Imperial Connections Research Articles

BRITISHNESS IN RECENT AUSTRALIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

Australian public debate in the 1990s was dominated by issues surrounding the ‘impending’ republic. At the same time, Australian historiography experienced a return in the attention of historians to Australia's relations and ties with Great Britain, paralleling the increasing interest of Australians in severing the remaining constitutional links with the United Kingdom. Australian ‘Britishness’ has, unarguably, been a common theme in many contemporary histories. In subjects ranging from war, ‘dedominionization’, and republicanism, historians have noted with interest the challenges in history which have faced the imperial connection in Australia. This paper reviews the exploration of Britishness in recent historiography, and pays particular attention to a few key publications.

The West and the Third World: Trade, Colonialism, Dependence, and Development (review)

Fieldhouse's historical narrative on the imperial connections between the West and the rest of the world over the past two centuries or so falls short as a comprehensive history of the topic. In recent years, for example, the field of imperial history has been overtaken by postmodern analyses focusing on cultural encounters. Much of this postcolonial scholarship has contributed significantly to our understanding of the imperial experience; some of it is mystifying and generally incomprehensible. Regardless, Fieldhouse completely avoids the literature on postcolonialism for he admits to have read little of it. In keeping with his earlier work, including Economics and Empire (1973) and Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonization (1994), Fieldhouse studies the economic history and theory of empire. In this respect, Fieldhouse's most recent book is superb.

Sporting Manhood in Australia: Test Cricket, Rugby Football, and the Imperial Connection, 1878–1918

Sporting Manhood in Australia: Test Cricket, Rugby Football, and the Imperial Connection, 1878–1918

The View from Gadshill

The View from Gadshill Francis Sparshott I I once had a furious confrontation with that learned and passionate scholar, the late Milton C. Nahm. He had been giving a paper that involved Falstaff—I forget how, but it included the familiar appeal to the fat knight as the comic spirit of untrammelled life, so that the newly crowned Hal’s final repudiation—“I know thee not, old man”—chills the audience as a denial of humanity in favor of impersonal administration. But I told Nahm that I could not see Falstaff that way. As a boy, if I cycled home from Gravesend to Rochester I had to pass over the North Downs at Gadshill. And it is at Gadshill, when we first meet him, that Falstaff’s gang is planning to waylay a band of innocent travelers. I could never take kindly to a man who made a living mugging and rolling people like me. Nahm was contemptuous of my incompetence to deal with literature: I was prevented from appreciating the portrait of the comic monster, appalling but breathtaking, by my inhibited and inhibiting moralism. But I insisted that I saw no reason why one should abandon one’s identity or one’s morality while one was watching a play or reading a book. Nahm would have been right if I had been insensitive to Falstaff’s outrageousness, his unscrupulous energy and vivacity, his wit and candor. But I think my appreciation was sharpened rather than nullified by my awareness of the real menace Falstaff represents to people who happen not to be his pals. And I think Nahm’s enthusiasm blinded him to something else that Shakespeare wrote into the part. At that very first meeting, we find Falstaff trying to negotiate for himself a position of power or privilege when the young prince shall succeed to the throne. And it is just this negotiation that Falstaff is trying to resume [End Page 398] from the sidewalk at the end, when the new king brushes him off. Nahm did not notice this because it did not occur to him that Henry V was going to be a real king with real power over real people, just as it did not occur to him that Falstaff’s robbed and brutalized pilgrim victims would be real people suffering real injury and loss. If my personal angle, the potential victim’s view, had so usurped my vision that it blinded me to whatever else the playwright had made of his character and its situation, it would have made me a bad viewer of the play. But it might have added depth to my understanding and my criticism if it gave me an angle that other viewers and readers could imaginatively share. 1 Since each of us has some sort of angle on everything, sharing perspectives can always be valuable. II I have been reminded of my encounter with Nahm by reading Edward W. Said’s Culture and Imperialism. 2 The book appears to start from the position that imperialism is the “determining political horizon of modern Western culture” (p. 60), imperialism being defined as the policy of establishing and maintaining an empire, and an empire as “a relationship . . . in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society” (p. 9). Because this is the determining horizon, the right way to think of any “Western” author is as an agent of imperialism, although of course this is most easily shown in the case of authors and works in which the imperial connection is explicit. If there is to be a uniform curriculum and canon for the teaching of English literature everywhere in the world, that canon obviously should not be based on works that assume the rightness and normality of an imperialism that defines most readers of that literature as racially and culturally inferior; such a canon is itself a tacit agent of an offensive and gratuitous imperialism. This much seems clear. But Said’s book then moves off into a hackneyed recitation of the evils that the West (or the north, or the developed world 3 ) inflicts on a world of passive victims, followed by a denunciation of the...

