Darwin J. The Empire Project. The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970
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645 / Reluctant retreat, 1959–1968
that Britain could hold its old place in the world, the public reaction
was surprisingly muted. Pricking the bubble of Conservative outrage
in the Commons debate, Wilson quoted the views of the Opposition
defence spokesman uttered twelve months before. ‘The “world role”
East of Suez’, Enoch Powell had remarked in the Spectator magazine,
‘was a piece of humbug.’
91
In fact, Conservative (and conservative)
opinion had already begun to edge its way back from the idea of the
Commonwealth as a key British interest and a pivot of policy.
The main reason for this was what became known as the
‘Rhodesian problem’. As we have seen, dissolving the Central African
Federation in 1963 had left a difficult legacy. Two of its territories
(Zambia and Malawi) were given independence in 1964 as black major-
ity states. But, in Southern Rhodesia (which adopted the shorter name
‘Rhodesia’), a white minority still ruled under the 1961 constitution
that London had approved. The constitution was ‘colour-blind’: unlike
in South African, blacks could vote but only if they met stringent qual-
ifications in education and property. Hence the prospect of a black
majority among voters, let alone in the parliament, lay in the indef-
inite (but far-distant) future. Nevertheless, the colony’s white leaders
insisted that, since they had been almost completely self-governing since
the 1920s, their claim to independence was as strong as (they meant
much stronger than) that of the African colonies where self-rule had
arrived in a rush with minimal warning. They were also convinced that
at the break-up of the federation they had been promised independence
by R. A. Butler, then the Secretary of State for Central Africa, in a
verbal undertaking ‘in a spirit of trust’. (No documentary evidence has
turned up, but the utter conviction of Winston Field, then Rhodesian
premier, and Ian Smith, his deputy, that the promise had been made
was an awkward political fact.
92
) London’s main difficulty lay in the
international political climate of 1964–5. With the rapid conversion of
almost all of Black Africa into sovereign states, and the near universal
hostility towards apartheid South Africa, British complicity in creating
a second independent ‘settler’ regime was almost unthinkable. Yet the
British had no hope of persuading the whites in Rhodesia that an early
take-over by African nationalist leaders would not quickly lead to the
murderous chaos that they saw in the Congo. This was the dilemma
that Labour inherited from the Conservative government, which had
carefully prevaricated. What made it worse was that, short of with-
holding ‘legitimate’ independence, Harold Wilson and his colleagues
646 / ‘The great liner is sinking’
had very few means of applying pressure on the whites who controlled
internal security and had their own (small) army.
In the year of arduous negotiation that preceded ‘UDI’ – the
Rhodesians’ ‘unilateral declaration of independence’ on 11 November
1965 – both sides tried to wear each other down. The key issue was
how far the 1961 constitution should be revised to make it accept-
able to the Rhodesian African nationalists. The British idea was that a
new royal commission (like the Monckton Commission) should decide
what was acceptable and make recommendations. But, to Ian Smith
and his Cabinet (Smith was now prime minister), to hand over their
constitutional right to self-government (though not independence) to
a British-appointed commission would be to sign their political death-
warrant. The commission might dissolve their constitutional authority
as Monckton had dissolved that of the federal government. In the con-
fusion that followed, anything might happen.
93
But, if Smith could not
budge London from its demand for a commission, Wilson for his part
made a crucial admission – that Britain would not use military force
to impose a solution. It may have been made to convince the African
leaders to accept terms they disliked. It may have reflected a common
assumption that the British armed forces would have refused to fire on
white ‘kith and kin’. Or it may have been the realistic appraisal that
taking over Rhodesia by force would have been to incur a large open-
ended commitment, military and political.
94
Since this was precisely
the moment when reducing its post-imperial hostages to fortune had
become London’s main external priority, to make such a dangerous
exception would have been very odd.
