Sentiment vs Strategy: British Naval Policy,Imperial Defence,and the Development of Dominion Navies, 1911–14

This article examines British naval policy towards imperial defence and the development of autonomous Dominion navies in 1911–14. It shows that the Admiralty's main goal under the leadership of Winston Churchill was to concentrate British and Dominion warships in European waters, and ideally in the North Sea, to meet the German threat. Churchill's approach to naval developments in the Dominions was also shaped by his desire to fulfil the Cabinet's policy of remaining strong in the Mediterranean Sea. He made some concessions to sentiment in the Dominions, but his attempts to create a coherent imperial policy for the naval defence of Britain and its empire were ultimately unsuccessful. By 1914 it was clear that the Dominions would not provide the additional warships Britain required for the Mediterranean, and on the eve of war the Admiralty was beginning to prepare an imperial naval strategy that more accurately reflected the Empire's capabilities.     

Free Trade Empire to Commonwealth of Nations: India,Britain and Imperial Preference, 1903–1932

This article examines the dialogue between British tariff reformers and Indian nationalists over the application of imperial trade preference in India from Joseph Chamberlain's 1903 Birmingham address to the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference. For both groups, this issue was a focal point to assess India's constitutional status and national participation within an emerging British Commonwealth and international system after the First World War. Specifically, it marked a comprehensive challenge to the orthodoxy of free trade and liberal empire seen increasingly as a determent to reconciling national prosperity and imperial unity. It is argued that prominent tariff reformers’ well-studied criticism of an ‘unpatriotic’ cosmopolitan free trade made them also sympathetic to longstanding Indian grievances that this fiscal policy exacerbated economic exploitation and racial discrimination. After 1919, Indian nationalists, including ‘historical economists’, utilized metropolitan advocacy for imperial preference to demand fiscal and political autonomy from Britain and national, as well as racial, equality in collective imperial decision. At the 1932 conference in Ottawa, India's voluntary and negotiated acceptance of preferential trade with Britain, beside the white self-governing Dominions, helped transform the British Commonwealth into an egalitarian organization recognizable after 1947.     

Selling the Empire?: Marketing and the Demise of the British World,c.1920–1960

ABSTRACT

This article uses a study of the politics of marketing and advertising to consider the role that British World collaboration played in consumer politics in the UK and the Dominions between the 1920s and 1950s. We will assess how politicians and businesspeople in the Dominions responded to the Empire Marketing Board’s efforts to encourage the habit of ‘Buying British’ in the inter-war years, as well as exploring the activities of the leading American marketing agency, J. Walter Thompson. The article concludes with a discussion of how the politics of patriotic trade was recast in the 1950s. While this was a cause which had taken on different forms in Australia, Canada and South Africa during the 1930s, in each country its advocates shared a wider concern with imperial development. And yet, changes in the advertising and marketing industries, and the growth of market research, cut across efforts to promote the consumer habit of buying imperially. By the early 1960s patriotic trade campaigns in the ‘old’ Dominions were nationally focused and shorn of their earlier ‘Britannic’ identity.     

The Limits of the Shanghai Bridgehead: Understanding British Intervention in the Taiping Rebellion 1860–62

This article discusses the rationale behind British intervention in the Taiping civil war in China and the episode’s wider significance for understanding nineteenth-century British imperial expansion. I argue that the most productive way to understand the shape of the limited British intervention in the war is through analysing the relative strength of distinct bridgeheads of British interest in China. British interests in Shanghai grew rapidly in the Taiping period and helped to draw in intervention against the Taiping armies when they attacked the port in 1860 and 1862. The strict limitation of this intervention, which did not result in any imperial expansion in China, was a result of the consistent underperformance of the wider British trade with China. Without a growth in this trade, the expense of an extensive intervention and its potential consequences could not be justified. The episode suggests that analyses of local conditions and the strength of local ties to metropolitan resources are important for understanding the wider pattern of British imperial expansion.     

