Table Of ContentImperialism in the Twentieth Century
IMPERIALISM
in the
TWENTIETH CENTURY
by
A. P. THORNTON
© The University of Minnesota 1977
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.
Reprinted in paperback 1980
First published in the U.K. 1978
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-30712-0 ISBN 978-1-349-05823-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05823-5
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
· . . and, whosoever considers that the
nature 0] men, especially 0] men in
authority, is inclined rather to commit
two errors than to retract one, will
not marvel that ]rom this root 0]
unadvisedness, so many and tall branches
0] mischief have proceeded.
CLARENDON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
W
iters are unable to acknowledge whatever knowledge they
have no recollection of having acquired: accordingly, this
note does not adequately thank all those in my life and
friendship who have so markedly helped my thinking and myself.
The generous leave policy of the University of Toronto made it pos
sible for me to begin this book, and its research funds to complete it.
The University of Edinburgh gave me the use of its splendid library,
and I owe much to the kindliness, which many others also know,
of George Shepperson. My friend J ames Conacher, chairman of the
department of history at the University of Toronto, generously and
doubtless quite improperly gave me some respite from departmental
duties while I was in labor. William C. Berman cast a sternly helpful
eye upon my fifth chapter. Cecile Sydney typed the manuscript,
but did more: her diligence and intelligence signally added to its
clarity. I have also greatly appreciated the editorial skill of Victoria
Haire of the University of Minnesota Press and the continuous sup
port of John Ervin, Jr., its director, and William Wood. But I hardly
need to make the point, standard but seldom sincere, that all faults
in this book are my own.
On page 7, I say that no book is ever written without conditions
of quiet. Only a writer's wife knows what those conditions cost
and to mine, I dedicate this book.
1 July 1977
University College,
University of Toronto
vu
FOREWORD
I
n the nineteenth century Sir Archibald Alison filled fifteen vol
umes with a narrative account of events in Europe between 1 789
and 1815, and followed these with another ten, bringing the
story to 1852 -and even after this prodigious achievement would of
ten tell his friends how much he regretted having left out. This single
volume could not try and does not try to provide an in-depth ac
count of the past seventy-seven years. Instead, it develops a single
theme from these years: the theme of imperialism, hereafter de
fined.
It examines how the policies of imperialism were organized, and
by whom. It sets out how imperialists saw the way of the world
and how they gathered its public affairs into a framework of their
own devising. It tells what assertions were made against them, and
how they dealt with these. It shows how they developed no new
strategy in the face of this challenge and how as a direct consequence
they watched the moral initiative pass to the dissidents, usually
called nationalists, who based their case on liberal principles like
self-determination, which were often preached but not as often
practiced among them. It discusses the ideas and the tactics of the
spokesmen for these dissidents, who spent the years between the
two world wars attaining credibility, durability, and, ultimately, a
national following.
IX
x Foreword
It asserts also that although the imperial framework at first held
firm under this pressure, it was pressure from within that finally
broke the image the imperialists had made of both empire and them
selves; for in World War II the ambitions of Germany, Japan, and
Italy put the matter of power to the test so thoroughly that, al
though they were defeated, they took with them down to defeat
their rivals' hope that the vast areas of the extra-European world,
over whose ground much of the war had been fought, could con
tinue to be controlled from metropolitan centers. And it tells how,
after the war, this exhaustion of imperial assurance cleared the way
for the success of the colonial assertion against it that had long been
publicized.
This assertion claimed first the name and then the righ ts of nation
alism. But its chief claim was one of imperialism's own: a claim to
control the future. For nationalism also set out to colonize the
minds of men and to build a world at the far side of empire wherein
its principles would animate free societies and promote free inter
change among free nations, loosed from the imperial bondage and
thus inspired to develop the best that was in them. Yet it turned
out that in the twentieth century the filing of such claims was not
covered by sufficient insurance. For any such policy the premiums
were too high. In this book an attempt is made to explain why this
was so and how it came about that the record of our own times tells
how long-term plans and policies of whatever kind, wherever and
by whomever made, came apart or came to grief under the pressure
of events.
