The Expansion of Europe Part 3

The part she had played in the Napoleonic Wars, and in the events which followed them, had brought her more fully into contact with Europe than she had ever been before. The acquisition of Poland and Finland, which she obtained by the treaties of 1815, had increased this contact, for both of these states were much influenced by Western ideas. Russia had promised that their distinct national existence, and their national inst.i.tutions, should be preserved; and this seemed to suggest that the Russian Empire might develop into a partnership of nations of varying types, not altogether unlike the form into which the British Empire was developing. But this conception had no attraction for the Russian mind, or at any rate for the Russian government; and the reactionary or pure-Russian school, which strove to exclude all alien influences, was inevitably hostile to it. Hence the period of reaction, and of eastward conquest, saw also the denial of the promises made in 1815. Poland preserved her distinct national organisation, in any full degree, only for fifteen years; even in the faintest degree, it was preserved for less than fifty years. Finland was allowed a longer grace, but only, perhaps, because she was isolated and had but a small population: her turn for 'Russification' was to come in due course. The exclusion of Western influence, the segregation of Russia from the rest of the world, and the repudiation of liberty and of varieties of type thus form the main features of the reactionary periods which filled the greater part of this age; and the activity of Russia in eastward expansion was in part intended to forward this policy, by diverting the attention of the Russian people from the west towards the east, and by subst.i.tuting the pride of dominion for the desire for liberty. Hence imperialism came to be identified, for the Russian people, with the denial of liberty.

But it is a very striking fact that each of the three main lines of territorial advance followed by Russia in Asia during this period led her to overstep the natural barriers which had made her an isolated and self-dependent empire, brought her into relation with other civilisations, and compelled her to play her part as one of the factors in world-politics.

Russia had begun the conquest of the wild Caucasus region as early as 1802; after a long series of wars, she completed it by the acquisition of the region of Kars in 1878. The mastery of the Caucasus brought her into immediate relation with the Armenian province of the Turkish Empire, which she henceforward threatened from the east as well as from the west. It brought her into contact also with the Persian Empire, over whose policy, from 1835 onwards, she wielded a growing influence, to the perturbation of Britain. And besides bringing her into far closer relations with the two greatest Mahomedan powers, it gave her a considerable number of Mahomedan subjects, since some of the Caucasus tribes belonged to that faith.

Again, the conquest of Central Asia led her to overstep the barrier of the Kirghiz deserts. The wandering Kirghiz and Turkoman tribes of this barren region lived largely upon the pillage of caravans, and upon raids into neighbouring countries; they disposed of their spoil (which often included Russian captives) mainly in the bazars of Bokhara, Khiva, Samarkand and Khokand--Mahomedan Khanates which occupied the more fertile areas in the southern and south-eastern part of the desert region. The attempt to control the Turkoman raiders brought Russia into conflict with these outposts of Islam. Almost the whole of this region was conquered in a long series of campaigns between 1848 and 1876.

These conquests (which covered an area 1200 miles from east to west and 600 miles from north to south) made Russia a great Mahomedan power.

They also brought her into direct contact with Afghanistan. Russian agents were at work in Afghanistan from 1838 onwards. The shadow of her vast power, looming over Persia and the Persian Gulf on the one hand, and over the mountain frontiers of India on the other, naturally appeared highly menacing to Britain. It was the direct cause of the advance of the British power from the Indus over North-Western India, until it could rest upon the natural frontier of the mountains--an advance which took place mainly during the years 1839-49. And it formed the chief source of the undying suspicion of Russia which was the dominant note of British foreign policy throughout the period.

Another feature of these conquests was that, taken in conjunction with the French conquest of Algeria and the British conquest of India, they const.i.tuted the first serious impact of European civilisation upon the vast realm of Islam. Until now the regions of the Middle East which had been subjugated by the followers of Mahomed had repelled every attack of the West. More definite in its creed, and more exacting in its demands upon the allegiance of its adherents, than any other religion, Mahomedanism had for more than a thousand years been able to resist with extraordinary success the influence of other civilisations; and it had been, from the time of the Crusades onwards, the most formidable opponent of the civilisation of the West. Under the rule of the Turk the Mahomedan world had become stagnant and sterile, and it had shut out not merely the direct control of the West (which would have been legitimate enough), but the influence of Western ideas. All the innumerable schemes of reform which were based upon the retention of the old regime in the Turkish Empire have hopelessly broken down; and the only chance for an awakening in these lands of ancient civilisation seemed to depend upon the breakdown of the old system under the impact of Western imperialism or insurgent nationalism. It has only been during the nineteenth century, as a result of Russian, French, and British imperialism, that the resisting power of Islam has begun to give way to the influence of Europe.

The third line of Russian advance was on the Pacific coast, where in the years 1858 and 1860 Russia obtained from China the Amur province, with the valuable harbour of Vladivostok. It was an almost empty land, but its acquisition made Russia a Pacific power, and brought her into very close neighbourhood with China, into whose reserved markets, at the same period, the maritime powers of the West were forcing an entrance. At the same time Russian relations with j.a.pan, which were to have such pregnant consequences, were beginning: in 1875 the j.a.panese were forced to cede the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, and perhaps we may date from this year the suspicion of Russia which dominated j.a.panese policy for a long time to come.

Thus, while in Europe Russia was trying to shut herself off from contact with the world, her advances in Asia had brought her at three points into the full stream of world-politics. Her vast empire, though for the most part very thinly peopled, formed beyond all comparison the greatest continuous area ever brought under a single rule, since it amounted to between eight and nine million square miles; and when the next age, the age of rivalry for world-power, began, this colossal fabric of power haunted and dominated the imaginations of men.

