Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:20:51.615Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“We Have No Colonies”— Similarities within the British Imperial Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Robert J. Hind*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney

Extract

The magnitude of contrasts within modern empires is incontrovertible. In the opinion of some scholars, the range of human experience they encompassed is so immense that it is impracticable to study adequately even one empire in its entirety. This premise has contributed to the formation of clusters of scholars with circumscribed areas of interest, whose research demonstrates unequivocally the distinctive characters of the various societies under each empire's jurisdiction, and the diverse effects of imperial policies upon them. Other scholars elect to concentrate upon the imperial macrocosm, but their work often highlights imperial differentiation too. Analyses such as those which hinge upon a core-periphery nexus and focus upon antitheses within metropolitan and colonial relationships are inherently inclined to give prominence to contrasts within an empire. Some studies, moreover, convey the impression of an improbable degree of cohesion and identity of interest within the metropolitan community and within each different colonized group of an empire's subjects. The revolts against the West, against the Dutch, the British, the French, and so on, helped to promote and reinforce this idea. These revolts also revealed that amongst peoples under imperial subjection there was a degree of identification with each other, in their relationships to members of the metropolitan society.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright   Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for instance, Spodek, Howard, “Pluralist Politics in British India: The Cambridge Cluster of Historians of Modern India”, American Historical Review, 84:3 (06 1979), 688707.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Davis, Richard P., “India in Irish Revolutionary Propaganda, 1905–22”, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 22:1 (04 1977), 85.Google Scholar

3 Richards, Dona, “The Ideology of European Dominance”, Présence africaine, no. 111 (1979), 3.Google Scholar

4 The Educational Magazine, and Journal of Christian Philanthropy, and of Public Utility (London), 1 (1835), 3.Google Scholar

5 The Educator (London), 3d Ser., 1:2 (1862), 35.Google Scholar

6 Bullock, Alan, Trade Union Leader, 1881–1940, Vol. IGoogle Scholar of The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin (London: Heinemann, 1960), 69.Google Scholar

7 Austin, Dennis, “The Transfer of Power: Why and How”, in Decolonisation and After. The British and French Experience, Morris-Jones, W. H. and Fischer, Georges, eds. (London: Cass, 1980), 26.Google Scholar

8 Perkin, Harold J., The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780–1880 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 5253.Google Scholar

9 Conacher, James B., ed., The Emergence of British Parliamentary Democracy in the Nineteenth Century: The Passing of the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884–5 (New York, London, Sydney, Toronto: Wiley, 1971), 56.Google Scholar

10 Kemp, Betty, King and Commons, 1660–1832 (London: Macmillan, 1957), 103, 145.Google Scholar

11 Harvey, A. D., Britain in the Early Nineteenth Century (London: Batsford, 1978), 1819.Google Scholar

12 Wasson, Ellis A., “The Spirit of Reform, 1832 and 1867”, Albion, 12:2 (Summer 1980), 165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Conacher, , ed., Emergence of British Parliamentary Democracy, 10, 173Google Scholar; see also Amstein, Walter L., “The Myth of the Triumphant Victorian Middle Class”, Historian, 37:2 (02 1975), 205–21.Google Scholar

14 Lubenow, William C., The Politics of Government Growth. Early Victorian Attitudes toward State Intervention (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1971), 15.Google Scholar

15 Durrans, Peter J., “The House of Commons and the British Empire, 1868–1880”, Canadian Journal of History, 9:1 (04 1974), 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 MacDonagh, Oliver, Early Victorian Government, 1830–1870 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), 132.Google Scholar

17 Bulpitt, Jim, “The Making of the United Kingdom: Aspects of British Imperialism”, Parliamentary Affairs, 31 (Spring 1978), 179.Google Scholar

18 Austin, , “Transfer of Power”, and Hargreaves, John D., “Assumptions, Expectations, and Plans: Approaches to Decolonisation in Sierra Leone”, in Decolonisation and After, Morris Jones and Fischer, eds. 13, 79.Google Scholar

19 Cannon, John, Parliamentary Reform, 1640–1832 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 82.Google Scholar

20 Austin, , “Transfer of Power”, and Hargreaves, , “Assumptions”, in Decolonisation and After, Morris-Jones and Fischer, eds. 7, 29, 86.Google Scholar

