Zealand
113
), and that the name ‘British Com-
monwealth’ should sometimes give way to ‘Commonwealth of Nations’
as the best designation.
114
The modified Commonwealth had become
a key part of Labour’s new world-system. But even more striking was
the extent to which Britain’s own role as its head and centre had come
to depend upon an ever deeper commitment in two large spheres, in
each of which British influence and authority suffered from potentially
crippling sources of weakness.
The first of these was the Middle East. As we have seen, in post-
war conditions the Middle East’s value had risen sharply for Britain.
As the base from which to attack Russian oilfields and industry in the
event of world war, and as the source for ‘dollar-free’ oil extracted from
British ‘concessions’, the Middle East had become much more than a
bastion of the old Anglo-Indian nexus. It was no longer an adjunct
to the British world-system but an integral part of it. This was the
meaning of Bevin’s victory over Attlee in 1946–7. Britain’s ability to
promote Western Union, to hold the Commonwealth together, to stage
an economic recovery, or to deter Soviet aggression required a regional
presence that was at least as commanding as before 1939,andmuch
more intrusive. It was really made up of a four-cornered connection:
with Iraq and Jordan, where the British relied on the local ‘strong men’,
Nuri al-Said and the ageing King Abdullah; with Iran and the special
position enjoyed by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; and above all with
Egypt and the Suez Canal Zone. Indeed, for the British, Egypt remained
the irreplaceable centrepiece of their Middle East imperium. It was not
just a matter of their huge complex of bases in the Suez Canal Zone.
There was also the vast depot at Tel el-Kebir (the Plassey of Egypt).
Egyptian labour and Egypt’s ports and railways were equally vital if the
Canal Zone bases were to serve their purpose efficiently. This meant, in
effect, that the British must enlist the cooperation, however grudging or
reluctant, of the government in Cairo and its local officials. It was this
realisation that had pushed Bevin and the Foreign Office into offering
a large-scale withdrawal of the British military presence in return for
the right to return in a Middle Eastern ‘emergency’. Those talks had
556 / ‘The great liner is sinking’
failed (largely over Cairo’s demand for a much larger say in the affairs
of the Sudan). Meanwhile, their abrupt departure from Palestine had
deprived the British of the alternative base where their troops could be
kept and hardened their view about the value of Egypt. With the onset
of the Berlin crisis in mid-1948, and the increased possibility of a war
with Russia, the idea of any real withdrawal from Egypt disappeared
almost completely. It was now essential, declared the Chiefs of Staff in
September 1948, to keep at least 20,000 troops in Egypt, and to go on
using the Tel el-Kebir depot.
115
The reality was, as the British admitted to themselves, that not
only was evacuation now inconceivable but that ‘our military require-
ments go beyond those of the present [1936] treaty’.
116
There was
no chance of finding any Egyptian regime that would agree to such
terms.
117
The embassy in Cairo was left, as so often before, to square
the circle. Its tactics were well tried: every proconsul from Cromer to
Lampson had played much the same hand. The aim was to tempt King
Farouk with the promise of a treaty, or to bully him into allowing a
government of the main popular party, the Wafd, who might also be
tempted (as in 1936). The difficulty was that London had little or noth-
ing to give. Worse still, there were growing signs of upheaval as the
Arab defeat in Palestine, the effects of inflation and the Islamist influ-
ence of the Muslim Brotherhood undermined ‘pashadom’ and the king’s
prestige. They were facing 1919 all over again, thought some British
observers. If violence broke out, it would be necessary to send three
major military units ‘and dominate the European quarter of Cairo’.
118
Nor could the British allow Egypt to fall into political chaos. But how
could they stop it, or prevent a populist government from disrupting
overtly or covertly the transport links and labour supply on which they
depended? It might happen at a moment of great international tension,
and ‘Egypt is the only country in the Middle East’, so the Chiefs of
Staff declared, ‘possessing the facilities and resources for the conduct
of a major war’.
119
‘All interpretations of Middle East strategy require
the location of a Middle East base in Egypt in war.’
120
By hook or by
crook some agreement must be made. 1950 was a year of desultory
talks with the new Wafd government and the prime minister, Nahas
Pasha, ‘an old, stubborn and enfeebled man’ in The Times’ dismissive
phrase.
121
At the end of the year, Nahas raised the stakes. Egypt would
end its treaty with Britain unilaterally if necessary. In October 1951,he
made good his threat, and the real confrontation began.
