Gentlemanly Capitalism Research Articles

Gentlemanly capitalism in New Zealand

This article responds to McAloon's contribution to this journal criticising the argument advanced by P.J. Cain and myself in British Imperialism. McAloon's research on Canterbury and Otago merits serious attention, but it is argued here that he is mistaken in claiming that it disproves the case we made for applying our concept of gentlemanly capitalism to New Zealand. Both the structure of ‘settler capitalism’ and the social characteristics of the settlers themselves provide a good fit with our interpretation. Nevertheless, McAloon deserves credit for putting this subject on the agenda, and it is to be hoped that other historians of New Zealand (and also of Australia) will now reconsider the relationship between the ‘rules of the game’ established by the imperial centre and the degrees of dependence experienced by the constituent parts of the empire.

‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’ and ‘Classical’ Theories of Economic Imperialism

‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’ and ‘Classical’ Theories of Economic Imperialism

Gentlemanly Capitalism and Settler Capitalists: Imperialism, Dependent Development and Colonial Wealth in The South Island of New Zealand

This article engages with Cain and Hopkins’ analysis of the British Empire, and the closely related literature of settler capitalism. For Cain and Hopkins, the Empire was dominated by gentlemanly rentiers, and the dominions were run by a dependent and collaborating elite. This paper rests in the first instance on a comprehensive analysis of wealthy settlers in the South Island of New Zealand. In noting that most settlers who became wealthy were not of gentlemanly origins, and that even those colonial financiers most closely tied to metropolitan capital pursued local agendas, it will suggest that the historiography under consideration needs to be balanced by a better understanding of the dynamic relationship between colonies and the metropolitan economy. The paper argues that settler capitalism is a model worth using, but that its utility will be greatly extended by a focus on settler capitalists as well as settler capitalism.

Economic appeasement or economic nationalism? A political perspective on the British Empire, Japan, and the rise of Intra‐Asian Trade, 1933–37

Over the last decade the study of the international history of East Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has undergone rapid change. This has occurred largely for two reasons: first, the appearance of new archival materials, particularly recently released documents from Taipei, Beijing and Moscow; and second, the rise of new methodological approaches, especially the growing interest in cultural history. These developments have led to significant revisions, such as a greater emphasis on the triangular relationship between Japan, China and Russia, and an increasing awareness of the importance of social forces and popular opinion. Although these new interpretations have gained great attention, they have, however, not been the only changes. Equally significant, if not perhaps as well known among political historians, has been the emergence of a major new interpretation of East Asian economic history. Over the last two decades Japanese economic historians led by Kaoru Sugihara, Heita Kawakatsu, and Takeshi Hamashita have published work stressing the significance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of the growth of intra-Asian trade.1 Challenging the idea that economic development should be measured solely in terms of trade with the West, they have demonstrated that in this period there was a rapid development of commercial ties between the countries of South, Southeast and East Asia. This, they argue, was largely the result of the growth of manufacturing in Japan and other Asian countries and the development of intra-regiona l networks of Chinese and Indian merchants. This process took place despite the fact that formal political power over much of the region was still held by European governments, and over time the trade became so substantial that it was more important to many of the Asian states than commercial links with the West. Moreover, drawing upon the 'Gentlemanly Capitalism' model of British imperialism conceived by Cain and Hopkins, they stress