21 Britain, Great, Parliament, Hansard, The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, 16 (4 02 1767), 316, 319–20Google Scholar; Atcheson v. Everitt (1 February 1775), 98 English Reports (Edinburgh: Green; London: Stevens, 1909), 1142 at 1145.Google Scholar

22 Shyllon, F. O., Black Slaves in Britain (London, New York, Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1974), 165–66, 171.Google Scholar

23 Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1975), 254, and see also 346–47, 350, 363, 376–77, 393, 450, 500.Google Scholar

24 Ward, John Manning, Colonial Self-Government. The British Experience, 1759–1856 (London: Macmillan, 1976), 11.Google Scholar

25 Murray, D. J., The West Indies and the Development of Colonial Government, 1801–1834 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), xii.Google Scholar

26 Britain, Great, Hansard, Parliamentary History, 32 (10 11 1795), 294 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

27 Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in The Works of Edmund Burke (London: Holdsworth, 1842), I, 445.Google Scholar

28 Jensen, Merrill, ed., American Colonial Documents to 1776, Vol. IXGoogle Scholar of English Historical Documents (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955), 6572Google Scholar; Andrews, Charles M., The Colonial Period of American History. The Settlements (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1964), I, 461.Google Scholar

29 Morris, James, Heaven's Command. An Imperial Progress (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 86.Google Scholar

30 See, for perspective, Emsley, Clive, “An Aspect of Pitt's ‘Terror’: Prosecutions for Sedition during the 1790s”, Social History, 6:2 (05 1981), 155–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Watson, Francis, The Year of the Wombat (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 154.Google Scholar

32 Briggs, Asa, “Peasant Movements and Agrarian Problems in England and Wales from the End of the XVIIIth Century up to Our Times”, Cahiers internationaux d'histoire economique et sociale, 6 (1976), 320.Google Scholar

33 See, for instance, Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., “The Political Economy of British Expansion Overseas, 1750–1914”, Economic History Review, 2d Ser., 33:4 (11 1980), 463–90Google Scholar; McCloskey, Donald N., “Magnanimous Albion: Free Trade and British National Income, 1841–1881”, Explorations in Economic History, 17:3 (07 1980), 303–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Deutsch, 1964), 133.Google Scholar

35 Webb, Sidney and Webb, Beatrice, The Old Poor Law, Pt. 1 of English Poor Law History, Vol. VII of English Local Government (London: Cass, 1963), 348.Google Scholar

36 Northern Liberator (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), 6 March 1840Google Scholar; see also Marshall, Peter J., Bristol and the Abolition of Slavery (Bristol: Historical Association, Bristol University, 1975), 15Google Scholar; and Marcus Cunliffe, Chattel, Slavery and Wage Slavery. The Anglo-American Context, 1830–1860 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979).Google Scholar

37 [The Reverend Joseph Townsend], A Dissertation on the Poor Laws. By a Well-Wisher to Mankind ([London?]: n. p., 1786), 2021.Google Scholar

38 Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 133.Google Scholar

39 Christian Observer (London), 13 (1814), 534.Google Scholar

40 Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser, 10 March, 22 September 1838Google Scholar (cited hereafter Northern Star); Northern Liberator, 8 November 1839, 6 March 1840.Google Scholar

41 Tinker, Hugh, A New System of Slavery. The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920 (London, New York, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Mahajani, U., “Slavery, Indian Labour and British Colonialism”, Pacific Affairs, 50:2 (Summer 1977), 263–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 [Townsend, ], Dissertation on Poor Laws, 24.Google Scholar

43 Britain, Great, Hansard, Parliamentary History, 32 (12 02 1796), 708.Google Scholar

44 Rose, Michael E., “Settlement, Removal and the New Poor Law”, in The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century, Derek Fraser, ed. (London: Macmillan, 1976), 27, 3132, 37.Google Scholar

45 Davis, , Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 281.Google Scholar

46 Young, D. M., The Colonial Office in the Early Nineteenth Century (London: Longmans, 1961), 38, n. 4.Google Scholar

47 Masterman, C. F. G., ed., The Heart of the Empire. Discussions of Problems of Modern City Life in England, Gilbert, Bentley B., ed. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1973), 350.Google Scholar

48 Kiernan, V. G., Lords of Human Kind. European Attitudes to the Outside World in the Imperial Age (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 50.Google Scholar