557 / The price of survival, 1943–1951
By that time the British had suffered a highly damaging blow
to their pride and pocket from Iranian nationalism. They had placed
heavy reliance upon the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
(later British Petroleum) and its refinery at Abadan (then the largest
in the world) to produce ‘sterling oil’, and reduce the dollar deficit
(to which the cost of oil imported from the United States, much the
world’s largest producer, made the biggest contribution).
122
To palli-
ate Iranian discontent with its oil royalties, a ‘supplemental’ agreement
had been negotiated. But, from Teheran’s point of view, this did little
to redress the growing imbalance between its share of oil revenues and
those accruing to London. In 1950, the company made net profits of
£33 million, paid more than £50 million in taxes to the British govern-
ment (five times as much as in 1946) but barely £16 million in royalties
to Teheran. New dividend rules applicable in London also depressed
the income that the Iranians received.
123
To make matters worse, at
the end of 1950 it became known that, in Saudi Arabia, the region’s
second-largest producer, the Arab-American Oil Company (Aramco)
had agreed on a fifty–fifty sharing of profits with the government in
Riyadh. It was hardly surprising that the Iranians cavilled at a much less
generous deal. Too late in the day, the British proposed the ‘Aramco’
terms. But, by early 1951, Iranian politics were being convulsed by
the fierce nationalist rhetoric of Mohamed Mussadiq and the struggle
for power between the youthful shah and his opponents, including the
Tudeh, a mass radical party suspected of communist leanings.
124
In this
stormy climate, British interference and Anglo-Iranian’s greed became
irresistible targets. At the end of April 1951, the Iranian Parliament
nationalised the company, and on 10 June the Iranian flag was raised
over its main office in Abadan.
The British were nonplussed. They considered and rejected a
familiar strategy: the occupation of Southwest Iran where Teheran’s
authority had always been weak. Without the Indian army, said the
Chiefs of Staff sorrowfully, Britain lacked the military means to carry
this out.
125
They thought about occupying Abadan Island, where the
refinery stood. But this Attlee vetoed, knowing that Washington was
fiercely opposed to military action against which the Soviet Union might
riposte in the north of Iran. ‘We could not afford a break with the United
States on an issue of this kind’, recorded the Cabinet minutes.
126
So the
grand British concession closed down with a whimper. On 4 October
1951, the remaining British staff embarked on a cruiser and sailed away.
558 / ‘The great liner is sinking’
In Egypt and Iran, the British were thus caught in a vice.
The logic of their economic and geopolitical position had deepened
their dependence upon their Middle East ‘assets’. Far from slackening
their ties with this turbulent region, they were determined to integrate
its strategic and commercial resources much more closely into their
post-war world-system, even while they acknowledged that Britain’s
own strength was, at least temporarily, in relative decline. The British
largely hid from themselves the inconvenient truth that the burden they
imposed upon Middle East polities was actually growing at a time when
those polities were under intense social and political strain. Hence the
unpredictable force of local nationalist feeling, as well as the growing
American presence and the looming shadow of Soviet military power,
heightened the risks and anxieties of this half-concealed ‘forward move-
ment’. By October 1951, visibly in Iran, not much less so in Egypt, it
had been stopped in its tracks.
The second great sphere was in Britain’s tropical empire, for
long the poor relation of the imperial system. Shoe-string budgets and
skeletal government had been the lot of most tropical colonies, espe-
cially during the depression years when their economies shrank. The
war and its aftermath transformed their place in the imperial structure.
Their potential value to the imperial centre now began to be recog-
nised. And the war had driven home the lesson (robustly pointed out
by Margery Perham in 1942) that, without a more pro-active approach
by their rulers, many colonial territories would become tropical ‘East
Ends’ with impoverished, disaffected populations, troublesome to gov-
ern and an economic liability. An energetic expansion of the colonial
state was thus on the cards.