Paternalism and Politics: Sir Francis Bond Head, the Orange Order, and the Election of 1836

maintenance of the imperial connection. On the basis of this belief, the lieutenant-governor acted in ways that polarized Upper Canadian politics on the issue of loyalty to bring about a favourable resolution for the Tory faction.' Subsequent work variously characterized Head as a fool, as a self-defined political cavalier, or as a thug who rigged elections through violence and intimidation in the cause of Upper Canadian loyalism versus American republicanism. • Recent work still leaves Head as a' posturing, vainglorious individual devoid of political experience and common sense,' muddying the clear waters leading to constitutional reform by use of the loyalty issue? While there is much truth in these descriptions of Head's role in the x836 election, they miss the point in seeing him as an aberrant twist to existing tensions between Tories and Reformers. The

The idea of loyalty in Upper Canada, 1784-1850

Tory loyalty, in addition to demanding unquestioning adherence to the imperial connection, was exclusive. It was used both to distinguish Loyalists from the American late-comers and to differentiate supporters of the political status quo from opponents of the administration. Tories and Reformers attached different qualities to loyalty. Although the Tories framed the political debate, a moderate Reform conception developed in response. The importance of loyalty was unchallenged by moderate Reformers, but they wished to redefine it in ways that would legitimize their own political goals. They appealed to British political traditions that emphasized the idea of individual dissent based on constitutional rights and the necessary independence of legislators threatened by the use of prerogative power as well as the corruption of the executive. By the 1830s, the polarization of politics seemed to offer only two choices - loyalty or disloyalty. This transitional period led to the emergence of moderate and accommodative Toryism as a response to the exclusiveness of the Family Compact. Moderate Toryism developed because other groups, who were not prepared to give up their political and social exclusion, had been drawn into the debate. The moderate Reformers survived through the 1840s and entered the administration. Tories also prospered through adoption of the Reform position permitting new groups to enter the High Tory elite. The result was the formation of a conservative consensus which dominated Upper Canada, whose conservatism lay in a new definition of loyalty which had evolved through the initiatives of moderate Reformers.

Canada's Place in the French Imperial Economy: An Eighteenth-Century Overview

In 1702 the French geographer, Guillaume Delisle, wrote of utility that the different nations of Europe established in America have drawn from that land. This usefulness made America important and it had become as it were, a supplement to Europe. This designation, A Supplement to Europe, seems to me to encapsulate in a true and striking manner the eighteenth-century French response to Canada, or for that matter to Africa or Asia. ' Canada was a part of the French Empire from the early seventeenth century until 1763. This imperial connection was the result of the spontaneous and unorchestrated activities of fishermen and merchants and of the directive activity of the French state. Statesmen and businessmen, theoreticians and men of action, all assumed that Canada existed for the benefit of France and not for its own self-realization. The relevant economic theory was mercantilism. The economy was one of primary production, and the engine that drove that economy was imperial trade. The royal manna of expenditures for provisioning, garrison pay, and the building of fortifications was from time to time

Local Imperatives and Imperial Policy: The Sources of Lord Carnarvon's South African Confederation Policy