49 Ripon, to Gladstone, , 22 October 1881, Papers of William Ewart Gladstone, British Library, Add. MSS. 44286, fol. 254.Google Scholar

50 Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 134–35.Google Scholar

51 de Kiewiet, C. W., The Imperial Factor in South Africa: A Study in Politics and Economics (London: Cambridge University Press, 1937), 194.Google Scholar

52 Lytton Bulwer, Edward G. E., England and the English (London: Bentley, 1833), I, 187.Google Scholar

53 Northern Star, 22 December 1838.Google Scholar

54 Webb, R. K., Modern England from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (London, Boston, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1980), 245.Google Scholar

55 Gavin, R. J., “Palmerston's Policy towards East and West Africa, 1830–1865” (Ph.D. diss., No. 3591, Cambridge University, 1958), 13.Google Scholar

56 Collison Black, R. D., “Economic Policy in Ireland and India in the Time of J. S. Mill”, Economic History Review, 2d Ser., 21:2 (08 1968), 336Google Scholar. For the structural transformation of the Indian economy and society, see Alavi, Hamza, “India: Transition from Feudalism to Colonial Capitalism”, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 10:4 (1980), 359–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Semmel, Bernard, The Governor Eyre Controversy (London: Macgibbon and Kee, 1962), 43.Google Scholar

58 Davis, , Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 152, 327.Google Scholar

59 Embree, Ainslie T., Charles Grant and British Rule in India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), 245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 Christian Observer, 3 (1804), 738.Google Scholar

61 Schlatter, Richard B., The Social Ideas of Religious Leaders, 1660–1688 (New York: Octagon, 1971), 38.Google Scholar

62 Trimmer, Sarah, The Oeconomy of Charity; or, an Address to Ladies Concerning Sunday schools … (London: Longman, 1787), 1112.Google Scholar

63 Heesom, Alan, “The Coal Mines Act of 1842, Social Reform, and Social Control”, Historical Journal, 24:1 (03 1981), 72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 The Educator, 3d Ser., 1:1 (1862), 10.Google Scholar

65 Churchill, Winston S., Liberalism and the Social Problem (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909), 224.Google Scholar

66 Political Register (London), 08 1823.Google Scholar

67 Evangelical Magazine (London), 2 (1794), 509Google Scholar; see also Piggin, Stuart, “Halevy Revisited: The Origins of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society: An Examination of Semmel's Thesis”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9:1 (10 1980), 1737.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 Letter from the Ministers Composing the Congregational Board in London to the Churches of the Congregational Denomination … in London and the Country, 10 February 1829 (London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, 1829), 12.Google Scholar

69 Gloucester Journal, 4 April 1785.Google Scholar

70 Report of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts during 1823, sermon, 20 February 1824 ([London?]: n. p., 1824), 29.Google Scholar

71 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 10, 15 February, 1899.Google Scholar

72 Masterman, , Heart of Empire, 358.Google Scholar

73 SirKay-Shuttleworth, James, “Sketches of the Progress of Manchester in Thirty Years, from 1832 to 1862”, in his Four Periods of Public Education as Reviewed in 1832, 1839, 1846, 1862 (Brighton: Harvester, 1973), 111–13Google Scholar; see also Manchester, and Salford, Advertiser and Chronicle (Manchester), 25 04 1846.Google Scholar

74 Report of the Proceedings of the General Sunday School Convention Held in London (London: Sunday School Union, 1862), 175Google Scholar; Baker, James, The Life of Sir Thomas Bernard, Bt. (London: Murray, 1819), 62.Google Scholar

75 [Stephen, James?], The Dangers of the Country (London: n. p., 1807), 211–13, 215.Google Scholar

76 The Philanthropist (London), 1 (1811), 196.Google Scholar

77 Sutcliffe, Joseph, The Divine Mission of the People Called Methodists to Revive and Spread Religion (London: n. p., 1814), 28.Google Scholar

78 Hobson, J. A., Imperialism: A Study (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968), 160.Google Scholar

79 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 46.Google Scholar

80 Christian Observer, 16 (1817), 403–4.Google Scholar

81 Christian Observer, 73 (1873), 65Google Scholar; ibid., 74 (1874), 299–300.

82 Merivale, Herman, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies Delivered before the University of Oxford in 1839, 1840, & 1841 and Reprinted in 1861 (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), 606.Google Scholar

