Imperialism in the Twentieth Century PDF
Preview Imperialism in the Twentieth Century
Imperialism in the Twentieth Century IMPERIALISM in the TWENTIETH CENTURY by A. P. THORNTON © The University of Minnesota 1977 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. Reprinted in paperback 1980 First published in the U.K. 1978 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-30712-0 ISBN 978-1-349-05823-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05823-5 The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. · . . and, whosoever considers that the nature 0] men, especially 0] men in authority, is inclined rather to commit two errors than to retract one, will not marvel that ]rom this root 0] unadvisedness, so many and tall branches 0] mischief have proceeded. CLARENDON ACKNOWLEDGMENTS W iters are unable to acknowledge whatever knowledge they have no recollection of having acquired: accordingly, this note does not adequately thank all those in my life and friendship who have so markedly helped my thinking and myself. The generous leave policy of the University of Toronto made it pos sible for me to begin this book, and its research funds to complete it. The University of Edinburgh gave me the use of its splendid library, and I owe much to the kindliness, which many others also know, of George Shepperson. My friend J ames Conacher, chairman of the department of history at the University of Toronto, generously and doubtless quite improperly gave me some respite from departmental duties while I was in labor. William C. Berman cast a sternly helpful eye upon my fifth chapter. Cecile Sydney typed the manuscript, but did more: her diligence and intelligence signally added to its clarity. I have also greatly appreciated the editorial skill of Victoria Haire of the University of Minnesota Press and the continuous sup port of John Ervin, Jr., its director, and William Wood. But I hardly need to make the point, standard but seldom sincere, that all faults in this book are my own. On page 7, I say that no book is ever written without conditions of quiet. Only a writer's wife knows what those conditions cost and to mine, I dedicate this book. 1 July 1977 University College, University of Toronto vu FOREWORD I n the nineteenth century Sir Archibald Alison filled fifteen vol umes with a narrative account of events in Europe between 1 789 and 1815, and followed these with another ten, bringing the story to 1852 -and even after this prodigious achievement would of ten tell his friends how much he regretted having left out. This single volume could not try and does not try to provide an in-depth ac count of the past seventy-seven years. Instead, it develops a single theme from these years: the theme of imperialism, hereafter de fined. It examines how the policies of imperialism were organized, and by whom. It sets out how imperialists saw the way of the world and how they gathered its public affairs into a framework of their own devising. It tells what assertions were made against them, and how they dealt with these. It shows how they developed no new strategy in the face of this challenge and how as a direct consequence they watched the moral initiative pass to the dissidents, usually called nationalists, who based their case on liberal principles like self-determination, which were often preached but not as often practiced among them. It discusses the ideas and the tactics of the spokesmen for these dissidents, who spent the years between the two world wars attaining credibility, durability, and, ultimately, a national following. IX x Foreword It asserts also that although the imperial framework at first held firm under this pressure, it was pressure from within that finally broke the image the imperialists had made of both empire and them selves; for in World War II the ambitions of Germany, Japan, and Italy put the matter of power to the test so thoroughly that, al though they were defeated, they took with them down to defeat their rivals' hope that the vast areas of the extra-European world, over whose ground much of the war had been fought, could con tinue to be controlled from metropolitan centers. And it tells how, after the war, this exhaustion of imperial assurance cleared the way for the success of the colonial assertion against it that had long been publicized. This assertion claimed first the name and then the righ ts of nation alism. But its chief claim was one of imperialism's own: a claim to control the future. For nationalism also set out to colonize the minds of men and to build a world at the far side of empire wherein its principles would animate free societies and promote free inter change among free nations, loosed from the imperial bondage and thus inspired to develop the best that was in them. Yet it turned out that in the twentieth century the filing of such claims was not covered by sufficient insurance. For any such policy the premiums were too high. In this book an attempt is made to explain why this was so and how it came about that the record of our own times tells how long-term plans and policies of whatever kind, wherever and by whomever made, came apart or came to grief under the pressure of events. It can of course be said that this has been and will continue to be the fate of all the best-laid schemes of men, who in no generation have ever commanded the lightning. But this century has been sing ular, in that it has witnessed a series of struggles fought less for limited and therefore possible ends than for ideas which often evaded clear formulation and made their strongest appeal to the emotions. The potent phrase "the revolu tion of rising expectations" has been elected to preside over a series of aspirations. But it does not summarize them. They are too diverse. Since the concept makes its appeal to the spirit, its essence will survive: but it will always lack substance, because the revolution it evokes is not actual, is not to be found in the record. It has never yet been able to find itself a Foreword xz general staff. If expectation is to have a strategy, it must, like any other strategy, first get itself its own tacticians. Tactics if they are to be effective must refer to experience: and in the field of imperial ism there is no one common experience, only a set of experiences, also as diverse as they can be. To know that the doctrine of the rights of man exists will perhaps put heart into a man in a dungeon, but it will not loosen his staple from the wall. What one dissident learned about the nature of imperial power in Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia does not usefully or sensibly compare with the view of the same taken by another dissident in, say, the British colony of the Gold Coast in West Africa-since the former would never have been heard of by the latter or indeed by anyone else at all. Moreover, casualties in the wars of this century have been heavy: so many dead men, so many vanished hopes. Among these casualties -and whether it should be listed as terminal or as among the walk ing-wounded was something still not clear as the century's final quarter began-has been the belief that there was such a thing as progress, that the best guarantee for its vitality and continuance is to be found within a system of order and a framework of control, and that the people best fitted to be in charge of both are those whose own progress is too obvious to be questioned by anyone lay ing claim to common sense. Whether a majority of people (supposing them to have believed this) stopped believing it for the reasons Jacques Berque has suggested-that they either had suffered a loss of will or had come to realize how "a subtle, uneasy shift in the tone and accent of life, a sense of inauthenticity, betrayed injustice under the cloak of order, and disease under that of health"l -or from some other less sensitive but more easily identifiable cause is another of the topics examined here. But it is also emphasized that although territorial empire relin quished its political grip, the economic control of the world's busi ness remained with an affluent minority, consisting of the comfort ably industrialized nations which did not take long to discover that the possession of such an empire was not a sine qua non of power. In these circumstances the assertions of nationalism and the prolif eration of nation-states often seemed irrelevant, and national leaders found out that full independence, if it was anywhere, was still be yond the horizon. At the far side of empire another country lay. xzz Foreword Many new flags flew over it; many new men held authority in many parts of it; but, for all its unfamiliarities, it was still a country much like that which had already been traveled-a country populated by controllers and controlled. No examination of or argument about anything can be made until matters that were and are by nature disorderly have been put into order. Because this is so, and because orderliness may become as much an enemy as an ally of the truth, the book runs the risk com mon to all histories of one's time, namely, of playing the censor's part-that is, of treating the immediate past as a country that, had only a little more intelligence and a lot more imagination been ap plied to its affairs by its inhabitants, would have prospered better than it did and left to its inheritors a brighter prospect than they have. The writer can only say he has remembered the risk-although a reader may think that its consequences have not been avoided. Yet why people think what they do at the time they think it is certainly a question to which historians may properly address them selves-provided always they are ready to answer, without resent ment, the same question when it is put to them in turn. No harm ever comes of holding fast to the reminder from Carl Becker that all historians approach their subject with at least one preconception: which is, the fixed idea that they have none.2 The following pages, therefore, set out a particular and considered statement on a subject which lives in a context of controversy: and it is not supposed that they will lay that controversy to rest. A.P.T.
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