THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 469, 18 June 1948, Page 28

THE IDEA OF EMPIRE

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HAT was the Victorian idea of empire? Probably few people would find much difficulty in giving an answer. It was, they would say, the idea of "painting the map red"; of "trade following the flag," of "the white man’s burden" of an "empire upon which the sun never sets." This is, indeed, a part of the answer which cannot be ignored. But it is not the whole answer, nor even the

most important part. The ideas of the _ late-Vic-torian imperialists — of Seeley and Froude, Disraeli and Joseph Chamberlain, Rudyard Kipling and Cecil Rhodes — are a spectacular deviation from the settled tradition of British thinking upon empire. They are not an integral part of it. To find the ideas which guided our policy and our action over most of the 19th Century (and which largely guide it today) we must go back to the first half of Queen Victoria’s reign, to a time before that typically Victorian figure, the "gentle reader,’ had begun to murmur, : Take up the White Man’s BurdenSend forth the best ye breedGo bind your sons to exile To serve your captives need Ae In those earlier years we shall find an idea of empire more modest and less condescending, more. respectful of genuine human values and less tinged with delusions of grandeur.

Such a mode of thought fits more readily into our ordinary way of political thinking. It stems from the philosophy of which Edmung Burke was the most forceful exponent. It argues that societies evolve organically, upon the basis of their own traditions and necessities, and that to impose alien institutions and controls undermines stability and the restraining force of the moral code. If such ideas are true of England, and of European countries, they are obviously true of colonies as well. But how have they ,actually formed our idea of empire, and been worked out in our imperial policy? Even now the ordinary Englishman--even the politician or the political philosopher-knows very little about the colonies. Least of all has he that intimate acquaintance with them which is needed for an understanding of their ways of thought-of the subtle changes of outlook which make Australians and New Zealanders something other than "transplanted British"; or of the alien cultures of non-European peoples. In Victorian times ignorance was, certainly, no less,

The answer is, of course, that our imperial thinking has always been done for us by a small minority of men who were specially concerned-men who had lived in the colonies or served at the Colonial Office, missionaries in the field or humanitarians at home, and a feW persistent travellers in distant parts of the world. Among the Victorians we have to look to men like James Stephen, Edward’ Gibbon Wakefield, David Livingstone, Goldwin Smith, Charles Dilke,

and Arthur Gordon. They are a diverse group-Stephen, the evangelical who entered the Colonial Office to fight slavery and remained to become its permanent head; Wakefield, the associate in Canada of Lord Durham .and leader in the colonisation of South Australia: and New Zealand; Livingtsone, the missionary turned explorer; Charles Dilke, the republican, who travelled round the world soon after going down from Cambridge and took England by storm on his return with his book Greater Britain; Arthur Gordon, the Earl of Aberdeen’s youngest son, who abandoned a political career at home for one in colonial administration. Perhaps the most interesting of themsall is the penetrating and pungent Goldwin Smith. He gave up the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Oxford, became one of the foundation professors at Cornell, and finally settled in Toronto. He was described by Roundell Palmer (later Lord Selborne), one of his Oxford seniors, as having more of the quality of personality which he supposed Milton to have had than anyone else he had ever met. And Matthew

