1815-1914 The British Imperial Century

Many in Britain still believe the country has been both a towering empire and a plucky underdog. But clearly both can’t simultaneously be true. To match a simplistic yearning for a glorious, maybe unjustly lost, past as a global superpower with the image of a lone, brave victim of superior forces is, to be polite, contradictory. It’s part of a collective memory where history has been mythologised into British exceptionalism. In policy terms this false perception, of two mutually exclusive portraits of the country’s place in the world, has been, and indeed continues to be, self-disabling.

Origins of the British Empire

Ireland aside, the British Empire began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16^th and early 18^th centuries. Envious of the great wealth Spain was generating from its empire, England, France and the Netherlands started colonies and trade networks of their own in America and Asia. Wars between European countries in the 17^th and 18^th centuries left England, or from 1707 Britain, as North America’s dominant colonial power. With the East India Company’s 1757 conquest of Bengal, Britain indirectly became the major colonial power in the Indian subcontinent, too.

By command of King and Parliament - East India Company arms

Losing the American colonies in 1783 may have seemed a blow. But Britain then turned to Asia, Africa and the Pacific. After Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 Britain emerged as the 19^th century’s leading imperial and naval power. With an unchallenged Royal Navy, it developed a dominant global trading role, later described as Pax Britannica, a period of relative global peace. The Empire grew to include most of India and much of Africa. Strength in related banking, insurance and shipping activities meant effective, if indirect, British commercial control of many regions, including Asia and Latin America, colonies or not.

Power and imperial contradictions 

This period, up to World War I was the zenith of the ‘Empire on which the sun never sets’. It included 412m people, 23% of the world’s population, and over a fifth of the earth’s land area. Raw materials and captive markets offered great wealth and power, but also brought hubris and the burying of some uncomfortable truths.

Was it right or even practicable to occupy so much territory and rule over so many people? The question was rarely asked. It never strayed from ‘whataboutery’ - if Portugal and Spain did it why not us? Britain hadn’t even the spurious justification of spreading Catholicism though the ‘civilising of savages’ line was used in a later rationalisation. Global competition for trade and commerce was the main driver. But Britain was often loath to bear the costs and responsibilities of occupation. And in the 18^th century slavery was sadly a huge part of the modus operandi.

French map - French, British and Russian empires 1840 

The East India Company drove British imperial growth in Asia, with Singapore (1819) and Burma (1826). The British Crown gradually assumed the administrative burden in these territories, claiming sovereignty over lands acquired. In the 1820s Britain took formal possession of the Cape Colony. This pushed many thousands of Afrikaners (Boers) north. Boer opposition to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire from 1834 was the catalyst for the Voortrekkers’ move to establish their own republics in the Orange Free State and Transvaal. The Sotho and Zulu nations in the Eastern Cape were also claimed by Britain. Many Victorian annexations (eg. Sind and Punjab) were made on the spot, without prior government approval.

Hone Heke and his wife, Hariata, signatories of the 1840 Waitangi Treaty

Meanwhile with the 1839 Durham report the ‘white colonies’ began their road to independence. Canada was soon formally created as an entity of several provinces with full self-government, though the Australian colonies were only later federated. New Zealand signed the Waitangi treaty with the Maoris in 1840 as the foundation document of the new nation. In fact these lands were in practice too far away to be governed day to day from Britain, though Dominion status was not officially granted until 1907.  

Britain and India

The 1857 Indian rebellion, called the ’Mutiny’ in Britain, involved Indian soldiers (sepoys), against the East India Company. It lasted six months, and was suppressed with savage brutality. The British government then assumed full control from the Company, establishing the British Raj with an appointed Viceroy, and a telegraph line to the Indian Office in London. Queen Victoria was made Empress of India, the supposed ‘jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire - its most valuable asset. 

Rebels attack Lucknow's Redan battery, 1857

The story of Britain in India has many constructive aspects, establishing a national rule over numerous diverse cultures and languages - building railways, the telegraph and a proper legal system. That’s the positive view of people at the time, and in many cases since, about the British Raj. Yet the divide and rule pattern adopted by Britain caused a legacy of problems too numerous to list. Natural disasters also played a part. In the later 19^th century a series of crop failures hit India. It’s estimated that over 15m people died. The causes had long been ignored and while prevention measures had been planned and drawn up, they were not fully implemented until the 20^th century.

