British Empire Bookshop: From Elizabethans to post-World War II

Books on the History of the British Empire.

Chance and Circumstance

The British Empire was largely an accidental thing, the result of diverse impulses often satisfied in despite of the mother country. Britain’s expansion into the world at large began with opportunist adventurers, speculative joint-stock expeditions and arbitrary land grants from the Crown that were scarcely capable of cartographic definition. Chartered trading companies and chartered colonies followed, but for many years the interest of the home government in overseas settlements was spasmodic. The kernels of empire were planted haphazardly: by sectaries seeking religious freedom (or the freedom to practise religious intolerance); by Utopian experiments; by opportunist land grabbing; by governments seeking to rid themselves of anti-social or dissenting elements of the population. All of this was scarcely a formula for cohesion amongst the colonials or between the colonies and the homeland. That cohesion was supplied by commercial interests rather than by idealism or dissent.

Britain was not Persia or Macedon or Rome, driven by territorial imperatives to expand its land borders. Britain was an island nation that had, by the days of colonial acquisition, surrendered its continental aspirations and was looking for other ways to keep pace with its European neighbours. Commercial efforts were encouraged by the issue of more royal charters to trading companies; and as new lands, as far away as the Pacific, came within the European purview, pre-emptive settlement was considered a necessary precaution.

Empires grow through the need to source and secure commodities, to protect markets for consumables and to defend the trading routes that service this two-way traffic. The embryonic British Empire, essentially maritime, developed as a network of remote and widely scattered enterprises with extended lines of communication. Trading stations, and the staging posts required to service and secure the shipping lanes, developed defensive exclusion zones through alliances with or oppression of local tribes and rulers. The territorial base expanded through necessity. But as borders extend, so do the resources required to defend them. Private armies increased the ambition and arrogance of the ex-patriate societies and abuses escalated. Intervention was called for, and for reasons that ranged from external threat to private greed to maladministration and corruption, Britain became, almost by default and sometimes reluctantly, a major colonial power.

The acquisition of empire was not universally welcomed. Taxation to support imperial adventures was seen by some as public subsidy of private ambition. Political power blocs emerged from the collaborations of colonial administrations with military cliques. Communication with the outposts of empire was slow and unreliable, and expansionist escapades were carried out without reference to government. At home the influence of imperial/military cliques increased and, in the years before the First World War, they were inextricable from the military and political establishment. It is interesting to speculate how a fragile British democracy might have evolved had not the High Command been substantially discredited during the Great War.

The British Empire survived the aftermath of a war that had swept away other, older, empires; indeed, overseas responsibilities increased through League of Nations mandates to administer Ottoman territories in the Middle East. But the seeds of separatism had been planted at home and abroad, and unrest was quelled, sometimes brutally, by anachronistic rearguard actions. The Second World War was the watershed. Long years away from home had reduced the willingness of a citizen army to police an empire that was seen as increasingly irrelevant to a modern state with a newly elected socialist government. Events in India, Palestine and elsewhere found Britain as the unhappy arbitrator between opposing factions; and there were aberrations, in Suez and Africa, when backward-looking politicians tried to reassert Britain’s role on the world stage. But the long dismemberment had begun, whether or not it was welcomed by territories that felt threatened by more powerful neighbouring states or by minorities at risk from their co-nationals.

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire / Lawrence James
A comprehensive work covering the full history and the full spectrum of British expansion, from the West Indies and the first, American, empire to the Cold War and the deliberate dismantling of colonial administration under Atlee and Macmillan. Lawrence James deals in detail with the political considerations and supremacist paternalistic philosophies that directed the imperial urge, and with the people, from the lowest of the low to the heroes of their day to younger sons without prospect of inheritance, who moved empire forward for good or ill. In many cases the flag followed trade rather than the other way around; and the granting of independence post-World War II had as much to do with the democratisation of the British public as with separatist movements in the British colonies. Discuss.

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England in the Seven Years War Vol I / Julian S Corbett

England in the Seven Years War Vol II / Julian S Corbett

When France began a line of fortifications to link New Orleans and Montreal along the Ohio Valley and threatened to isolate British coastal settlements from the vast hinterland, it sparked a colonial war that, two years later, brought Britain into alliance with a Prussia that was faced with a hostile coalition of France, Austria and Russia. Britain saw its Hanoverian territory as threatened by France; at the same time there was colonial rivalry with France in India, Africa and the Caribbean. Although Britain supported Prussia’s European efforts with financial and military aid, a major contribution to the War came from her attacks on France’s colonial possessions. Julian Corbett gives a strategic global analysis of a conflict that seems to have slipped somewhat from modern historical consciousness. But the ramifications were enormous. The acquisition of Canada and the loss of Britain’s other American colonies, the beginnings of the British Empire in India, the end of France as a major colonial power, the French Revolution, Russian expansion, the beginnings of Prussian military strength — all these and more can be traced to the war of 1756-63.