Arnold considered that Parliament suffered its greatest loss by his absence from it. In earlier times it would not have been easy to apply the Burkian philosophy to colonial policy. For the colonies had formerly been valued as privileged sources of raw materials, protected markets for British manufactures, and exclusive preserves for English shipping, They had been hedged round with a mass of laws and regulations, imposed in the interests of Great Britain. But the Victorians completed the destruction of these mercantilist controls, which had begun before their time (mid-Victorian Britain could buy or sell where it would) and the colonies could go their own way. As Goldwin Smith wrote: "The time was when the universal prevalence of commercial monopoly made it well: worth our while to hold colonies in dependence for the sake of commanding their trade. But that time has gone. Trade is everywhere free, or becoming freq: wit With the fall of mercantilism, the state itself began to seem less important. In relation to empire, the Vic# torians were concerned with the spread of English civilisation, rather than with the extension of political control. This was the idea behind the theory of Wakefield and the colonial reformers of the 1830’s and 40’s. They believed in "systematic colonisation,’ by which they meant the creation of new societies abroad reproducing, so far as possible, the characteristics of England. This was what interested Goldwin Smith and Dilke, too. It was at the root of-their affection for the United States; for there millions of immigrents-not only from Great Britain, but from all Europe--were becoming assimilated to English civilisation. Gristle Into Bone If Canada, Australia and New Zealand were to emulate the United States, they must be given a fair chance. Political dependence made colonists irresponsible; it prevented the full use of their energies: "We are keeping the colonies in a perpetual state of political infancy, and preventing the gristle of their frames from being matured and hardened into’ bone." Goldwin Smith wrote that sentence in 1863. He was scarcely just to Durham and Wakefield and their friends, for their work had made the idéa of responsible government a form of political orthodoxy. The powers which were retained over the major colonies were fairly narrowly restricted. But even this was not enough; responsible government, as it was then conceived, was still a form of dependency. If the colonies were to become new nations they must be completely free; they must be given their independence. To men like Goldwin Smith and Dilke a belief in colonial separation did not thean a dislike of colonies as such. As Goldwin Smith wrote: "I am no more against colonies than I am against the solar system. I am against dependencies, when nations are fit to be independent." Nor, as we have seen, was independence a purely negative conception. It would enable the former colonies to develop, and at the same time it would ensure the preservation of friendly rellations with England, on a basis of common interests and sympathies. There was everything to gain and nothing, really, to lose. "After all," to quote Dilke, "the strongest of the arguments

in favour of separation is the somewhat paradoxical one that it would bring us a step nearer to the virtual confederation of the English race." The colonial separatists were the first to foresee the modern Commonwealth. Non-European Dependencies For the colonies of European settlement the future seemed clear. But what of the depéhdencies with a non-Euro-pean popylation — India, Ceylon, the West Indies, the settlements in West Africa? Ultimately, they too would become free nations, when their people had adjusted themselves to Western civilisation and learnt how to work a modern constitutional system. But in the meantime they needed active help. The Victorians had, indeed, inherited a strong sense of obligation towards backward peoples. Missionary expansion and the long struggle against slavery had produced a cofiviction that it was our duty to convey the. benefits of our civilisation to those who did not possess it. David Livingstone, for example, in his lectures at Oxford and Cambridge in 1857, pressed upon his hearers the duty of spreading among the Africans "those two pioneers of civilisationChristianity and commerce." Such an extension of trade and missions did not necessarily, of course, involve the acquisition of territory and the setting up of a colonial government. In fact, it was best if this step could be avoided; for then native society could adapt itself gradually to the changing needs of a new age. But sometimes annexation became unavoidable; native rulers ceased to be able to maintain law and order in the face of growing European activity. It was so in regard, to New Zealand in 1840, to Lagos in 1861, .and to Fiji in 1874. But if .non-European people came under British rule, how were they to be governed? Obviously it was not sufficient either to transfer British representative institutions or to establish some form of despotism. Both methods had been adopted in practice, but they could not satisfy an intelligent observer. Charles Dilke was greatly troubled by the problem after travelling in India; but, like most writers on the empire, he had not the experience to attempt a solution. It was left largely to men who had actually served as colonial administrators to work out this part of our imperial creed. : Pioneer in Fiji We may take as one of the most distinguished examples the contribution of Sir Arthur Gordon. He had gone to Fiji in 1875 as the first Governor of that new colony. His jdeas were already formed by experience in previous governorships. In Fiji he had the task of creating a whole system of government. When he was in England on leave in 1879 he explained and justified what he had done in an address to the Royal Colonial Institute. He pointed out how rule by even the best-intentioned of outsiders was often characterised by a "want of imagination on the part of the dominant race which prevents any conception by them of matters from the native point of view." . This lack of imagination produced friction,-which in its turn often led on to actual injustice. "Indeed it is probable," he said, "that as much real wrong has been inflicted (Continued on page 31)