Durbar procession - Akhbar II 1806-1837, followed by the British resident 

It is sometimes forgotten that Britain ruled India, along with what are now Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka, with barely 300 civil servants sent out from London. There were always far more Britons engaged in trade there than in the Indian Army or Civil Service. Hundreds of millions of people were governed through local potentates acting with British advisers and thus effectively under licence from Britain. Civil servants were responsible for administering huge areas and vast populations. It would have been quite impossible without widespread local cooperation.   

Rebellion and the turning point

Apart from 1857’s violence in India there were serious Caribbean slave revolts, especially in Jamaica in 1867. The Empire saw popular rebellions on a local, if not a wider scale during the 19^th century. They ranged from China to South Africa, from the Caribbean to Kabul.

The 1899-1902 Boer War was maybe the Empire's key turning point. With gold discovered in the Transvaal in the 1890s, Britain’s attitude toward the separate Boer republics changed. When the siege of Mafeking was lifted early on, large jingoistic British crowds went wild. But it took virtually half the British army to beat a few thousand Afrikaner settler families. And Britain only secured victory through the use of concentration camps where maybe 100,000 women and children died. The Vereeniging Treaty ending hostilities suggested that if Britain had won the war it had lost the peace.

Boer women and children in a concentration camp, c1901

This conflict marked the end of unquestioning acceptance of the role and legitimacy of the British Empire. Many students from British ruled lands were coming to the ‘home country’ for education. More locals were trained to run things locally, too. The political mood in Britain changed with a Liberal government. People were increasingly asking if an imperial policy was right, or even affordable. With new global trade patterns (from 1875 Britain’s share of world trade started to fall, and 70% of British exports were to non-imperial markets), the raw material/captive market tradition was no longer tenable. Scarce profits meant it was actually costing Britain to maintain the Empire.

Imperial legacy

Huge migrations were involved in the story. Apart from the millions leaving Britain and Ireland to settle or serve overseas, many also left lands within the empire to settle in Britain or other territories - from India and Africa to the Caribbean, for instance. Large numbers of Indians moved to South Africa, Fiji or Malaya. The demographics and ethnic balance of Britain itself have also, of course, been changed.

Many in Britain learned of an imaginative, civilising imperial regime, bringing benefits to backward people. The traditional narrative has been that of subject peoples accepting benign British rule without violence. But this is just not true. There was resistance to occupation and conquest, often followed by revolt. If Britain was not wrenching land from local inhabitants and suppressing by force indigenous peoples, it was fighting competing colonial powers - the Netherlands or France. So Britain often became involved in a three sided contest, as in India, the Caribbean or South Africa.

In June 1897 Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, cheered by hundreds of thousands. It was the peak of the British Empire, a watershed. Kipling wrote the ‘White Man’s Burden’ for the occasion. It seemed synonymous with Anglo-Saxon imperial pretensions and racial superiority. So deciding not to use it, he wrote ‘Recessional’ instead, in the form of a prayer - Lest we forget! These lines would have profound echoes in British history, later used to commemorate those who died in the service of the British Empire in World War I.    

Territories which were at one time part of the British Empire

The descendants of the empire-builders and of their former subjects now share a home in Britain. Immigration from Commonwealth countries has meant re-appraising Britain’s history to take account of two imperial traditions - of the conquered as well as the conquerors. The first of these has been conspicuous by its absence. But the sort of sanctimonious incandescence now displayed on both sides - 'it was a great thing and you were lucky to have us'; or, 'you were inhuman exterminating exploiters' - loses the nuance of what really happened. Yes, Britain built railways and cities, but it was also at times a cruel occupier.

Says historian Alex von Tunzelmann pointedly, “To learn from mistakes you must confront them, and exceptionalism means you never do. Successes may be evidence of Britain’s greatness, but failures are inherently un-British…it may be tempting to imagine a golden age in which Britain was competent, reliable, stable and sensible. Looking at its history, though, if it turns out to be none of those things, we shouldn’t be surprised”.