The result, nevertheless, was a diplomatic fiasco. When UDI
was declared, London replied with a broadside of bombast. It soon
became clear that its threats and sanctions had very little effect, largely
because the economic coercion of Rhodesia required the unlikely coop-
eration of its white neighbour, South Africa. What UDI did reveal
was the embarrassing impotence of the Labour government in London,
whose ‘world-role’ fell short of dealing with ‘rebels’ in its constitutional
backyard. Worse still, it exposed it to a torrent of criticism – turning
into abuse – from Britain’s Commonwealth ‘partners’. At the Com-
monwealth prime ministers conferences – once the arena where British
world-leadership was reassuringly paraded – Harold Wilson and his
colleagues now found themselves in the dock, charged with betrayal
of Commonwealth ideals, harangued on the need to show courage and
647 / Reluctant retreat, 1959–1968
take action. After two ill-fated attempts at a compromise settlement in
1966 and 1968 (the ‘Tiger’ and ‘Fearless’ talks at sea off Gibraltar),
Wilson abandoned hope of a deal.
95
But the effect was not simply to
embarrass his government and expose its shortcomings. The spectacle
of Commonwealth countries, whose political record fell far short of
ideal, pressing for military action and denouncing British ‘complicity’
in a racist regime, transformed British public attitudes to the Com-
monwealth idea, and nowhere more than in the Conservative party,
where grass-roots sympathy for the Rhodesian whites was especially
strong.
96
Reinforced by the declining importance of Commonwealth
trade and investment, and the association of the Commonwealth with
black immigration into Britain (1968 was the year of Enoch Powell’s
speech on the ‘rivers of blood’), it helped to erase with extraordinary
speed the long-standing connection between patriotic feeling in Britain
and loyalty to the Commonwealth as the offspring of empire.
The dramatic announcement on withdrawal from east of Suez
thus coincided with a wider shift in the thinking of both political
‘insiders’ and public opinion at large. But, without the ‘world role’,
the cherished illusion of close Anglo-American partnership and the
claim to Commonwealth leadership, almost nothing was left of the
Churchillian statecraft to which all post-war governments had tried
to adhere, let alone of the late-Victorian Weltpolitik on which it was
based. The policy-makers cast around in confusion. Official commit-
tees debated which British interests deserved recognition. An inane map
was devised in the Foreign Office purporting to show on an imaginary
scale which countries were important to Britain. Predictably, the United
States and Europe were huge. Revealingly, the Falkland Islands, scene of
Britain’s last and most dangerous colonial war (in 1982), were omitted
completely.
97
Salisbury (who knew a thing or two about cartographic
delusions) would have put it in the waste-paper basket. In this mael-
strom of uncertainties, official opinion fell back on two axioms. The
first was that economic recovery was the root of all policy; the second
that the only future for Britain lay in joining the European Commu-
nity, at whatever the cost. The Labour government had made a second
abortive application in 1967, dismissed with a shrug from De Gaulle. It
fell to their Conservative successors, once De Gaulle had left power (and
also the world), to win this ultimate prize. In the Heath government’s
white paper proclaiming Britain’s new course, few tears were shed over
all that was left of the old British connections. The Commonwealth, it
648 / ‘The great liner is sinking’
said, did not ‘offer us, or indeed wish to offer us alternative and compa-
rable opportunities to membership of the European Community. The
member countries of the Commonwealth are widely scattered in dif-
ferent regions of the world and differ widely in their political ideas
and economic development. With the attainment of independence their
political relations with the United Kingdom have greatly changed and
are still changing.’
98
As a comprehensive repudiation of the old British
‘system’, that would be hard to improve on. With the white paper’s
publication in 1971, the imperial idea finally ceased to be a political
force. It sailed away to the Coast of Nostalgia.
CONCLUSION
The argument of this book has been that the fate of the world-system
in which the British Empire was embedded was largely determined by
geopolitical forces over which the British themselves had little control.
The distribution of wealth and power within and between the two ends
of Eurasia, in East Asia and Europe, created the openings and then
closed off the freedoms that the British had exploited with striking suc-
cess since the early nineteenth century. Once the politics and economics
of both these great regions had turned against them, and wrecked the
fine balance of naval and military power on which the defence of their
interests depended, they had little chance of surviving at the head of an
independent world-system. Perhaps they might have hoped to ride out
the storm. But the strategic catastrophe of 1938 to 1942, and its devas-
tating impact on the central elements of their system, were together so
crushing that recovery (after 1945) was merely short-lived remission.