In the 1870s Lord Carnarvon, the British secretary of state for the colonies, attempted to unite the colonies and republics of South Africa into a selfgoverning (that is, settler-governed) dominion under the British flag, which he hoped would extend northwards to the Zambezi. So grandiose a scheme was clearly something more than the attempts at imperial retrenchment that earlier proposals for union had been. But there is little agreement among historians on the reasons for it. Until the publication of Goodfellow's work in 1966,1 the standard work on the subject was C. W. de Kiewiet's The Imperial Factor in South Africa.2 De Kiewiet, the least dogmatic of historians, gave no single or definite answer to the question of why Carnarvon wanted to confederate South Africa. Perhaps he gave the greatest stress, as Carnarvon himself did, to the necessity for a uniform native policy, the desire for which on Carnarvon's part De Kiewiet tended to see in humanitarian terms. De Kiewiet, like his mentor, W. M. Macmillan, belonged to what might be called the Liberal-Imperial school of South African historiography, which saw the imperial connection as a counterweight to settler rapacity and lamented that it had not been more effective. The view that the motive, or even a motive, behind Carnarvon's confederation scheme was a desire to protect the black population of South Africa from the whites, is not one that can survive a reading of Goodfellow. He makes it clear that the impulses behind it were not at all liberal. The South Africa Act of 1877, as originally drawn up by Carnarvon and his advisers, was more restrictive than that drawn up by white South Africans in 1910, since it excluded non-whites from representation in the federal Assembly. One of the objections of the Cape ministry to Carnarvon's scheme was to its retrograde and illiberal nature.3 Goodfellow's own conclusion, following Robinson and Gallagher,4 is that Carnarvon's interest in South Africa arose essentially from its strategic position on the route to India, and that confederation was intended to ensure continued

Colonial Rule and the Internal Economy in Twentieth-century Madras

Throughout the colonial period, the government played a substantial role in structuring India's foreign trade and in moulding the economy of the great port cities and their immediate hinterlands. Once Company and government had started to prise themselves apart in the early nineteenth century, however, the colonial rulers adopted a very haughty attitude towards the working of the internal economy. The development of internal production and trade would of course be deeply affected by the imperial connection, but the colonial government refused to admit responsibility and was careful not to be drawn into active intervention. The transition from colonial rule to independence did not mark a sharp break between this era of laissez faire or minimal interference in the internal economy, and an era of 'development' or constructive intervention. Indeed, it is more likely that a reluctant slide into economic management during the latter part of the colonial period helped to speed the colonial rulers along their course of retreat; any attempt to tamper with the mechanisms of the internal economy opened up the colonial government to contradictory pressures and threatened to expose many of the weaker links in the mesh of colonial command.

Australia and Imperial Defence, 1918-39: A Study in Air and Sea Power

INTRODUCTION The study of military affairs in Australia has beennlargely ignored by historians and political scientists. A criticalnanalysis of anything other than contemporary defencenpolicies has likewise been neglected. Apart from the informationnscattered throughout the official war histories, nonaccount of the armed services nor of the formulation andnimplementation of defence policy exists for the interwarnperiod. The aim of this book is to fill part of the gap. It isnintended to examine the development of the air force and thenrelationship between air power and sea power in Australianndefence in terms of the Imperial defence relationship as itnexisted between the formulation of the 1923 Imperial Conferencendefence resolutions and the outbreak of war withnGermany in September 1939. The strategic principlesnembodied in the qFleet to Singaporeq concept governedninterwar defence planning. It follows that the attitude of thengovernment and the Australian armed services towards thenSingapore strategy will be given an extended analysis. Thennature of the Imperial defence connection in the interwarnyears will be examined in an effort to show how the partnershipnbetween Australia and the United Kingdom operated. Itnis hoped to demonstrate some of the solutions offered bynAustralian and United Kingdom defence planners to specificnproblems and to reach some conclusions regarding the valuenof the Imperial connection to Australian defence generally.n Imperial defence may be defined as the joint defence ofnUnited Kingdom possessions and interests by a combinationnof United Kingdom, Dominion, and Colonial forces. Australian participation may be dated from 1885 when anmixture of fear and pragmatism led the Australian colonies tonoffer the United Kingdom troops to fight the Mahdi in thenSudan. For all its appearance as a spontaneous gesture, thendispatch of the Sudan contingent from New South Wales wasna result of a realistic understanding that the colonies couldnonly find protection through British sea power and insidensome framework of Imperialism. In an early expression ofnqforward defenceq, Dibbs, premier of New South Wales,nexplained that Australia was defending itself in Egypt just asnif qthe common enemy menaced us in the colonyq; and thatnqupon the success of British arms in the Sudan, the fate ofnIndia in all probability hinges. And if that success concernsnIndia it also concerns the Australian colonies.q Dibbs wasnestablishing what was to become a theoretical first principlenof Imperial defence: that the Empire was composed of interdependentnparts. Thereafter it was made increasingly clearnthat Australian forces would be available to fight in Imperialnwarshh..n

