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Bookshop British Empire
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Chance and Circumstance The British Empire was largely an accidental thing, the result of diverse impulses often satisfied in despite of the mother country. Britains 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 Britains 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.
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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 war that spread from the Americas to Europe
and to India. Julian Corbett gives a strategic analysis of the progress of
the Seven Years War, a conflict that seems to have slipped somewhat from
modern historical consciousness. But the ramifications were enormous. The
loss of Britains American colonies, the beginnings of the British Empire in
India, the French Revolution, Russian expansion, the beginnings of Prussian
military power all these and more can be traced to the war of 1756-63. -
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 Jeffersons 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. -
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. -
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. - -
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. -
The Boer War / Thomas Pakenham -
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Text & Photographs © 2006 History Unlimited & Hill
House Publications
Bookshop Intro
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Ireland
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