Race and the Webs of Empire: Aryanism from India to the Pacific

Race and the Webs of Empire: Aryanism from India to the Pacific Tony Ballantyne Knowledge, particularly about cultural difference, has emerged as a central theme in recent studies of imperialism. Largely, if not entirely, encouraged by Foucault’s work on power/knowledge and Said’s paradigmatic studies of Orientalism, scholars from across the humanities have increasingly highlighted the centrality of the cultural projects of empire building. Studies of colonial disciplines (from cartography to psychology), re-readings of canonical texts, and a new recognition of cultural manifestations of imperial ideologies (from advertisements for soap to the place of Shakespeare in colonial classrooms) have fundamentally reshaped our understandings of the sources, structure and consequences of imperialism. 1 Central to this new scholarship has been a fundamental reappraisal of racial thought: no longer some epiphenomenona of empire, race — a concept that emerged unevenly over time and space — is now seen as being fundamental to the discourses of European imperialism from the sixteenth century on. 2 This essay re-examines the development of Aryanism within the British empire in the long nineteenth-century. A range of case studies have identified Aryanism — the notion that certain communities shared cultural features as a result of their sharing a common ‘Aryan stock’ — as one of the most significant racializing discourses in contexts as divergent as India and Nigeria, Ireland and Hawai’i, Argentina and New Zealand. 3 Rather than simply recounting the development of this domain of knowledge narrowly within one colony, this essay argues that a careful examination of Aryanism reveals the profoundly mobile character of racial knowledge and discourses about cultural difference within the British empire, a reality that necessitates a trans-national analysis imperial knowledge production. To achieve this end, this essay reevaluates the place of Aryanism in the historiography of South Asia and the Pacific, revealing the important elisions that can arise from a ‘national’ history of racial thought. By sketching the conscious transplantation of ethnological models drawn from British India to the New Zealand frontier in the second half of the nineteenth century, I hope to recover the important networks and exchanges that shaped the empire and to underscore the fundamentally intertextual nature of colonial knowledge. Before mapping these ‘webs of empire’, it is important to begin by sketching the inherited spatial models that order most studies of British imperialism. I. The spatial imagination of imperial/colonial histories Over the last decade there have been growing calls for trans-national histories and many historians have insisted that the construction of new analytical models that recover the movement of people, ideas, ideologies, commodities and information across the borders of the nation-states are urgently needed in this global moment. Traditionally, of course, history is conceived of as a temporal discipline in which the fundamental structures of research, analysis, and narrativization are concerned with change over time. But, as we are increasingly aware, history is also a spatial discipline and historical knowledge is also structured by spatial parameters, whether these units are continental, cultural, regional, or, most frequently, national. Calls to fundamentally reorder the spatial basis of historical writing and write histories that look beyond the nation pose a fundamental challenge to history, a discipline that has produced enabling narratives for so many nations and that continues to depend heavily upon state-sponsored archives, institutions, and funding. Breaking this ‘narrative contract’ — to borrow Sudipta Kaviraj’s memorable phrase — between history and the nation-state is difficult, yet this project is pressing as we seek to understand both the complex forces that have framed the asymmetries of our contemporary world and the future shape of the discipline of history itself. 4 The need to revisit what we might term the ‘spatial imagination’ of historical writing is particularly vital within the specific context of British imperial and post-colonial history, as the vast majority of historians continue to use one of two models. The first and perhaps dominant historiographical tradition has been the production of metropolitan-focused imperial histories, a tradition revivified by Peter Cain and A. G. Hopkins’s model of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ and, more recently, by David Hancock’s study of the role of London merchants in the integration of an eighteenth-century Atlantic...

The economics of the British stage, 1800-1914

List of illustrations List of figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations Note to readers Introduction Part I. Competition: Theatre and Laissez-Faire: 1. Monopoly and free trade: fair and unfair competition 2. Property and the stakes of private interest 3. Industrial regulation and safety 4. Marginal economics, national interest and the half-naked woman Part II. Ownership and Entrepreneurialism: 5. Opportunity, finance and failure 6. Profit 7. Business structures 8. Gender, 'gentlemanly capitalism' and the wo-manager Part III. Industrialization, Commodity Capitalism and Theatre Production Systems: 9. Labour and labourers 10. Theatre as cultural capital Appendix: 'To the public. Charles Kemble's mercies or the '999' increasing' Notes Bibliography Index.

