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Book review Pioneer, 30 Oct., 2008
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->British Empire’s incredible objective: Welfare of the Conquered

If there was a single moving spirit consistently behind British Imperialism, it was pioneering enterprise, business through discovery. KR Phanda and Prafull Goradia look at Piers Brendon’s story of the decline and fall of the Empire

The Decline and Fall of the British Empire
Author: Piers Brendon
Publisher: Vintage (Random House Group)
Price: Rs 695

Piers Brendon has written an exceptionally interesting account of the largest empire in history. Its title, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire is, however, a misnomer. Evidently, the author is a Gibbonphile. Or else, there is no reason to use this name for his book. If anything, the volume covers the beginning to the end of the empire, from the 17th century when America began to be colonized to 1997 when the Hong Kong lease expired. A photograph of the Union Jack being lowered on the island is a part of the book. Incidentally, the Falkland Islands still celebrate the continuing flicker of the empire. This epical saga has been covered in the course of some 650 pages; too short a length for so long a story. It is therefore not a history but a racy narrative of selected, engaging episodes.

In the words of the author, “This is my aim, for a shorter period, in the following pages. I endeavour to give the big picture vitality through abundance of detail, telling the imperial story in terms of people, places and events; through brief lives, significant vistas and key episodes. I trace the warp and weft of imperial existence. And some strands come under particularly close scrutiny: the food and drink empire-builders consumed, the clothes they wore, the homes they built, the clubs they joined, the struggles they endured, the loot they acquired, the jubilees, durbars and exhibitions they attended. Also observed are their trimmed moustaches and clipped foreskins, their addiction to games and work, their low-brow ideas and high-minded attitudes, their curious blend of honesty and hypocrisy, their preoccupation with protocol and prestige, their racial prejudices and the extent to which they lived in symbiosis with their charges. I lack the space, not to mention the knowledge, to treat all aspects of the history of the British Empire.”

In the Introduction to his work, Brendon quotes Edward Gibbon as having taught that chronology is the logic of history. But he himself does not follow this teaching in this book under review. He is choosy; apparently his criterion is how interesting an episode and how few readers are likely to be familiar with it. For example, the first chapter consists of 29 pages on The American Revolution or the War of Independence. Yet 14 of the 29 pages are devoted to the Slave Trade mainly with Jamaica and its sugar plantations. The details are lurid and unlikely to be known to many. To quote a paragraph, after the cruel rigours of their abduction in West Africa, their sale to the white traders and the voyage to the New World, “Africans who reached the West Indies looked more like shadows than men. Most were skeletal, many were ill and a few had gone mad. So they were prepared for market, fed, washed, rubbed with palm oil until they gleamed, calmed with drams and pipes. Grey hair was shaved or dyed. To conceal signs of the ‘bloody flux’ some ships’ doctors plugged the anuses of slaves with oakum, causing excruciating pain. They also used a mixture of iron rust, lime juice and gun powder to remove the external symptoms of yaws. Slaves were then subjected to further humiliating scrutiny and sold once again, sometimes individually, sometimes by auction, sometimes in a ‘scramble’. The last was a ferocious melee in which purchasers seized what slaves they could, all at a fixed price.”

The author then scoffs at the slave owners, traders, shippers and British leaders like Edmund Burke who said that colonial government was for those who were unable to rule themselves. They need a trust to be exercised by the rulers for their benefit; an imperial trusteeship for the betterment of native societies. The fact that many a liberated slave, after slavery was abolished, were unwilling to go to Sierra Leone or Liberia showed that they had to be forced to be free. So as Jean Jacques Rousseau said liberty could be compulsory. <b>The author adds, Britain would subjugate many lands in its name, i.e. liberty.</b>

As one reads on, one often comes across an apologetic attitude of the author to the empire. It is difficult to say whether Brendon sincerely feels that way. Or is it to give a balance to his narrative; so that it does not sound like a boast about Britain’s imperial success? Or is it a touch of inverted snobbery whereby it sounds right to be self derogatory? At one stage, he refers to British hypocrisy which claimed that liberty was its governing principle. On the other hand, the author of capitalism, Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, did write that trade was cost effective, humane, immune to rebellion compared with empire. Britain should restrict itself to commercial dominance. The author goes on to quote how Smith contended that colonies were a cause of weakness rather than of strength to Britain. On the other hand, Brendon could not help referring to Sir George Macartney who talked about the empire on which the sun never set. <b>In the ultimate analysis, the British could not be free from the ego !</b>