Of course, the British were not just victims of blind fate, benign
or malign. They had taken a hand in prompting the geopolitical changes
from which they had gained, although (as at Trafalgar) perhaps more to
ward off an imminent danger than to create a main chance. The peculiar
trajectory of the British economy before 1800, and the accompanying
emergence of a ‘polite and commercial society’, were essential founda-
tions. By then, British commerce was geared to the long-distance traffic
that had roused Adam Smith’s ire, and the long credit advances required
by the cycle of commodity trades, including the slave trade. The infra-
structure to exercise maritime power in almost every part of the world
was already in place, including the systematic compilation of naviga-
tional data. The British consumer was already addicted to a range of
exotic new tastes, both cultural and physical, and easily tempted with
more. Economic and religious transformation had created a restless,
650 / Conclusion
competitive, pluralistic and (amongst a critical number) guilt-ridden
society, harbouring rival visions of empire and of Britain’s true place
in a world needing redemption. It had the means and the motive to
widen the bridgeheads already established in the world beyond Europe,
and to send in new ‘landings’ for commerce, conversion and coloni-
sation. All that was needed was the (vague) promise of gain in new
regions opened up to commercial or spiritual enterprise. In the 1820s
and 1830s, a torrent of travellers’ ‘narratives’, seductive prospectuses,
missionary reports and settler propaganda proclaimed a world that was
ready for a British invasion.
Nineteenth-century British leaders shared much of the intox-
ication that these visions had stirred among the key interest groups
behind Britain’s global expansion. Yet they were generally cautious
about the government’s part. They commanded a strong and well-
funded state apparatus, but were wary that public opinion might turn
against an unlucky venture abroad. They subscribed to ‘Gladstonian’
finance which implied a steady reduction of the government’s share of
the national income, and a negative view of costly long-term commit-
ments. Hence they preferred to avoid direct confrontation with large
or resilient states in Europe or Asia and intuitively grasped the signal
advantage of an ‘intermediate’ situation, neither fully ‘continental’, nor
entirely peripheral to the rest of Eurasia. They saw – or sensed – that
this geostrategic prudentialism was vital to the stability of Britain’s
global connections, because these depended so much upon cooperation
and partnership, not coercion and conquest. The settlement colonies,
effectively self-governing from the 1830sand1840s, could not be
conscripted into imperial wars, or made to pay for their strategic
defence – it was hard enough to extract any real contribution to wars
fought on their soil and in defence of their (settler) interests. India,
which could, was viewed contradictorily as an economic and military
asset, and as a strategic and political risk. Its loyalty and quiescence
could never be taken for granted after 1857. The dense web of com-
mercial connections was best left to itself under the regime of free
trade, thought most British leaders. They knew that commercial suc-
cess, and the commanding role of the City, depended on ‘confidence’ –
not least foreign confidence in British public finances. They were ready
to throw in their diplomatic resources, and sometimes the navy, to
persuade ‘recalcitrant’ states to open their markets, although rarely in
cases where they would meet strong resistance or risk a dispute with
651 / Conclusion
another great power. They pressed British officials in India and else-
where to enlarge the consumption of British manufactures by heavy
spending on railways (and heavy borrowing from London). But they
were usually reluctant to champion particular companies (unless they
could serve a larger objective) and suspected the motives of British mer-
chants and capitalists as much as they did those of settlers, planters
and missionaries (a missionary, quipped Lord Salisbury, was ‘a reli-
gious Englishman with a mission to offend the religious feelings of the
natives’).
1
So British ‘policy’ was often in a state of unease between the
need to defend ‘British interests’ abroad and official suspicion that the
effort to do so would bring loss and embarrassment.