BUSINESS AND EMPIRE: A REASSESSMENT OF THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF BURMA IN 1885

Drawing upon recently published research and previously unseen archival sources, the article provides a new explanation of the British conquest of Burma in 1885. Previous explanations have attributed British motives for conquest to either the need to defend the eastern borders of Britain's Indian empire from French expansion in mainland south-east Asia, or the desire to open Burma and China to British trade and investment at a time of perceived economic depression. The article contends that while French expansionism certainly loomed large in the British decision to invade, commercial interests and considerations were pivotal in persuading the British government of the French threat. In particular, the role of London-based ‘gentlemanly capitalists’ in shaping government policy is emphasized and explored. In the process, new insights into the methods and strategies of City financiers are revealed. Besides contributing to the debate surrounding the ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ thesis of Cain and Hopkins, the article also evaluates the importance of socio-economic conditions in Burma itself as a factor which stimulated British expansion.

Shorter notice. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism. The New Debate on Empire. RE Dumett [ed

Journal Article Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism. The New Debate on Empire. RE Dumett [ed] Get access DK Fieldhouse DK Fieldhouse Jesus College, Cambridge, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 115, Issue 461, April 2000, Pages 487–488, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/115.461.487 Published: 01 April 2000

Shorter notice. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism. The New Debate on Empire. RE Dumett [ed

Journal Article Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism. The New Debate on Empire. RE Dumett [ed] Get access DK Fieldhouse DK Fieldhouse Jesus College, Cambridge, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 115, Issue 461, April 2000, Pages 487–488, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/115.461.487 Published: 01 April 2000

Dumett (Raymond E.), ed. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism. The New Debate on Empire

Dumett (Raymond E.), ed. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism. The New Debate on Empire

The Pyrrhic Victory of Gentlemanly Capitalism: The Financial Elite of the City of London, 1945-90, Part 2

The Pyrrhic Victory of Gentlemanly Capitalism: The Financial Elite of the City of London, 1945-90, Part 2

The Pyrrhic Victory of Gentlemanly Capitalism: The Financial Elite of the City of London, I945-90

For the last 50 years, the remarkable achievement of the City of London in maintaining itself as one of the world's principal financial capitals has stood out in contrast to the dismal failure of many other once-leading sectors of the British economy. It has been an achievement against the odds, despite first the dissolution of the British Empire's worldwide political and trading network and then the crumbling of its home base in the domestic manufacturing economy. It was a success which demanded a radical transformation of the City's financial techniques and culture: a transformation from the old slowmoving system based on the mutual trust of a gentlemanly British elite, to an incessantly demanding struggle with the ruthless instabilities of today's open global markets. Yet it was that elite itself which carried through these changes: changes which have given the City a chance of maintaining its international role into the next century, but at the expense of relinquishing its own dominance.

‘Gentlemanly capitalism’, intra‐Asian trade and Japanese industrialisation at the turn of the last century

Abstract Recent scholarship, led by several Japanese economic historians, has offered new perspective on Asian economic history. They argue that the economic growth of Asian countries was led by the intra‐Asian trade which began to grow rapidly around the turn of the century. On the other side, prominent British imperial historians, P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins present a provocative thesis, ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas’, in which they emphasise the leading role of service sectors rather than that of British industry for reassessing the nature of British expansion overseas. The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the British attitude to Japan and China at the turn of the century in the light of these important historiographical revisions in Great Britain as well as in Japan. By this stage, Japan had achieved an impressive economic growth, or a rapid industrialisation. The traditional view has been that Britain and other Great Powers had generally discouraged industrialisation i...

Towards a ‘Hindoo Marriage’. Anglo-Indian Monetary Relations in Interwar India, 1917–35

A puzzling feature of interwar Anglo-Indian economic relations is the contrast between Whitehall's relatively hands-off attitude to Indian tariff policies, and its insistent hands-on approach to monetary policy issues in the colony. Both sets of issues were, at various times, equally contentious. But while Britain's strategic objectives in India paved the way for the Fiscal Autonomy Convention, the road towards a similar monetary ‘convention’ was never taken. Rather, thanks to Britain's external financial problems, the interwar decades saw initially a tightening, and later a refinement, of London's control over Indian monetary policies. This paper hopes to set out the processes at work more clearly than has been attempted before, and to account for them. The interpretation offered here is consistent with the ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ explanation of British imperialism during the interwar years, and of the postwar de-colonization process.