83 Alan, H.Cairns, C., Prelude to Imperialism. British Reactions to Central African Society, 1840–1890 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), 235, 238–40.Google Scholar

84 Wilberforce, Robert I. and Wilberforce, Samuel, The Life of William Wilberforce (London: Murray, 1839), II, 451.Google Scholar

85 The Philanthropist, 3 (1813), 347.Google Scholar

86 Coats, A. W., “The Classical Economists and the Labourer”, in Land, Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution. Essays Presented to J. D. Chambers, Jones, E. L. and Mingay, G. E., eds. (London: Arnold, 1967), 104, 117–18, 127.Google Scholar

87 McCord, Norman, The Anti-Corn Law League, 1838–1846 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968), 24, 32, 106.Google Scholar

88 Bell, Kenneth N. and Morrell, W. P., eds. Select Documents on British Colonial Policy, 1830–1860 (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), xxxiii.Google Scholar

89 Northern Star, 3 February 1838.Google Scholar

90 Wendeborn, Gebhardt Friedrich A., A View of England towards the Close of the Eighteenth Century (London: Robinson, 1791), I, 369–71, 373, 380.Google Scholar

91 Sadler, M. E., “The English Ideal of Education”, The Independent (New York), 21 08 1902, 2015–17.Google Scholar

92 Cohen, W. B., “The Colonized as Child: British and French Colonial Rule”, African Historical Studies, 3:2 (1970), 428, 430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

93 Symonds, Richard, The British and Their Successors. A Study in the Development of the Government Services in the New States (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 237–38.Google Scholar

94 Crowder, Michael, West Africa under Colonial Rule (London: Hutchinson, 1968), 20.Google Scholar

95 Lyons, Charles H., “The Educable African: British Thought and Action, 1835–1865”, in Essays in the History of African Education, Battle, Vincent M. and Lyons, Charles H., eds. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1970), 22.Google Scholar

96 The Philanthropist, 6 (1816), 236.Google Scholar

97 Lyons, Charles H., To Wash an Aethiop White. British Ideas about Black African Educability, 1530–1960 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1975), 48.Google Scholar

98 Lyons, , “The Educable African”, 2, 15, 17Google Scholar; see also Nwosu, S. N., “The British Idea of the Educability of the African: 1840–1939”, Etudes d'histoire africaine, 8 (1976), 149–71.Google Scholar

99 The Central Society of Education, Second Publication (London: n. p., 1838), 340–41.Google Scholar

100 The Philanthropist, 4 (1814), 329–30.Google Scholar

101 The Life of William Allen, with Selections from His Correspondence (London: Gilpin, 1846), I, 139, 253; see also British and Foreign School Society, Secretary's Minute Book, 27 October 1815, 19 April 1816, 14 September 1816 (held by the West London Institute of Higher Education, Borough Road, Isle worth).Google Scholar

102 National Society, School Committee Minutes, I, fol. 77, 12 March 1813, and fol. 120, 26 November 1813; ibid., V, fol. 44, 29 April 1825, and fol. 51, 20 May 1825 (held by the National Society for the Promotion of Religious Education, Church House, Dean's Yard, London, S.W.I).

103 National Society, Committee of Enquiry and Correspondence, 1838, fol. 95.

104 Christian Observer, 15x (1816), 551.Google Scholar

105 Christian Observer, 14 (1815), 804.Google Scholar

106 Coke, Thomas, A Historyofthe West Indies … with an Account ofthe Missions (London: Cass, 1971), II, 427; III, 202, 239.Google Scholar

107 Great Britain, Parliament, Hansard, Parliamentary Debates (cited hereafter Pari. Deb.), 2d Ser., 18 (21 March 1828), 1241–42.Google Scholar

108 Turner, Mary, “The Bishop of Jamaica and Slave Instruction”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 26:4 (1975), 365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

109 Newcastle Journal, 25 March 1890.Google Scholar

110 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 19 May 1874.Google Scholar

111 Curtin, Philip D., “The Black Experience of Colonialism and Imperialism”, Daedalus, 103:2 (1974), 2325.Google Scholar

112 O'Leary, John G., ed., The Autobiography of Joseph Arch (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1966), 21, 25–26.Google Scholar

