How did Britain justify its colonial empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?
The British Empire expanded under the banner of many causes in this period. Initially, Christianisation had been the non-commercial ideology behind Empire. As the 19th century drew on, however, sectarian Christianity was eclipsed by more pragmatic doctrines. Most notably, the Empire returned to its aggressive profit-seeking roots in the latter half of the 19th century. Ideological motivations remained, however, now in the form of Scientific Racism and Rhodesian proto-Globalism.
The Clapham Sect
Early 19th century Britain saw an extraordinary religious revival. On the heels of the abolition, acolytes of Wilberforce probed the terrain for new public discourses to dominate. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ colonial possessions lent themselves to this cause. Inhabited by uncivilised heathens, the loosely knit ‘Clapham Sect’ called for state-funded ‘civilisation’ of these heathen peoples. To their dismay, however, their calls for action were met with resistance from Government. Still reeling from relentless campaigning from abolitionists, Whitehall wasn’t keen to fund missionary expeditions. Missionary George Gogerly remarked bitterly:
… missionaries had nothing to expect in the way of encouragement, either from the Government or the European inhabitants of the place. The morality of the latter was of the most questionable character, and the presence of the missionary was a check on their conduct which they did not choose to tolerate; whilst the officers of the Government looked upon them with suspicion.
Sermons given by Clapham adherents grew increasingly bellicose. They insisted Britain would be ‘punished’ lest it cease tolerating the cruelties of ‘Hindoo’ religion in India. For this reason, and his vocal distrust of orientalised ‘nabob’ elites in India, Evangelicals welcomed the appointment of Bentinck as Governor General of India. Bentinck was, unlike his predecessors, open to proactive Christianisation of India. The first item on his agenda was, quite unsurprisingly, the practice of sati. Sati, or widow burning, was illustrative of the ‘need for a civilising mission’. The horrifying practice of sati worked to crystallise the chasm between Western and Indian culture, cementing the Saidian ‘imperial difference’ or ‘otherness’ which fuelled Empire. Because the practice was so graphic and so intuitively ‘wrong’‚ zealous Evangelicals found it easy to garner popular support. Charismatic members such as Zachary Macaulay, William Wilberforce and later Charles Spurgeon created the imperialist Evangelical, who regarded imperialism as a divinely ordained duty.
In the name of furthering the ‘the moral and intellectual regeneration of the people of India’, Bentinck effected a ban of sati in 1829. Implemented under the aegis of the ‘civilising mission’, the policy constituted a revolt against the ‘commercialism of the East India Company’. Unlike the morally dubious exploits of ‘nabobs’, Bentinck’s policies were not ‘polluted’ by money. Those who criticised curtailing religious liberties were dismissed as amoral money-grubbers or ‘nabobs’. This marked an immense shift in imperial attitudes. Prior to Bentinck, imperial administration hadn’t been buttressed by an ideological framework. Granted, many such ‘frameworks’ were to come — scientific racism, Rhodesian globalism, plain Whiggism, but Clapham sectarianism was first to offer an ideological impetus for imperial expansion.
The sati ban and similar policies horrifically backfired in 1857 with the Indian Mutiny. The Mutiny itself is crucial in terms of chartering ‘justifications’ for imperial expansion. By 1850s, the cutthroat profit-seeking of 18th century imperialism was enjoying a renaissance. This renaissance largely owed to, Marxist historians would argue, the need to satiate the growing demand for investment opportunities among the capitalist classes. This kind of imperialism ran anathema to Clapham sectarianism. Unlike Macaulay or Spurgeon, investors were prepared to tolerate arcane religious practices given they didn’t impact business. The Clapham civilising mission was, therefore, increasingly regarded with suspicion by financiers. They feared curtailing religious freedoms would ultimately disrupt trade and sever business relations. A ‘civilising mission’ was still desirable, from the point of view of investors, but in a secular incarnation. Clapham sectarianism, therefore, was no longer fit to ‘lead’ the civilising mission of the 19th century.
A new, more pragmatic, secular philosophy had to take its place. The Mutiny very neatly facilitated this transition. Following the 1857 dissolution of The East India Company, Indian territories were directly subsumed under the British State. The new regime was resolved to not repeat the mistakes which had brought about the mutiny. Instead, imperial energies were redirected to maximise imperial economic output, rather than tout ideology. However, this isn’t to say that ‘ideological Empire’ was abandoned. On the contrary, Empire became more ideologically motivated in this period. Only this time, the ideological framework would be secular Whiggism where British agency would usher in an era of global democracy.
