The problem of “nationalism” and “imperialism” in british settlement colonies

The Journal of British Studies

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 1971, Pages 160-182

  Cole, Douglas ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84908966129     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: 15456986     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/385614     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Sir John Willison, Partners in Peace: the Dominion, the Empire and the Republic (Toronto 1923), p. 16.
2. “Imperialism,” as used in the settlement colonies, did not mean expansion, but the attempt to consolidate the unity of the Empire. The essay concentrates on Australia and Canada, the only two settlement countries where the writer has had an opportunity to do personal research. Occasional reference will be made to New Zealand. English-speaking South Africa is omitted from consideration, though not because the conceptions, with variation, may not apply. The author is obliged to the President's Research Fund, Simon Fraser University, and the J. S. Ewart Memorial Fund, University of Manitoba, for research aid.
3. The usage of “national” for a school system is of Irish origin, though it tended to assume various shades of meaning in the colonies and has even been considered as a nationalistic system, e.g., T. Findlay Mackenzie, Nationalism and Education in Australia (London, 1935).
4. Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (2d ed.; Melbourne, 1965), pp. 193, 223.
5. K. R. Minogue, Nationalism (London, 1967), p. 45; for examples of the “mangle” of nationalist ideology on historical writing and a rare vindication of its usefulness, see Richard M. Saunders, “The Historian and the Nation,” Historical Papers (Canadian Historical Association, 1967), pp. 1-19. David M. Potter has written of the historian's need to be ever alert to distinguish between a genuine culture generating a genuine nationalism and the trumped-up nationalism generating the pretence or illusion of a culture. David M. Potter, “The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa,” American Historical Review, LXVII (1962), 935.
6. G. R. MacLean, “The Imperial Fedefationist Movement in Canada, 1884-1902” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1958), p. 313; Norman Penlington, Canada and Imperialism, 1896-1899 (Toronto, 1965), pp. 11, 66; Carl C. Berger, “The Vision of Grandeur: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1966), pp. 1, 11. A revised version has recently been published as Carl C. Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in The Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914 (Toronto, 1970). The most comprehensive attack on the various strands of nationalist historiography - centralist, anti-imperial, economic and anti-American - has been made by Ramsay Cook, “Nationalism in Canada or Portnoy's Complaint Revisited,” South Atlantic Quarterly, LIX (1970), 1-19.
7. The same quick change of character seems obvious in literature, though its extent may be exaggerated. See A. A. Phillips, The Australian Tradition: Studies in Colonial Culture (Melbourne, 1958), pp. 70-71.
8. Robin Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, 1850-1910 (Melbourne, 1960), pp. 196, 201; Ward, Legend, p. 163; Charles Grimshaw, “Australian Nationalism and the Imperial Connection, 1900-1914,” Australian Journal of Politics and History, III (May 1958), 161; Kathleen J. Melhuish, “Australia and British Imperial Policy: Colonial Autonomy and the Imperial Idea, 1885-1902,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Sydney University, 1965), p. 525; see also Vance Palmer, The Legend of the Nineties (Melbourne, 1954), especially chap. VIII.
9. The best attempts at explaining the reasons for the change are Charles S. Blackton, “Australian Nationality and Nativism: The Australian Natives’ Association, 1882-1901,” Journal of Modern History, XXX (1958), 46; Charles S. Blackton, “Australian Nationality and Nationalism, 1850-1900,” Historical Studies, IX (1961), 364-65; and W. K. Hancock, Australia (2nd ed.; Brisbane, 1961), pp. 48-51.
10. Keith Sinclair, Imperial Federation: A Study of New Zealand Policy and Opinion, 1880-1914 (“Commonwealth Papers,” II; London, 1955), p. 47.
11. Benjamin Akzin, State and Nation (London, 1964), p. 30.
12. Ibid., pp. 8, 11.
13. Ibid., p. 12. See also H. Munro Chadwick, The Nationalities of Europe and the Growth of National Ideologies (Cambridge, 1945), p. 3; and Don Luigi Stru2o, Nationalism and Internationalism (New York, 1946), pp. 5-33.
