The British Empire

The British Empire like most other empires started by chance. In the 16th and 17th century with the discovery of the new world, Spanish sailors managed to find the route to the gold and silver mines of Latin America. From Peru and Mexico huge amounts of precious metal ore started being shipped back to the Spanish treasury, laying down the backbone of Spain’s burgeoning economy. The Portuguese had amassed a huge area of land as well and were trading from Brazil to China. Thus Englishmen feverent with the desire to discover “gold and riches” were sent out from the Royal Navy. This economic threat posed by other European heavyweights added on to the now present religious duty of a newly reformed England to create a protestant empire to rival catholic Spain.
The answer to end England’s lackluster economical success came in the form of “Informal” imperialism. Pirates and buccaneers were born. British ships, mostly private funded started raiding the Spanish Main. “Privateering” as it was called, was soon made royally legitimate by Elizabeth 1 as she realized its benefits to Britain. However these were humble beginnings, since even with the loot obtained from Spanish ships the British treasury didn’t make more than 200,000 pounds a year.
The change in British fortunes did take a while to come. The re-exporting of tobacco, sugar and tea to parts of northern Europe started them on an upward economic growth spurt which was to continue for the better part of the next 250 years. This was followed by the discovery of sub-continental India’s rather advanced and massive textile and raw material sector. Thus still following a form of informal imperialism the east India Company was set up. The real boost however came from the adaptation of the Dutch financial banking system, ideas of credit and concept of national public debt. The British economy was up and running.
After the formation of the premature empire, the British kept it alive and fed its growth using a variety of factors. Settler colonialism was one of them. In its south pacific island colonies and dominions, hundreds and thousands of convicts were sent. This helped lessen the drain on government resources for their upkeep and also helped in the securing of the raw materials which helped the British private industry boom. When this great exodus started occurring from England, it was more than just people seeking freedom from religious oppression or trying to build a new way of life, it was the expansion of the British idea of a free market. The settlers also led to the extermination of the local population of the land, be it the aborigines in Australia, the Native Americans in the USA, the Maoris in New Zealand and the Zulus in southern Africa. Being in control of the land resources and paying taxes to the Queen, Britain efficiently built up a system of grand monetary return.
In the New World, plantations sprung up. They started out with tobacco, but the majority was cotton. While in the West Indies sugar plantations were becoming increasingly popular. The colonials needed cheap labor that wouldn’t mind the back breaking work in the fields. This started the British slave trade; a business that would help Britain rake in enormous profits while ensuring a steady supply of raw materials was available to its post-industrial revolution industry. It helped to subsequently acquire domination over a previously untapped area of land called Africa.
Britain’s policies towards most of its colonies existed on direct rule. The British didn’t try to hide the fact that they were empire builders, infact they took pride in it. They were involved in political, economic and cultural aspects of every country they took or governed. Thus for example they didn’t let India or Ireland have an autonomous government and insured that “natives” stayed out of the higher level positions. The rule was absolute, where the people of the nation paid taxes to the empire, were under the jurisdiction of British officials and had their markets controlled by the empire.
There were however, some instances of indirect rule. The government of Egypt between 1882 and 1922 was heavily influenced by the British Empire. Especially with the installation of Tewfiq Pasha as a puppet, that took orders from the English government. Thus Egypt was a protectorate, and not till 1922 did it gain independence from British rule. In Nigeria with Frederick Lugard, who assumed the position of high commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria in 1900 a powerful indirectly ruled system was in place. The emirs and kings paid homage and got advice and orders on ways to run the country from the high commissioner.
The British Empire even though driven by economic greed and racial and religious arrogance brought about some positive changes. It helped create a complex grid of trade routes. It brought the textiles from India, tea from china, coffee from Brazil and sugar from the West Indies to Europe. On the flipside, European ideals of government, free market systems, the English language and in countries like India, the extensive railway systems were exports of the British Empire. Even though being avidly involved in the slave trade from Africa, the British did try to put a bottleneck on this dehumanizing business, using the royal navy to hunt down merchant slave vessels. The upper class of nations like India were exposed to western ideas and educated in Oxford and Cambridge. This helped foster the nationalist movements which were spearheaded by intellectuals and crucial in gaining independence and creating a stable autonomous rule. The industrial revolution which began in Britain did spread to its colonies due to the growing demand of raw materials in England, thus the British did help mechanize the workforce of its acquired nations.
