Table Of ContentBRITAIN'S LIBERAL EMPIRE 1897 -1921
Also by Max Seloff 
DREAM  OF  COMMONWEALTH,  1921-42  (Volume  2  of  IMPERIAL 
SUNSET) (in preparation) 
PUBLIC ORDER AND POPULAR DISTURBANCES, 1660-1714 
THE FOREIGN POLICY OF SOVIET RUSSIA (2 volumes) 
THOMAS JEFFERSON AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
SOVIET POLICY IN THE FAR EAST, 1944-51 
THE AGE OF ABSOLUTISM, 1660-1815 
FOREIGN POLICY AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS 
EUROPE AND THE EUROPEANS 
THE GREAT POWERS 
THE AMERICAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 
NEW DIMENSIONS IN FOREIGN POLICY 
THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITY OF EUROPE 
THE BALANCE OF POWER 
THE FUTURE OF BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY 
THE INTELLECTUAL IN POLITICS 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM (with G. R. Peele) 
WARS AND WELFARE, 1914-1945 
Edited by Max Beloff 
THE FEDERALIST 
MANKIND AND HIS STORY 
THE DEBATE ON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 
ON THE TRACK OF TYRANNY 
L'EUROPE DU XIXe ET XXe SIECLE 
AMERICAN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE 1970s (with V. Vale)
BRITAIN'S LIBERAL EMPIRE 
1897-1921 
Volume I of IMPERIAL SUNSET 
MAX BELOFF 
Emeritus Professor of Government and Public Administration 
University of Oxford 
Second Edition 
M 
PALGRAVE 
MACMILLAN
© Max Beloff 1969, 1987 
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1987 
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission 
of this publication may be made without written permission. 
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied 
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance 
with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), 
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying 
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 7 Ridgmount Street, 
London WC I E 7A  E. 
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to 
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and 
civil claims for damages. 
First edition (Methuen) 1969 
Second edition (Macmillan) 1987 
Published by 
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD 
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS 
and London 
Companies and representatives 
throughout the world 
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 
Beloff, Max 
Imperial sunset. -2nd ed 
Vol. I: Britain's liberal empire 1897-1921 
I. Great Britain-Colonies-History 
2. Great Britain-Foreign relations 
-20th century 
I. Title 
325'.32'0941  DAI6 
ISBN 978-0-333-44491-7  ISBN 978-1-349-18957-1 (eBook) 
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18957-1
for Michael  and Jeremy
CONTENTS 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION  page  ix 
SOURCES  AND  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  XIX 
CHAPTER I:  INTRODUCTION  I 
The choice of Europe . The reversal of fortunes . Persons and 
influences . Summary of this volume 
CHAPTER II: DIAMOND JUBILEE  20 
Threats to the empire . Defence and imperial unity: Ireland· 
Costs and complications in ruling India . The new imperialism 
and Cecil Rhodes' Chamberlain and Salisbury· The generation 
in power . Pressures for reform . Fissures within the Empire 
70 
CHAPTER III: THE  WEARY  TITAN 
The turning-point . The Boer war and imperial cohesion . The 
creation of the C.l.D . . Reshaping naval policy· Military re 
organization . The tariff reform argument . Colonial views on 
tariff reform . The pressures on imperial strategy 
CHAPTER IV: THE  EMPIRE  AND  THE  ENTENTES  108 
Policies and politics in  the  liberal era . New personalities • 
Moves for change and reform· South Africa - the touchstone' 
Imperialism, tariffs, and Milner· The Round Table' Radical 
attitudes .  The  dominions'  differing views  .  The  dictates  of 
defence . The dominions and naval and military dispositions . 