IX Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas II: New imperialism 1850–1945

Abstract The forces presented by what we have termed gentlemanly capitalism rose to prominence in the late 17th century. 1 At their centre stood the powerful landed interest which combined, in the manner of samurai, the prestige of inherited social position with progressive, market-oriented ambitions. Closely associated with the landed elite, and offering it both support and defence, were the “new men” of the emerging service sector, whose innovations in finance, distribution and the professions generated wealth and eventually bestowed social recognition. Important though the manufacturing sector was, it was also less dynamic than is often supposed, and its representatives lacked both prestige and direct access to the “charmed circles” where policy was formulated. In the 18th century, England's mission was concerned less with world conquest than with entrenching domestic political order in the aftermath of the Civil War. But political imperatives at home rapidly became linked to economic and military succ...

VIII Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas I. the old colonial system 1688–1850

Abstract In an earlier survey of the history of British imperialism we suggested that closer attention should be given to the connexions between the slow and uncertain development of British industry and the pace and direction of overseas expansion.1 P.J. Cain & A.G. Hopkins, “The political economy of British expansion overseas, 1750–1914”, Economic History Review, 33, 1980, pp 463–90. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the ESRC for personal research grants in aid of this work in 1981 and 1982–83. We also argued that insufficient regard had been paid to the influence of non-industrial forms of capitalism on both overseas development and imperial policy. In the course of that survey, the former problem was dealt with in some detail, whereas the latter was treated briefly and tentatively. The purpose of the present article is to correct this deficiency and to advance a new perspective on British imperialism for the period between the Glorious Revolution and the Second World War.

‘Gentlemanly capitalism’ and empire: The British experience since 1750?∗

(1990). ‘Gentlemanly capitalism’ and empire: The British experience since 1750? The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 265-295.

Investment and empire in the later eighteenth century: East India stockholding, 1756-1791

In recent years important advances have been made in our understanding of the relationship between Britain's overseas empire and the metropolitan or domestic economy. In an important article Cain and Hopkins have attempted to establish a 'connexion between gentlemanly capitalism based on landed wealth and overseas expansion, particularly in its imperialist forms, between i688 and i850'. They present a convincing alternative to the view that the 'link between the metropolitan economy and imperialism was forged by the industrial revolution', and they focus instead upon 'the influence of non-industrial capitalism on both overseas development and imperial policy'.3 In a later article their interpretative framework has been extended to cover the period to I945.4 Secondly, Davis and Huttenback have provided us with an exhaustive study of the 'profitability of empire' during the second half of the nineteenth century.5 Like Cain and Hopkins they focus on non-industrial capitalism, and in particular on the portfolio finance of the London stockmarket between i86o and I9I2. They have presented quantitative evidence on a massive scale, and thanks to their labours we now know a great deal about the volume and direction of imperial investment, the rate of return, and exactly who saw fit to invest in empire. Unfortunately, the last remark cannot be held to apply to our knowledge of imperial finance in the later eighteenth century. Of course, the stockmarket was then still in its infancy and there were relatively few imperial or overseas investment opportunities available to ordinary British investors. But, even so, important territorial advances were being made in various quarters of

Economic Aspects of the Dutch Expansion in Indonesia, 1870–1914

The time appears due for a reappraisal of the economic argument in the imperialism debate. For decades the standard procedure has been first to refute Hobson and Lenin on empirical grounds and then to present a non-economic explanation for the European overseas expansion during the era of modern imperialism (1870–1914). Presently a new paradigm is gaining acceptance. It is an approach which puts the emphasis solidly back on the economic side but without its Marxist connotations. Cain and Hopkins took the lead with their theory of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’; they link the landed South and City finance with Imperial policy thus explaining overseas expansion by referring to macroeconomic changes at home. Davis and Huttenback associate the profitability of Empire investments with their ‘two-England hypothesis’ for British business: London investors stood apart, profited more and exerted a greater influence. It is my intention to show that a similar type of non-Marxist economic argument applies also to the case of Dutch expansion in the Indonesian archipelago at the time of modern imperialism.

Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas II: New Imperialism, 1850-1945

Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas II: New Imperialism, 1850-1945