THE CHARACTER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE - Part 2

The creation of the British Empire has been simply a part (though, perhaps, the greatest part) of that outpouring of the European peoples which has, during the last four centuries, brought the whole world under the influence of western civilisation. That is a great achievement, and it has brought in sight the establishment of a real world-order. It is merely foolish to condemn the "lust of conquest" which has driven the European peoples to subdue the rest of the world, though, of course, we ought to condemn the cruelties and injustices by which it has sometimes been accompanied. But without it North and South America, Australia, and South Africa would have remained deserts, inhabited by scattered bands of savages. Without it India would have been sentenced to the eternal continuance of the sterile and fruitless wars between despotic conquerors which made up her history until the British power was established. Without it the backward peoples of the earth would have stagnated for ever in the barbarism in which they have remained since the beginning. The "imperialism" of the European nations has brought great results to the world. It has made possible that unification of the political and economic interests of the whole globe which we see beginning to-day. It is one of the fine aspects of this grim and horrible war that it affects the interests of the whole world, and that the whole world knows this. The giant's part which has been played by Britain in the conquest of the world by Western civilisation, and the peculiar character of her work, have been due to two things—British institutions and the British Navy. It ought never to be forgotten that down to the nineteenth century (that is, during all the earlier part of the process of European expansion) Britain was the only one of the greater European States which possessed self-governing institutions. She has been, in truth (this is not a boast, but a mere statement of indisputable historical fact), the inventor of political liberty on the scale of the great nation-state, as Greece was the inventor of political liberty on the scale of the little city-state. And wherever free institutions exist to-day, they have been derived from Britain, either by inheritance, as in America and the self-governing British colonies, or by imitation, as in all other cases. When the outpouring of Europe into the rest of the world began, the British peoples alone had the habit and instinct of self-government in their very blood and bones. And the result was that, wherever they went, they carried self-government with them. Every colony of British settlers, from the very first, was endowed with self-governing institutions. No colony ever planted by any other nation ever obtained corresponding rights.[1] That is one of the outstanding features of British expansion. In the eighteenth century, and even in the middle of the nineteenth century, Britain herself and the young nations that had sprung from her loins were almost the only free States existing in the world. It was because they were free that they throve so greatly. They expanded on their own account, they threw out fresh settlements into the empty lands wherein they were planted, often against the wish of the Mother Country. And this spontaneous growth of vigorous free communities has been one of the principal causes of the immense extension of the British Empire. Now one of the results of the universal existence of self-governing rights in British colonies was that the colonists were far more prompt to resent and resist any improper exercise of authority by the Mother Country than were the settlers in the colonies of other countries, which had no self-governing rights at all. It was this independent spirit, nurtured by self-government, which led to the revolt of the American colonies in 1775, and to the foundation of the United States as an independent nation. In that great controversy an immensely important question was raised, which was new to human history. It was the question whether unity could be combined with the highest degree of freedom; whether it was possible to create a sort of fellowship or brotherhood of free communities, in which each should be master of its own destinies, and yet all combine for common interests. But the question (being so new) was not understood on either side of the Atlantic. Naturally, Britain thought most of the need of maintaining unity; she thought it unfair that the whole burden of the common defence should fall upon her, and she committed many foolish blunders in trying to enforce her view. Equally naturally the colonists thought primarily of their own self-governing rights, which they very justly demanded should be increased rather than restricted. The result was the unhappy war, which broke up the only family of free peoples that had yet existed in the world, and caused a most unfortunate alienation between them, whereby the cause of liberty in the world was greatly weakened.