A demonstration of the growing power of Western civilisation, even more impressive than the expansion of the Russian Empire, was afforded during these years by the opening to Western influence of the ancient, pot-bound empires of the Far East, China and j.a.pan. The opening of China began with the Anglo-Chinese War of 1840, which led to the acquisition of Hong-Kong and the opening of a group of treaty ports to European trade. It was carried further by the combined Franco-British war of 1857-58, which was ended by a treaty permitting the free access of European travellers, traders, and missionaries to the interior, and providing for the permanent residence of amba.s.sadors of the signatory powers at the court of Pekin. All the European states rushed to share these privileges, and the Westernising of China had begun. It did not take place rapidly or completely, and it was accompanied by grave disturbances, notably the Taiping rebellion, which was only suppressed by the aid of the British General Gordon, in command of a Chinese army.

But though the process was slow, it was fully at work by 1878. The external trade of China, nearly all in European hands, had a.s.sumed great proportions. The missionaries and schoolmasters of Europe and America were busily at work in the most populous provinces. Shanghai had become a European city, and one of the great trade-centres of the world. In a lame and incompetent way the Chinese government was attempting to organise its army on the European model, and to create a navy after the European style. Steamboats were plying on the Yang-tse-kiang, and the first few miles of railway were open. Chinese students were beginning to resort to the universities and schools of the West; and although the conservatism of the Chinese mind was very slow to make the plunge, it was already plain that this vast hive of patient, clever, and industrious men was bound to enter the orbit of Western civilisation.

Meanwhile, after a longer and stiffer resistance, j.a.pan had made up her mind to a great change with amazing suddenness and completeness. There had been some preliminary relations with the Western peoples, beginning with the visits of the American Commodore Perry in 1853 and 1854, and a few ports had been opened to European trade. But then came a sudden, violent reaction (1862). The British emba.s.sy was attacked; a number of British subjects were murdered; a mixed fleet of British, French, Dutch, and American ships proved the power of Western arms, and j.a.pan began to awaken to the necessity of adopting, in self-defence, the methods of these intrusive foreigners. The story of the internal revolution in j.a.pan, which began in 1866, cannot be told here; enough that it led to the most astounding change in history. Emerging from her age-long isolation and from her contentment with her ancient, unchanging modes of life, j.a.pan realised that the future lay with the restless and progressive civilisation of the West; and with a national resolve to which there is no sort of parallel or a.n.a.logy in history, decided that she must not wait to be brought under subjection, but must adopt the new methods and ideas for herself, if possible without shedding too much of her ancient traditions. By a deliberate exercise of the will and an extraordinary effort of organisation, she became industrial without ceasing to be artistic; she adopted parliamentary inst.i.tutions without abandoning her religious veneration for the person of the Mikado; she borrowed the military methods of the West without losing the chivalrous and fatalist devotion of her warrior-caste; and devised a Western educational system without disturbing the deep orientalism of her mind. It was a transformation almost terrifying, and to any Western quite bewildering, in its deliberation, rapidity, and completeness. Europe long remained unconvinced of its reality. But in 1878 the work was, in its essentials, already achieved, and the one state of non-European origin which has been able calmly to choose what she would accept and what she would reject among the systems and methods of the West, stood ready to play an equal part with the European nations in the later stages of the long imperial struggle.

One last sphere of activity remains to be surveyed before we turn to consider the development of the new British Empire: the expansion of the independent states which had arisen on the ruins of the first colonial empires in the New World. Of the Spanish and Portuguese states of Central and South America it is not necessary to say much. They had established their independence between 1815 and 1825. But the unhappy traditions of the long Spanish ascendancy had rendered them incapable of using freedom well, and Central and South America became the scene of ceaseless and futile revolutions. The influence of the American Monroe Doctrine forbade, perhaps fortunately, the intervention of any of the European states to put an end to this confusion, and America herself made no serious attempt to restrain it. It was not until the later years of our period that any large stream of immigration began to flow into these lands from other European countries than Spain and Portugal, and that their vast natural resources began to be developed by the energy and capital of Europe. But by 1878 the more fertile of these states, Argentina, Brazil, and Chili, were being enriched by these means, were becoming highly important elements in the trade-system of the world, and were consequently beginning to achieve a more stable and settled civilisation. In some regards this work (though it belongs mainly to the period after 1878) const.i.tutes one of the happiest results of the extra-European activities of the European peoples during the nineteenth century. It was carried on, in the main, not by governments or under government encouragement, but by the private enterprises of merchants and capitalists; and while a very large part in these enterprises was played by British and American traders and settlers, one of the most notable features of the growth of South America was that it gave play to some of the European peoples, notably the Germans and the Italians, whose part in the political division of the world was relatively small.

Far more impressive was the almost miraculous expansion which came to the United States during this period. When the United States started upon their career as an independent nation in 1782, their territory was limited to the lands east of the Mississippi, excluding Florida, which was still retained by Spain. Only the eastern margin of this area was at all fully settled; and the population numbered at most 2,000,000, predominantly of British blood. In 1803, by a treaty with Napoleon, the French colony of Louisiana, with vast and ill-defined claims to the territory west of the Mississippi, was purchased from France. Meanwhile the stream of immigrants from the eastern states, and in a less degree from Europe, was pouring over the Alleghany Mountains and occupying the great central plain; and by 1815 the population had risen to almost 9,000,000, still mainly of British stock, though it also included substantial French and German elements, as well as large numbers of negro slaves. In 1819 Florida was acquired by purchase from Spain. In 1845-48 a revolution in Texas (then part of Mexico), followed by two Mexican wars, led to the annexation of a vast area extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast, including the paradise of California; while treaties with Britain in 1818 and 1846 determined the northern boundary of the States, and secured their control over the regions of Washington and Oregon.

