Empire

Here's a book written for TV. It is filled with pictures and easy-to-read text. It was written by an up and coming British historian, who happens to be 100% true red Tory.

I have the distinct feeling that the author is a man who enjoys parades, delights in uniforms and is thrilled by the telling of adventures in India, Egypt and even Gallipoli. He follows a long tradition of reporting history as stories of battles and wars, of defeat and glory. He skips the details of the battles, the life and death struggles, instead focusing on what was won or lost at the end of it all. I suppose it is much easier to appreciate the valor, the courage, when the blood and gore is avoided. Maybe that is what historians have to do: rise above it all and give an "objective" accounting.

Prof Fergusson makes it seem all so easy. The English didn't set out to have an Empire; it just grew (like Topsy) around them. They had to solve problems to survive, so they solved the problems. Somehow the solutions made Great Britain master of the seas and a flock of Dominions and colonies on which 'the sun never set.'

Prof Fergusson specifically holds the Herzog chair as Professor of Financial History, Stern School of Business, New York University. It should be no surprise, then, that his book is punctuated with facts about the costs and benefits of Empire. He frequently tells us about the benefits of Empire to investors and capitalists (entrepreneurs).

Fergusson's specific claim is that the Empire benefited the colonies. He records a steady, net outflow of capital from the center (England) to the periphery. That outflow was made possible by the steady, controlled conditions of colonial life under British rule. The capital provided the colonies improved trade, productivity, and business profits; consequently, higher living standards.

In comparison, Fergusson shows that former British colonies, especially in Africa, lost their advantaged incomes and wealth (relative to England) after being set free. It was British rule that made them better off, and that is a reason why such places should be colonies, not independent States.

In concluding, Fergusson sets out this curious discussion:

"The economic historian David Landes recently drew up a list of measures which 'the ideal growth-and-development' government would adopt. Such a government, he suggests, would

1. secure rights of private property, the better to encourage saving and investment;

2. secure rights of personal liberty ... against both the abuses of tyranny and ... crime and corruption;

3. enforce rights of contract;

4. provide stable government ... governed by publicly known rules;

5. provide responsive government;

6. provide honest government ... [with] no rents to favour and position;

7. provide moderate, efficient, ungreedy government ... to hold taxes down [and] reduce the government's claim on the social surplus."

   ... from David S Landes The Wealth and Poverty of Nations 1998

 

"The striking thing about this list is how many of its points correspond to what British Indian and Colonial officials in the nineteenth and twentieth believed they were doing. The sole, obvious exceptions are points 2 and 5. Yet the British argument for postponing (sometimes indefinitely) the transfer to democracy was that many of their colonies were not yet ready for it [emphasis mine] ... "
 

... "In short, what the British Empire proved is that empire is a form of international government that can work - and not just for the benefit of the ruling power. It sought to globalize not just an economic but a legal and ultimately a political system, too."

Empire, pp 361-362

What's apparent throughout this book is the pride Fergusson has in his British compatriots, past and present. He believes what they've done has benefited the world greatly ever since QE I.

I have an entirely different take on the world's history of the last 500 years, perhaps because I am a weak-kneed, lily-livered Liberal, not a red-coated Tory. For me, there's a lot of inconvenient facts the very charming Prof Fergusson does not discuss.

For example: while he mentions many times how the New World and other places were settled by the Irish and the Scots, and he mentions their poverty as an inducement to emigrate, he does not discuss the enduring poverty of Ireland and Scotland under English rule. That poverty was especially helpful in recruiting the all-volunteer British colonial army, just as it is in America's inner cities and rural South. Surely the economic lives of England's closest neighbors have some relevance to Empire?

Sadly, once you introduce the blood and guts which paid for the Empire, it doesn't seem so clean, so great. It's the tiny problem of points 2 and 5 above; the small problem of being a free man, of living one's own life. For Imperialists, like Lady Macbeth, it is always "... out, out damned spot ..."