Imperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of Territorial Expansion

English Historical Review

Volumn 112, Issue 447, 1997, Pages 614-642

  Darwin, John ^a  

^a NUFFIELD COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85190538289     PISSN: 00138266     EISSN: 14774534     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ehr/CXII.447.614     Document Type: Article

References (141)

1. i. J. Gallagher and R. Robinson, 'The Imperialism of Free Trade', Econfomic]Histfory] Rev[iew],v\
2. See e.g. B. Porter, The Lion's Share (London, 197s), p. 27; id., Britain, Europe and the World (London, 1983), p. 30; R. Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century (London, 1976), p.63; D. K. Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire, 18JO-1914 (London, 1973), p. 62; M. E. Chamberlain, Pax Britannka? British Foreign Policy, 1789-1914 (London, 1988), p. 125.
3. Porter, Lion's Share, pp. 113, 17-51; Fieldhouse, Economics, p.6j.
4. Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century, p. 104; Fieldhouse, Economics, p.63; Porter, Lion's Share, p. 28.
5. For the original concept, R. Robinson and J. Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (London, 1961), ch. 1. For foreign policy-making as 'largely* unaccountable, Porter, Britain, p. 9. For a more or less enthusiastic endorsement of the 'official mind', P. M. Kennedy, 'Continuity and Discontinuity in British Imperialism', in British Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, ed. C. C. Eldridge (London, 1984) p. 27; Kennedy, The Realities behind Diplomacy (London, i98i),pp. 59-65.
6. For the diffusion of this view, D. Southgate, 'Imperial Britain' in Britain Pre-eminent, ed. C. J. Bartlett (London, 1969), pp. 15 5-7; Fieldhouse, Economics, p. 465; Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century, p. 66; P. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism (London, 1980), p. 411.
7. Fieldhouse, Economics, p.7; Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century, p. 109; Porter, Lion's Share, p. 118; id., Britain, pp.42, 58; Kennedy, 'Continuity', p. 38; Chamberlain, Pax Britannica, p. 126 f.
8. P. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688—1914 (London, •993). PP-8-io.
9. Ibid., pp. 45-6.
10. Ibid., pp. 471-3.
11. Ibid., p. 395.
12. In fact Robinson and Gallagher's model of British imperialism rejects explicit reliance on peripheral factors as the prime cause of expansion.
13. M. J. Daunton,' "Gentlemanly Capitalism" and British Industry, 1820-1914', Past and Present, cxxii (1989), 149, 153, 157; G. Ingham, 'British Capitalism: Empire, Merchants and Decline', Social History, xx (1995), 342, 346.
14. A. N. Porter, '"Gentlemanly Capitalism" and Empire: The British Experience since 1750?', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, xviii (1990), 265-95.
15. Cain and Hopkins, Imperialism, pp. 356, 382, 386, 390-91.
16. Ibid., p. 312; Ingham, 'British Capitalism', p. 345.
17. J. Osterhammel, 'Semi-colonialism and Informal Empire in China: Towards a Framework of Analysis', in Imperialism and After, ed. W. Mommseri and J. Osterhammel (London, 1986). The classic account is J. K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842-60 (Cambridge, Mass., •953)-
18. P. Gootenberg, Between Silver and Guano: Commercial Policy and the State in Postindependence Peru (Princeton, 1989), pp. 82-3.
19. H. S. Ferns, Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, i960), ch. ix; P. Winn, 'British Informal Empire in Uruguay in the Nineteenth Century' Past and Present, Ixxiii (1976), pp. 106-7; J- Lynch, Caudillos in Spanish America, 1800-18;o (Oxford, 1992), pp. 264 f.; A. Graham-Yooll, The Forgotten Colony: A History of the English-speaking Communities in Argentina (London, 1981). Fora recent survey of the role and influence of British merchants in Latin America before 1870, see R. Miller, Britain and Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1993), pp. 78-88.
20. L. Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1970); R. Graham, Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 107-8. For an appraisal stressing the ill-coordinated character and uneven results of British intervention in Latin America before 1870, Miller, Latin America, pp. 48-59,
21. M. Collis, Foreign Mud (London, 1946), pp. 265—85; G. S. Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830-60 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 71-101. Sir James Graham was able to show, in the Commons debate on the China war in April 1840, that despite a recommendation by the Duke of Wellington in 183 5, no naval presence was established off Canton until September 1839: Hansard, 3rd ser., liii (7 April 1840) cols. 696-703. For the view that recourse to war was the Cabinet's only escape from meeting the £2 million indemnity promised to British traders who had had opium confiscated, P. W. Fay, The Opium War, 1840-42 (Chapel Hill, 1975), pp. 193-4-
22. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, pp. 156 ff.