127
What made it more urgent was the dawn-
ing realisation that tropical produce (cocoa, groundnuts, coffee, rubber)
and minerals (tin and copper especially) from the ‘crown colony’ empire
could provide a large dollar income and contribute significantly to the
urgent recovery of the sterling economy. By 1948, it was estimated that
the colonies were earning $600 million a year, with a net surplus of
$200 million for the sterling area dollar-pool. Since this was enough to
cover the dollar deficit of the self-governing countries of the overseas
sterling area (i.e. excluding Britain), its contribution to the smooth-
ness and cohesion of the sterling area’s working relations was highly
significant. But there were bound to be costs. To raise local produc-
tion, the colonial state had to become (compared with its past) almost
hyperactive. It would need to discard the allies that had served it in the
559 / The price of survival, 1943–1951
age of immobility and seek new friends who would grasp the advan-
tage of rapid development, not least to themselves. Local administration
would need reforming to give them a voice. Advisers and experts would
descend on the countryside: imposing new rules (against overstocking
or deforestation); attacking diseases (like cocoa ‘swollen shoot’ where
the trees were cut down); or commandeering labour (for anti-erosion
activity). And, because colonial incomes could not be allowed to grow
quickly (to prevent inflation and conserve the dollars), the colonial
state would become an economic leviathan, setting prices and wages
wherever it could. The tropical colonies were to be integrated forcibly
into the sterling economy on terms not of their choosing, but, it was
claimed, to their considerable benefit. What has aptly been called the
‘second colonial occupation’ was the most self-confident face of the
fourth British empire.
But, almost immediately, there were signs that the colonial gov-
ernments were badly under-engined for their demanding new role. They
lacked the intelligence, the financial incentives and above all the man-
power to assert their power over what had hitherto been very lightly
ruled hinterlands. In the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), this opened the
space for a mass movement of protest, when a breakaway group of
coast politicians, led by Kwame Nkrumah, began to mobilise growing
discontent against the government’s rural reforms. In February 1951,
under the slogan of ‘Self-Government Now’, Nkrumah’s Convention
People’s Party made ‘practically a clean sweep’ in the elections to the
new local legislature created to conciliate ‘moderate opinion’.
128
In
Kenya, where the colonial government relied on its old chiefly allies
to force through a programme for better land husbandry, the result
was a spiral of increasingly violent social conflict among the Kikuyu,
the main ethnic group in the central highlands. What became known
as Mau Mau – the spread of ‘oathing’, urban militancy and agrarian
terror – was already well established long before London agreed to
a state of emergency in October 1952.
129
The crisis came earlier in
Malaya, where British rule had been demolished by the Japanese con-
quest. Here the colonial state had to be rebuilt, so London insisted,
on more robust lines. Singapore would remain the great centre of
British power in the East, Malaya its outwork and economic annexe. A
Malayan Union giving more power to the colonial centre would unite
the ramshackle ‘Federated’ and ‘Unfederated’ states of the pre-war era
with the old ‘Straits Settlements’, the four crown colony enclaves of
560 / ‘The great liner is sinking’
which Singapore was the largest. The revived colonial state would
extend its control into the forested hinterland, and over the labour
force of the mines and plantations whose ‘discipline’ had broken down
in the occupation period. In fact, ‘Union’ was abandoned in the face
of the angry reaction of the Malay elite, who feared that including
Singapore would give the Chinese a predominant voice in the new
Malaya. Singapore stayed separate and Malay feelings were soothed.
But, in the Chinese community (in both Singapore and Malaya), the
effects of occupation and of civil war in China deepened social divi-
sions, and the appeal of communism. When the colonial government
entered the fray to check rural squatting and labour militancy, violence
soon spread.
130
In June 1948, the British declared a state of emergency,
to protect the white planters and safeguard the dollar earnings from
rubber and tin which London valued so highly. It was to take more
than five years before they broke the back of the communist-led insur-
rection. In Malaya, the British were willing to make a huge effort to
protect what they saw as an economic resource and a prime strategic
asset. But, here, as in the Gold Coast and Kenya, it soon became clear
that the colonial state had become much more dependent on the local
indigenous elite. The imperial initiative had run out of steam.
Test of Empire, 1951–1952
In its six years of office from July 1945 until October 1951, the Labour
government had followed a remarkably consistent external policy. Its
aim had been to protect British independence in Europe, where it seemed
to be threatened by Soviet expansion, as well as British power in the
world. It was no less committed to regaining Britain’s old place in world
trade as the best guarantee of domestic prosperity and restored living
standards. It pursued these objectives by what seemed the logical means.
It sought to engage the United States as fully as possible in the defence
of Western Europe, recognising that Britain, even with its Empire and
Commonwealth behind it, could not hope to hold out against a Soviet
onslaught in another world war. It hoped to deter a further Soviet
advance partly by alliance diplomacy in Europe (‘Western European
Union’) and partly by digging in on the Soviet flank in the Middle
East. After the dramatic upset of the convertibility crisis in July–August
1947, it vowed to defend the sterling economy by exchange control
561 / The price of survival, 1943–1951
and commercial restriction until London’s reserves of dollars and gold
were sufficient to meet the pound’s post-war liabilities and restore the
City to its premier place in global finance. It was committed, in short,
to building a new British world-system, not as grand perhaps as its
pre-war model, but more dirigiste, more development-minded and, up
to a point, more democratic.
