The 19th century was a time of fevered colonial expansion. Whether it was the British consolidating their rule in India, Australia and Canada, or the French in Indochina any look at global politics in this era will be forced to acknowledge the pre-eminence of European powers. This reached its undoubted zenith from 1880 onwards – with what became known as ‘the scramble for Africa’ involving the old colonial powers of Britain, France and Portugal, and the new European nations of Germany and Italy. Colonialism found its logic within these nation-states via three factors: Structural reasons that combine institutional, geographical and financial pressures, political reasons, to do with the influences of political ideologies, and finally the role of religion and other societal pressures. This essay will examine these three reasons, focusing on examples from all substantial colonial powers of the age but using Great Britain as the main example from which the logic of 19th century colonialism can be explained.
Structural reasons are some of the most pertinent to the question of how colonialism was granted consensual legitimacy by nation states. They are particularly important in that to a certain extent they bypass party political pressures and are – in the case of geographical and British maritime primacy – crucial for explaining why empires took the form they did. One such structural motivator of colonialism was closely linked to one of the defining social upheavals of the 19th century: The industrial revolution. Industrialisation greatly enhanced the productivity of European manufacturing outlets, but particularly Britain; widely considered to be at the forefront of this technological revolution. Industrialisation did however raise questions about over-production, namely; what was to be done with this huge surplus of goods produced? The home market was insufficiently wealthy to accommodate the usage of goods – the rise of a wealthy bourgeoisies middle class not yet a factor (Marx & Engels 1998; 3-4). Overseas colonies did, however, provide a perfect outlet for this overproduction and offset the cost of defending and maintaining them – something Disraeli described as a “millstone around the neck of British tax payers”(Kennedy 1976; 153).
Companies such as Societe de Credit Foncier et de Banque (Banking and Land Credit Society) and the Compagnie des Minerais de fer de Motka (Motka Iron Ore Company) were created in the late 19th century for the purpose of aiding a monopoly for French capital in Algeria (Sartre 1964; 32-33). This was one way in which production could be maximised without any need for goods dumping. In turn colonialists would be expected to buy home products – in the case of Algeria – French agricultural tools and seed, or, as in British India – wool would be shipped from India to mills in Lancashire where it would be spun into cotton products and exported (Ferguson 2003; 16-17). This cyclical business operation funded itself, generating substantial revenues for companies and governments alike and crucially making colonialism a profitable – and therefore logical business.
Once profitable and strategically useful, colonies perpetuated there own existence by the administration and military resources that found logic in their existence. One example of this would be the growth of European – particularly British – naval power to protect colonies (Kennedy 1976; 3). This growth in British naval power was to a large degree a function of Britain’s geographical position, sociological factors and ‘national characteristics’ as outlined in A. T. Mahan’s influential tome of the period: The Influence of Sea Power upon History 1660-1783. Once the British navy was pre-eminent amongst nations following the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, and the subsequent period of Pax Britannica, then it’s formidable presence not only made far-flung colonies easier to defend, but also led to the creation of naval stations dotted around the globe: Singapore taken over in 1819, the Falkland Islands in 1833, Aden in 1839, Hong Kong in 1841, and Lagos, Fiji, Cyprus, Alexandria, Mombassa and Zanzibar all annexed later in the century (ibid. 1976; 152). This repeated process bolstered the ideal of colonialism, furthering British economic and military hegemony. It is crucial to note that the “millstone” that Disraeli talked of around the neck of British taxpayers was less of an issue when these bases provided such good economic and military returns (Williams 1972; 78).
The logic fuelling colonial expansion was thus realpolitik and economic self-interest. This age-old explanation for nation-states behaviour may forever seem incongruous and paradoxical in an age when a belief in human progressivism in the style of such liberal thinkers as Emmanuel Kant was in vogue. What is crucial to understanding how colonialism became a convincing and inescapable facet of the 19th century narrative is less individual nationalist and racial differences between colonisers and the colonised – though they were important and legitimised many rational for conquest as we shall examine later – but the colonisers function as agents of nation-states. An organised state in the post Westphalia European model acted to protect and project its own interests around the globe (Doyle 1997; 386) – and thus impose their image on un-chartered territory.