23. 6 The British had to be careful not to come into conflict with powers of comparable strength which might combine with China or with each other against them. Informal empirefaute de mieux had become the leitmotif of their policy. Manchu recovery after i860, and fears that opinion at home would not tolerate another war in China, also helped to entrench the 'cooperative policy' against merchant criticism.
24. Bowring to Clarendon,; June 1854: W. C. Costin, Great Britain and China, I8JJ-I860 (Oxford, '9i7
25. Clarendon to Bowring, 7 Mar. 1856: ibid., p. 197.
26. Bowring to Clarendon, 28 Jan., 10 Mar., 9 April 1858: Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Clarendon dep c. 85.
27. Elgin (Singapore) to Clarendon, 29 July 1857:0. Bonner-Smith and E. W. R. Lumby, The Second China War (Navy Records Soc, London, 1954), p. 218; Costin, Great Britain and China, pp. 186,194, 236.
28. See J. Evans, The Russo-Chinese Crisis: N. P. Ignatiev's Mission to Peking i8;<>-6o (Newtonville, Mass., 1987), p. 15.
29. Costin, Great Britain and China, p. 228.
30. W. P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell (Oxford, 1930), ch. v; P. Adams, Fatal Necessity (Auckland, 1977), pp. 92-15 $.
31. Adams, Fatal Necessity, pp. 169-70.
32. A new border, D'Urban had told Aberdeen in a classic expression of proconsular sub-imperialism, would 'provide security for the future and a just indemnification for the past' as well as allowing a reduction of the garrison: Documents Relating to the Kaffir War of i8j<, ed. G. M. Theal (London, 1912), pp. 218-24.
33. For Smith's policy, see J. S. Galbraith, Reluctant Empire (Berkeley, 1963), pp. 222-60.
34. W. P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy in the Mid-Victorian Age (Oxford, 1969), pp. 18-22.
35. Minute of 22 April 1861: C. W. De Kiewiet, British Colonial Policy and the South African Republics (London, 1929), p. 146.
36. Minute by T. F. Elliott, 17 Aug. 1865: Morrell, Mid-Victorian Policy, pp. 28-9.
37. C. W. De Kiewiet, The Imperial Factor in South Africa (Cambridge, 1937), chs. iv, v. 3. Significantly, because of fears that slave trading had revived. For the select committee report, see Great Britain and Ghana: Documents of Ghana History, /S07-/9/7, ed. G. E. Metcalfe (repr. London, •994). PP->7'-83-
38. Ibid., pp. 20J-8.
39. Ibid., pp. 276—7.
40. Ibid., pp. 310-11, 330, 352-3, 364-7. The acquisition of the Dutch forts in 1872, pointed out a Colonial Office memo, had violated the select committee's resolutions of 1865: ibid., p. 363.
41. M. W. Williams, Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy (London, 1916), pp.41-2; R. W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire (Oxford, i960), p. 158.
42. W. D. Jones, The American Problem in British Diplomacy, 1841-61 (London, 1974), pp. 70-3.
43. Ibid., pp. 84-5.
44. N. Tarling, British Policy in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, 1824—71 (Kuala Lumpur, 1969), pp. 200-4.
45. J. B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 179S-1SS0 (Oxford, 1968), chs. xii, xiv.
46. C. K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston (London, 1951), ii. 792, for Palmerston's views. For a more critical view of British thinking, see P. W. Schroeder, Austria, Great Britain and the Crimean War (Ithaca, 1972), pp. 400-22.
47. For a recent discussion of the debate on free trade, see A. C. Howe, 'Free Trade and the City of London, c. 1820-1870', History, lxxvii (1992).
48. P. Knaplund, Gladstone and Britain's Imperial Policy(London, 1927), pp. 58,61,82,93. 'The great interest and purpose of England', declared Gladstone in 1852, 'was the multiplication of her race ...' Hansard, 3rd ser., cxxi, col. 956. ForCardwelPs views, ibid., clxix, cols. 911-14 (26 May I86J).
49. m Currents of Radicalism, ed. E. F. Biaggini and A. J. Reid (Cambridge, 1991); F. W. Hirst, Gladstone as Financier and Economist (London, 1931), pp. 147-8, 178; P. R. Ghosh, 'Disraelian Conservatism: A Financial Approach', ante, xcix (1984), 268-96.