The Victorians and the Empire |

(Continued from page 29) by the conscientious but narrow-minded desire to act in accordance with maxims themselves generally sound, but not of universal application, as by violence and consequent tyranny." From this analysis, it is not difficult to deduce the solution. It was the same, in essence, as that which had long been advocated for the colonies of European settlement. The people must be given responsibility, and their institutions must be in accord with their own ideas. Changes must come about in response to local demand, not to the whim of a European Governor or his home government. Upon these lines he founded his system of native administration, and it has survived, in its main outlines, to the present day. Gordon’s contribution to colonial theory was made, of course, when the mid-Victorian tradition in imperial matters was being temporarily overthrown. In 1872 Disraeli had committed the Conservative Party to a policy of imperialism. In 1876 he had, by the Royal Titles Att, made Queen Victoria Empress of India-or, in the words of a contemporary, he had "changed the sign of the Queen’s Inn to Empress Hotel Ltd." Before 1890 we were to be in- volved in the "scramble" for Africa. The causes of the change were complex, but they were mainly economic. For, from the late ’sixties onwards Britain experienced a series of depressions. It began to be realised that our industrial predominance was likely to be a temporary phenomenon. Colonies became increasingly attractive as markets and fields of investment. Fresh annexations were welcomed, and a prolonged attempt was made to tighten relations with the existing self-governing colonies. It was hoped by many that the colonies would abandon the right to make their own tariffs. And much labour was spent in drawing up paper constitutions for the federation of the empire.

Continents and Cobblestones It is obvious from these projects how wrongly the new Imperialists had gauged the temper of opinion in the colonies. But at home they had great success; and they bespattered their predecessors in the field with a liberal stream of abuse. Goldwin Smith, in particular, became the victim of a _ conventional anti-radical witch hunt. When he left Oxford one London paper had declared its satisfaction that no longer would young men of "the High Orders" be exposed to the corrupting influence of his teaching. Disraeli had greeted one of his earlier utterances with a description of him as a pedant and a prig, later he called him, amongst much else, "an itinerant spouter of stale sedition." Even in his old age, in Toronto, the Imperialists did not forget him. Perhaps it was only to be expected that a man who possessed both wit and integrity in such a high degree should have almost as many permanent enemies as Disraeli had temporary friends. Even in our own time we have not been willing to give full recognition to the contribution of the mid-Victorians to Imperial thinking. We have slowly learnt again through experience nearly all the lessons which they taught. But we still feel that, like the writers of history books, we should reserve the

topmost places in our hierarchy of } honour for the leaders of the generation which followed. We seldom possess the courage to repeat G. K. Chesterton’s observation on Cecil Rhodes. "There is nothing large," said Chesterton, "about painting the map red. It is an innocent game for children. It is just as easy to think in continents as to think in cobblestones. The difficulty comes in when we seek to know the substance of either of them." But to-day, looking back on a year which has seen the establishment of the Dominions of India and Pakistan, the grant of independence to Burma, and the attainment of dominion status by Ceylon, does it not seem that the opinions of Rhodes and his contemporaries have less to offer us than a passage such as this which Anthony Trollope wrote in 1872: "We are called upon to rule them (the colonies)-as far as we do rule them-not for our glory, but for their happiness. If we keep them, we should keep them not because they add prestige to the name of Great Britain, not because they are gems in our diadem, not in order that we may boast that the sun never sets on our dependencies, but because by keeping them we may assist them in developing their own resources. And when we part with them, as part with them we shall, let us do so with neither smothered jealousy nor open, hostility, but with a proud feeling that we are sending a son out into the world able to take his place among men."