In retrospect, this might be seen as a quixotic endeavour to turn
back a tide that had set irrevocably against European empires in gen-
eral and Britain’s in particular. In fact, the Labour leaders behaved with
what they clearly regarded as tough-minded pragmatism. They accepted
the need to let India go quickly lest it drag them into a vast communal
conflict. They abandoned Burma as ungovernable and made almost no
effort to dissuade its new rulers from leaving the Commonwealth. They
acknowledged the claim of Ceylon’s Sinhalese elite to swift indepen-
dence and endorsed the claim of the Commonwealth Secretary that ‘if
we treat them strictly as a[n] [independent] dominion, they will behave
very like a loyal colony.’
131
They made little fuss when the Irish Free
State became the Irish Republic, preferring a bilateral agreement to the
tattered remains of the crown connection to protect British interests.
They threw up the Palestine mandate and simply withdrew rather than
enforce a partition that would further damage their relations with the
Arab states. On the other hand, they were also determined to hold the
Commonwealth together and get the help of the self-governing domin-
ions in the defence of sterling – by forceful methods if necessary. They
were ready to modify what was widely regarded as its main source of
cohesion to mitigate the effects of the end of the Raj and retain the
friendship of India. After their initial attempt to win Egyptian agree-
ment to a new defence treaty by the drastic reduction of their military
presence, they showed a stubborn refusal to give up British rights to use
Egypt as a vast military base in the event of a new war. And, across the
wide expanse of their tropical empire, they demanded economic and
political change on a scale and at a speed that seemed likely to test the
colonial state to the point of destruction.
After April 1949 and the signing of the North Atlantic treaty,
with its promise of American help in the defence of Western Europe,
Attlee and Bevin could have been forgiven for thinking that they had
turned the main corner. Their aim, after all, was to preserve British
power as a ‘third force’ in world affairs, in alliance with America to
contain Soviet aggression, but not subordinate to it. Just as they hoped
562 / ‘The great liner is sinking’
to restore sterling to something like parity with the dollar as a trading
currency, they thought that a modified British world-system, with its
treaty relations, Commonwealth links, informal connections and far-
flung network of bases, would secure Britain’s status as America’s all
but co-equal in the Western alliance. They looked forward to the easing
of Cold War tensions and the demands they had made on the British
economy. What remained of these hopes was largely demolished in the
course of 1951–2 by the seismic consequences of the Korean War and
the delayed after-shocks of the Palestine conflict.
1950 had been a good year for the British economy and the
sterling area. With the balance of payments back in surplus and the
easing of the dollar deficit, Marshall Aid was suspended. The sterling
area, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told his Australian counterpart,
was stronger than at any time since the war.
132
But, he warned, it
was a ‘darkening picture’. The darkest cloud was the huge increase
in Britain’s defence spending, the price Britain must pay, so the Attlee
government argued, to maintain the American commitment to Europe’s
defence at a time when East Asia had become Washington’s most urgent
priority. The defence budget was raised to the enormous figure of
£4.7 billion over three years, doubling the level of 1948–9, and threat-
ening to consume more than 10 per cent – perhaps even 14 per cent – of
output. Almost at once a vicious circle set in. The price of dollar goods
rose just as rearmament made them more necessary. British produc-
tion was diverted from overseas exports and dollar-earning activity.
Britain’s dollar reserves, the key to sterling’s revival as a convertible
currency, began to dwindle rapidly. Even in March 1951, before the
crisis really set in, they stood at only one-third of the 1938 figure.
133
Between June 1951 and March 1952, they fell by half. By October,
the incoming Conservative government was engulfed in a full-blown
sterling crisis, the third in six years. At an emergency meeting of Com-
monwealth finance ministers in January 1952, an urgent programme of
dollar-saving was agreed.
Sterling recovered and staggered on to achieve convertible sta-
tus in the (briefly) easier conditions of 1958. But the 1951 crisis was
a real turning point. It offered stark evidence that the closed sterling
economy could not be the springboard to the pound’s full recovery as
a world ‘master-currency’ or London’s revival in global finance. The
pound’s credibility was badly damaged in Europe. Nor was it possible
to prevent the leakage of sterling as dollars were bought by indirect
563 / The price of survival, 1943–1951
methods. We have reached a ‘dead end’, concluded a secret report
in the Bank of England.