Economics, Whiggism and Rhodesian globalism
Following the Indian Mutiny, rationales for imperial expansion grew increasingly secular. Rather than imposing Christian values, the goal became to spread liberal democratic government. A very successful precedent had been set with the abolitionist movement. The fierce campaigning of Wilberforce and Grenville had the effect of leveraging British imperial might to end the slave trade, thereby illustrating the efficacy of government involvement in bettering the world. In the same way British imperial might (working together with exceptionally courageous individuals) made tremendous efforts to end the slave trade, it was now resolved to civilise heathen countries. In the words of Lord Palmerston, ‘our duty, our vocation is not to enslave, but to set free; and I may say without any vainglorious boast, or without great offence to anyone, that we stand at the head of moral, social and political civilisation. Our task is to lead the way and direct the march of other nations’. This slotted neatly into the prevailing Whiggish paradigm, wherein the world is caught up in an inexorable progress towards democracy. By projecting English Whiggism into global theatres, the whole world was to partake in the fruits of English liberal democracy. This secular ‘civilising mission’ soon came to dominate. Tales of intrepid missionaries such as Livingstone continued to enthral the penny press throughout the 1860s, but that civilising mission had largely been eclipsed by its secular counterpart by the mid 1870s. Charles Gordon and Livingstone continued the legacies of 1807, 1823 and 1833 in their efforts to disrupt the African slave trade. These efforts allowed the civilising mission to widen in scope in the mind of the public, since it afforded the secular civilising mission with the righteousness of 1807.
The most extreme manifestations of the new imperialist mentality can be seen in Cecil Rhodes, John Seeley and Joseph Chamberlain. All self-styled ‘imperial consolidationists’, they essentially advocated a Global Government under British oversight. Rhodes was undoubtedly the greatest visionary of the three. Unlike the thousands of prospectors who idolised him, he wasn’t primarily motivated by money. On the contrary, Rhodes saw himself as a messianic figure — resolutely committed to establishing a ‘World Government’. Making a profit was only a welcome bonus. He stated this explicitly in his will, wherein he bequeathed a sizeable portion of his wealth to the furtherance of global governance. A similar vision animated Whitehall imperialist-in-chief, Joseph Chamberlain in the late 1890s and the 1910s. Inspired by the theories of University of Cambridge historian Seeley, Chamberlain believed an imperial federation of British white settler were the most suited to govern the world. A British imperial federation would be the artificer of a new world order — an order no one in their right mind would refuse. The Empire would offer streamlined British administration, judicial security and democratic elections. In Rhodes’ mind certainly, a global government would work to end the internecine rivalry which had blighted all states (as well as chiefdoms and kingdoms in the orient) throughout the vast majority of human history.
This became an remarkably comprehensive ideological framework. This strictly secular ‘civilising mission’ made it much more conducive to imperial expansion. It lacked religious spirituality (which might have raised qualms), and dovetailed nicely with an investment-eager financial sector. Placing the civilising mission under the banner of an imperial federation offered a strong political vector to guide expansion. Interestingly, Rhodes wasn’t averse to putting up tariffs for traders outside Empire and Chamberlain campaigned tirelessly for Imperial Preference, or protectionism for Empire.
The imperial consolidationist mindset was, like the imperialist mindset at large, informed by ideas of Scientific Racism. Rhodes stated unabashedly that ‘[The English people] are the first race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race’. Similarly, Chamberlain proclaimed he believed ‘that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen’. A persuasive argument could be made that it was scientific racism which underpinned the new, secular ‘civilising mission’. It cloaked imperial expansion in a veil of scientific dispassion, precluding subjectivity and biases.
Imperial federalism paired with Scientific Racism proved a very potent combination. In effect, it enabled Imperial expansion to be rebranded as a form of natural selection: Having one’s homestead annexed by the British Empire constituted an improvement of the human race at large. In fact, the empire would be doing you a disservice by not annexing you. It was rationales of this nature, bolstered by spurious race ‘science’, which informed British imperial expansion towards the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century. It had been perfected to the point where it was a secular, moral imperative to conquer ‘inferior stock’ of primitive kingdoms.
Hitherto, we have isolated ideological motors of expansion from economics. These two, unsurprisingly went hand in hand. It would be very unnuanced at this point, however, to lay the blame for imperial bloodshed at the door of ill-defined ‘merchant bankers’ (as imperial historians are wont to do). Imperial historians tend to censure the jingoism of the financial elite, all the while letting the government off the hook. Government, they argue, was lobbied by financial interests and thus couldn’t be regarded as an independent actor. A very persuasive argument could be made however, that imperial expansion was largely undertaken as a misguided state-run ’economic stimulus program’. Like most politicians, British politicians entertained a fetish for exports. Here, economic factors weren’t used only to justify expansion, but to explain its necessity. Without Empire, how would Britain compete with the burgeoning industrial economies of Germany and the United States?