The good done by the empire often seem redundant and pale in comparison to the devastation and disharmony the English brought to most of their colonies. First of, genocide; the British systematically “ethnically cleansed” the natives of any country they invaded. The massacre of the Native Americans, Maoris, aborigines, Zulus and Indians are staggering. The classical ideology of the empire builder was social Darwinism. A concept they used when committing atrocities against the lesser humans. Another destructive force was the introduction of the free market. The British imports from their colonies was mostly raw materials , which they obtained at hugely unequal prices, which they then turned into high ended items and exported to the same colonies. This ensured that the local private industry wasn’t allowed to grow. In essence the British wanted their subjects to be beggars, and thus always dependant on the empire for material as well as military support. Therefore just in India, British import and export fetched a mind-boggling profit of 200%.
Cultural imperialism was the buzzword of the Victorians. No longer satisfied with just economically exploiting the colonies where they didn’t practice settler colonialism, they wanted to export to these nations the whole British way of life including Christianity. Thus the British who were mostly ignorant of local customs, tribal rivalry, religious differences and political structures went ahead and geographically and communally divided the world. British ideas of “divide and rule” and low understanding or care for Indian culture resulted in the partition of India in 1947 which ended in a carnage that resulted in the deaths of over 12 million Indians and led to a harrowing legacy of warfare between Hindus and Muslims. In Africa, missionaries like Livingstone were interested in helping the Africans with disease and better implementation of agricultural techniques; however their primary aim was to create a society of people that they could then convert to Christianity. Livingstone even wanted to build a European society on the banks of the river Zambezi and open up the heartland of Africa to trade, commerce and Christianity.
British entrepreneurs like Cecil Rhodes and the East India Company of India, were epicenters for exploitation of a nations resources. Right from acquiring of gold mines to the rather perfectly executed economic annexation of the DeBeers diamond mines, to the building of railroads to support the needs of capitalist giants like the East India company, the empire through private industries and governmental limitations and military force managed to divert the majority of the profits coming from the colony back to Britain.
The similarities between the informal and clandestine empire built by the USA and the days of the British rule are many. To start off, the methods the British used to get into a nation usually constitute of starting a trading outpost which slowly turns into an economic monopoly taking over regulating the import and export sector and crippling the local competitors. In the case of the British, the effects that the East India Company had on the economy of India, is the best example of such a venture. The Americans have used the same tactics all over the world. From the creation of banana republics in the Caribbean, where large multinationals like Union fruit practically decided the lives and deaths of the population, to companies like Exxon Mobil and Enron which have huge market shares in the oil rich Middle East. In the case of either “empire”, a blockade or restriction against the expansion of the markets in the various different countries, have been met with military force. Thus the first gulf war and the present operation Iraqi freedom added to the hundreds of proxy wars the US fought during the cold war era were mostly the Empire’s attempts to allow their entrepreneurs a safe space to grow and take over the economic structure of a nation.
However the most significant similarity between the two empires is the export of cultural values to its colonies. In the globalized world of today, McDonalds and Wal-Mart have mushroomed in hundreds of nations all over the world, most home PCs are run on Windows Operating systems, Hollywood movies have become household names, American clothing and above all, a culture of consumerism and love for instant gratification has penetrated deep into the heart of many societies all over the world. The Victorians in particular believing in their cultural superiority wanted to “civilize and Christianize” the native. Thus right from drinking afternoon tea, to the governmental structures, to driving on the left side of the road, the British impregnated its colonial Diaspora with the quintessential aspects of England. In essence this imposition of a certain way of life was another structure of control, using which the metropole made the periphery dependant on its good graces for even the ideology by which they lived their life.
The British depended greatly on local officials and leaders in order to rule. By bribing or choosing the officials they ensured their control on the larger civilian population. The ruling of India, a country of over 200 million people by 10,000 British officials is this theory at work. The Americans chose to use the same tactics all over the world, be it arming Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or installing puppet governments in Bolivia and Nicaragua. The British use of military presence was also an important factor in “taming” the wild countries. To keep up with this imperialist tradition, the USA has over 725 military bases effective in the world today. This legacy of restrained yet, universally present military might allows the US to mobilize their forces at very short notice whenever the policies of the national rulers do not humor their own strategic or economic interests.
Even though suggested in the text that the British Empire was the least of all the evil empires and a rather noble enterprise which took on the role of saving the world even at the cost of personal destruction, the logic seems a little skewed. Genocide, communal violence, extermination of national resources, crippling of local economies, atrocities against human rights, cultural and religious imposition – the crimes committed by the empire were against everything that people hold sacrosanct. A moral argument cannot be created by an institution which holds racism, limitless economic gain and a penchant for dehumanizing at its very core. In retrospect, even as industrial revolution spread and the illusionary free market took over, the British Empire was visible in its full glory – an institution religiously committed into transforming the world into a neo-England, populated by sub-human native beggars, that looked up to the white man for lessons on civilization and spirit. A world order created at the cost of justice and human liberty.