In the course of his treatment of America, Brendon shows repeated concern for the fact that it was Lord Cornwallis who finally surrendered to George Washington and ended the War of Independence in 1776. He appears to feel that the quality of Cornwallis was vindicated by defeating Tipu Sultan at the second battle of Seringapatam in 1799. Britannia’s Indian Empire is a 31 page chapter in which three pages are devoted to Tipu only. His qualities make absorbing reading although in a historical perspective they might not have deserved so much space. To quote, “Moral censure of Tipu Sultan did not come well from a nation which treated convicts and slaves so brutally and, in any case, it rather missed the mark. Seen in the context of South Indian kingship, the Tiger of Mysore was, if hardly tame, not altogether wild. Tipu was intelligent, cultured and witty. He possessed a library of two thousand volumes (carefully wrapped and placed in chests to protect them from white ants) which doubtless nurtured his passion for innovation. He was as fascinated by western technology as by eastern astrology, wearing on his person a gold fob watch and a magical silver amulet. His French-trained army was in some respects superior to that of the British. Tipu’s artillery was ‘both larger and longer than ours’, wrote an English officer, his ‘Rocket Boys are daring, especially when intoxicated by Bang.’ The Sultan was altogether ‘a respectable and formidable enemy’. He was also notably fastidious. His chin was cleanly shaved in oil of almonds, and his muscular body, tending to corpulence but distinguished by delicate wrists and ankles, was regularly ‘shampooed’ (i.e. massaged). A fine white handkerchief, a black enamel vase of flowers and a silver spit-box were placed close to his musnud, which faced Mecca. Although the court elephants were trained to make obeisance to him, Tipu dressed plainly, ate; with restraint (for breakfast ‘an electuary composed of the brains of male tame sparrows’), and spent little time in his zenana. A keen hunter, ‘an incomparable horseman, a gallant soldier, an excellent marksman’, he was admired as well as feared.”

Although Pitts India Act of 1784 prohibited further conquest in India, Cornwallis’ successor Richard Wellesley, aimed to establish one paramount power in India. He kept his aim and, in a matter of eight years, he ensured the rise of “an insignificant trading settlement to a mighty empire” as Lord Valentine wrote. He built the palatial Government House for himself against the wishes of the East India Company Directors. They could do nothing; <b>the moral of these stories was how little was the control of London over self willed Governor Generals 7000 miles away. And how uncoordinated was the growth of the empire.</b>

In the course of a total of 22 chapters, the author deals with the entire empire from the white colonies like Australia to the conquest of Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Gold Coast to East Asia, Malaya et al. <b>If there was a single moving spirit consistently behind the empire building, it was a pioneering enterprise, business through discovery. Most other motives were paradoxical. Trade versus empire. Liberty versus helping those who did not know how to rule themselves. Then there were the evangelists for whom it was a white man’s burden to civilize the coloured people.</b>

<b>Regardless, the British empire was the most sophisticated of all empires in history. It exploited its colonies but as businessmen would. Develop their economies, create their productivity and then cream their surpluses by exporting manufactured goods to them expensive and importing their commodities cheap.</b> What Dadabhai Naoroji had called adverse terms of trade. Otherwise, the accounts of each colony were separate and often Britain owed money to some colonies. For example, at the end of World War II, New Delhi was London’s creditor. <b>All in all, Britain enabled a number of its colonies to undergo an industrial revolution; India was one example. True, it meant more profit for the British. But for India, it meant the building of infrastructure like the railways, the ports, the electricity to enable the profits. Above all, an excellent administration guided by the rule of law backed by a modern jurisprudence.</b>

Although Brendon, in his modesty, has not made the point, its merit would standout clearly if a comparison was attempted with the other contemporary imperialists. <b>The Dutch did little in their colonies but loot. The Portuguese priority was to destroy temples and convert the people to Catholicism. The French busied themselves with civilizing the people; making them pseudo-French; did not lend their excellence of governance. Belgium and its Congo need no mention.</b>

<b>The British empire did not decline and fall in the manner of say the Roman or the Ottoman. The rulers in London and elsewhere did not degenerate as did the Romans and the Turks. The nation, that fought World War II, could not possibly be decrepit. Soon after the war, the Atlee government decided on a spontaneous, largely graceful, withdrawal. Beginning with India in 1947, the end of the empire was completed in 1997 at Hong kong.</b>

<b>Whitehall must have been motivated by several factors, some conscious others implicit, but certainly differing from colony to colony.</b> In the case of India, London might have felt that, after the rebellion led by Netaji Subhas’ Indian National Army whose soldiers violated their oath of loyalty to the crown, a lakh of expatriates can no longer control the enormous colony. Perhaps, it was the British aversion to dealing with the Hindu-Muslim conflict after the war. And so on.

<b>Nevertheless, one was a universal consideration applicable to all colonies. Territory or land was about the only source of big wealth until the Industrial Revolution. Fishing, farming and mining were the main economic activities. With the progress of the Revolution, the growth of manufacture and marketing, territory began to be discounted; with that the economic value of colonies.</b>

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This last one was the arguement advanced by US experts for dismantling the empire.