Thus the imperialist spirit was working as irresistibly in the democratic communities of the New World as in the monarchies of Europe.

Not content with the possession of vast and almost unpeopled areas, they had spread their dominion from ocean to ocean, and built up an empire less extensive indeed than that of Russia, but even more compact, far richer in resources, and far better suited to be the home of a highly civilised people. Into this enormous area there began to pour a mighty flood of immigration from Europe, as soon as the Napoleonic wars were over. By 1878 the population of the States had risen to about 50,000,000, and was greater than that of any European state save Russia. A new world-state of the first rank had arisen. It was made up of contributions from all the European peoples. Those of British stock, especially the Irish, still predominated throughout this period, but the Germans and the Scandinavians were becoming increasingly numerous, and the Italians, Greeks, Poles, Czechs, Russian Jews, and other stocks were beginning to form very substantial elements. It was a melting-pot of races, which had to be somehow welded into a nation by the moulding-power of the traditions implanted by the earlier British settlers. It may fairly be said that no community has ever had imposed upon it a more difficult task than the task imposed by Fate upon the American people of creating a national unity out of this heterogeneous material. The great experiment was, during this period, singularly successful. The strength of the national sentiment and of the tradition of freedom was very powerfully exhibited in the strain of the great Civil War (1861-65) which maintained at a great cost the threatened unity of the republic, and brought about the emanc.i.p.ation of the negro slaves. And the Civil War produced in Abraham Lincoln a national hero, and an exponent of the national character and ideals, worthy to be set beside Washington. The America of Lincoln manifestly stood for Liberty and Justice, the fundamental ideals of Western civilisation.

But in this great moulding tradition of freedom there was one dubious and narrowing element. Accustomed to regard herself as having achieved liberty by shaking off her connection with the Old World, America was tempted to think of this liberty as something peculiar to herself, something which the 'effete monarchies' of the Old World did not, and could not, fully understand or share, something which exempted her from responsibility for the non-American world, and from the duty of aiding and defending liberty beyond her own limits. In the abounding prosperity of this fortunate land, liberty was apt to be too readily identified merely with the opportunity of securing material prosperity, and the love of liberty was apt to become, what indeed it too often is everywhere, a purely self-regarding emotion. The distance of the republic from Europe and its controversies, its economic self-sufficiency, its apparent security against all attack, fostered and strengthened this feeling. While the peoples of the Old World strove with agony and travail towards freedom and justice, or wrestled with the task of sharing their own civilisation with the backward races of the globe, the echo of their strivings penetrated but faintly into the mind of America, like the noises of the street dimly heard through the shuttered windows of a warmed and lighted room. To the citizens of the Middle West and the Far West, especially, busy as they were with the development of vast untapped resources, the affairs of the outer world necessarily appeared remote and insignificant. Even their newspapers told them little about these far-off events. Naturally it appeared that the function of the republic in the progress of the world was to till its own garden, and to afford a haven of refuge to the oppressed and impoverished who poured in from all lands; and this idea was strengthened by the great number of immigrants who were driven to the New World by the failure of the successive European revolutions of the nineteenth century, and by the oppressive tyranny of the Habsburg monarchy and the Russian despots.

This att.i.tude of aloofness from, and contempt, or, at the best, indifference, to the Old World was further encouraged by the traditional treatment of American history. The outstanding event of that story was, of course, the breach with Britain, with which the independent existence of the Republic began, and which const.i.tuted also almost its only direct contact with the politics of the Old World. The view of this conflict which was driven into the national mind by the school-books, by the annual celebrations of the Fourth of July, and by incessant newspaper writing, represented the great quarrel not as a dispute in a family of free communities, in which a new and very difficult problem was raised, and in which there were faults on both sides, but as one in which all the right was on one side, as a heroic resistance of free men against malevolent tyranny. This view has been profoundly modified by the work of American historians, whose researches during the last generation have transformed the treatment of the American Revolution. To-day the old one-sided view finds expression, in books of serious pretensions, only in England; and it is to American scholars that we must have recourse for a more scientific and impartial treatment. But the new and saner view has scarcely yet made its way into the school-books and the newspapers. If Britain, the mother of political liberty in the modern world, the land from which these freemen had inherited their own liberties and the spirit which made them insist upon their enlargement, was made to appear a tyrant power, how could it be expected that the ma.s.s of Americans, unversed in world-politics, should follow with sympathy the progress of liberty beyond the limits of their own republic? It was in the light of this traditional att.i.tude that the bulk of Americans regarded not only the wars and controversies of Europe, but the vast process of European expansion. All these things did not appear to concern them; they seemed to be caused by motives and ideas which the great republic had outgrown, though, as we have already seen, and shall see again, the republic had by no means outgrown them. The strength of this traditional att.i.tude, fostered as it was by every circ.u.mstance, naturally made the bulk of the American people slow to realise, when the great challenge of Germany was forced upon the world, that the problems of world-politics were as vitally important for them as for all other peoples, and that no free nation could afford to be indifferent to the fate of liberty upon the earth.