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Redcoats and Rebels / Christopher Hibbert

It seemed reasonable to the British government that the lightly taxed American colonies should make a contribution to the cost of the recently concluded Seven Years War — known in America as the French and Indian War — and of the garrisons that continued to protect them. The colonials greeted the new taxes with fury. Although most were repealed in short order, hard-liners adopted the taxation issue as a focus for a more fundamental question: the relationship of the largely self-governing colonies to the British Parliament. The American War of Independence divided the colonials into Loyalists and Rebels and exacerbated existing divisions among the British political classes. Whigs were largely sympathetic to the American case, Tories were outraged by a sense of betrayal, especially after the dissidents enlisted the support of France, the recent enemy, still under the rule of an absolutist monarchy. The Declaration of Independence was received in Tory circles as part meaningless cant, part hypocrisy: Samuel Johnson, virulently opposed to slavery, dismissed slave-owning Thomas Jefferson’s high sounding phrases with: ‘How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?’

British and Loyalist efforts were hampered by limited resources, a front that extended from Canada to Georgia, difficult terrain, extended lines of communication and supply, by disagreements between military commanders and, in some cases, by glaring incompetence. With the surrender in 1777 by British and Loyalist troops at Saratoga, the debate in Britain reached new heights. The Whig leader Charles Fox spoke for more than two hours in the Commons, arguing that the war had been mismanaged so far and that, in any case, an independent America could be a powerful friend to Britain. The Tory first minister Lord North took a different view: ‘If America should grow into a separate empire it must cause a revolution in the political system of the world, and if Europe did not support Britain now, it would one day find itself ruled by America imbued with democratic fanaticism’. With hindsight, both were almost right. Redcoats and Rebels is a fascinating and detailed account that, in adopting a British and Loyalist viewpoint, offers a counterpoint to much of the mythologising of minor events that followed and provided potent separatist propaganda at the time.

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The Fatal Shore / Robert Hughes

A history of the convict transportations to Australia between 1787 and 1868, this is an absorbing read, if a little tainted by mild Anglophobia. When castigating the British for their illiberal punishment of comparatively minor crimes, it should perhaps be remembered that the victims were also British. Transportation was a tool of a judicial system that had evolved for the benefit of the property owning classes.

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The Great Game / Peter Hopkirk

Although the expression ‘The Great Game’ was immortalised by Rudyard Kipling in Kim, the phrase, and the underlying notion, had been originated by Captain Arthur Connolly of the Bengal Native Light Cavalry more than half a century before. The Great Game was played out across the high deserts and towering mountain ranges of Central Asia. The main protagonists were a Russian Empire extending remorselessly towards the south and east, and a British India convinced, not totally without reason, that Russian territorial ambitions included the rich prize of the sub-continent. The often deadly arena was the domain of native Khans, Emirs and Turcoman tribesmen, who played by their own rules in response to alien encroachment.

The British veered between opposing theories in the face of the perceived threat from the north. The ‘masterly inactivity’ school argued that any Russian move on India would fail as a result of extended lines of communication and the natural obstacles that protected the northern borders. The ‘forward’ school took a pre-emptive stance: the creation of buffer satellites across likely invasion routes, by diplomacy or force majeure. In the vanguard of the forward school were ambitious young officers (matched by their Russian counterparts) in search of excitement and promotion as they gathered intelligence from the vast unknown territories beyond the passes of Afghanistan and the Karakorams. The Great Game attracted quixotic adventurers who set out, often alone and in disguise, to map the Asian hinterland, build alliances with native rulers and, in passing, establish trading links in the time honoured fashion of an empire built on trade. They were complemented by Indian hillmen, posing as pilgrims or holy men, who had been trained in clandestine surveying techniques. Together they mapped thousands of square miles of inhospitable terrain.

For a century the Great Game encompassed the best and worst, and the triumph and tragedy, of British imperial endeavour, from the first diplomatic mission to Teheran to the contentious invasion of Tibet. Embryonic orientalists and aggressive imperialists each played their part; but individual epics of exploration were offset by numerous disasters, such as the catastrophic retreat from Kabul in 1841. And ironically, in the year following the Kabul debacle, the man who had coined the phrase joined the long list of casualties. Arthur Conolly had volunteered to travel to Bokhara and negotiate for the release of his brother officer, Colonel Charles Stoddart, held captive in the dungeons of the Emir. In the event, both men were beheaded in the great square of Bokhara after months of incarceration in a pit beneath the Emir’s palace.

Peter Hopkirk suggests that the story of the Great Game has ominous contemporary currency and, indeed, that the Great Game never really ended. Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, one of the great novels about India, was filmed in 1950. Film and book are available from our Film Store.