The Problem of Anglo-American Politics in Bellomont's New York

B Y the end of the seventeenth century, politics in the colony of New York had assumed an essentially three-dimensional appearance. On the one hand there were the familiar worlds of English politics and of local colonial politics. In England, changing parties and governments evolved colonial policy on the grand scale and attempted to implement it through a formally constituted and hopelessly complicated bureaucracy. In New York, a wide range of political activity which was purely local in interest and importance was carried on completely independent of the formal imperial connection. Both these dimensions have been considered in some detail for the period i697 to I70I when Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, held the New York governorship, but much less attention has been paid to the third dimension, the totally different and vitally important world of Anglo-American politics. Although politics on this Anglo-American level functioned to a considerable degree outside and independent of the formal institutions of imperial control, their course was still largely determined by the very sensitive relationship that existed between the colony and the mother country. Of special importance was the shifting political balance in England, for it was in the faction and cabal of English politics that colonial policies of more than merely local importance were won or lost. It was here, too, that colonial politicians sought to establish connections powerful enough to keep them in office and to withstand the pressures constantly applied by the patrons of their colonial rivals and enemies. If connections and patrons were of great importance to colonial politicians and their rivals, so too was the need to maintain agents and representatives, official and unofficial, in London. It was only

The Significance of Oil

The Middle East without oil would be a very different region. In addition to changing the face of large parts of the area, oil has helped shape the policies and alignments of all the countries of the Middle East not only with each other but also with the world's great powers. These outside powers, in their turn, have found their oil interests and their oil ambitions in the Middle East spilling over into their more general relationships with each other, thus helping a process which has made the region a centre of international tension over long periods of time. Early British oil interests in the area merely reflected late nineteenth-century British interests of a more general nature. These arose out of imperial connections with India and the Far East which demanded the establishment of coaling stations and of territorial enclaves to protect both them and routeways such as the Suez Canal. As a result of these imperial developments, Britain then took an earlier interest than any other outside power in the possibilities of oil from the Middle East. Even so, the region was well behind other parts of the world in the development of oil resources. By the time the Anglo-Persian company finally discovered oil in Persia in I908, and started to work the discoveries under the stimulus of participation by the British government, which sought British owned and controlled oil for its navy, the oil industry elsewhere in the world had almost half a century of history behind it. Britain's strategic and military domination of all areas of the Middle East outside Turkish control acted as a restraint

The Origins of Canada's Department of External Affairs

On June 1, 1959, Canada's Department of External Affairs may look back upon a history of half a century's duration. Even so it is not the oldest foreign ministry in the overseas Commonwealth. That distinction belongs to the Australian Department of External Affairs, which became one of the original departments of the new federation created in 1901. The Canberra innovation seems not to have excited the slightest interest in Canada, despite the appearance during the same year of a book by a Canadian author containing what is probably the earliest written advocacy of separate foreign ministries for the self-governing colonies or dominions. In The Canadian Contingents and Canadian Imperialism, W. Sanford Evans developed at considerable length the case for “the creation in Canada, and in each of the other self-governing Colonies, of a Ministry of Imperial and Foreign Affairs.” It was, however, far from his intention to provide machinery for conducting a foreign policy distinct from and perhaps in defiance of that of the mother country. Evans was a staunch supporter of imperial federation, who looked on his project as a means of strengthening the imperial connection by adding to the power and influence of the centre.

Australian Nationalism and the Imperial Connection 1900–1914

Australian Nationalism and the Imperial Connection 1900–1914

Nationalism in Tropical Africa

Postwar uprisings and nationalist assertions in Tropical Africa—that part of the continent south of the Sahara and north of the Union—have directed increased attention towards the nature and implications of the awakening of the African to political consciousness. Among scholars this neglected area has long been the preserve of the scientific linguist or of the social anthropologist; only recently have American sociologists, economists, and political scientists developed an active interest in its problems. As a consequence, apart from certain efforts by anthropologists to popularize their findings and insights we have been obliged to rely primarily upon the somewhat contradictory accounts of colonial governments seeking to explain imperial connections, or of African nationalists determined to achieve self-government and the good life of which national self-determination has become the symbol. Thus, we have been placed in the uncomfortable position of having to formulate opinions and policy and to render judgments without sufficient knowledge, or, what could be worse, on the basis of evaluations provided by participants in the nationalist struggle. There is, therefore, a very real need for independent and objective research regarding the character and probable course of African nationalist development.