At one moment, indeed, almost at the beginning of the period, it appeared as if this narrow outlook was about to be abandoned. The League of Peace of the great European powers of 1815[6] had, by 1822, developed into a league of despots for the suppression of revolutionary tendencies. They had intervened to crush revolutionary outbreaks in Naples and Piedmont; they had authorised France to enter Spain in order to destroy the democratic system which had been set up in that country in 1820. Britain alone protested against these interventions, claiming that every state ought to be left free to fix its own form of government; and in 1822 Canning had practically withdrawn from the League of Peace, because it was being turned into an engine of oppression. It was notorious that, Spain once subjugated, the monarchs desired to go on to the reconquest of the revolting Spanish colonies in South America. Britain could not undertake a war on the Continent against all the Continental powers combined, but she could prevent their intervention in America, and Canning made it plain that the British fleet would forbid any such action. To strengthen his hands, he suggested to the American amba.s.sador that the United States might take common action in this sense. The result was the famous message of President Monroe to Congress in December 1823, which declared that the United States accepted the doctrine of non-intervention, and that they would resist any attempt on the part of the European monarchs to establish their reactionary system in the New World.

[6] See "Nationalism and Internationalism," p. 155 ff.

In effect this was a declaration of support for Britain. It was so regarded by Monroe's most influential adviser, Thomas Jefferson. 'Great Britain,' he wrote, 'is the nation which can do us the most harm of any one, or all, on earth, and with her on our side we need not fear the whole world. With her, then, we should the most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship; and nothing would tend more to knit our affection than to be fighting once more side by side hi the same cause.' To be fighting side by side with Britain in the same cause--the cause of the secure establishment of freedom in the world--this seemed to the Democrat Jefferson an object worth aiming at; and the promise of this seemed to be the main recommendation of the Monroe Doctrine. It was intended as an alliance for the defence of freedom, not as a proclamation of aloofness; and thus America seemed to be taking her natural place as one of the powers concerned to strengthen law and liberty, not only within her own borders, but throughout the world.

The Monroe Doctrine was rapidly accepted as expressing the fundamental principle of American foreign policy. But under the influence of the powerful tradition which we have attempted to a.n.a.lyse, its significance was gradually changed; and instead of being interpreted as a proclamation that the great republic could not be indifferent to the fate of liberty, and would co-operate to defend it from attack in all cases where such co-operation was reasonably practicable, it came to be interpreted by average public opinion as meaning that America had no concern with the politics of the Old World, and that the states of the Old World must not be allowed to meddle in any of the affairs of either American continent. The world of civilisation was to be divided into water-tight compartments; as if it were not indissolubly one. Yet even in this rather narrow form, the Monroe doctrine has on the whole been productive of good; it has helped to save South America from becoming one of the fields of rivalry of the European powers.

But it may be doubted whether the mere enunciation of the doctrine, even in this precise and definite form, has of itself been sufficient to secure this end. There is good reason to believe that the doctrine would not have been safe from challenge if it had not been safeguarded by the supremacy of the British Fleet. For throughout the last half-century all the world has known that any defiance of this doctrine, and any attack upon America, would bring Britain into the field. During all this period one of the factors of world-politics has been the existence of an informal and one-sided alliance between Britain and America. The alliance has been informal, because it has not rested upon any treaty or even upon any definite understanding. It has been one-sided, because while average opinion in America has been distrustful of Britain, has been apt to put unfavourable constructions upon British policy, and has generally failed to appreciate the value and significance of the work which Britain has done in the outer world, Britain, on the other hand, has always known that America stood for justice and freedom; and therefore, however difficult the relations between the two powers might occasionally become, Britain has steadfastly refused to consider the possibility of a breach with America, and with rare exceptions has steadily given her support to American policy. The action of the British squadron off the Philippines in 1898, in quietly interposing itself between the threatening German guns and the American Fleet, has, in fact, been broadly typical of the British att.i.tude. This factor has not only helped to preserve the Monroe Doctrine from challenge, it has indirectly contributed to deepen the American conviction that it was possible, even in the changed conditions of the modern world, to maintain a complete isolation from the political controversies of the powers.

During the period 1815-1878, then, while the greater part of Europe was still indifferent to extra-European affairs, America had developed into a vast state wherein freedom and law were enthroned, a huge melting-pot wherein diverse peoples were being gradually unified and turned into a new nation under the moulding power of a great tradition of liberty.

But her geographical position, and certain elements in her tradition, had hitherto led her to abstain from, and even to repudiate, that great part in the shaping of the common destinies of civilisation to which she was manifestly called by her wealth, her numbers, her freedom, and her share in the traditions of all the European peoples. In the nature of things, whatever some Americans might think, this voluntary isolation could not continue for ever. It was to be brought to an end by the fevered developments of the next era, and by the great challenge to the liberties of the world in which it culminated.

VI

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1815-1878

Mighty as had been the achievements of other lands which have been surveyed in the last section, the main part in the expansion of European civilisation over the world during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century was played by Britain. For she was engaged in opening out new continents and sub-continents; and she was giving an altogether new significance to the word 'Empire.' Above all, she was half-blindly laying the foundations of a system whereby freedom and the enriching sense of national unity might be realised at once in the new and vacant lands of the earth, and among its oldest civilised peoples; she was feeling her way towards a mode of linking diverse and free states in a common brotherhood of peace and mutual respect. There is no section of the history of European imperialism more interesting than the story of the growth and organisation of the heterogeneous and disparate empire with which Britain entered upon the new age.

This development appeared, on the surface, to be quite haphazard, and to be governed by no clearly grasped theories or policy. It is indeed true that at all times British policy has not been governed by theory, but by the moulding force of a tradition of ordered freedom. The period produced in Britain no imperialist statesman of the first rank, nor did imperial questions play a leading part in the deliberations of parliament. In fact, the growth of the British Empire and its organisation were alike spontaneous and unsystematic; their only guide (but it proved to be a good guide) was the spirit of self-government, existing in every scattered section of the people; and the part played by the colonists themselves, and by the administrative officers in India and elsewhere, was throughout more important than the part played by colonial secretaries, East Indian directors, parliamentarians and publicists at home. For that reason the story is not easily handled in a broad and simple way.