It can of course be said that this has been and will continue to be
the fate of all the best-laid schemes of men, who in no generation
have ever commanded the lightning. But this century has been sing
ular, in that it has witnessed a series of struggles fought less for
limited and therefore possible ends than for ideas which often
evaded clear formulation and made their strongest appeal to the
emotions. The potent phrase "the revolu tion of rising expectations"
has been elected to preside over a series of aspirations. But it does
not summarize them. They are too diverse. Since the concept makes
its appeal to the spirit, its essence will survive: but it will always lack
substance, because the revolution it evokes is not actual, is not to
be found in the record. It has never yet been able to find itself a
Foreword xz
general staff. If expectation is to have a strategy, it must, like any
other strategy, first get itself its own tacticians. Tactics if they are to
be effective must refer to experience: and in the field of imperial
ism there is no one common experience, only a set of experiences,
also as diverse as they can be. To know that the doctrine of the
rights of man exists will perhaps put heart into a man in a dungeon,
but it will not loosen his staple from the wall. What one dissident
learned about the nature of imperial power in Kazakhstan in Soviet
Central Asia does not usefully or sensibly compare with the view
of the same taken by another dissident in, say, the British colony
of the Gold Coast in West Africa-since the former would never
have been heard of by the latter or indeed by anyone else at all.
Moreover, casualties in the wars of this century have been heavy:
so many dead men, so many vanished hopes. Among these casualties
-and whether it should be listed as terminal or as among the walk
ing-wounded was something still not clear as the century's final
quarter began-has been the belief that there was such a thing as
progress, that the best guarantee for its vitality and continuance is
to be found within a system of order and a framework of control,
and that the people best fitted to be in charge of both are those
whose own progress is too obvious to be questioned by anyone lay
ing claim to common sense. Whether a majority of people (supposing
them to have believed this) stopped believing it for the reasons
Jacques Berque has suggested-that they either had suffered a loss
of will or had come to realize how "a subtle, uneasy shift in the
tone and accent of life, a sense of inauthenticity, betrayed injustice
under the cloak of order, and disease under that of health"l -or
from some other less sensitive but more easily identifiable cause is
another of the topics examined here.
But it is also emphasized that although territorial empire relin
quished its political grip, the economic control of the world's busi
ness remained with an affluent minority, consisting of the comfort
ably industrialized nations which did not take long to discover that
the possession of such an empire was not a sine qua non of power.
In these circumstances the assertions of nationalism and the prolif
eration of nation-states often seemed irrelevant, and national leaders
found out that full independence, if it was anywhere, was still be
yond the horizon. At the far side of empire another country lay.
xzz Foreword
Many new flags flew over it; many new men held authority in many
parts of it; but, for all its unfamiliarities, it was still a country much
like that which had already been traveled-a country populated by
controllers and controlled.
No examination of or argument about anything can be made until
matters that were and are by nature disorderly have been put into
order. Because this is so, and because orderliness may become as
much an enemy as an ally of the truth, the book runs the risk com
mon to all histories of one's time, namely, of playing the censor's
part-that is, of treating the immediate past as a country that, had
only a little more intelligence and a lot more imagination been ap
plied to its affairs by its inhabitants, would have prospered better
than it did and left to its inheritors a brighter prospect than they
have. The writer can only say he has remembered the risk-although
a reader may think that its consequences have not been avoided.
Yet why people think what they do at the time they think it is
certainly a question to which historians may properly address them
selves-provided always they are ready to answer, without resent
ment, the same question when it is put to them in turn. No harm
ever comes of holding fast to the reminder from Carl Becker that
all historians approach their subject with at least one preconception:
which is, the fixed idea that they have none.2
The following pages, therefore, set out a particular and considered
statement on a subject which lives in a context of controversy: and
it is not supposed that they will lay that controversy to rest.
A.P.T.
