An Empire, If You Can Keep It

Several historians have recently chimed in on the 'American Empire' debate. On HNN Paul Schroeder in particular has introduced an element of scholarly interpretation to the otherwise naive dialogue of the talk-show pundits and radical rags. America certainly is not an Empire. Yet that is not to say that it does not stand on the brink. Britain, too, in the late 1870s was anti-imperialist and anti-expansionist. Yet, through a roughly analogous set of events, that great democracy within a short span of years became the largest formal empire on the globe.

In August 1882, the British government of William Gladstone invaded Egypt, promising the general public a brief campaign with highly moral intentions. Instead, the invasion ushered in more than three-quarters of a century of formal empire in Africa and Asia, transforming Britain and undermining the legacy of the enlightenment and the promise of democracy and liberalism. In America's search for a solution to our geo-political woes, we are following a well-trodden path, and it's fitting that Americans pause to reflect upon the experiences of the last global hegemon.

In its global position and internal situation, Britain in the third quarter of the nineteenth century paralleled modern America. Just as American primacy is linked to our trajectory in departing World War II, so Victorian Britain had emerged from the triumph over Napoleonic France that left her the sole great world power. The nineteenth-century industrial revolution had vaulted her to an unprecedented global economic predominance as well.

By-and-large, Britain's electorate held many of the same principles as the American electorate in 2002: they generally preferred smaller government, fewer taxes, and political reform. Despite a certain secularization of society, religion was central to the lives of many Britons, and a growing number of non-conformist congregations embraced core themes of the enlightenment and laissez-faire free-trade economics. The resulting combination of religious, ideological, and political development has been described by historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher as the 'happy play of free minds, free markets, and Christian morality.' " When turned outwards, this set of values imbued mid-century Britons, like modern Americans, with a sense of a right and a duty to lead "unenlightened" societies into democracy, civilization, and general progress.

Unfortunately, in 1857 these ideas were shattered when brutal realities of British rule in India resulted in the Indian or 'Sepoy' Rebellion. The uprising was the culmination of a complex set of processes by which both the rural peasantry and Indian soldiers serving the British East India Company became alienated from company rule. Before the rebellion was put down, a number of Britons had been killed by the rebels, including civilians at a siege at Kanpur. The popular press of the day depicted the event into a massacre, and the story reverberated across an increasingly racially-aware Britain. . If the massacre at Kanpur was more distant to the average Briton than 9/11 was to the average American, it has certain parallels. Both completed the transformation of the 'other' - Hindu or Muslim - from potential partners to global deviants. The message some drew from both experiences was that Indians, or Muslims, or by extension all of the 'oriental races', were no longer to be trusted.

Britain also entered empire on the shoulders of an economic recession. Its industry, humming along so happily in mid-century, by 1873 had hit a brick wall. Like American investors and the dot.com bubble, early Victorians saw their mechanical industry as a mold-breaking transformation in productivity. However, both over-expanded too quickly -- Victorian mechanical industry and Silicon Valley both out-produced the market's ability to absorb new products. In 1873, with Europe temporarily approaching railroad capacity, and with new competitors on the continent and in America beginning to industrialize, British industry began to collapse. The Great Depression of 1873 would in fact last for several decades. Amongst its immediate effects, however, was a conservative victory in the election of 1873-1874, bringing Benjamin Disraeli to the Prime Minister's seat. Disraeli, a favorit of Queen Victoria's, oversaw the transformation of Britain's view of its place in the world. Whereas most Britons, and even powerful business lobbies prior to this period trusted Britain's ability to dominate global markets through free trade, and thus opposed the cost of extending formal empire, Disraeli saw a growing challenge to Britain's pre-eminent commercial position. The newly-united German state was gaining power under the guidance of Bismarck. America was industrializing. The French, chastened by their defeat in the Franco-Prussian wars of 1870-1871, were looking to redeem themselves overseas. Finally, an expanding Russia was threatening British access to her crown jewel, India.

Incredibly, Britain had made no provisions to seize the empire she would later claim. As late as 1865, a Parliamentary Committee had recommended total withdrawal from her possessions in West Africa, and Disraeli's predecessor, Gladstone, had seen imperial expansion as extravagant and wrong. The holy doctrine of 'free trade' promised that British commercial prowess would maintain her dominance without the need for overseas adventures. Fortunately for the imperialist lobby, the enlightenment principles of egalitarian and democratic rule, which could have gotten in the way of empire building, had been blunted by events such as Kanpur and by a growing social Darwinist movement. Disraeli was able to justify the backing of despots and 'pashas' against reformers in the middle east through a doctrine of national interest and a civilizing mission. The ideals of early-Victorian Britain -- free thought, freedom of religion, modernization -- were thus abandoned in the name of Empire.

Thus between 1870 and 1882, Britain's international position was transformed from global hegemon to empire. A complex policy of diplomatic and economic pressure slowly gave way to military adventurism in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Could the same transition be taking place in America today with the call to invade Iraq? Perhaps the most strikingly comparable event in British imperial history is the 1882 invasion of Egypt. British propaganda had promised the electorate a brief, surgical strike, following which a 'responsible', western-oriented administration would be put in place. In a foreshadowing of the Bush administration's stance in 2003, William Gladstone's government over-rode self-interested French opposition and internal protest, Britain's ironclads bombarded Alexandria like pre-modern Tomahawk missiles and an army occupied Cairo. A British Consul-General was then put into the royal palace, not for 2 years, but for 40. Is it any wonder even the anti-Saddam exile Iraqi movements distrust the Bush administration's proposal to emplace an American military governor in Baghdad?

Should the United States compete for world hegemony in the way Britain did, hanging on tooth-and-claw to our pre-eminent position? Economically, and militarily, the Empire may at moments have been Britain's salvation -- there is some debate. Morally, however, Empire was a disaster. John Hobson, the great turn-of-the-century British democrat, decried the new imperialism as a decision to "neglect [Britain's] agriculture…[and] fall behind other nations in its methods of education and in the capacity of adapting to its uses the latest scientific knowledge, in order that it may squander its pecuniary and military resources in forcing bad markets and finding speculative fields of investment in distant corners of the earth… ."

Hobson's fears, that empire would destroy the peculiar freedoms of British democracy, are echoed by civil libertarians such as that great modern day democrat and Democrat, Senator Robert Byrd, who observes that "[h]ere at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with less than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim… "* Ironically, Hobson predicated that the scramble for empire would happen repeatedly, although warning that "the circumstances of each new imperialist exploit [will] differ from those of all preceding ones: whatever ingenuity is requisite for the perversion of the public intelligence, or the inflammation of the public sentiment, will be forthcoming." Americans will have to consider whether his pessimistic prediction will become a depressing reality.

*Senate floor speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003.