134
The draft communiqu
´
e of the Common-
wealth finance ministers in January 1952 acknowledged the core of
the problem.
135
Sterling could only rebuild its old status and be safely
convertible if London’s reserves were restored to pre-war levels. That
would require an enormous effort to increase trade and earn more dol-
lars. But this could only be done if more investment was raised and if
the sterling countries gained better access to the goods and capital of
the dollar economies. Britain alone could not provide the development
capital that was needed to improve the productiveness of its sterling
area partners. Indeed, much of what it did send abroad was not the
result of domestic saving but capital brought back from non-sterling
countries (like Argentina).
136
As a result, investment (in Australia) was
‘incredibly and worryingly low’.
137
The finance ministers agreed that
capital had to be sought from outside the sterling area, but, as the
Australian ministers gloomily noted, it was hard to attract while ster-
ling remained a ‘soft’ currency. And so the circle was closed. It was
hard to escape the conclusion that its long convalescence had prepared
Britain’s commercial empire – the central pillar of British strength in the
world – not for rejuvenation but for premature senility.
At almost exactly the same moment, the same wasting dis-
ease became painfully visible at the heart of Britain’s Middle Eastern
imperium. As we have seen, quite apart from the value of the Suez Canal
Zone as the main base from which Britain’s regional presence could be
supplied and reinforced in time of war, and the need to use Egyptian
resources and assets outside the Canal Zone, the Anglo-Egyptian rela-
tionship remained the centrepiece of Britain’s Middle East influence.
It was hard to imagine how that could survive the defection of Egypt
from the British connection. That was why the British were so anxious
to reconcile Cairo to their military claims. But they remained surpris-
ingly confident that they could sit out the storm in the short term at
least. In the last resort, or so they assumed, they could seal off the
Canal Zone and send troops into Cairo and Alexandria to protect their
citizens and enforce a change of government. But, between October
1951 and January 1952, a revolution took place in Anglo-Egyptian
relations.
It was triggered by the treaty abrogation that Nahas had
announced. At first, the British were tempted to dismiss it as simply
‘hot air’. But it soon became clear that something much more than an
564 / ‘The great liner is sinking’
empty gesture had happened. Egyptian labour disappeared from the
Canal Zone. The police became hostile.
138
British soldiers began to be
murdered. The Canal Zone, remarked the Middle East Office in Cairo,
‘can no longer be considered a base for the defence of the Middle East,
having lost its wider operational potential’.
139
The British cast around
for remedial measures. Reinforcements were sent out to Cyprus, but,
since the strategic reserve in Britain was already exhausted, flooding the
Canal Zone with troops was not a viable option. Financial sanctions
against Egypt were considered and rejected.
140
Sealing off the Canal
Zone under a military government would impose administrative com-
plications that were ‘almost intolerable’, said the Chiefs of Staff.
141
Instead, the local commander-in-chief was empowered to disarm the
troublesome Egyptian police. Then came disaster. At Ismailia on the
Canal, on 25 January 1952, the British stormed the police station,
killing more than forty Egyptians. The next day, in Cairo, there were
violent anti-British disturbances in which British civilians were killed
and British property wrecked including the famous Shepheard’s Hotel.
The British had long had a plan in case of such an event. Operation
‘Rodeo’ would bring British troops from the Canal Zone to the city. But
now the generals held back. They could not be sure to keep the Canal
Zone secure and have an adequate force to make ‘Rodeo’ work. For
two things had changed. The first was the rise of a popular nationalism,
a form of mass opposition that the British had not faced since 1919.
The second was the risk of a clash with the Egyptian army, on whose
tacit acquiescence the British had always previously counted. The imme-
diate crisis blew over; Nahas was dismissed by Farouk; the desultory
talks were resumed. But, almost unnoticed, the armed strength that had
underlain British influence in Egypt since 1882, and which had given
the Residency its ‘whisper behind the throne’, was melting away. The
decolonisation of Egypt that Nasser completed was now under way.
‘Thinking over our difficulties in Egypt’, remarked a senior For-
eign Office official, ‘it seems to me that the essential difficulty arises from
the very obvious fact that we lack power. The Egyptians know this, and
that accounts for their intransigence.’
142
The ‘basic and fundamental
aim of British policy’, he went on, ‘is to build up our lost power. Once
we despair of doing so, we shall never attain this aim.’ It was a lapidary
comment on the British dilemma: ‘We are not strong enough to carry
out the policies needed if we are to retain our position in the world; if
we show weakness, our position in the world diminishes.’
143
Until the