Indian nationalism and defence . The intractability of the Irish 
question . The North Atlantic triangle· From peace to war 
CHAPTER V: WAR  AND  WAR AIMS  181 
PAR T  I: Britain, the Empire and early peace feelers 
Basic considerations' The political machinery for waging war' 
Imperial factors, the dominions and Ireland' India and the war' 
Early war aims and peace feelers· Lloyd George and reorganiza 
tion . The 'left' against the 'new imperialists' . Imperial con 
sultation and economic cohesion 
Vll
CONTENTS 
PART II: The United States and victory  229 
Early Anglo-Americanfriction· Wilson the peacemaker· Later 
imperial war aims· The American susceptihilities and claims • 
The  Middle East·  The Balfour declaration·  The  United 
States and peace terms . Peace - The final pressures 
CHAPTER VI: THE EMPIRE  AND  THE  PEACE  274 
The demand for securiry • The Empire and peace terms • The 
Paris peace conference . The dominions, the League and man 
dates· The Middle East settlement and relations with France· 
Constitutional advance in India . Dominion status: India and 
Ireland· The 1921 imperial conference· Coming to terms with 
Europe  • Britain and the holsheviks  • The Anglo-American 
understanding· The Far East 
CHAPTER VII: APOGEE  OF EMPIRE  344 
CHRONOLOGY  1897-192 I  366 
INDEX  373 
MAPS: The British Empire in 1897  362 
Imperial acquisitions in the peace settlement  364 
viii
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
When the first  edition of this book was published in  1969 I  had 
hoped  that a  sequel  would  follow  very  rapidly.  For a  variety of 
reasons my work on this project was interrupted. I now hope if all 
goes  well  to  produce the second volume of 'Imperial Sunset' for 
publication in 1988. Meanwhile the republication of the first volume 
gives me an opportunity to look at the period that has elapsed since 
1969 and to see what additional insights it provides in respect of the 
problems I undertook to investigate. 
Such insights derive from  two sources. There has been a  large 
volume of historical scholarship devoted to all aspects of the imperial 
history of the period with which I was dealing, making use in large 
part of materials that became available subsequently to the works 
upon which I myself had to rely. In the second place there have been 
the events in the ongoing history of Britain's relations with the rest of 
the Commonwealth and with the rest of the world that cannot but 
affect one's judgement of their antecedents. 
One reviewer of the first edition complained that I had made too 
much of the debate over Britain's possible entry into the European 
Communities which had become 'an intellectual and political bore', 
and felt  that the knowledge that the EEC represented one of the 
'author's ultimate guidelines' cast 'its own shadow' across the book 
as  a  whole.  On that score,  I  feel  time has justified my original 
I 
conception.  Britain  has  become  a  member  of  the  European 
Communities and with every year that passes, this fact becomes of 
increasing significance in its economic and political aspects and in its 
impact  upon  Britain's  domestic  affairs.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Commonwealth has clearly been downgraded in the list of Britain's 
priorities  and  with important divergencies  of opinion developing 
among its member governments and with Britain occupying a less 
central  role  in  the  affairs  of many  member  countries,  even  its 
perpetuation has been called into question. It seems more than ever 
reasonable  to  look  at the development from  British  Empire into 
British Commonwealth and (latterly) from British Commonwealth 
into Commonwealth as a reaction not only to internal developments 
lX
PREFACE 
within  the  British  system  but also  to  the  changing balances  in 
economic  and  military  power  to  which  Britain's  rulers  were 
responding. In respect of that approach I see no need to change the 
framing of my original inquiry. 
Domestic as  well  as  international  developments  have also  in 
evitably  produced  a  new perspective upon  the earlier period.  A 
whole school of historical interpretation has grown up, of which Mr 
Correlli Barnett was the pioneer which sees in the decline of British 
power  the  consequence  of an  inadequate attention  to  industrial 
development,  and  the  Empire-Commonwealth  as,  if anything,  a 
burden rather than an asset to the home country.2 Or again, the 
growing salience of race-relations  as  an issue of internal  British 
politics has produced an examination of earlier British attitudes on 
questions of race and an effort to link the ideologies and practices of 
Empire and Commonwealth to changing conceptions of race. 3 These 
in turn are shown to have rested in large part upon developments in 
the natural and human sciences and particularly in anthropology 
which to some extent bridges that divide. The impact of such ideas 
as well as of changes in the religious outlook draws attention to the 
role of universities and in particular of Oxford as the main source in 
the pre-1914 period of the Empire's administrators and a principal 
source of its missionaries and teachers.4 
The way in which one looks at these and other aspects of the 
imperial decline will indeed in part be a question of generations. A 
schoolboy growing up as I did, with much of the map coloured red 
and with memories of several visits to the British Empire Exhibition 
at Wembley at the age oftwelve, must see things differently from the 
way in which they are seen by those whose most impressionable 
years fell during the height of the period of , deco Ionisation' after the 
second world war.5 And for today's youngsters Britain is no more 
than an offshore island with a cluster of tiny dependencies showing· 
their  peaks  above  the  enveloping ocean  like  signposts  to  a  lost, 
continent.6 
Geographical perspective may also give important differences of 
emphasis. It is  not surprising that the author of important books 
offering a very critical handling of British imperialism should have 
spent  much  of  his  teaching  career  outside  Britain.7  Others, 
particularly  the non-British  and  particularly  perhaps  Americans 
with their inbuilt anti-imperial bias, may see the British imperial 
x