An enduring influence on imperial defence and grand strategy: British perceptions of the Italian Navy, 1935–1943

The Mediterranean was a vital artery of the British Empire. It was a strategic corridor, linking Britain to its Middle and Far East possessions and precious resources. Its control was a central tenet of British imperial strategy, yet by the mid-1930s, this faced a new challenge from Fascist Italy. The Italian Navy was central to expansionist aspirations and forced British reappraisals of the allocation of defence resources both in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. It therefore came to exert a generally under-appreciated influence on pre-war British imperial defence policy and war planning. Although consistently viewed as vastly inferior to the Royal Navy, it was still seen as an impediment to Britain's ability to deliver imperial defence across the globe, or conduct a worldwide war against multiple enemies. This view persisted even after important defeats were inflicted on it in 1940–1941, and continued right through to 1943. Awareness of the seriousness with which the British viewed Italian naval strength adds important context to debates about British strategy in the Far East and over Winston Churchill's preference for a ‘Mediterranean first’ strategy. Italian naval power played a greater role in shaping the Allied prosecution of the Second World War than is commonly accepted.     

The Ambiguities of an Imperial Institution: Crisis and Transition in the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1899–1911

In the tumultuous years after the Sino-Japanese war the Maritime Customs Service reeled from one crisis to another, threatened by growing competition among the foreign powers to extract concessions and by the brutal Boxer war. Chinese political elites increasingly viewed the Customs with suspicion and sought to limit its influence. Meanwhile, the service suffered from deep internal dissention. Ageing Inspector General Sir Robert Hart – much celebrated in public – was criticised privately for his autocratic style and unwillingness to make reforms. Frustrated senior Customs officers lobbied for support in London. The Foreign Office viewed maintaining British predominance in the service as an important priority, only to see Hart undermine its efforts to establish a widely acceptable successor. While Hart always insisted that the Customs was a servant of the Chinese government, over the last decade of his career the service was increasingly alienated from its Chinese master, and became ever more an expression of imperial – particularly British – interests in China.     

Empire, emigration and school geography: changing discourses of Imperial citizenship, 1880–1925

The state school curriculum, and geography in particular, played a role in encouraging emigration to the colonies, if not in actually educating for emigration. Emigration was an implicit and explicit topic in school geography, and was increasingly endorsed after the 1885 Revised Instructions to inspectors of schools which explicitly sought the promotion of emigration to young people as an “honourable enterprise”. Early-twentieth century school geography texts were part of the broader imperial discourse which valorized the settler Dominions over the tropical colonies and portrayed them as the good citizen's choice for emigration. The 1922 Empire Settlement Act represented the British government's most direct intervention in supporting out-migration from Britain, but texts at this time were generally less jingoistic than some of their forerunners, in keeping with the changed attitudes in post-World War I Britain.     

Empire, Patriotism and the Working-Class Electorate: The 1900 General Election in the Battersea Constituency

The extent to which the Unionist victory in the 'khaki' general election of 1900 was the result of patriotic sentiment arising from the South African war has long been a source of controversy among historians. Battersea has been cited as an area that was largely unaffected by patriotic and imperial fervour during this period. This article examines the general election campaign in the Battersea constituency. The sitting MP, John Burns, was re-elected despite his opposition to the war, but the Conservatives achieved their highest percentage vote of that at any parliamentary election between 1885 and 1918. While the war was not the only issue raised during the campaign, it was the most prominent and clearly benefited the imperialist and pro-war Conservative candidate. In order to retain his seat Burns had to fight a far more dynamic local campaign than his opponent, and even then he won only narrowly. Although imperial sentiment was not quite enough to oust Burns from this otherwise safe seat, it was the main reason for the strong Conservative performance.     

Protection,Federation and Union: The Global Impact of the McKinley Tariff upon the British Empire, 1890–94

This article takes a global historical approach to American protectionism and the British imperial federation movement of the late nineteenth century, showing how US tariff policy was intimately intertwined with the political and economic policies of the British empire of free trade. This article argues that the 1890 McKinley Tariff's policies helped call into question Britain's liberal, free trade, global empire by drumming up support for an imperial, protectionist, preferential Greater Britain. The tariff also speeded up the demand and development of more efficient transportation and communications—technological developments that made imperial federation all the more viable—within the British Empire. This article is thus a global history of the McKinley Tariff's impact upon the British Empire, as well as a study of the tariff's effect upon the history of modern globalisation.     