14. K. W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (2nd ed.; Cambridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 40, 288; for similar, though not always identical usages of the conceptions, see also Carlton J. H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (New York, 1926), chap. I; Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (3rd ed.; Ldndon, 1966), especially pp. 73-74; and George Heiman, “The 19th Century Legacy: Nationalism or Patriotism?,” in Nationalism in Canada, ed. Peter Russell (Toronto, 1966), pp. 323-40. The use of the same term, “patriotism,” for both loyalty to political institutions and an affection for the land, for both the state and the territory, is doubtless too broad. Tht two sentiments are probably analytically distinct, though in practice they frequently blend.
15. J. S. Ewart, The Kingdom of Canada… and Other Essays (Toronto, 1908), pp. 5, 82, 78, 114; J. S. Ewart, The Kingdom Papers (Ottawa, 1911-17), II, 226: for a fuller treatment of Ewart's “nationalism,” see Douglas L. Cole, “John S. Ewart and Canadian Nationalism,” Historical Papers (Canadian Historical Association, 1969), pp. 62-73. Richard Jebb was also concerned to make clear that there were “two distinct and conflicting senses” to the words “nation,” “national,” and “nationalism,” and that he used them in their “modern and political rather than the racial sense.” Richard Jebb, “Twelve Months of Imperial Evolution,” Royal Colonial Institute Proceedings, XXXIX (1907-08), 6; Richard Jebb, “Notes on Imperial Organization,” Royal Colonial Institute Proceeding, XXXVIII (1906-07), 5.
16. Akzin, State and Nation, p. 74; for an emphatic demarcation of nationalist- inspired independence movements from “mere political separatism,” see Florian Zaniecki, Modern Nationalities: A Sociological Study (Urbana, 1952), pp. 44-45.
17. See Bruce Mansfield, “Australian Nationalism in the Growth of the Labour Movement in the Eighteen-Eighties in New South Wales, with Reference to Queensland,” (M.A. thesis, University of Sydney, 1951), and Bruce Mansfield, “The Background to Radical Republicanism in the Eighteen-Eighties,” Historical Studies, V (1953), 346-48; C. D. Allin, “Proposals for the Neutrality of the British Colonies,” Political Science Quarterly, XXXVIII (1922), 415-39; K. A. McKirdy, “Canadian and Australian Self-interest, the American Fact, and the Development of the Commonwealth Idea,” in Empire and Nations: Essays in Honour of Frederic H. Soward, ed. Harvey L. Dyck and H. Peter Krosby, (Toronto, 1969), pp. 116-32; for a very balanced appreciation of the non-coincidence of self-government and nationalism, see J. C. Beaglehole, “The Development of New Zealand Nationality,” Cahiers d'histoire mondiale, II (1955), 106-23.
18. P. B. Wake's The Life and Times of Confederation, 1864-1867 (Toronto, 1962) contains the best description of the popularity and unpopularity of the movement; see also F. R. Scott, “Political Nationalism and Confederation.” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, VIII (1942), 386-415; C. P. Stacey, “Fenianism and the Rise of National Feeling in Canada,” Canadian Historical Review, XII (1931), 238-61.
19. See the discussion of the debate in Eugene Forsey, “Canada: Two nations or one?,” C.J.E.P.S., XXVIII (1962), 489-90, and a current discussion in Donald V, Smiley, The Canadian Political Nationality (Toronto, 1967), pp. 128-35. Cook's attack on the identification of centralism with nationalism in Cook, “Nationalism,” South Atlantic Quarterly, LIX, 5-7, 19, is an interesting comment.
20. Ramsay Cook, Canada and the French-Canadian Question (Toronto, 1966), pp. 171, 173-74.
21. Robert Thomson, Australian Nationalism (Burwood, N. S. W., 1888), pp. 35, 50.
22. Official Report of the Federation Conference Held in the Court-House, Corowa, 31st July and 1st August, 1893 (Corowa, N.S.W., 1893), p. ii; The Bulletin (Sydney), 11 Feb. 1905.