The best 19th century example of this feature of colonialism would be the scramble for Africa, where a whole continent of countries was created where previously there had existed individual tribes and tribal boundaries in a flux, and alien to the European concept of settled borders and nation-states. Although it leaps out of the confines of this essay the 20th century saw Anglo-French colonialism carve out a whole set of a new countries in the middle-east – the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement (Lochery 2004; 18) – out of the ashes of the old Ottoman empire – and with mixed consequences for the world. What is inescapable is less a post-enlightenment faith in liberal progressivism and more a belief in what the Ancient Greek philosopher Thucydides deemed history to be; “constant” rather than progressive (Doyle 1997; 53). It was the concept of national interest – inextricable tied to the very concept of sovereign states that for better or worse helped spawn colonialism.
A notable example of where the concept of realpolitik rode rough shod over political morality is that of the British annexation of Egypt in 1882. Gladstone, the Liberal prime minister, was a progressive totally averse to the kind of cynical, pragmatic realism practiced by Tories such as Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Salisbury, yet he was forced into intervention in Egypt against all his liberal principles by the powerful combination of keeping the Suez Canal open to British shipping – and political pressure from the Whigs, Tories and radicals within his own party (Harrison 1995; 63-70). The bottom line in this situation – as in so many others – was that the logic of colonialism and national interest did not respect the vagaries of Gladstone’s individual morality, and found a clear majority of politicians as subordinate to its whims.
Similarly, reforms to the electoral franchise carried out in 19th century Britain had the unforeseen consequence of increasing popular pressure on politicians to preserve – and where possible extend – the glory of the empire. Technological advances, such as the laying of telegraph cables across the ocean floors connecting distant points of the empire, and the development of steam powered ships, served to solidify links between families based in colonies around the globe – and greatly increase mobility and communications that had hitherto been unreliable and slow. Empire – in a popularly coined phrase – became “flesh and blood” for the populace (ibid. 1995; 71). This popularity of empire – although a societal pressure for colonialism as an end in itself – was caused by the structural necessity of electoral reform – largely relevant to the 1867 Reform Act, which added an additional one and a half million voters onto the roles. It is therefore evidence of the way that even domestic constitutional issues could have a significant impact on colonial aspirations of 19th century Britain.
In the cases of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Tsarist Russian entity and the Ottoman Turk Empire colonialism and imperialism were less strategies of further enrichment and more to do with the survival of the state in its present form. All of these empires ruled over a multitude of nations and ethnic groups. Once the logic of a large, powerful federation exercising benign yet omnipotent rule from the centre – be it Moscow, Vienna or Constantinople – dried up, then there was little to contain popular ethnic demands for independence. Colonialism was, for these empires, as much a survival mechanism to solidify fractured societies than any grand strategic plan.
Of the various political ideological and societal influences on colonialism the most influential – the ideas of ‘Liberal imperialism’ the ‘white mans burden’, the benefits of free trade and the missionary zeal prevalent in much of 19th century Europe, go a long way to explaining how colonialism found willing protagonists in all walks of society. They are crucial in recognising not only the logic of colonialism, but also the justifications for it.