Mythologising the Dominion Fighting Man: Australian and Canadian Narratives of the First World War Soldier, 1914–39

A stereotypical image of the nation's First World War soldiers—and a conventional understanding of their war experience and its meaning—is not a concept unique to the British Empire's former Pacific Dominions, but is also promulgated in other parts of the Empire. During the First World War and interwar period, Canada also saw the emergence of a ‘Myth of the Soldier’ that paralleled the Anzac legend in many ways. This article focuses on some of the similarities and differences in Australia and Canada's mythologising of their First World War soldiers, proposing that this process reflects aspects of identity formation common to settler societies within the British world.     

Statistics as the science of government: The stillborn British Empire statistical bureau, 1918–20

The 1920 British Empire Statistical Conference was the direct outcome of the Dominions Royal Commission's Final Report, which had spelt out the need to increase the uniformity and comparability of statistics originating from various parts of the Empire and had proposed setting up an imperial central statistical office. Over 24 days, delegates debated a large number of topics, ranging from the practical and empirical subject matters of statistical inquiry to more abstract issues such as the nature and object of statistical data collection and analysis, and to the problems raised by the establishment of a statistical bureau that would operate on an unprecedented scale. This article seeks to understand why, despite apparently favourable conditions, this project soon ended in complete failure. The reasons must be sought in the neatly distinctive outlooks held by the British government and Dominion representatives as regards the function of statistics for the purpose of government, in the quite different bureaucratic settings that embodied and sustained these views, as well as in the tensions and centrifugal pressures that acted upon inter-imperial relations following the Great War.     

A Technocratic Vision of Empire: Lord Montagu and the Origins of British Air Power

This article advances the existing literature on British imperial aeronautics by explaining how Lord John Montagu’s extensive collaboration with military and government officials during the first decades of powered flight expanded the global distribution of the air forces and anticipated their important later role in facilitating international communication and security. In reconsidering problems of conquest and governance through an aeronautical perspective, Montagu strengthened critical junctures between British civil and military affairs, while his innovative employment of the new technology also complicated divisions between the metropolis and periphery in ways that would intensify the destructiveness of modern warfare across the planet.     

The Imperialism of Internment: Boer Prisoners of War in India and Civic Reconstruction in Southern Africa, 1899–1905

During the course of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, over 9,000 captured Boers were sent abroad to India as prisoners of war. Using hitherto unexamined sources, this article explores how, during their internment and repatriation, British officials and administrators across the empire collaborated in a concerted attempt to transform the imperial enemy into colonial collaborator. This involved a necessarily intercolonial effort to conduct a successful programme of ‘re-education’ capable of cultivating ‘white’ British virtues in preparing Boer POWs for their future rights and duties in reconstructing Southern Africa upon their repatriation. In so doing, the government of India and other colonial officials across the empire thus recapitulated their ideal of Britain’s imperial project in the Boer POW camps. Highlighting the intercoloniality of this process, India’s viceroy, Lord George Curzon, played as prominent a role as did the War Office, or South Africa’s soon-to-be pro-consul, Lord Alfred Milner. The microcosmic imperialism of Boer internment thus reveals a great deal about the nature and structure of power within the British Empire, and emphasises the value of an intercolonial or transcolonial perspective in examining the complex, global consequences of the Anglo-Boer War.     

Marching to the Beat of an Imperial Drum: Contextualising Australia's Military Effort During the First World War

When war erupted in 1914, Britain embarked on its prewar plans of mobilising resources from its vast Empire, and created an imperial coalition which fought within a wider coalition with France, Russia and, later, the United States of America. This article examines the limited role performed by Australian naval and military forces within this wider imperial effort and assesses the extent to which Australian forces relied on British command, technology, and logistic support. It challenges common assumptions about Australia’s wartime performance, including the degree to which Australian forces and commanders contributed to tactical innovation and wider planning and operational thought.     

Imperial Legacies and Internationalist Discourses: British Involvement in the United Nations Freedom from Hunger Campaign, 1960–70

Between 1960 and 1965, the British public raised almost seven million pounds to support the Freedom from Hunger Campaign (FFHC), a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization initiative that funded agricultural development projects across the underdeveloped world in an effort to ‘help the hungry to help themselves’. With the involvement of more than 100 countries and affiliated NGOs, the FFHC was by a considerable margin the largest humanitarian effort of its time, but it also forms part of a specifically British story about imperial benevolence and imperial decline. This article uses the British public's support for the campaign as a window onto the changing experience of British humanitarianism during an era of decolonisation. Did the British public's moral geography change as they lost their empire? Was there a role for the empire/commonwealth within the framework of an international campaign such as Freedom from Hunger? Which imperial legacies remained intact in the FFHC, which were adapted and which discarded?     