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Despatches from the Crimea, 1854-56 / William Russell

William Howard Russell achieved celebrity status as a special correspondent of the London Times. His rise to prominence began with his coverage of the Crimean War, during which he established single-handedly the profession of war correspondent. Russia had expanded down the western shore of the Black Sea at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. When Russia destroyed the Turkish fleet at Sinope in 1853, war was inevitable. Britain was concerned that Russian conquest of an ailing Ottoman Empire would threaten her overland communications with India. Napoleon III, newly installed on the imperial throne of France, was looking to consolidate his position with a rousing adventure. France and Britain allied themselves with Turkey against Russia and the war was fought on the bleak Crimean Peninsula. Russell sailed from Malta in March 1854, accompanying the men of the Rifle Brigade. He was to provide eye-witness accounts of all the major actions: Alma, the long siege of Sebastopol, Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade, Inkerman, Redan and the rest. His despatches were read avidly at the time and remain amongst the primary sources for subsequent historical accounts. But the greatest impact of his reporting came from his critical accounts of the failings of the British military command: in organising proper supply of food, clothing and equipment; in communications through the hierarchy of command; and in care of the casualties of battle and the much greater casualties that were wasted through disease. His articles began the public reaction against a military system that, through the sale of commissions and a belief in aristocratic virtue, placed troops at the whim of bumbling amateurs. Russell went on to report on the Indian Mutiny, the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War and the Zulu War. Go to the Film Store for Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968).

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The Washing of the Spears / Donald R Morris
Still the definitive work on the rise and destruction of the Zulus in our view. The emergence of Chaka from an obscure minority tribe; the confederation and militarisation of the Zulu nation; the head-on meeting of the Zulus with, firstly, the Boers, and then the British; the British disaster at Isandhlwana, the defence of Rorkes Drift and the ultimate subjugation of Cetswayo. An epic story on a big canvas. Zulu (1964), starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine, is a stirring re-enaction of Rorke’s Drift and is available from our Film Store.

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Churchill: A Life / Martin Gilbert

From Omdurman and Boer War journalist to Cold War statesman, Churchill lived and played his part through the period of greatest technological and social change in English history. His failings and schoolboy enthusiasms have been well documented, but his triumphs in public life and as war leader, orator and writer more than compensate.

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The Boer War / Thomas Pakenham
A few myths destroyed and many whited sepulchres besmirched (on both sides). A memorable study of a conflict that was carried on against the better judgement of many of the great and good (on both sides). Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant (1980) takes place against the backdrop of the Boer War and is available from our Film Store.

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On The Psychology of Military Incompetence / Norman Dixon
A tragi-comedy of errors. Norman Dixon examines the social and institutional conditions that allowed the eminently unsuitable to rise to the top of military hierarchies, and the psychological factors — arrogance, indecision, remoteness from reality — that led to some of the greatest fiascos in 19th and 20th Century warfare. Witty, perceptive and depressing, all at the same time.

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Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India / S Wolpert

Stanley Wolpert’s central thesis is that the chaos that accompanied the British departure from India was due to a failure of political leadership and in particular to that of the last Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Certainly Mountbatten’s inexplicable decisions, to reduce the allotted time for withdrawal from one year to ten weeks, and to hold back the announcement of the boundary lines for Partition until after independence, contributed to the chaos and loss of life that followed. And certainly the boundaries themselves, drawn with little knowledge or regard for the distribution of communities on the ground, added fuel to the conflict between Moslems, Sikhs and Hindus. But Wolpert’s carefully prepared account makes clear that the friction between Indian politicians, and particularly between the two Inns of Court barristers Mohandas Gandhi and Muhammad Jinnah, were in no small degree emblematic of the sub-continent as a whole. These charismatic early leaders of the Independence movement soon took divergent paths. Gandhi, hero of the Hindu masses, held to the conviction that his National Congress Party could adequately encompass all communities and religions; that peaceful non-cooperation was the most effective means of ending British rule; and that the future lay in a return to the simplicity of everyday rural life. The Muslim leader Jinnah, Anglophile, modernist and pro-western, was suspicious of Gandhi’s naivety and romanticism. He feared that a successful Congress would lead to a single party state with Hindu interests predominant; and that Gandhi’s passive demonstrations would inevitably degenerate into violence and hold back progress towards a political resolution. The split between Muslim and Hindu and Jinnah’s call for a separatist state of Pakistan seem to have been equally inevitable, rooted in long years of sectarian antagonism. Doubtless Mountbatten’s precipitate exit (and his antipathy towards Jinnah) exacerbated a deteriorating situation. But contrary to the conclusions of the author, it seems most likely that a more relaxed timescale would have simply provided an arena for more pre-Partition violence, with the final outcome pretty much unchanged. Regardless of conclusions, Shameful Flight is an invaluable and non-partisan examination of the events that led through the first half of the 20th Century towards an estimated one million deaths and laid the ground for the discord that persists down to the present day.

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