Ибраев Е.Е. Костанайский
государственный университет,
г. Костанай, Казахстан
HISTORIOGRAPHY
OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
The historiography of the British
Empire refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and
interpretations used by scholars to study the history of the British Empire.
Scholars have long studied the Empire, looking at the causes for its formation,
its relations to the French and other empires, and the kinds of people and
their ideas who became imperialists or anti-imperialists. The history of the
breakdown of the Empire has attracted scholars of the United States (which
broke away in 1776), as well as India (independent in
1947) and the African colonies (independent in the 1960s). John Darwin (2013)
identifies four imperial goals: colonizing, civilizing, converting, and
commerce.[1] In the First British Empire (before 1780s) there was no
single imperial vision, but rather a multiplicity of private operations led by
different groups of English businessmen or religious groups. While protected by
the Royal Navy, they were not funded or planned by the government.
In the Second British Empire, which emerged after the loss of the Thirteen
Colonies (1783) and the victory in the Napoleonic Wars (1815) there four
distinct elements in the colonies. The most politically developed colonies were
the self-governing colonies in the Caribbean and those that later formed Canada
and Australia. India was in a category by itself, and its immense size and
distance required control of the routes to it, and in turn permitted British
naval dominance from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. The third group
was a mixed bag of smaller territories, including isolated ports used as way
stations to India, and emerging trade entrepots such as Hong Kong and
Singapore, along with a few isolated ports in Africa. The fourth kind of empire
was the informal dominance exercised through investments, as in Latin America,
and including the complex situation in Egypt (it was owned theoretically by the
Ottoman Empire, but ruled by Britain).[2] John Darwin argues the
British Empire was distinguished by the adaptability of its builders. Darwin
says, "The hallmark of British imperialism was its extraordinary
versatility in method, outlook and object." The British tried to avoid
military action in favour of reliance on networks of local elites and
businessmen who voluntarily collaborated and in turn gained authority (and
military protection) from British recognition.[3]
In recent years scholars have paid special attention to its impact on the
native peoples of Asia and Africa who became part of its domain, with respect
to the impact on their economy, social structure, demography, politics and
world view. The cultural turn in historiography has recently emphasized issues
of language, religion, gender, and identity. Recent debates have considered the
relationship between the "metropole" (Britain itself, especially
London), and the colonial peripheries. The "British world" historians
stress the material, emotional, and financial links among the colonizers across
the imperial diaspora. The "new imperial historians," by contrast,
are more concerned with the Empire's impact on the metropole, including
everyday experiences and images.[4]
Idea of Empire. Armitage (2008) traces the emergence of a British
imperial ideology from the time of Henry VIII to that of Robert Walpole in the
1720s and 1730s. Using a close reading of English, Scottish and Irish authors
from Sir Thomas Smith (1513–77) to David Hume (1711–1776), Armitage argues that
the imperial ideology was both a critical agent in the formation of a British
state from three kingdoms and an essential bond between the state and the
transatlantic colonies. Armitage thus links the concerns of the 'New British
History' with that of the Atlantic history. Before 1700, Armitage finds that
contested English and Scottish versions of state and empire delayed the
emergence of a unitary imperial ideology. Furthermore the notions of
republicanism produced in the writers a tension between "empire and
liberty" and "imperium and dominium". However political
economists Nicholas Barbon and Charles Davenant in the late 17th century
emphasized the significance of commerce, especially mercantilism or commerce
that was closed to outsiders, to the success of the state. They argued that
"trade depended on liberty, and that liberty could therefore be the
foundation of empire."[5] To overcome competing versions of
'empires of the seas' within Britain, Parliament undertook the regulation of
the Irish economy, the Act of Union (1707) and the formation of a unitary and organic
'British' empire of the sea. Walpole's opponents in the 1730s in the
"country party" and in the American colonies developed an alternative
vision of empire that would be "Protestant, commercial, maritime and
free."[6] Walpole did not ensure the promised
"liberty" to the colonies because he was intent on subordinating all
colonial economic activity to the mercantilist advantages of the metropolis.
Anti-imperial critiques emerged from Francis Hutcheson and David Hume,
presaging the republicanism that swept the American colonies in the 1770s and
led to the creation of a rival empire.
Theories of imperialism. Theories
about imperialism typically focus on the British Empire, with side glances
elsewhere. The term "Imperialism" was originally introduced into
English in its present sense in the late 1870s by opponents of the allegedly
aggressive and ostentatious imperial policies of British Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli. It was shortly appropriated by supporters of
"imperialism" such as Joseph Chamberlain. For some, imperialism
designated a policy of idealism and philanthropy; others alleged that it was
characterized by political self-interest, and a growing number associated it
with capitalist greed. Liberal John A. Hobson and Marxist Lenin added a more theoretical
macroeconomic connotation to the term. Many theoreticians on the left have
followed either or both in emphasizing the structural or systemic character of
"imperialism." Such writers have expanded the time period associated
with the term so that it now designates neither a policy, nor a short space of
decades in the late 19th century, but a world system extending over a period of
centuries, often going back to Christopher Columbus and, in some accounts, to
the Crusades. As the application of the term has expanded, its meaning has
shifted along five distinct but often parallel axes: the moral, the economic,
the systemic, the cultural, and the temporal. Those changes reflect - among
other shifts in sensibility - a growing unease, even squeamishness, with the
fact of power, specifically, Western power.[7][8]
The relationship among capitalism, aristocracy, and imperialism has long
been debated among historians and political theorists. Much of the debate was
pioneered by such theorists as J. A. Hobson (1858–1940), Joseph Schumpeter
(1883–1950), Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), and Norman Angell (1872–1967). While
these non-Marxist writers were at their most prolific before World War I, they
remained active in the interwar years. Their combined work informed the study
of imperialism's impact on Europe, as well as contributed to reflections on the
rise of the military-political complex in the United States from the 1950s.
Hobson argued that domestic social reforms could cure the international disease
of imperialism by removing its economic foundation. Hobson theorized that state
intervention through taxation could boost broader consumption, create wealth,
and encourage a peaceful multilateral world order. Conversely, should the state
not intervene, rentiers (people who earn income from property or securities)
would generate socially negative wealth that fostered imperialism and
protectionism.[9][10]
1.
John Darwin (historian), Unfinished
Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (2013)
2.
John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The
Global Expansion of Britain (London: Allen Lane, 2012), p 391.
3.
Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The
Global Expansion of Britain, p 388.
4.
Zoë Laidlaw, "Breaking
Britannia'S Bounds? Law, Settlers, and Space in Britain's Imperial
Historiography," Historical Journal (Sept 2012) 55#3 pp p807-830
5.
Armitage (2000) p. 143
6.
Armitage (2000) p. 173
7.
Mark F. Proudman, "Words for
Scholars: The Semantics of 'Imperialism'". Journal of the Historical
Society, Sept. 2008, Vol. 8 Issue 3, p395-433
8.
D. K. Fieldhouse,
"Imperialism": An Historiographical Revision," South African
Journal Of Economic History, March 1992, Vol. 7 Issue 1, pp 45-72
9.
P. J. Cain, "Capitalism,
Aristocracy and Empire: Some 'Classical' Theories of Imperialism
Revisited," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, March 2007, Vol.
35 Issue 1, pp 25-47
10. G.K. Peatling, "Globalism, Hegemonism and British Power: J. A.
Hobson and Alfred Zimmern Reconsidered," History, July 2004, Vol. 89 Issue
295, pp 381-398