Enjoying almost a monopoly of oversea activity, Britain was free, in most parts of the world, to expand her dominions as she thought fit.

Her statesmen, however, were far from desiring further expansion: they rightly felt that the responsibilities already a.s.sumed were great enough to tax the resources of any state, however rich and populous.

But, try as they would, they could not prevent the inevitable process of expansion. Several causes contributed to produce this result.

Perhaps the most important was the unexampled growth of British trade, which during these years dominated the whole world; and the flag is apt to follow trade. A second cause was the pressure of economic distress and the extraordinarily rapid increase of population at home, leading to wholesale emigration; in the early years of the century an extravagantly severe penal code, which inflicted the penalty of death, commonly commuted into transportation, for an incredible number of offences, gave an artificial impetus to this movement. The restless and adventurous spirit of the settlers in huge and unexplored new countries contributed another motive for expansion. And in some cases, notably in India, political necessity seemed to demand annexations. Over a movement thus stimulated, the home authorities found themselves, with the best will in the world, unable to exercise any effective restraint; and the already colossal British Empire continued to grow. It is no doubt to be regretted that other European nations were not able during this period to take part in the development of the non-European world in a more direct way than by sending emigrants to America or the British lands. But it is quite certain that the growth of British territory is not to be attributed in any degree to the deliberate policy, or to the greed, of the home government, which did everything in its power to check it.

In India the Russian menace seemed to necessitate the adoption of a policy towards the independent states of the North-West which brought an extension of the frontier, between 1839 and 1849, to the great mountain ranges which form the natural boundary of India in this direction; while a succession of intolerable and quite unprovoked aggressions by the Burmese led to a series of wars which resulted in the annexation of very great territories in the east and north-east: a.s.sam, Aracan, and Tena.s.serim hi 1825; Pegu and Rangoon in 1853; finally, in 1885-86, the whole remainder of the Burmese Empire. In North America settlers found their way across the Rocky Mountains or over the Isthmus of Panama into the region of British Columbia, which was given a distinct colonial organisation in 1858; and the colonisation of the Red River Settlement, 1811-18, which became hi 1870 the province of Manitoba, began the development of the great central plain. In South Africa frontier wars with the Kaffirs, and the restless movements of Boer trekkers, brought about an expansion of the limits of Cape Colony, the annexation of Natal, and the temporary annexation of the Orange River Settlement and the Transvaal; but all these additions were most reluctantly accepted; the Orange River Settlement and the Transvaal soon had their independence restored, though the former, at any rate, accepted it unwillingly. In Australia, drafts of new settlers planting themselves at new points led to the organisation of six distinct colonies between 1825 and 1859; and this implied the definite annexation of the whole continent. New Zealand was annexed in 1839, but only because British traders had already established themselves in the islands, were in unhappy relations with the natives, and had to be brought under control.

But it was not the territorial expansion of the British Empire which gave significance to this period in its history, but, in a far higher degree, the new principles of government which were developed during its course. The new colonial policy which gradually shaped itself during this age was so complete a departure from every precedent of the past, and represented so remarkable an experiment in imperial government, that its sources deserve a careful a.n.a.lysis. It was brought into being by a number of distinct factors and currents of opinion which were at work both in Britain and in the colonies.

In the first place, there existed in Britain, as in other European countries, a large body of opinion which held that all colonies were sure to demand and obtain their independence as soon as they became strong enough to desire it; that as independent states they could be quite as profitable to the mother-country as they could ever be while they remained attached to her, more especially if the parting took place without bitterness; and that the wisest policy for Britain to pursue was therefore to facilitate their development, to place no barrier in the way of the increase of their self-government, and to enable them at the earliest moment to start as free nations on their own account. This was not, indeed, the universal, nor perhaps even the preponderant, att.i.tude in regard to the colonies in the middle of the nineteenth century. But it was pretty common. It appeared in the most unexpected quarters, as when Disraeli said that the colonies were 'millstones about our necks,' or as when The Times advocated in a leading article the cession of Canada to the United States, on the ground that annexation to the great Republic was the inevitable destiny of that colony, and that it was much better that it should be carried out in a peaceable and friendly way than after a conflict. It is difficult to-day to realise that men could ever have entertained such opinions. But they were widely held; and it must at least be obvious that the prevalence of these views is quite inconsistent with the idea that Britain was deliberately following a policy of expansion and annexation in this age. Men who held these opinions (and they were to be found in every party) regarded with resentment and alarm every addition to what seemed to them the useless burdens a.s.sumed by the nation, and required to be satisfied that every new annexation of territory was not merely justifiable, but inevitable.

A second factor which contributed to the change of att.i.tude towards the colonies was the growing influence of a new school of economic thought, the school of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus. Their ideas had begun to affect national policy as early as the twenties, when Huskisson took the first steps on the way to free trade. In the thirties the bulk of the trading and industrial cla.s.ses had become converts to these ideas, which won their definite victories in the budgets of Sir Robert Peel, 1843-46, and in those of his disciple Gladstone. The essence of this doctrine, as it affected colonial policy, was that the regulation of trade by government, which had been the main object of the old colonial policy, brought no advantages, but only checked its free development.