[2] Britain learned many valuable lessons from the American Revolution. In the new empire which she began to build up as soon as the old one was lost, it might have been expected that she would have fought shy of those principles of self-government which no other State had ever tried to apply in its over-sea dominions, and which seemed to have led (from the imperialistic point of view) to such disastrous results in America. But she did not do so; the habits of self-government were too deeply rooted in her sons to make it possible for her to deny them self-governing rights in their new homes. On the contrary, she learnt, during the nineteenth century, to welcome and facilitate every expansion of their freedom,[3] and she gradually felt her way towards a means of realising a partnership of free peoples whereby freedom should be combined with unity. Its success (although it must still undergo much development) has been strikingly shown in the Great War. Thus British institutions—the institutions of national self-government, which are peculiarly British in origin—have played a main part both in determining the character of the British Empire and in bringing about its wonderful expansion. The more the British Empire has grown the more freedom has been established on the face of the earth. The second great factor in the growth of the British Empire has been the power of the British Navy, which has been the greatest sea power of the world practically since the overthrow of the Spanish Armada in 1588. It is a striking fact that in all her history Britain has never possessed a large army, until the necessities of this war suddenly forced her (as they are now forcing America) to perform the miracle of calling her whole manhood from the pursuits of peace to arms, of training them, and of equipping them, all within two years. In 1775 it was the fact that she possessed only a tiny armed force (some 40,000 men for the defence of all her dominions), which made it necessary for her, for example, to hire Hessian troops in a hurry for the purposes of the American War of Independence. Is not this an astounding paradox, that the power which has acquired dominion over one-quarter of the earth has done it without ever possessing a large army? And does it not suggest that the process by which this empire was acquired must have been very different from the ordinary processes of military conquest? This is a paradox which those who speak of the British Empire as if it were a mere military dominion must somehow explain. But there has been the supreme British fleet. It has made the creation and preservation of the Empire possible by securing the free transit not merely of soldiers, but, far more important, of settlers, merchants, administrators, organisers, and missionaries. Scattered as it is over all the seas of the world, the British Empire would undoubtedly be broken into fragments if the security of the ocean high-roads by which it is united were ever to be lost. But although the British Navy has made the growth of the Empire possible, and has held it together, it has not conquered it. A fleet cannot conquer great areas of land; it cannot hold masses of discontented subjects in an unwilling obedience; it cannot threaten the freedom or independence of any land-power. It is strong only for defence, not for offence. There are two aspects of the work of the British Navy during the last three centuries which deserve to be noted, because they also help to indicate the character of the work done by the British Empire during this period. In the first place, the British naval power has never been used to threaten the freedom of any independent State. On the contrary, it has been employed time and again as the last bulwark of freedom against great military Powers which have threatened to overwhelm the freedom of their neighbours by mere brute strength. That was so in the sixteenth century, when Spain seemed to be within an ace of making herself the mistress of the world. It was so a hundred years later, when the highly-organised power of Louis XIV. threatened the liberties of Europe. It was so again, a century later, when Napoleon's might overshadowed the world. It is so once more to-day, when the German peril menaces the liberty of nations. During each of these desperate crises the British Navy has seemed to neutrals to be interfering unduly with their trade, in so far as their trade helped the enemy. In this connection it is worth noting that it has been for two centuries the invariable rule of the British Navy that in no circumstances must a neutral vessel ever be sunk, and in no circumstances must the lives of non-combatants be sacrificed. But is it not reasonable to say that in each of these great wars the theoretic rights of neutral trade were justly subordinated to the struggle for the preservation of liberty? In all the great crises of modern European history, then, British naval power has been the ultimate bulwark of liberty. But how has this power been used in times of peace? The Spanish naval power, which preceded the British, enforced for its people a monopoly of the use of all the oceans of the world except the North Atlantic. The Dutch naval power, which carried on an equal rivalry with the British during the seventeenth century, established a practical monopoly for Dutch trade in all the waters east of the Straits of Malacca. But the British naval power has never for a moment been used to restrict the free movement of the ships of all nations in times of peace in any of the seas of the world. This, again, is not a boast, but a plain statement of undeniable historical fact. The freedom of the seas in times of peace (which is much more important than the freedom of the seas in times of war) has only existed during the period of British naval supremacy, but it has existed so fully that we have got into the habit of taking it for granted, and of assuming, rather rashly, that it can never be impaired. What is more, it has been entirely during the period of British naval supremacy, and mainly by the work of the British fleet, that the remoter seas have been charted and that piracy has been brought to an end, and the perils of the sailor reduced to the natural perils of wind and wave. This also is a contribution to the freedom of the seas. British institutions, the institutions of self-government, and the British Navy, which has at all times been a bulwark of liberty, and has never interfered in times of peace with the use of the seas by any nation—these have been the main explanations of the fabulous growth of the British Empire. We cannot here attempt to trace the story of this growth, but must be content to survey the completed structure and consider on what principles it is governed.