Unlike any previous scheme, a global Empire provided an unprecedented opportunity for raising exports. British coal replenishment for the navy was offered at virtually every port in the world. The hulls of the ships were repainted with British paint, fires were stoked with British fire irons and the crew would have had British tea with British biscuits in British porcelain cups. Every little squalid garrison in the most arid desert would house some British official — equally in need of lump sugar and starched shirts as a Londoner. The mass-emigration of English citizens to the remote recesses of Empire had a similar effect. Generously subsidised by the Government, imperial emigrants promptly began consuming British goods once they’d settled in the imperial possession of their choice. Had these same emigrants purchased British articles from within the British isles, their purchases would not have made the statistics. By displacing them beyond the English borders, the same purchases looked like an export boom, which looked very impressive when compiled in statistical compendiums.
These measures created a form of economic ‘feedback loop’. Taxes were exacted to subsidise the ‘brick and mortar’ purchases of government officials. When the government wasn’t the customer, overseas British emigrants were — this led to a certain inflation of export statistics. Such statistics was catnip for careerist politicians. Empire was an export boom. As Herbert Spencer noted, outlets for English goods were kept open regardless of the costs they incurred. Jan Morris points to the fact that coal replenishment for the navy, for instance, was emphatically praised by politicians — who conceitedly fancied themselves artificers of an economic miracle. This caricature of politicians as economic ‘miracle makers’, was used as a battering ram by Liberal debater Herbert Spencer in his criticisms of Empire. Spencer objects to the common argument that Empire secured ‘free trade’ where there otherwise would have been none:
Those holy men of whom the middle ages were so prolific seem to have delighted in exhibiting their supernatural powers on the most trifling occasions … When at a loss where to deposit his habiliments, St. Goat of Treves, would transform a sunbeam into a hat-peg … although these examples of the use of vast means for the accomplishment of insignificant ends are not quite paralleled by the exertions of Governments to secure colonial trade, the absurdity attaching to both differs only in degree.
In the one case, as in the other, an unnatural agency is employed to effect what a natural agency would effect as well. Trade is a simple enough thing that will grow up wherever these is room for it. But, according to statesmen, it must be created by a gigantic and costly machinery.
Every new outlet for English goods, kept open at no matter what cost, they think valuable.
When criticisms were levelled at imperial expansion, ‘the economic argument’ was the ultimate recourse for its defenders. Yet, as Spencer points out, this argument was largely a canard with little evidential underpinning.
A variation of this argument was revived during the post-war economic crisis of the 1940s. Rhodes and Chamberlain’s vision of transforming the Empire into a coherent economic bloc was exhumed to combat the infamous ‘dollar shortage’. The Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme was intended as a proof-of-concept project, showing that Britain could repurpose her possessions to regain her edge. Unfortunately, the project failed catastrophically. In the same way Parliament and the British public had emphatically rejected Chamberlain’s Imperial Preference doctrine, attempts to reconstruct the Imperial edifice in the image of Rhodes’ Federation were disapproved of by Parliament.
In summary, the British ‘Imperial ideology’ underwent a gradual secularisation throughout the 19th century. The Sectarian Christianity advanced by the Clapham Sect gradually made way for Rhodesian globalism and Whiggish liberal democracy. These doctrines were often buttressed by notions of Scientific Racism which afforded the civilising mission a scientific rationale, as it was seen then, impervious to subjective judgements. These ‘scientific’ pretensions rendered it a more resilient ideological framework, geared towards improving the world. When these ideas faltered, the ‘infallible’ economical argument was invoked; Empire secures free trade, opens markets to British goods — boosting exports all the while. Yet, as we have seen, this line of reasoning was largely fallacious. Their shortcomings notwithstanding, these ideological frameworks were constructed and deployed in the service of justifying imperial expansion.
Bibliography
Morris, J.,
Heaven’s Command (London: Faber and Faber, 1973)
Morris, J.,
Pax Britannica (London: Faber and Faber, 1968)
Porter, B.,
The Lion’s Share (Harlow: Pearson, 2012)
Ferguson, N.,
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2004)
Cannadine, D.,
Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (Oxford, 2001)
Spencer, H.,
Social Statics (London: Williams and Northgate, 1892)