And for a country in the position which Britain then occupied, this was undeniably true; so overwhelming was her preponderance in world-trade that every current seemed to set in her direction, and the removal of artificial barriers, originally designed to train the current towards her sh.o.r.es, allowed it to follow its natural course. The only considerable opposition to this body of economic doctrine came from those who desired to protect British agriculture; but this motive had (at this period) no bearing upon colonial trade. The triumph of the doctrine of free trade meant that the princ.i.p.al motive which had earlier led to restrictions upon the self-government of the colonies--the desire to secure commercial advantages for the mother-country--was no longer operative. The central idea of the old colonial system was destroyed by the disciples of Adam Smith; and there no longer remained any apparent reason why the mother-country should desire to control the fiscal policy of the colonies. An even more important result of the adoption of this new economic doctrine was that it destroyed every motive which would lead the British government to endeavour to secure for British traders a monopoly of the traffic with British possessions. Henceforth all territories administered under the direct control of the home government were thrown open as freely to the merchants of other countries as to those of Britain herself. The part which Britain now undertook in the undeveloped regions of her empire (except in so far as they were controlled by fully self-governing colonies) was simply that of maintaining peace and law; and in these regions she adopted an att.i.tude which may fairly be described as the att.i.tude, not of a monopolist, but of a trustee for civilisation. It was this policy which explains the small degree of jealousy with which the rapid expansion of her territory was regarded by the rest of the civilised world. If the same policy had been followed, not necessarily at home, but in their colonial possessions, by all the colonising powers, the motives for colonial rivalry would have been materially diminished, and the claims of various states to colonial territories, when the period of rivalry began, would have been far more easily adjusted.

These were negative forces, leading merely to the abandonment of the older colonial theories. But there were also positive and constructive forces at work. First among them may be noted a new body of definite theory as to the function which colonies ought to play in the general economy of the civilised world. It was held to be their function not (as in the older theory) to afford lucrative opportunities for trade to the mother-country: so far as trade was concerned it seemed to matter little whether a country was a colony or an independent state. But the main object of colonisation was, on this view, the systematic draining-off of the surplus population of the older lands. This, it was felt, could not safely be left to the operation of mere chance; and one of the great advantages of colonial possessions was that they enabled the country which controlled them to deal in a scientific way with its surplus population, and to prevent the reproduction of unhealthy conditions in the new communities, which was apt to result if emigrants were allowed to drift aimlessly wheresoever chance took them, and received no guidance as to the proper modes of establishing themselves in their new homes. The great apostle of this body of colonial theory was Edward Gibbon Wakefield; and his book, A View of the Art of Colonisation (1847), deserves to be noted as one of the cla.s.sics of the history of imperialism. He did not confine himself to theory, but was tireless in organising practical experiments. They were carried out, in a curious revival of the methods of the seventeenth century, by means of a series of colonising companies which Wakefield promoted. The settlement of South Australia, the first considerable settlement in the North Island of New Zealand, and the two admirably designed and executed settlements of Canterbury and Otago in the South Island of New Zealand, were all examples of his methods: with the exception of the North Island settlement, they were all very successful. Nor were these the only instances of organised and a.s.sisted emigration. In 1820 a substantial settlement, financed by government, was made in the eastern part of Cape Colony, in the region of Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, and this brought the first considerable body of British inhabitants into South Africa, hitherto almost exclusively Dutch. An unsuccessful plantation at Swan River in West Australia may also be noted.

Systematic and scientific colonisation was thus being studied in Britain during this period as never before. In the view of its advocates Britain was the trustee of civilisation for the administration of the most valuable unpeopled regions of the earth, and it was her duty to see that they were skilfully utilised. So high a degree of success attended some of their efforts that it is impossible not to regret that they were not carried further. But they depended upon Crown control of undeveloped lands. With the growth of full self-government in the colonies the exercise of these Crown functions was transferred from the ministry and parliament of Britain to the ministries and parliaments of the colonies; and this transference put an end to the possibility of a centralised organisation and direction of emigration.

A second constructive factor very potently at work during this age was the humanitarian spirit, which had become a powerful factor in British life during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It had received perhaps its most practical expression in the abolition of the slave-trade in 1806, and the campaign against the slave-trade in the rest of the world became an important object of British policy from that time onwards. Having abolished the slave-trade, the humanitarians proceeded to advocate the complete abolition of negro slavery throughout the British Empire. They won their victory in 1833, when the British parliament declared slavery illegal throughout the Empire, and voted 20,000,000 pounds--at a time when British finance was still suffering from the burdens of the Napoleonic War--to purchase from their masters the freedom of all the slaves then existing in the Empire. It was a n.o.ble deed, but it was perhaps carried out a little too suddenly, and it led to grave difficulties, especially in the West Indies, whose prosperity was seriously impaired, and in South Africa, where it brought about acute friction with the slave-owning Boer farmers. But it gave evidence of the adoption of a new att.i.tude towards the backward races, hitherto mercilessly exploited by all the imperialist powers. One expression of this att.i.tude had already been afforded by the organisation (1787) of the colony of Sierra Leone, on the West African coast, as a place of refuge for freed slaves desiring to return to the land of their fathers.

It was princ.i.p.ally through the activity of missionaries that this new point of view was expressed and cultivated. Organised missionary activity in Britain dates from the end of the eighteenth century, but its range grew with extraordinary rapidity throughout the period. And wherever the missionaries went, they const.i.tuted themselves the protectors and advocates of the native races among whom they worked.