113 Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor (New York: Dover, 1968), I, 16, 20–21, 24.Google Scholar

114 The Times (London), 20 11 1850.Google Scholar

115 Truth (London), 26 04 1883, 570.Google Scholar

116 Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers, Education, 1847, vol. 45Google Scholar, “Report on Schools in the Northern District”, by the Watkins, Reverend Frederick, in The Minutes of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education, with Appendices, 1846, 228.Google Scholar

117 Briggs, Asa, “The Human Aggregate”, in Past and Present and Numbers of People, Vol. IGoogle Scholar of The Victorian City: Images and Realities, Dyos, H. J. and Wolff, Michael, eds. (London, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 87.Google Scholar

118 Webb, Beatrice, My Apprenticeship (London: Longmans, Green, 1926), 216.Google Scholar

119 Curzon, to Balfour, , 31 March 1901, Papers of Arthur J. Balfour, British Library, Add. MSS. 49732, fol. 73. (The Papers of Arthur J. Balfour are calendared provisionally.)Google Scholar

120 Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers, 1884–85, Vol. 30Google Scholar, C. 4402–1, First Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Housing of the Working Classes, 5.

121 Hutchins, Francis G., The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

122 Hudson, Derek, Munby: Man of Two Worlds. The Life and Diaries of Arthur J. Munby, 1828–1910 (London: Murray, 1972), 309.Google Scholar

123 Curtis, L. P., Jr., Apes and Angels. The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1971), 100.Google Scholar

124 Akenson, Donald H., The Irish Educational Experiment. The National System of Education in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 30.Google Scholar

125 Northern Star, 13 March 1838.Google Scholar

126 Ranger, Terence, “The White Presence and Power in Africa”, Journal of African History, 20:3 (1979), 467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

127 Masterman, Heart of Empire, 341.Google Scholar

128 Parl. Deb., 1st Ser., 33 (15 March 1816), 325.Google Scholar

129 Public Record Office, Colonial Office (cited hereafter PRO, CO), 885/5/68, First Report of the Royal Commission on Colonial Defence, 3 September 1881, p. 412Google Scholar; see also, PRO, Cabinet, 37/18/30, printed 24 April 1886.

130 Derby, to Potter, (copy), 21 May 1883, Papers of the Fifteenth Earl of Derby, X24 (consulted at Knowsley Hall, Knowsley, Lancashire).Google Scholar

131 Parl. Deb., 1st Ser., 33 (15 March 1816)Google Scholar, 333, 336; see, for instance, PRO, CO, 42/147/100 no. 6, SirBathurst, G. to Prevost, , Bt., 10 August 1812.Google Scholar

132 Parl. Deb., 1st Ser., 7 (6 June 1806), 535.Google Scholar

133 Ripon, to Gladstone, , 6 October 1882, Papers of William Ewart Gladstone, British Library, Add. MSS. 44286, fol. 281.Google Scholar

134 Gladstone, William Ewart, Political Speeches in Scotland, November and December, 1879 (Edinburgh: Elliot, 1879), 143–45Google Scholar, 155, 200–203; idem., Political Speeches in Scotland, March and April, 1880 (Edinburgh: Elliot, 1880), 9697.Google Scholar

135 Morley, John, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (London: Macmillan, 1906), II, 565.Google Scholar

136 “Notes of Conversation between J. Chamberlain and R. L. Morant, 12 December 1901”, Papers of Arthur J. Balfour, British Library, Add. MSS. 49787, fol. 49.

137 Andrews, J. A., “The Concept of Statehood and the Acquisition of Territory in the Nineteenth Century”, Law Quarterly Review, 94 (07 1978), 409.Google Scholar

138 SirDuffy, C. Gavan to Ripon, , 5 August 1886, Papers of the First Marquess of Ripon, British Library, Add. MSS. 43545, fol. 217.Google Scholar

139 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 9 March 1899.Google Scholar

140 Kay-Shuttleworth, , “The Condition of the Working Classes of Manchester in 1832”, in Four Periods of Public Education, 50.Google Scholar

141 Curtin, Philip D., The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

142 Northern Star, 27 January 1838.Google Scholar

143 Northern Liberator, 24 March 1838.Google Scholar

144 Northern Star, 13 March 1838.Google Scholar

145 Ibid., 14 April 1838.

146 Ibid., 27 January 1838.