The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography

756 Pages·2001·42.78 MB·English

by  Wm Roger Louis

THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Volume I. The Origins of Empire
EDITED BY Nicholas Canny
Volume IL The Eighteenth Century
EDITED BY R J. Marshall
Volume HI. The Nineteenth Century
EDITED BY Andrew Porter
Volume IV. The Twentieth Century
EDITED BY Judith JML Brown and WITL Roger Louis
Volume V. Historiography
EDITED BY RobuiW.Winks
THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Wm. Roger Louis, CBE, D.Litt, FBA
Kerr Professor of English History and Culture, University of Texas, Austin
and Honorary Fellow ofSt Antony's College, Oxford
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
VOLUME V
Historiography
Robin W. Winks, Ph.D.
Jownsend Professor of History*
Yale University
EDITOR
Maine Low, D.PhiL
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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The Editor-in-Chief and Editors of the Oxford History of the British Empire
acknowledge with gratitude support from
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The University of Texas at Austin
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FOREWORD
From the founding of the colonies in North America and the West Indies in the
seventeenth century to the reversion of Hong Kong to China at the end of the
twentieth, British imperialism was a catalyst for far-reaching change. British dom-
ination of indigenous peoples in North America, Asia, and Africa can now be seen
more clearly as part of the larger and dynamic interaction of European and non-
Western societies. Though the subject remains ideologically charged, the passions
aroused by British imperialism have so lessened that we are now better placed
than ever before to see the course of the Empire steadily and to see it whole. At
this distance in time the Empire's legacy from earlier centuries can be assessed, in
ethics and economics as well as politics, with greater discrimination, At the close
of the twentieth century, the interpretation of the dissolution of the Empire can
benefit from evolving perspectives on, for example, the end of the cold war. In still
larger sweep, the Oxford History of the British Empire as a comprehensive study
helps to understand the end of the Empire in relation to its beginning, the mean-
ing of British imperialism for the ruled as well as the rulers, and the significance
of the British Empire as a theme in world history,
It is nearly half a century since the last volume in the large-scale Cambridge
History of the British Empire was completed. In the meantime the British Empire
has been dismantled and only fragments such as Gibraltar and the FaUcIands,
Bermuda and Pitcairn, remain of an Empire that once stretched over a quarter of
the earth's surface. The general understanding of the British imperial experience
has been substantially widened in recent decades by the work of historians of Asia
and Africa as well as Britain. Earlier histories, though by no means all, tended to
trace the Empire's evolution and to concentrate on how it was governed. To many
late-Victorian historians the story of the Empire meant the rise of worldwide
dominion and Imperial rule, above all in India, Historians in the first half of the
twentieth century tended to emphasize constitutional developments and the cul-
mination of the Empire in the free association of the Commonwealth, The Oxford
History of the British Empire takes a wider approach, It does not depict the history
of the Empire as one of purposeful progress through four hundred years, nor does
it concentrate narrowly on metropolitan authority and rule. It does attempt to
explain how varying conditions in Britain interacted with those in many other
parts of the world to create both a constantly changing territorial Empire and
ever-shifting patterns of social and economic relations. The Oxford History of the
British Empire thus deals with the impact of British imperialism on dependent
VUi FOREWORD
peoples in a broader sense than was usually attempted in earlier historical writ-
ings while it also takes into account the significance of the Empire for the Irish,
the Scots, and the Welsh as well as the English.
The volume on historiography deals with the evolving or changing interpretations
of history of the British Empire, with the legacy of historical writing, and with
today's perspectives on previous scholarship. It is concerned with the ways the his-
tory of British imperialism has been written from one generation of historians to
the next. The volume is especially dedicated to the period in which British
Imperial history developed as an academic discipline. It thus addresses itself
mainly to how historians in the past one hundred years or so have dealt with the
subject, though individual chapters take into account early works on British
expansion and colonization. Historians from the eighteenth century generally
took pride in the Empire, They believed, as is clear from their writings on British
settlements spreading across the world> that Britain had a destiny to be a 'Greater