23. Quoted in Robert Randolph Garran, The Coming Commonwealth (Sydney, 1897), p. 7.
24. Akzin, State and Nation, p. 103.
25. The phrase, perhaps the most famous in Australian history, is that of Sir Henry Parkes. Charles E. hyne, Life of Sir Henry Paries (London, 1897), p. 495.
26. E. Morris Miller, The Principles of Alliance and Federation Contrasted (Melbourne, 1908), p. 8; Alfred Deakin, Imperial Federation (Melbourne, 1905), p. 6. See National Library of Australia, J. N. H. Hume Cook Papers, Series XII; Hume Cook reported in The Charters Towers Mining Standard, 18 June 1896.
27. The contemporary literature on this idea is voluminous. A useful sample is found in Ian Turner, (ed.), The Australian Dream: A Collection of Anticipations about Australia from Captain Cook to the Present Day (Melbourne, 1968), Pt. VI.
28. Hancock, Australia, p. 49.
29. Donald Home, “The New Nationalism?,” The Bulletin. 5 Oct. 1968, p. 36.
30. Peter Coleman, “Introduction: The New Australian,” in Australian Civilization, ed. Peter Coleman (Melbourne, 1962), pp. 1-11; reply by Brian Fitzpatrick, “Counter Revolution in Australian Historiography ?,” Meanjin Quarterly, XXII (1963), 197-213; R. M. Connell, “Images of Australia,” Quadrant, XII (1968), 9-19, follows up the attack on the identification of Australian nationalism with equalitarian democracy. Some Australian literary critics have shown a similar discount with the “nationalist” view of literature. See, for example, Geoffrey Dutton, “Gentlemen Vs. Liars,” Quadrant, IX (1965), 14-20, and Patrick Morgan, “The Misuse of Australian Literature,” Quadrant, XI (1967), 23-33.
31. See Carl Berger's excellent essay, “The True North Strong and Free,” in Nationalism in Canada, ed. P. Russell (Toronto, 1966), pp. 3-26. Berger notes the intimate connection between imperialistic ideas and the northern mystique.
32. These ideas of racial differentiation are all the more fascinating when it is realized that at this time similar expressions of superior geographic-climatic evolution were being made in New Zealand. New Zealanders, formed by a rigorous climate, a cold wind, and island insularity, would develop a superior national type. See F. W. L. Wood, “Why Did New Zealand Not Join the Australian Commonwealth in 1900-1901?,” New Zealand Journal of History, II (1968), 115-29 and the reply by Adrian Chan, “New Zealand, the Australian Commonwealth and “Plain Nonsense,’ “ New Zealand Journal of History, III (1969), 190-95.
33. Berger, A Sense of Power, makes the strongest case for a Canadian nationalistic consciousness within these terms.
34. G. R. Parkin, Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity (London, 1892).
35. Public Archives of Canada [hereafter PAC], Grant Papers, Vol. 15, Memoranda, draft “The British Empire Today and Tomorrow No. II”; PAC, Grant Papers, Vol. 24, Windsor lecture, n.d.; G. M. Grant, “Imperial Federation,” A Lecture (Winnipeg, 1890), p. 1.
36. G. T. Denison, The Struggle for Imperial Unity: Recollections and Experiences (Toronto, 1909), p. 85.
37. PAC, Denison Papers, Vol. 3, Charles Mair to G. T. Denison, 29 October 1884.
38. Adam Shortt, “Some Aspects of the Imperial Problem,” The Canadian Magazine, XVIII (1902), 331.
39. Berger, “Vision of Grandeur,” p. 390.
40. Rev. Canon L. Norman Tucker, “Canada and the Empire,” Empire Club Speeches, 1910-1911, ed. J. Castell Hopkins, (Toronto, 1911), p. 149.
41. G. M. Grant, Canada and the Canadian Question: A Review (Toronto, n.d.), p. 29; PAC, Grant Papers, Vol. 24, Windsor lecture, n.d.
42. PAC, Denison Papers, Vol. 3, Mair to Denison, 29 October 1884.
43. Stephen Leacock, “Education and Empire Unity,” Empire Club Speeches, 1906-1907, ed. J. Castell Hopkins (Toronto, 1907), p. 290.