Divided Counsels in French Imperialism: The Ras El Aïn Incident in 1904

A THE beginning of the twentieth century the Moslem empire of ~~Morocco was one of the few independent native states remaining in Africa. It is not surprising, therefore, that its economic importance, real or potential, and its strategic significance for the maintenance of imperial connections constantly held the attention of the foreign offices of Europe. The land of the Moors had begun to attract considerable attention from economists; it appeared to be at once a granary capable of feeding a significant portion of the populations of Europe and a deposit of minerals for the factories of Europe. Nearly everyone agreed that Morocco must sooner or later be modernized by European intervention. The strategic importance of Morocco had to be taken into consideration as well. The disposal of the North African littoral concerned the interests of France, Italy, and Spain as Mediterranean powers. Moreover, France affirmed that the fate of Morocco would affect the very existence of her neighboring Algerian colony.' Britain, always sensitive to developments anywhere in the Moslem world, always concerned with trade and investment, emphasized particularly the necessity of excluding a first-rate power from control of the straits opposite Gibraltar. And Germany was not disposed to witness the dismemberment of Morocco without securing for herself some territorial compensation on the Atlantic side of the country, possibly in the region of Agadir.2 The story of imperialism in Moroccoor more particularly French imperialism in Morocco, since France was the nation destined to achieve her ambitions in that region-was marked by certain interesting features. Diplomatic restraints due to the international situation probably played a greater part in the Moroccan adventure than in any other French colonial enterprise.3 This was not the usual tale of dispatching a punitive expedition against the natives, raising the flag, and confronting the world with a fait accompli. In her Moroccan plans France was constrained to move warily. Another handicap also embarrassed the French in Morocco. Rivalries in the French government, with ministers, administrators, and generals working at cross-purposes, accounted for a consid-

The Imperial Conference of 1937

THIS year is studded with anniversaries for English-speaking peoples. It marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the drafting of the American constitution; the centenary of the Canadian rebellions, which were responsible for the ablest state paper in British colonial policy, Lord Durham's report; and the fiftieth anniversary of the Imperial Conference. The least attention has been paid to the last of these anniversaries, fact which appears somewhat surprising in view of the area and importance of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and its oft-repeated claim to have reconciled unity and freedom, the imperial connection and dominion nationalisms. The absence of celebrations may be due to the sobering realization that the golden years of unchallenged British supremacy have passed, or to the uneasy apprehension that this ambitious experiment in empire organization is presenting as serious problems of both machinery and policy as the federations which were established in Canada and Australia. When the Colonial conference assembled in i887, during the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign, it counted for little, and, in fact, owed its very existence to the activities of one of those unofficial political associations which play so great part in British history. The Imperial Federation League interviewed Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, in August i886 with the request that he call conference with the colonies to discuss trade, communications, naval policy and any other means for securing the closer federation or union of all parts of the empire. Lord Salisbury agreed and his colonial secretary, Sir Henry Holland, prominent member of the League, acted as chairman. The delegates were chosen in rather casual fashion, those from Canada for instance being the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario and Sir Sanford Fleming, the distinguished engineer; and the conference was in Mr. Duncan Hall's words a casual and amorphous thing. Few took its proceedings seriously. True, Lord Salisbury solemnly hailed

Greek Inscriptions from Lycia

1. At Lydae, on the western edge of the horizontal slabs of a tomb, on the side of which is Mr. Hicks' No. 12.This may be compared with the inscription No. 16 of Mr. Hicks, which it very closely resembles. The builder would seem to be the same Heliodoros who is numbered 6 in the genealogical tree. Letters ·04m.Below the three lower heroa and further south we found two inscribed fragments. One had the letters ΑΥΤΟ (·06m.) and obviously had an imperial connection: the other showed ΩΡΟΥΤΟΥ ΝΙΑΗΛΙΟ and must have referred to the Diophantus family.