In the long nineteenth century, this hand-to-mouth practice had
favoured the growth of a decentralised system. It was glued together
by a mixture of commercial self-interest, ethnic solidarity, ideological
sympathy and the common dependence of Indian Civilians and settlers
on London’s reserve bank of military force. It permitted the florescence
of colonial societies largely left free to manage their local affairs: even
the Indian Civilians enjoyed much of this freedom. Despite the feeling
of strain in the last decades of the century (the subject of professional
exaggeration by soldiers, sailors and diplomats), Britain’s long lead in
extra-European expansion allowed it to ride out the squalls of imperi-
alist rivalry up to 1914. The prospects of a continental coalition against
them (the great British fear) receded to vanishing point. The First World
War marked a critical shift, though its full meaning was veiled. The huge
war contributions of the dominions and India affected their ‘British con-
nections’ after 1918: encouraging dominion ‘isolationism’ and Indian
resentment at an imposed ‘war economy’ so poorly requited by politi-
cal change. Britain’s revenge on the Turks, evicting the Sultan from his
centuries-old capital, roused the fury of Muslims in India, exploited by
Gandhi in the ‘non-cooperation’ campaign. Indian politics were radi-
calised by religious emotion – a syndrome that endured. Britain’s large
war debts, the drain of dollar securities, and the general disruption of
markets and currencies, destroyed vital parts of the global economic
regime on which London, and Britain, had thrived. The general eco-
nomic collapse of 1929–32 seemed to bury the old landscape of free
trade imperialism, the commercial foundation of British world power.
Protection, barter and blocs arrived to replace it.
Despite this deepening gloom, the inter-war years conveyed
an ambivalent message. Cassandras foretold an ever steeper path of
652 / Conclusion
decline. A failure of will had cost the British their dominion in India,
declared one ex-official in a widely read book. To Churchill (and
others), the appeasement of nationalism was a betrayal of trust (‘the
great liner is sinking in a calm sea . . . but the captain, and the officers
and the crew are all in the saloon dancing to the jazz band’).
2
To a
vociferous body of ‘Die Hards’ (and their less vocal supporters inside
and outside the government), the same symptoms of weakness were
alarmingly visible in many other parts of the system, especially in Ire-
land, Egypt and China. But, to much seasoned opinion, this was simply
hysterical, the over-reaction of old men in a hurry. An impressive array
of authorities rejected the view that the fundamentals had changed.
Milner and Curzon, MacDonald and Baldwin, Simon and Halifax, Hai-
ley and Lampson, among many others, acknowledged that the old meth-
ods of imperial command could no longer be used. But they insisted that
Britain still enjoyed the ability to manage what mattered: those aspects
of politics that affected the stability of its system as a whole. To their
nationalist opponents before the Second World War, this machiavellian
capacity seemed frustratingly real.
This confident view now looks strangely myopic. But there
was much to encourage it. Despite economic hard times, Britain was
not obviously weaker in the inter-war years than before 1914.The
British had paid out the premium for more strategic insurance in the
ex-Ottoman Middle East: a ‘great glacis of desert and Arabs’ (in Attlee’s
later phrase
3
) to protect their imperial communications by both sea and
air. They had appeased Indian nationalism, but also divided it by Byzan-
tine manoeuvres, leaving themselves free to command India’s most vital
resource – its military manpower. The white dominions acknowledged,
with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that their British connection lay at
the centre of their external relations, and, in three of the five, that their
British identity was the cardinal fact of their national existence. Of the
trade and monetary blocs into which the world was divided after 1931,
the combined sterling bloc and imperial preference system seemed the
best placed to restore its members’ prosperity and escape economic
disaster. If British power was constrained, so was that of other great
states. Indeed, the deep mutual suspicions that divided all the other
great powers seemed to suggest that, in relative terms, the British sys-
tem still enjoyed considerable room for manoeuvre. In a fragmenting
world, drifting towards autarky, the rapid implosion of the British
world-system was among the least likely scenarios.
