Great Britain and the World

Abstract

Writing from Paris to his friend Grace Norton on December 15, 1877, five days after the fall of Pleven essentially settled the Russo-Turkish War in Russia's favor, Henry James wondered how the British would take this latest snub to their Balkan designs. One has a feeling now to me it is a very painful one England will take anything/' he wrote, that over-cautious somewhat sordid counsels will always prevail. On the continent, certainly, England's ancient prestige was gone, James almost wished she would fight in a bad cause, if only to show she still could. really think we are assisting at the political decadence of our mother-land, he told his American compatriot. I must say even the 'decline' of England seems to me a tremendous even, almost, an inspiring spectacle, he added; and if the British Empire is once more to shrink up into little island, the process will be the greatest drama in history!1 As it happened, the mighty mother-land had more than a little life in her yet, against the great novelist's expectation, the British Empire was about to enter its most vigorous territorially expansive phase. But James was not wrong to anticipate either its eventual decline or the great drama shrinkage into the plethoric little island would present. As British historians often observe, Edward Gibbon gave himself over a thousand years to trace the decline fall of the Roman Empire. Had he chosen, Piers Brendon could have gotten away with fifty: the scant half century separating the transfer of power in India (1947) the last lowering of the Union Jack in Hong Kong (1997). In retrospect, it is the swiftness of the British retreat most stands out lends the fall of the Pax Britannica its historically spectacular quality.