Britain' beyond the seas and a duty, particularly in India, to govern 'less fortunate
peoples1* The academic historians—notably those in Cambridge, Oxford, and
London who created the English Historical Review in 1886—rebelled against the
romantic view of the Empire held by earlier writers, but these late-Victorian his-
torians also believed in progress and the moral validity of British rule no less than
their predecessors. Whatever its assumptions, professional history emerged in the
decades before the First World War in a form recognizable today with such themes
as migration, commercial regulation, and defence, and with footnotes citing
sources at the Public Record Office. By 1914, for example, a clear concept had
taken shape of the commercial system of the 'First British Empire* in North
America* the West Indies, and Ireland. How long the system lasted, and at what
point it gave way to that of a 'Second British Empire* in India and the East
remained a subject of ongoing historical research and controversy.
If historiography is, in a sense, the art of explaining why historians wrote as
they did at certain times, it is useful to bear in mind that all history reflects the
period in which it was written. In the decades before the First World War, British
historians wrote against the background of economic and military competition
among the European powers. They tended to project back into earlier periods the
subjects of contemporary debate such as free trade versus the proposal for eco-
nomic protection known as Imperial Preference. The South African or Boer War
at the turn of the century caused journalists, and eventually historians, to ponder
the economic causes of wan At about this time the idea of 'colonial nationalism*
in the colonies of white settlement and India began prominently to emerge in his-
torical writing. The two themes of economic imperialism and nationalism help in
turn to explain the economic and constitutional preoccupations of historians in
FOREWORD IX
the inter-war period, According to the main current of historical interpretation,
which flowed in the same direction as Sir Frederick Lugard's The Dual Mandate
published in 1922, the indigenous inhabitants would be protected against eco-
nomic exploitation, and those administering the colonies would be held account-
able to Parliament. Historians such as Sir Reginald Coupland, who perhaps as
much as anyone represented the trends in British historial writing in the era
before the Second World War, believed that nationalist aspirations could be ful-
filled within the constitutional structure of the Empire.
In still another sense historiography is the art of depicting historical contro-
versy. From the late nineteenth century, historians clashed on whether or not the
system of self-government in the colonies of white settlement could be reconciled
with 'despotism' in India and more generally with British rule in Asia and Africa.
Other broad areas of controversy included the nature of what is now called the
colonial state, and the responsibilities of the British government. Could national-
ist demands in India, or for that matter in Australia, be reconciled with the aspi-
ration to unite and federate the Empire? To what extent did historical research
demonstrate the need for state intervention in local economies to promote eco-
nomic development and welfare* as argued for example in W. M. Macmillan's
Warning from the West Indies published in 1936? Macmillan pursued a line of
analysis not incompatible with Marxist thought* and he inspired dissent from the
assumptions of Coupland and others who believed that the British Empire had
the moral capacity to shape a better world and to help dependent peoples advance
towards self-government There was thus a divide between historians affirming
the benevolent purpose of the Empire and those denouncing, both implicitly and
explicitly, British imperialism as exploitative and ruthless. Even radical historians,
however, usually did not want so much to abolish the Empire as to reform it and
make it more accountable. The acrimony among historians supporting or attack-
ing the Empire before the Second World War was as acute as that between
Imperial historians and Africanists, and historians representing other area studies,
in the generation of the 19605.
Historiography may also be regarded as the way certain historians have left a
mark on the subject. As may be inferred from the number of references to the arti-
cles of John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, and to their book, Africa and the
Victorians, published in 1961, it is no exaggeration to say that these two historians
brought about a conceptual revolution. They did so essentially in time ways. They
presented an argument that denied the sharp breaks in the chronological periods
upheld by most previous historians (who had emphasized substantial changes of
attitude, for example, between the mid- and late-Victorian periods} and they
}
insisted on a continuity of the forces of imperialism throughout the nineteenth
century and indeed the twentieth. Next, by putting forward an interpretation of