653 / Conclusion
In fact, a total collapse was only barely averted between 1938
and 1942. The economic, political and ideological revolutions set off
by the war and supercharged by depression convulsed much of Eurasia
after 1930. To an extent that many contemporaries found hard to
discern, they created a vortex of geopolitical change and destroyed
almost all means of arresting its progress. At both ends of Eurasia, the
local power balances on which the British relied broke down almost
completely amid bitter mutual mistrust. Anglo-American friendship,
which might have taken their place (and to which some British looked),
survived in the circles of naval officers and financiers. But its formal (and
effective) expression as a diplomatic alignment was blocked by disputes
over debts, and the antipathy of important American interests towards
the British world-system. The ethos of empire and its protectionist
practice (through the Ottawa duties and the cooperation of sterling
economies) were bound to stick in their craw. As a result, the status quo
in world politics was defended inadequately by two reluctant associates,
the British and the French, each of which doubted the other’s good
faith and military means. This proved no real protection against a
violent geopolitical storm whose lightning assaults and sudden change
of direction baffled most onlookers. With France’s sudden collapse in
June 1940, the central assumption of British grand strategy – that the
line against Germany would be held on the mainland of Europe –
disappeared like a dream. Perhaps only the failure of their three main
assailants to combine more effectively (a function in part of their mutual
suspicions) gave the British the time to rally American help, and for that
help to arrive before it was too late.
The British system survived. But the cost of staying alive was
enormous and the collateral damage irreparable. The British were
forced to accept the early independence of India, both ‘premature’
(as they saw it) and partitioned. Any part India might play in their
post-war recovery was soon written off. The loss of the vast bulk of
their non-sterling assets (dollars above all) wrecked their balance of
payments, forced a retreat to a closed sterling zone, and (by throwing
the full burden of paying for imports on a steam-age economy near the
end of its tether after six years of war) gravely damaged the prospects
of industrial modernisation. It also transformed the terms of Anglo-
American relations making the British dependent upon American aid
as well as support for their currency – although this was offset in part
by the value of Britain’s contribution in a widening Cold War. Even
654 / Conclusion
so, to survive as a world power at all, the British were forced into
much heavier intervention in their tropical empire, with its skeletal
states; to risk a deeper involvement in the volatile Middle East just at
the time when their influence was waning; and to impose an unprece-
dented burden of military spending on their peace-time economy. In a
different geopolitical setting, they might just have remained the ‘third
world power’ and exploited American help to recoup some of their
pre-war position. But the scale of the Soviet victory in Europe and
Mao’s triumph in China – the climax of Eurasia’s twentieth-century
revolutions – ended all prospect of this. The Cold War did not end,
as Churchill had hoped, in a three-power agreement. Instead, what
remained of the British world-system was harnessed to the task of
Western ‘containment’, until the strain on British resources enforced a
final surrender in the late 1960s.
Of course, the roller-coaster of geopolitical fortune can form
only part of the story. It provided the setting for the upsurge of private
expansionist energies, the spawning of multiple ‘British connections’,
the fusing of British and local resources (willing or coerced) in an endless
variety of regional cases. It promised at one time the eventual forma-
tion of a globe-spanning ‘British world’. Ethnic populations of British
Isles origins, the mercantile classes in Britain’s commercial and cultural
spheres, and colonial elites in Asia and Africa: all might have found in
the liberal imperialism of British free trade the ideal global regime within
which to pursue their own state-building objects. To leaders as different
as Surendranath Banerjea, the Yoruba Samuel Johnson, the Xhosa John
Tengo Jabavu and the Afrikaner Jan Christiaan Smuts, this was the true
meaning of Britain’s world mission. This vision assumed that Britain
would remain strong enough to withstand hostile exogenous pressures
without visible strain. But, for all its appeal, such a global ‘common-
wealth’ under British protection was never more than a pipe-dream.
The great power arena was always too dangerous (this was London’s
view) to risk the representative politics for which Indian nationalists
were calling before 1914. Ethnic solidarities (among whites and non-
whites) sabotaged the appeal of pan-imperial citizenship or imposed on
it a narrowly racial meaning. ‘Garrison’ interests in the Civilian Raj
and the colonial dependencies successfully excluded local native elites
from political power and drove them towards an ethnic-nationalist
programme. The wealth and cultural prestige of late-Victorian Britain,
largely founded upon London’s centripetal attractions, flagged in the