44. Andrew Macphail, Essays in Politics (London, 1909), p. 244.
45. See George E. Foster, “The Trend of Empire,” Empire Club Speeches, 1909-1910, ed. J. Castell Hopkins, (Toronto, 1910), p. 101; see also Lord Milner, The Nation and the Empire (London, 1913), p. xxxii.
46. See Bernard Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social Imperial Thought, 1895-1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1960); Richard Faber, The Vision and the Need: Late Victorian Imperialist Aims (London, 1966); L. P. Curtis, Jr., Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian Britain (Bridgeport, 1968); A. E. Campbell, Great Britain and the United States, 1895-1903 (London, I960), Chap. VII.
47. Wilfred Campbell, “The Children,” Sagas of Vaster Britain: Poems of the Race, the Empire and the Divinity of Man (Toronto, 1914), p. 74.
48. J. S. Willison, Sir George Parkin (London, 1929), p. 261.
49. PAC, Grant Papers, Vol. 25, Clippings, “The British Empire To-Day and To-Morrow,” The Westminster (Toronto), 4 December 1897, p. 551; The Week (Toronto), 8 November 1895, p. 1189; The Mail (Toronto), 18 July 1891.
50. J. S. Willison, Anglo-Saxon Amity (Toronto, 1906), pp. 7, 14; J. S. Willison, “The Taft Banquet,” Addresses Delivered before the Canadian Club of Toronto, 1913-1914 (Toronto, 1914), p. 186.
51. PAC, Denison Papers, Vol. 9, Mair to Denison, 29 November 1899.
52. D'Alton McCarthy, Staynor speech, 12 July 1889, quoted in J. S. Willison, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party (Toronto, 1903), II, 53.
53. S. A. Cudmore, review of J. S. Ewart, The Kingdom Papers in Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada, 1911, ed. George M. Wrong and W. Stewart Wallace (Toronto, 1912), XVI, 6-7.
54. Stephen Leacock, “Greater Canada: An Appeal,” University Magazine, VI (1907), 135, 137.
55. Evening Journal (Ottawa), early 1886, quoted in Murray Donnelly, Dafoe of the Free Press (Toronto, 1968), p. 20; Winnipeg Free Press, 9 March 1923, quoted in M. S. Donnelly, “The Political Ideas of J. W. Dafoe,” in The Political Process in Canada: Essays in Honour of R. MacGregor Dawson, ed. J. H. Aitchison (Toronto, 1963), p. 109; J. W. Dafoe, “Canada and the British Empire,” in Great Britain and the Dominions, ed. Sir Cecil J. B. Hurst, et, (Chicago, 1928), p. 209.
56. Geoffrey Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851-1861 (Melbourne, 1963), pp. 194-95.
57. A. J. Taylor, Imperial Federation versus Australian Independence (Hobart, 1889), p. 10.
58. G. Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question (Toronto, 1891), p. 265.
59. Michel Brunet, “L'anti-iniperialisme des Canadiens et le fidelity britannique des Canadians,” in Canadians et Canadiens: etudes sur I'histoire et la pensee des deux Canadas, ed. M. Brunet (Montreal, 1954), pp. 127-28, 146; see also H. F. Angus, Canada and the Far East, pp. 9-10: “It [Canadian imperialism] was rather itself a form of nationalism, a Pan-British nationalism.” John T. Saywell has also written of “imperial Pan Anglo-Saxonism,” though without elaboration. See J. T. Saywell (ed.), The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, 1893-1898 (Toronto, I960), p. xxiv.
60. Deakin, Imperial Federation.
61. The Bulletin, 4 May 1905, 10 January 1903, 18 May 1905.
62. Commonwealth of Australia, Parliamentary Debates (House of Representatives), 1901-1902, IV, 4802.
63. B. R. Wise, The Commonwealth of Australia (London, 1909), p. 275.
64. For a nice summary of some of these points, see McKirdy, in Empire and Nations, ed. Dyck and Krosby, pp. 116-32.
65. “Lux [M. A. J. Macdonald], “Notes,” Advance Australia, II (1898).
