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.     

Welsh Sojourners in India: The East India Company,Networks and Patronage,c. 1760–1840

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, within the framework of imperial expansion and exploitation there were opportunities for individuals to acquire wealth and power. Several men grew wealthy in India through the opportunities afforded to them by the East India Company, with lucrative careers and the possibility of generating money through commerce and trade. Britain witnessed the return of several East Indians, or ‘nabobs’ as individuals who returned home with considerable wealth were called. Indeed, some of these nabobs succeeded in amassing sizeable fortunes during their time in the East. This article aims to address a neglected area in the historiography, by examining the experiences of Welshmen as sojourners in India. In comparison with Scotland in particular, but also England and Ireland, the Welsh dimension of the East India Company is under-researched. This article highlights the existence of networks of patronage in existence in Wales which facilitated the voyage out to India and the return home of men in the employ of the East India Company during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Networks were predominantly regional or familial, with family members supporting and sustaining loved ones during their time in India, and aiding them in their return home at the end of their sojourn in the East. The importance of letters in maintaining links with home is explored, not only as a method of relaying news, but also as a means for the sojourner to maintain an emotional link with home, and ultimately to lay the groundwork for a smooth transition home. How these Welshmen viewed themselves while out in India will be analysed, and the multi-layered nature of concepts of identity explored. Identity could be regional in focus, while some showed an awareness of a Welsh identity. Integration within the broader framework of the British East India Company is evident, as is the broader European community in the East.     

Imperial Citizenship or Else: Liberal Ideals and the India Unmaking of Empire, 1890–1919

ABSTRACT

This article examines three connected campaigns for Indian imperial citizenship which spanned the period 1890 to 1919, and their impact on the emergence of radical South Asian anticolonialism. It shifts our focus from individuals and ideologues who sought the status of British imperial citizens, to address the agitations which commenced to attain such a status within a reconstructed British Empire. Specific attention is paid to the conditions which encouraged South Asian patriots to imagine that the ideal of equal imperial citizenship within an imperial federation was a feasible political objective, to the illiberal official retreat from such an ideal, and to the political ramifications of this retreat. In conclusion, this article argues that the quest for Indian imperial citizenship, which spanned the Empire from South Africa to Canada, has been a much-neglected chapter in the evolution of anti-colonial nationalism in South Asia which deserves to be reinserted in the grand meta-narrative of the region’s twentieth century history.     

‘The Company as Their Lords and the Deputy as a Great Rajah’: Imperial Expansion and the English East India Company on the West Coast of Sumatra, 1685–1730

The emergence of new historiographical approaches to the study of British imperialism over the past two decades, has begun to challenge the trade-to-empire narrative which continues to dominate the way historians understand the English East India Company's presence in Asia, anchoring the beginnings of empire there to the mid-eighteenth century. However, as this article argues, Company servants operating on the West Coast of Sumatra sought imperial expansion through political hegemony and territorial acquisitions as far back as the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Indeed, Company servants, distinct from the directors in London, formulated these imperial, expansionist policies on the West Coast in support of a private, patriarchal authority which they had developed to rule over the people they encountered there.     

The East India Company’s Farmān, 1622‒1747

The East India Company’s presence and ongoing trade in Persia was reliant on the privileges outlined in the Farmān, granted after the capture of Hormuz in 1622. The relationship between these two powers was cemented in the rights enshrined in the Farmān, which was used by both to regulate their varying needs and expectations over the course of 125 years. This article explores the Company’s records of the Farmān and how changes to its terms were viewed from both sides. As a Persian document, the Farmān gives a clear view of the attitudes of native officials and rulers to the Company and how these terms were used as a means of control.     

The Everlasting Empire： The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy

To most specialists and non-specialists of Chinese political culture, probably the most intriguing question is why the Chinese empire, one of the largest political entities in human history, attained against all odds its unparalleled longevity for more than two millennia from 221 BCE to 1911. Building upon his previous study of the formation of China＇s unique imperial ideology prior to the foundation of the first dynasty, （Yuri Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire： Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era, Honolulu： University of Hawai＇i Press, 2009）.     

The Politics of Empire: Douglas Hailsham and the Imperial Policy of the National Government, 1931–38

While the majority of high-profile imperialists were excluded from Britain's National Government during the 1930s, at least one leading imperialist of the era, Douglas Hogg, first Viscount Hailsham (1872–1950), was at the heart of British policy-making. Although historians have largely overlooked the multifaceted contribution of this leading Conservative to inter-imperial affairs, as a senior cabinet minister he made significant interventions in Britain's policy towards both India and Ireland. He was, both publicly and privately, at the forefront of attempts to resist Irish violations of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and, at the same time, became one of the government's leading advocates of a progressive solution to India's constitutional development. The article demonstrates that the simplistic image of Hailsham as a diehard reactionary requires significant modification. His approach was characteristically underpinned by a belief in the sanctity of existing agreements and pledges—whether or not he intrinsically approved of them.     

‘Hereditary Guardians of the Nation’: The House of Lords and the East India Company in the Age of the American Revolution

The reform of the East India Company following its acquisition of vast territories in Bengal in the mid 1760s raised hopes that it could provide Britain with a fund to alleviate the burdens of the national debt in the wake of the failure of American taxation. Concomitantly, it elicited genuine fears that the acquisition of such revenues and patronage by the state would radically augment the already overgrown ‘influence of the crown’. Studies of the parliamentary debates surrounding East India reform have consistently emphasized the house of commons as the principal scene of action. Inspired by the work of Clyve Jones in reasserting the centrality of the house of lords as a ‘pillar’ of the 18th-century constitution, this essay seeks to redress the balance, arguing that the Lords was a key arena through which co-ordinated parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activities and press campaigns altered the trajectory of the regulation and reform of the East India Company. Through the use of its distinct privileges, such as the right of opposition lords to protest any vote of the House and the right of peers to an audience with the monarch, as well as its determination to uphold its status as a mediator between the powers of the crown and the Commons, the upper chamber played a crucial role in shaping debates in the 1770s and 1780s over the future of the East India Company and its place in a burgeoning British Empire.