The idea of ‘Liberal imperialism’ centred largely on the politics and individualism of William Gladstone. Gladstone – as already mentioned – was a deeply religious man of morality. This morality did not encompass the logic of Tory colonialism cum imperialism, though it was a morality that had – as demonstrated by the Egyptian affair – to bow to the demands of state realpolitik. Gladstone, like many liberals of his age managed to accommodate his fundamental enlightenment belief in human rights and self-determination under the guise of ‘Liberal imperialism’. This philosophy deemed colonialism to be desirable on the grounds of spreading knowledge (Harrison 1995; 3), and – unique to Britain – due to what Burke saw as her “pedigree of liberties” as embodied in the Magna Carta (Tamir 1993; 63). This was opposed to nations like Russia and Germany, where none of these liberal-civic preconditions existed – and where identification with the “spirit” of the nation would likely lead to autocracy (Hagel 1967; 218). John Stuart Mill even managed to justify the kind of imperialism as practiced by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Eastern Europe by noting the “virtue of necessity” of certain nations reconciling themselves “to living together under equal rights and laws” (Tamir 1993; 140).
British colonialism was also seen as an instrument for spreading the benefits of free trade, another liberal ideal that can be regarded as an early form of globalisation – and an effective tool for sowing the seeds of interdependence between different colonies that may have otherwise been competitors under the old mercantile trading of old (Harrison 1995; 3). This new fashion for liberal economics helped cement economic interdependence between British colonies and thus furthered the logic of colonialism and empire.
However, the liberal economist Adam Smith – a famous critic of all forms of colonialism, regarding it as unprofitable and immoral – correctly pointed out the inherent contradictions in this ‘Liberal imperialism’, noting:
It fits perfectly with the sense of superiority inhering in ‘ethnocentric nationalism’ (however) imperialism is essentially a derogation, even a contradiction, of the main tenet of ‘polycentric nationalism’ – the right of each nation to realise itself in perfect autonomy, so as to be able to contribute to mankind (Smith 1983; 257).
As Smith points out not only was imperialism anathema to a liberal’s faith in rights of self-rule – what would be termed “self-determination” in the 20th century – but also an abuse of their belief in universal rights of individual liberty. The suspicion must be that Liberal imperialism partly served a self-justifying purpose; to ease the consciences of men like Gladstone who – by dint of their subordination to the national interest – were reconciled to a policy of colonialism whether they liked it or not. The need, as some a ledge, was for colonialism to have a justification (Lewis 2002; 341). An irony of 19th century colonialism is that it occurred on the back of such dramatic advances in liberal-enlightenment thinking across the globe – the French and American revolutions, the rapid advancement of the electoral franchise in Britain, and the metaphysical transition of European populaces from subjects to citizens. Yet across colonies – from Africa to Asia – people essentially remained subjects of imperial states. The colony that avoided this paradox, demonstrating the feudal nature of colonialism best was that of the Congo Free State, an independent state run as Leopold II of Belgium’s personal fiefdom (Manning 1988; 60).
Colonialism and it’s brother; imperialism were exploited ruthlessly by Gladstone’s opponents as party political issues. Disraeli was particularly talented at this; in a speech in 1866 he hailed England’s interference in Asia, Australia, Africa and New Zealand as a marker of her global strength (Harcourt 1980; 96). Later, in 1867, he declared the Tory party to be “the national party of England” – and succeeded in exploiting the Russophobia of the time (Ward 1998; 18), frightening Liberals by his “investing patriotism with an irrational force” (ibid. 1980, 19). It was this appeal to national pride and patriotism that invariably made colonialism an appealing policy for those on the right of European domestic polities.
The political logic of colonialism was thus something that could appeal to people of differing political persuasions. Both Liberal imperialism and Tory nationalism proved that the logic of colonialism was a bipartisan belief within the sphere of domestic politics – though for Liberals it was partly a tactical concession to appear to an empire-enthusiastic electorate as imperialist as the most nationalist Conservative, whilst not compromising their sacrosanct philosophical values.