Often enough they got themselves into bad odour with the European traders and settlers with whom they came in contact. But through their powerful home organisations they exercised very great influence over public opinion and over government policy. The power of 'Exeter Hall,'

where the religious bodies and the missionary societies held their meetings in London, was at its height in the middle of the nineteenth century, and politicians could not afford to disregard it, even if they had desired to do so. This influence, supporting the trend of humanitarian opinion, succeeded in establishing it as one of the principles of British imperial policy that it was the duty of the British government to protect the native races against the exploitation of the European settlers, and to guide them gently into a civilised way of life. It is a sound and n.o.ble principle, and it may fairly be said that it has been honestly carried out, so far as the powers of the home government rendered possible. No government in the world controls a greater number or variety of subjects belonging to the backward races than the British; no trading nation has had greater opportunities for the oppressive exploitation of defenceless subjects. Yet the grave abuse of these opportunities has been infrequent. There have been in the history of modern British imperialism sporadic instances of injustice, like the forced labour of Kanakas in the Pacific. But there have been no Congo outrages, no Putumayo atrocities, no Pequena slave scandals, no merciless slaughter like that of the Hereros in German South-West Africa.

The principle of the protection of backward peoples has, however, sometimes had an unfortunate influence upon colonial policy; and there was no colony in which it exercised a more unhappy effect than South Africa. Here the Boer farmers still retained towards their native neighbours the att.i.tude which had been characteristic of all the European peoples in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: they regarded the negro as a natural inferior, born to servitude. It is not surprising that no love was lost between the Boers and the missionaries, who appeared as the protectors of the negroes, and whose representations turned British opinion violently against the whole Boer community. This was in itself a sufficiently unfortunate result: it lies largely at the base of the prolonged disharmony which divided the two peoples in South Africa. The belief that the Boers could not be trusted to deal fairly with the natives formed, for a long period, the chief reason which urged the British Government to retain their control over the Boers, even when they had trekked away from the Cape (1836) and established themselves beyond the Orange and the Vaal rivers; and the conflict of this motive with the desire to avoid any increase of colonial responsibilities, and with the feeling that if the Boers disliked the British system, they had better be left in freedom to organise themselves in their own way, accounts for the curious vacillation in the policy of the period on this question. At first the trekkers were left to themselves; then the lands which they had occupied were annexed; then their independence was recognised; and finally, when, at the end of the period, they seemed to be causing a dangerous excitement among the Zulus and other native tribes, the Transvaal was once more annexed; with the result that revolt broke out, and the Majuba campaign had to be fought.

Again, tenderness for the natives led to several curious and not very successful experiments in organisation. The annexation of Natal was long delayed because it was held that this area ought to form a native reserve, and fruitless attempts were made to restrict the settlement of Europeans in this empty and fertile land. An attempt was also made to set up a series of native areas under British protection, from which the white settler was excluded. British Kaffraria, Griqualand East and Griqualand West were examples of this policy, which is still represented, not unsuccessfully, by the great protected area of Basutoland. But, on the whole, these experiments in the handling of the native problem in South Africa did more harm than good. They were unsuccessful mainly because South Africa was a white man's country, into which the most vigorous of the native races, those of the Bantu stock (Kaffirs, Zulus, Matabili, etc.), were more recent immigrants than the white men themselves. Owing to their warlike character and rapidly growing numbers they const.i.tuted for a long time a very formidable danger; and neither the missionaries nor the home authorities sufficiently recognised these facts.

Perhaps the most unhappy result of this friction over the native question, apart from the alienation of Boer and Briton which it produced, was the fact that it was the princ.i.p.al cause of the long delay in establishing self-governing inst.i.tutions in South Africa. The home government hesitated to give to the colonists full control over their own affairs, because it distrusted the use which they were likely to make of their powers over the natives; even the normal inst.i.tutions of all British colonies were not established in Cape Colony till 1854, and in Natal till 1883. But although in this case the new att.i.tude towards the backward races led to some unhappy results, the spirit which inspired it was altogether admirable, and its growing strength accounts in part for the real degree of success which has been achieved by British administrators in the government of regions not suited for the settlement of Europeans in large numbers. Indeed, this spirit has come to be one of the outstanding features of modern British imperialism.

It was not only in the treatment of backward races that the humanitarian spirit made itself felt. It was at work also in the government of the highly developed civilisations of India, where, during this period, British power began to be boldly used to put an end to barbarous or inhumane practices which were supported or tolerated by the religious beliefs or immemorial social usages of India. Such practices as thagi, or meria sacrifices, or female infanticide, or, above all, sati, had been left undisturbed by the earlier rulers of British India, because they feared that interference with them would be resented as an infraction of Indian custom or religion. They were now boldly attacked, and practically abolished, without evil result.

Alongside of this new courage in measures that seemed to be dictated by the moral ideas of the West, there was to be seen growing throughout this period a new temper of respect for Indian civilisation and a desire to study and understand it, and to safeguard its best features.