50. Bethell, Brazilian Slave Trade ch. 11 (despite growing opposition in Britain to coercive measures). For the annexation of Lagos, see Rogers to Woodhouse, 19 June 1861, in British Policy towards West Africa: Select Documents, 1786-1874, ed. C. W. Newbury (Oxford, 1965), P428.
51. Ferns, Britain and Argentina, ch. ix.
52. M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China (Cambridge, i95i);N. A. Pelcovits, The Old China Hands and the Foreign Office (New York, 1948), pp. 73-83; M. C. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism (Stanford, 1957), p. 291.
53. T. P. O'Connor's phrase: W. C. Lubenow, Parliamentary Politics and the Home Rule Crisis (Oxford, 1988), pp. 326-7.
54. E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, minute of 23 Feb. 1873: Newbury, West Africa, p.455.
55. M. Swartz, The Politics ofForeign Policy in the Age of Disraeli and Gladstone (London, 1983), p. 13.
56. Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill, 1 Oct 1886: K. Wilson, 'Drawing the Line at Constantinople', in British Foreign Secretaries and British Foreign Policyfrom the Crimean War to the First World War, ed. K. Wilson (London, 1987), p. 202.
57. Melbourne to Howick, 16 Dec. 1837: Adams, Fatal Necessity, p. 101.
58. Morrell, Mid-Victorian Colonial Policy, p. 27.
59. Minute of 22 April 1861: De Kiewiet, British Colonial Policy, p. 146.
60. Minutes by Winston Churchill, 17, 19 May 1906: R. Hyam, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office (London, 1969), p. 199.
61. Elgin's minute of 28 Feb. 1906: ibid.
62. For the travails of Montreal-based mercantile sub-imperialism, see D. G. Creighton, The Commercial Empire of the St Lawrence (Toronto, 1937); for the Hudson Bay's Company and the Pacific coast, J. S. Galbraith, The Hudson's Bay Company as an Imperial Factor (Berkeley, 1957), PP- 79, 92, 122, 218-19, 232.
63. For the restrictive and defensive character of the earlier treaty ports, see Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, i. 156-61.
64. A. H. Imlah, Lord Ellenborough (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. 213—28.
65. C. H. Philipps, The East India Company, 1784-18}} (London, 1940), p. 259.
66. R. A. Huttenback, British Relations with Sind, 1799-184} (Berkeley, 1962), pp. 105-6; M. Yapp, Strategies of British India (Oxford, 1980), pp. 560-72.
67. A. K. Banerji, Aspects of the Indo-British Economic Relations 18)8-98 (Bombay, 1982), pp. 3-4,9. India's merchandise exports increased by about five times between the 1850s and the 1890s.
68. Philipps, East India Company, p. 151.
69. J. Malcolm,/! Political History of India, 1784-182} (London, 1826), ii. 126.
70. E. Stokes, 'The First Century of Colonial Rule in India', Past and Present, Iviii (1973); P. Nightingale, Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784-1806 (Cambridge, 1970) pp. 202, 240-4.
71. Yapp, Strategies, pp. 10, 18, 586-7.
72. C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 229, 238, 240, 249.
73. Stokes, 'First Century'; H. Fuber,John Company at Work (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), chs. vi, vii; id., Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient (Minnesota, 1976), pp. 293-7.
74. D. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 180 ff.
75. Parliamentary Papers 1900 [131], XXIX.553, Final Report of the Royal Commission on the Administration of the Expenditure of India, p. 96.
76. L. Subramanian, 'Banias and the British: The Role of Indigenous Credit in... Imperial Expansion in Western India' Modem Asian Studies, xxi (1987), 473-510.
77. See C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian (1988), p. 106.
78. See B. Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 139, 145, 151.
79. E. T. Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959).
80. By mid-century, thought Sir George Stephen {Antislavery Recollections [London, 18J4], pp. 230-1), about a third of the membership of the Commons was 'more or less of avowed religious principles': quoted in F. K. Brown, The Fathers ofthe Victorians (Cambridge, 1961), p. 271.
81. For anti-slavery's role as the 'external' expression of disparate reformist causes, see D. Turley, The Culture of English Anti-Slavery (London, 1991), p. 44; for the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, H. Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, I8JJ-/O (London, 1972). Apart from its hundred or so auxiliary societies spread through the provinces, the London-based BFASS alone had 850 members in 1847 - as many as the Movement for Colonial Preedom in the 1950s.
82. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, pp. 179-80.