66. The depth, even to some extent, the sincerity, of The Bulletin's separatist convictions were questioned by B. R. Wise, The Making of the Australian Commonwealth, 1889-1900 (London, 1913), p. 42, and, more recently, by W. K. Hancock, in his review of Gordon Greenwood (ed.), Australia: A Social and Political History, in Australian Journal of Politics and History, I (1955), 125.
67. Hancock, Australia, pp. 49-50. Barbara R. Penny has documented the strong consciousness of kinship and race that lay behind Australian support of the Boer War. See B. R. Penny, “Australia's Reaction to the Boer War - A Study in Colonial Imperialism,” Journal of British Studies, VII (1962), 97-130. Robert J. D. Page's “Canada and the Imperial Idea in the Boer War Years,” Journal of Canadian Studies, V (1970), 33-49, has touched upon some similar points.
68. A. Gordon Dewey, The Dominions and Diplomacy: The Canadian Contributor (London, 1929), I, 13, 35, 68, 19.
69. PAC, Willison Papers, Vol. 108, speech to Larkin dinner, n.d. Canon Cody expressed very well die patriotic element in imperialism when he analysed the religious ties of Methodists, Catholics, Congregationalists, and Anglicans to places and memories in the United Kingdom. See Canon Cody, “Religious Contributions toward Imperial Unity,” Empire Club Speeches, 1908-1909, ed. J. Castell Hopkins (Toronto, 1909), pp. 23-24. A further element in the complex relationship can probably be singled out: the ancient personal loyalty which a subject owed to his monarch. The Crown, often cited as the most important link of Empire, was a pre-nationalist personal loyalty, with close affinities to the concept of patriotism since the Crown had become so closely identified with the state (either as the United Kingdom or the Empire). Such a liege loyalty could be shared among the non-British ethnic groups, especially among French Canadians where it seems to have had considerable effect.
70. Since Britain was relatively isolated from the influences of nineteenth century continental movements, it escaped a good deal of the nationalist ideology. It seems quite possible that some, especially those further isolated in the colonies, missed almost completely this nationalist impulse. For a useful corrective to the exaggerated nationalism-is-everywhere idea, see Kedourie, Nationalism.
71. C. Hanly, “A Psychoanalysis of Nationalist Sentiment,” in Nationalism in Canada, ed. P. Russell (Toronto, 1966), p. 312.
72. J. Porter, “Canadian Character in the Twentieth Century,” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science, CCCLXX (1967), 49. See also Angus, Canada and the Far East, Chap. I; Cook, Canada and the French- Canadian Question, pp. 171-74; G. P. de T. Glazebrook, “Some Thoughts on Canadian Nationalism,” in Empire and Nations, ed. Dyck and Krosby, p. 18.
73. G. Serle, “Godzone: 6) Austerica Unlimited?,” Meanjin Quarterly, XXVI (1967), 245, 249.
74. Connell, “Images,” Quadrant, XII, 17. See also Neil Mclnnis, “Australia - The Lucky Province,” Quadrant, IX (1963), 9-17.
75. This problem is much discussed in studies of colonial literature. See such works as John Pengwerne Matthews, Tradition in Exile: A Comparative Study of Social Influences on the Development of Australian and Canadian Poetry in the Nineteenth Century (Melbourne, 1962); Judith Wright, Preoccupations in Australian Poetry (Melbourne, 1965); and the extremely thoughtful Kendrick Smithyman, A Way of Saying: A Study of New Zealand Poetry (Auckland, 1965).
76. Cook, Canada and the French-Canadian Question, pp. 4, 25. Carlton J. H. Hayes recognized the distinction in the Canadian, South African, and Swiss situations; in Canada, he wrote, “side by side with the French nationalism of Quebec and the British nationalism of, say, Ontario, exists a common Canadian patriotism.” Hayes, Essays in Nationalism, p. 270.
77. Margaret E. Prang, “Nationalism in Canada's First Century,” Historical Papers (Canadian Historical Association, 1968), p. 114. “As a coin can become valueless,” writes one student of the meaning of “nation,” “so a word can become senseless, insignificant.” Guido Zernatto, “Nation: The History of a Word,” Review of Politics, VI (1944), 351.