The study of early Indian literature, law, and religious philosophy had indeed been begun in the eighteenth century by Sir William Jones and Nathaniel Halhed, with the ardent encouragement of Warren Hastings. But in this as in other respects Hastings was ahead of the political opinion of his time; the prevalent idea was that the best thing for India would be the introduction, so far as possible, of British methods. This led to the absurdities of the Supreme Court, established in 1773 to administer English law to Indians. It led also to the great blunder of Cornwallis's settlement of the land question in Bengal, which was an attempt to a.s.similate the Indian land-system to that of England, and resulted in an unhappy weakening of the village communities, the most healthy features of Indian rural life. In the nineteenth century this att.i.tude was replaced by a spirit of respect for Indian traditions and methods of organisation, and by a desire to retain and strengthen their best features. The new att.i.tude was perhaps to be seen at its best in the work of Mountstuart Elphinstone, a great administrator who was also a profound student of Indian history, and a very sympathetic observer and friend of Indian customs and modes of life. But the same spirit was exemplified by the whole of the remarkable generation of statesmen of whom Elphinstone was one. They established the view that it was the duty of the British power to reorganise India, indeed, but to reorganise it on lines in accordance with its own traditions. Above all, the principle was in this generation very definitely established that India, like other great dependencies, must be administered in the interests of its own people, and not in the interests of the ruling race. That seems to us to-day a plat.i.tude. It would not have seemed a plat.i.tude in the eighteenth century. It would not seem a plat.i.tude in modern Germany. And it may safely be said that the enunciation of such a doctrine would have seemed merely absurd in any of the earlier historical empires. In 1833 an official report laid before the British parliament contained these remarkable words: 'It is recognised as an indisputable principle, that the interests of the Native Subjects are to be consulted in preference to those of Europeans, wherever the two come in compet.i.tion.' In all the records of imperialism it would be hard to find a parallel to this formal statement of policy by the supreme government of a ruling race.

When such a statement could be made, it is manifest that the meaning of the word Empire had undergone a remarkable transformation. No one can read the history of British rule in India during this period without feeling that, in spite of occasional lapses, this was its real spirit.

But the most powerful constructive element in the shaping of the new imperial policy of Britain was the strength of the belief in the idea of self-government, as not only morally desirable but practically efficacious, which was to be perceived at work in the political circles of Britain during this age. Self-government had throughout the modern age been a matter of habit and practice with the British peoples; now it became a matter of theory and belief. And from this resulted a great change of att.i.tude towards the problems of colonial administration. The American problem in the eighteenth century had arisen ultimately out of the demand of the Americans for unqualified and responsible control over their own affairs: the att.i.tude of the Englishman in reply to this demand (though he never clearly a.n.a.lysed it) was, in effect, that self-government was a good and desirable thing, but that on the scale on which the Americans claimed it, it would be fatal to the unity of the Empire, and the unity of the Empire must come first. Faced by similar problems in the nineteenth century, the Englishman's response generally was that self-government on the fullest scale was the right of all who were fit to exercise it, and the most satisfactory working solution of political problems. Therefore the right must be granted; and the unity of the Empire must take care of itself. No doubt this att.i.tude was more readily adopted because of the widespread belief that in fact the colonies would all sooner or later cut their connection with the mother-country. But it was fully shared by men who did not hold this view, and who believed strongly in the possibility and desirability of maintaining imperial unity. It was shared, for example, by Wakefield, a convinced imperialist if ever there was one, and by that great colonial administrator, Sir George Grey. It was shared by Lord Durham and by Lord John Russell, who were largely responsible for the adoption of the new policy. Their belief and hope was that the common possession of free inst.i.tutions of kindred types would in fact form the most effective tie between the lands which enjoyed them. This hope obtained an eloquent expression in the speech in which, in 1852, Russell introduced the bill for granting to the Australian colonies self-government on such a scale as amounted almost to independence. It is not true, as is sometimes said, that the self-governing inst.i.tutions of the colonies were established during this period owing to the indifference of the home authorities, and their readiness to put an end to the connection. The new policy of these years was deliberately adopted; and although its acceptance by parliament was rendered easier by the prevalence of disbelief in the permanence of the imperial tie, yet, on the part of the responsible men, it was due to far-sighted statesmanship.

The critical test of the new colonial policy, and the most dramatic demonstration of its efficacy, were afforded by Canada, where, during the thirties, the conditions which preceded the revolt of the American colonies were being reproduced with curious exactness. The self-governing inst.i.tutions established in the Canadian colonies in 1791 very closely resembled those of the American colonies before the revolution: they gave to the representative houses control over taxation and legislation, but neither control over, nor responsibility for, the executive. And the same results were following. Incomplete self-government was striving after its own fulfilment: the denial of responsibility was producing irresponsibility. These was the same unceasing friction between governors and their councils on the one hand, and the representative bodies on the other hand; and the a.s.semblies were showing the same unreasonableness in refusing to meet manifest public obligations. This state of things was becoming steadily more acute in all the colonies, but it was at its worst in the province of Quebec, where the const.i.tutional friction was embittered by a racial conflict, the executive body being British, while the great majority of the a.s.sembly was French; and the conflict was producing a very dangerous alienation between the two peoples. The French colonists had quite forgotten the grat.i.tude they had once felt for the maintenance of their religion and of their social organisation, and there was a strong party among them who were bent upon open revolt, and hoped to be able to establish a little isolated French community upon the St. Lawrence.

This party of hotheads got the upper hand, and their agitation culminated in the rebellion of Papineau in 1837. In the other colonies, and especially in Upper Canada, the conditions were almost equally ominous; when Papineau revolted in Quebec, William Mackenzie led a sympathetic rising in Ontario. The situation was quite as alarming as the situation in the American colonies had been in 1775. It is true that the risings were easily put down. But mere repression formed no solution, any more than a British victory in 1775 would have formed a solution of the American question.

Realising this, the Whig government sent out Lord Durham, one of their own number, to report on the whole situation. Durham was one of the most advanced Liberals in Britain, a convinced believer in the virtues of self-government, and he took out with him two of the ablest advocates of scientific colonisation, Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Charles Buller. Durham's administrative work was not a success: his high-handed deportation of some of the rebel leaders was strongly condemned, and he was very quickly recalled. But he had had time to study and understand the situation, and he presented a masterly Report on Canada, which is one of the cla.s.sics in the history of British imperialism. His explanation of the unhappy condition of Canadian politics was not (as some were tempted to say) that the colonists had been given too much liberty, but that they had not been given enough.