83. For this calculation, see P. Bairoch, Economics and World History (Hemel Hempstead, 1993), pp.89ff.
84. For this term, see R. Robinson, 'Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism', in Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, ed. R. Owen and B. Sutdiffe (London, 1972), p. 124.
85. See G. S. Graham, The Politics of Naval Supremacy (London, 1965); C. J. Bartlett, Great Britain and Sea Power, i8if-i8f] (Oxford, 1963), pp. 22, 233.
86. C. I. Hamilton, Anglo-French Naval Rivalry, 1840-1870 (Oxford, 1993); H. Blumethal, Franco-American Relations, 1830-1871 (Chapel Hill, 1959), pp. 35, 43-6.
87. For the influence of Anglo-French tension on Britain's Oregon diplomacy, 1844-6, see Bartlett, Sea Power, pp. 175-81; Galbraith, Hudson's Bay Company p. 246; and R. Bullen, Palmerston, Guizot and the Collapse of the Entente Cordiale (London, 1974), pp. 3 8-41.
88. Herbert to Canning, 21 July 1860: Lord Stanmore, Sidney Herbert: A Memoir (London, 1906), ii. 3*4-5-
89. See S. D. Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain from the Industrial Revolution to the First World War (Cambridge, 1992); A. N. Porter, Victorian Shipping, Business and Imperial Policy: Donald Currie, the Castle Line and Southern Africa (Woodbridge, 1986); B. M. Ratcliffe, 'Commerce and Empire: Manchester Merchants and West Africa, 1873-1895', JnL of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vii (1979), 293-320; and D. R. SarDesai, British Trade and Expansion in South East Asia (New Delhi, 1971).
90. For a pioneering study, see A. G. Hopkins, 'Imperial business in Africa',/n£ of African History, xvii-xvin (1976).
91. See R. Rotberg, The Founder (Oxford, 1988), for Rhodes; J. Flint, Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria, (London, i960); J. Galbraith, Mackinnon and East Africa, (Cambridge, 1976).
92. A. N. Porter, 'Religion and Empire: British Expansion in the Long Nineteenth Century', JnL of Imperial and Commonwealth History, xx (1992), 370-90; R. A. Stafford, Scientist of Empire (Cambridge, 1989}; R. C. Bridges, 'Europeans and East Africans in the Age of Exploration', Geographical JnL, cxxxix (1973), 220-32; F. V. Emery, 'Geography and Imperialism: The Role of Sir Bartle Frere (1815-1884)', ibid., cl (1984), 342-50.
93. R. V. Kubicek, "The Colonial Steamer and the Occupation of West Africa by the Victorian State, 1840-1900', JnL of Imperial and Commonwealth History, xviii (1990), 9-32.
94. D. Helly, 'Informed Opinion and Africa, 1860-90' African Affairs, lxviii (1969), 195-217.
95. Frederick Jackson Turner calculated that it took a century for the English settlements to reach a hundred miles inland from the Atlantic coast: The Frontier in American History (London, 1920), p. 67.
96. M. Jefferson, The Peopling of the Argentine Pampas (New York, 1926), p. 46.
97. D. Treadgold, The Great Siberian Migration (Princeton, 1957), pp. 33-4, calculates a total of 5.3 million for 1887-1913.
98. The classic expression of this view is R. Robinson and J. Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (London, 1961).
99. The Anglo-German agreement of 1890, remarked D. K. Fieldhouse, was 'a classic example of the diplomacy of late 19th century imperialism': Economics and Empire, p. 380.
100. See Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, i. 444-6; Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire, p. 436.
101. A. Colquhoun, China in Transformation (London, 1898), p. 145.
102. [University of Toronto Library (microfilm)], MSS J. O. P. Bland, box 4: J. O. P. Bland to V. Chirol, 7 June 1903. Bland had been Secretary to the Shanghai municipal council, the representative body of the Anglo-American settlement. Chirol was foreign editor of The Times.
103. See Y. P. Hao, The Compradore in Nineteenth Century China (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
104. Ibid., ch.iv.
105. For the difficulties facing foreign businessmen engaged in local manufacture, see R. Y. Eng, 'Chinese Entrepreneurs, the Government and the Foreign Sector: The Canton and Shanghai Silk-reeling Enterprises, 1861-1932', Modem Asian Studies xviii (1984), 3 j 3-70. For the general situation, S. R. Brown, "The Partially-Opened Door: Limitations on Economic Change in China in the 1860s', ibid., xii (1978), 177-92.
