Imperialism and Social Classes

The Conservative leader spoke of social reform. Actually he was only reverting to Conservative traditions (Ashley) which he himself had helped to shape in earlier years. Besides, such a policy might split off a few radicals from Gladstone’s camp. A certain kinship between the Conservatives and the radicals was of long standing—did not, in fact, cease, until the radicals had got the better of the Whigs within the Liberal Party. But the situation was unfavorable for “Tory democracy.” For the moment, Gladstone had done more than enough in this field. The slogans were shopworn. There was prosperity. The working people turned every official trip of Gladstone’s into a triumphal procession. No, there was little capital to be made on that score. It was no better with the Irish question—the cause of the Ulstermen and the High Church. In this predicament Disraeli struck a new note. The election campaign of 1874—or, to fix the date exactly, Disraeli’s speech in the Crystal Palace in 1872—marked the birth of imperialism as the catch phrase of domestic policy.

It was put in the form of “Imperial Federation.” The colonies—of which Disraeli in 1852 had written: “These wretched colonies . . . are a millstone round our necks” (Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, p. 343)—these same colonies were to become autonomous members in a unified empire. This empire was to form a customs union. The free soil of the colonies was to remain reserved for Englishmen. A uniform defense system was to be created. The whole structure was to be crowned by a central representative organ in London, creating a closer, living connection between the imperial government and the colonies. The appeal to national sentiment, the battle cry against “Liberal” cosmopolitanism, already emerged sharply, just as they did later on in the agitation sponsored by Chamberlain, on whom fell Disraeli’s mantle. Of itself the plan showed no inherent tendency to reach out beyond the “Empire,” and “the Preservation of the Empire” was and is a good description of it. If we nevertheless include the “Imperial Federation” plan under the heading of imperialism, this is because its protective tariff, its militarist sentiments, its ideology of a unified “Greater Britain” all foreshadowed vague aggressive trends that would have emerged soon enough if the plan had ever passed from the sphere of the slogan into the realm of actual policy.

It is important to grasp the full implications of these facts. The parties succeeded each other in power, and each one had different aims and policies. One might declare war and wage it victoriously, only to be brought down by the other, which might at once conclude peace and surrender some of the gains which had been won. One might enter into alliances which the other would dissolve. One might bask in national glory, while the other would calculate the costs to the people. In this way England, since 1688, has lacked an unbroken, planned political line. If there was the appearance of such a thing, it was only the consequence of the fact that certain iron necessities prevailed in the face of all deliberate efforts to escape them; in part, also, the consequence of biased interpretation. True, even the policies of continental states were not necessarily governed by strict logic. But in the case of the advisers of such sovereigns the driving forces, interests, traditions, and motivations behind policies were firmly fixed. They brought a certain consistency to the whole picture, while in England it was precisely the driving forces and interests that so frequently alternated. There was only one point on which the parties were always in agreement. This was to prevent the rise of a professional army; and when that rise had become unavoidable, to keep the army as small as possible and prevent it from growing into a separate occupational estate with independent power and distinct interests. This element always worked in the same direction: it served to eliminate any factor that might have continually pressed for aggression.

We see this even at the outset of the new era. A peace party as such arose at once, and has persisted ever since, to act as a brake on any policy of aggression. At first it consisted of the Tories, the clerical party, the small landowners, the yeomen, the farmers. All of them wanted to go riding and hunting, or till the soil, in peace. They looked on all war as sheer Whig deviltry. European policies and overseas struggles were matters of supreme indifference to them, which was not at all true of the tax burden which at that time fell primarily on them.

The Whigs, for their part, were all the more belligerent. They were the party of the great lords on the one hand, and the City on the other. For, in the first place, colonial possessions at that time really meant more than they do today. War was then still something it has no longer been since about the time of the French Revolution—good business. Again—and this is something that is overlooked unbelievably often—it behooved the Whigs to defend the newly won freedom—and with it their own position—against unquestionable aggressive intentions on the part of France. Finally, it was up to them to hold those national positions throughout the world that had been captured by their individual co-nationals rather than by the state as such.

These last two factors make it appear doubtful whether it is proper to speak of eighteenth-century English imperialism in our sense. At the very least, it would be a very special imperialism, quite different from the continental brand. As in the case of Spain, England at first merely defended itself against France. True, the defense was so successful that it passed over into conquest. And it is also true that appetite appeared in the eating. The first of our three factors certainly supported any and every predisposition toward war. The wars of that period were commercial wars, among other things, but to describe them only as commercial wars is simply historically untrue—for the French as well as the English side of the question. It is noteworthy, furthermore, that it was not the English state that conquered the colonial empire. Usually the state intervened in a protective capacity—generally with extreme reluctance and under duress—only when a colony was already in existence. More than that, it cannot even be said that it was “the people” who conquered the whole empire, that the leading men embarked on conquest to the plaudits of the public. The conquerors were of an altogether different stripe—adventurers who were unable to find a solid footing at home, or men driven into exile. In the latter case there was the simple necessity for finding a new home. In the former it was a question of elements who, on the Continent, would have joined the armies of the sovereigns and vented their belligerent instincts on their own people or on some other European state. Since England had no sovereign who could have hired or paid them, they ventured out into the world and waged war on their own—“private imperialists,” as it were. But the people refused to go along. No one was more unpopular than the slave trader, or the “nabob” who returned with his pockets full of plundered gold. Only with great effort could such a man secure social position. The public attitude toward him was similar to the reaction toward “war profiteers” nowadays. As often as not, he was haled into court. But of course it is true that every war creates groups interested in that war. Armaments always create a predisposition toward war. And every war is father to another war.