The Boer War and the Media (1899-1902)

The South African War that broke out in October 1899 was bothvery old and very new. It was a traditional war, the last ofthe old-fashioned British imperial wars, with cavalry playinga significant part. But it was also a very modern war, for instancein the British Army's use of railways to subdue the Boers inthe early months of 1900, or the use of trench warfare by theBoers along the Modder river. It was disturbingly new in theway that it changed in the autumn of 1900 from a war betweenarmies to a guerrilla war against a civilian population, mostdistastefully so in the British concentration camps set up tohouse Boer women and children. Above all, it was a distinctlycontemporary war in its impact on the media, especially thenewspapers, and in the interaction between the media and thoseparticipating in the fighting. It was a significant war, farbigger than originally expected, and was therefore big news.The British Army, ill-prepared for the original Boer invasionof Natal, at first numbered 75,000 troops. In the end, the Britishand imperial forces totalled 450,000 with contingents from Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and India. The British lost 22,000 men,13,000 of them from disease. The Boers lost about 7,000 in thefield, while another 27,000 (many of them very young children)are estimated to have died in the concentration camps. Therewere also about 20,000 black and ‘coloured’ Africanswho died in concentration camps, though this was little reportedat the time. So it was a major episode in British military history.The impact on British opinion of the relief of Ladysmith andespecially of Mafeking in 1900 was quite overwhelming. In afrenzy of ‘jingo’ celebration, the verb ‘mafficking’entered the language. In these circumstances, the consequencesof the Boer War on the media and its representation of war wereinevitably massive.     

The Long Goodbye: British Agency in the Creation of Navies for India and Pakistan

The armed forces of India and Pakistan draw legacies from a common British imperial past. British influence persisted in the navies that emerged from independence and partition on the South Asia subcontinent. Complaints over treatment and other grievances in the colonial Royal Indian Navy underscored a major mutiny in February 1946, prior to division of warships, shore-based establishments and personnel between the two countries. The transformation into truly national navies was long and involved, buttressed by continued reliance on British professional expertise and arms transfers. While the Admiralty offered warships on the basis of association with the commonwealth and defence cooperation in the Indian Ocean, navies in India and Pakistan led by senior British officers pursued distinct agendas and force structures that more and more looked towards potential war against each other. Louis Mountbatten, the last British viceroy, intervened often in naval matters before and after partition, encouraging Indians and Pakistanis to build up naval forces suited to national needs as well as serving British interests and imperial defence commitments during the early Cold War. Continued British presence impaired full nationalisation and the assumption of higher leadership roles by qualified indigenous naval officers in the newly independent commonwealth nations.     

Review Article: Professional,Political, and Mercenary Soldiers

Since the late 1970s, most scholarship on the origins of the Zionist–Palestinian conflict has emphasised the actions and agency of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, with a focus on the period before 1914. It is argued in this article, however, that the expectation of and commitment to political independence on both sides, a defining feature of the conflict, did not emerge until 1918, and that the actions of the British government in Palestine during the final year of the First World War drove this fundamental shift. Following Britain's occupation of southern Palestine in December 1917, the British administration undertook an extensive propaganda operation in the country to advertise their backing for Arab nationalism and Zionism. This campaign was part of the British government's wider endeavour to mobilise support for the Allied war effort and British imperial expansion in the Middle East in the new age of nationality. It led, the article contends, to a war for national sovereignty over Palestine between two statist nationalist movements. Rather than emphasise British colonial agency at the expense of that of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, the article argues that this development derived from a complex interaction between the three parties within the context of radical changes in international politics.     

Unmasking Britannia: The Rise and Fall of British National Identity

Abstract. British national identity is a supranational identity deriving from an imperial past. Warfare created Britain in the eighteenth century, and at first glance mass war in the twentieth century seemed to reinforce it. War, however, was a twoedged sword. On the one hand, it dominated the lives of Britons between 1900 and 1945, yet war and its social-political demands weakened the fabric of the British state which was designed to be a nation-state, rather a state-nation. The more it demanded loyalty to its national icons, the more it became clear that these were not ‘national’ at ail. In many ways war forged state and nation but in a way that has led to its possible break-up.