106. MSS J. O. P. Bland, Box 1: Bland to Chirol, 9 July 1897.
107. MSS J. O. P. Bland, Box 4: Bland to F. Mayers, 24 Jan. 1905. In his Recent Events and Present Policiesin China (London, 1912), ch.x, Bland launched a sustained attack on British policy since the 1860s. There was no hope of diplomacy opening China to the free transit trade promised in the Tsientsin treaty 'unless backed by horse, foot and artillery'.
108. For the move from commodities into finance and then into local manufacturing within the treaty ports, see J. Osterhammel, 'British Business in China, 1860s - 1950s', in British Business in Asia since i860, ed. R. Davenport-Hines and G.Jones (Cambridge, 1989).
109. For the merchants' programme in July 1899, see Pelcovits, Old China Hands, p. 5.
110. L. K. Young, British Policy in China, 189S-1902 (Oxford, 1970), p. 170.
111. Pelcovits, Old China Hands, pp. 267-76.
112. MSS J. O. P. Bland, Box 23: Bland to Addis, 23 Sept. 1907.
113. G. Cecil, The Life of the Fourth Marquess of Salisbury (London, 1932), iv. 38-9 ff.
114. Cecil, Salisbury, iv. 282: 'Rarely can a political enterprise of equal importance have left behind so few traces of its incubation'.
115. This was Gladstone's judgement on the immediate intervention: The Gladstone Diaries, ed. H. C. G. Matthew, Vol. x: 1881-Sj (Oxford 1990), p. 296. For an argument stressing the incoherence of the Gladstone cabinet's policy-making, see J. S. Galbraith and Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, "The British Occupation of Egypt: Another View', International Journal of Middle East Studies, ix (1978), 471-88.
116. Cecil, Salisbury, iv. 138-9.
117. Ibid., 326.
118. Hansard, 3rd ser. (Lords), cccxlvi, cols. 1263-70.
119. Baring to Salisbury, 15 Dec. 1889: M. Shibeika, British Policy in the Sudan, 1882-1902 (Oxford, >9$*).PP-3«-3-
120. j . Shibeika, British Policy, p. 313. Apart from the political difficulties created in Egypt by the loss of the Sudan, the loss of Khartoum exposed Upper Egypt to the continual threat of flanking attacks from the desert and heightened Cairo's military dependence on London.
121. Bodleian, MSS Milner 3: Dawkins (Cairo) to Milner, 18 Feb. 1895; 17 June 1896.
122. Cecil, Salisbury, iv. 326; Shibeika, British Policy, p. 323.
123. Cecil, Salisbury, iv. 329.
124. Ibid., 330: Salisbury to Baring, 31 Aug. 1890.
125. I. R. Smith, The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (Oxford, 1972), pp.38 ff.
126. See D. Gillard, 'Salisbury's African Policy and the Heligoland Offer of 1890', ante, lxxv (i960), 631-J3; and Gillard, 'Salisbury's Heligoland Offer The Case against the 'Witu Thesis', ante, Ixxx (1965), 548.
127. I am grateful for this information to Arne Perras.
128. Cecil, Salisbury, iv. 234. Malet was ambassador at Berlin.
129. Smith, Emin Pasha, p. 298-9.
130. J. S. Galbraith, Mackinnon and East Africa (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 184-6. Salisbury complained to Malet in May 1890 that 'sentimental considerations' and 'powerful commercial motives' had created an exaggerated interest in the Lakes region: Gillard, 'Salisbury's Heligoland Offer', 548.
131. Galbraith, Mackinnon, p. 152.
132. Ibid., p. 164.
133. Hansard, jrd ser. (Lords), cccxlvi, col. 1264.
134. Gladstone Diaries, ed. Matthew, Vol. xiii: 1892—1896 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 79, 84, 86.
135. [Rhodes House Library, Oxford], Portal Papers, MSS Afr S 113: Salisbury to Portal, 4 Sept. 1892.
136. For Portal's correspondence with Sir Percy Anderson, 1891-2, see Portal Papers, MSS Afr S 105, 106.
137. Portal Papers, MSS Afr S 106: Portal to Salisbury, 15 Aug. 1892; MSS Afr S 105; Portal to Sir P. Anderson, 2 Nov. 1891.
138. For an interpretation along these lines (though she excepts the Nile Valley), see Cecil, Salisbury, iv. 336.
139. For a suggestive use of this term, see P. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead (Cambridge, 1988).
140. For Salisbury's views in 1892, see Robinson and Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians, p. 383.
141. rar'', Journal of Modern History, xxiv (1952), 111-26, for an early study.