One of the most powerful motivators for colonialism that emanated from the nation-states of the 19th century is another factor linked in part to Liberal imperialism; colonialism as a missionary, Christian mission. This was not something that early 19th century colonialists had any enthusiasm for – the so-called “orientalists” in the British Raj of India particularly averse to what they regarded as unhelpful missionary agitators that had the potential to insight anger in the native populace, and thus endanger trade and commerce. As Robert Dundas, the President of the Board of Control in India explained to Lord Minto, the Governor-General, in 1808:
Nothing could be more unwise than any imprudent or injudicious attempt to induce it by means which should irritate and alarm their religious prejudices…It is desirable that the knowledge of Christianity should be imparted to the native, but the means to be used for that end shall only be such that are free from any political danger or alarm…(Ferguson 2003; 135)
Prudence was the order of the day – the bottom line being financial considerations. But by the mid 19th century the mood had substantially changed with the advent of Queen Victoria’s long reign, and Christian morality and missionary work suddenly in vogue. The power of Christianity to affect progressive change had been demonstrated by the work of British Evangelicals – particularly the ‘Clapham Sect’ – in the abolition of slavery from the British Empire in 1807 (ibid. 2003; 107-19). Religious – Protestant – underpinnings had indeed part of the 17th century rational for British colonies, as a bulwark against the Roman-Catholic empires of continental Europe (Cookson 157; 1997). Christianity was thus far from a hitherto unknown motivator of British colonialism; but what was new by the mid-1800s was its marriage to progressive, liberal enlightenment theory. Native populaces were to be “saved”, whether they liked it or not.
What has to be understood with regards to the work of Evangelical missionaries across all European empires is the moral absolutism of their motives. Unlike Liberal Imperialists, orientalists, businessmen, or avowed nationalists, theirs was a self-motivating mission; unsubordinated to any greater national or material interest, and crucially owing its primary allegiance not to the nation-state, but the Church and God. Theirs was not just a disguised excuse for colonial expansion – as the reaction of British officials in India demonstrates. Missionary work was however fundamentally a product of Victorian morality, and from this perspective it legitimised a European presence in “backward” lands – thus fuelling the logic of colonial rule.
An extension of this sense of spiritual superiority was the European sense of racial superiority, manifesting itself in a belief in native – particularly black African – inferiority. In 1863 Dr James Hunt gave a lecture in Newcastle for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in which he stated the Negro to be “a separate species of man, located half way between the ape and European man” (Ferguson 2003; 263). Such views were bolstered by the fashion for Darwinism within the scientific community – and the subsequent concept of social Darwinism. This inferiority was twinned to the necessity of the white European mans duty to civilise – ‘The White Man’s Burden’, expressed eloquently by Rudyard Kipling in 1899:
Take up the White Man’s Burden –
Send forth the best of your breed –
Go bind your sons in exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man’s Burden
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard…(Kipling; 1990)
Kipling intention was to appeal to the United States to take up its share of the ‘White Man’s Burden’ – indeed, although a discussion of 19th century colonialism will invariably focus on European colonisers, the importance of such racial ideas twinned with the spiritual notion of ‘Manifest Destiny’ should be noted in the US war with Mexico of 1846-48 (Baym 2005; 355-56). The concept of a ‘burden’ went further than merely providing a convincing rational for colonialism; it stated it to be a mission, a dereliction of duty if a white – particularly Anglo-Saxon – state did not participate.
This entire myriad of reasons contributed towards European colonisation. Although some are indefensible in today’s society – ideas of race for example – it is unfair to regard the logic of colonial expansion as purely a case of exploitation fuelled by national interest. The British Empire played an invaluable role post 1807 in attacking slave traders (Pakenham 1991; 282), and although they may be regarded as naïve or worse in today’s heavily secularised society, Christian missionaries were motivated by altruism above all else. The spread of free trade is also easily preferable to the mercantilist protectionism that had characterise the economic policies of European nations up to the 19th century – though the true extent that trade was ‘free’ can be debated, as there was an undoubted preference for inter colonial trade, leading to the exclusion of rival empire colonies in trade patterns. These are however debates separate to the nature of the question. Whether or not colonialism was beneficial or not, and whether the logic of it was partly an exercise in self-justification, we can see how it found an abundance of logic in the nation-states of the 19th century.
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