Studies in British Imperial History: Essays in Honour of A.P. Thornton

243 Pages·1986·22.843 MB·English

by  Gordon Martel (eds.)

STUDIES IN BRITISH IMPERIAL HISTORY
A. P. Thornton
Photograph by Kenneth Quinn, 1983, courtesy of University College Archives, Toronto
STUDIES IN BRITISH
IMPERIAL HISTORY
Essays in Honour of A. P. Thornton
Edited by Gordon Martel
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-18246-6 ISBN 978-1-349-18244-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18244-2
© Gordon Martel 1986
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986 978-0-333-36198-6
All rights reserved. For information write:
St. Martin's Press, Inc.,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Published in the United Kingdom by
The Macmillan Press Ltd.
First published in the United States of America
in 1986
ISBN 978-0-312-77080-8
Library of Congress Cataloging in
Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Studies in British Imperial history.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
Contents: Introduction, A.P. Thornton, realism
tempered by wit/by Nicholas Mansergh
A system of commands/Robin Winks -
An Imperial idea and its friends/
Ged Martin - [etc.]
I. Great Britain--Colonies- History
Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Thornton, A.P.
(Archibald Paton) I. Thornton, A. P.
(Archibald Paton) II. Martel, Gordon.
DAIO.5.S78 1985 941 85-8110
ISBN 978-0-312-77080-8
Contents
A. P. Thornton frontispiece
Priface by Gordon Martel Vll
Notes on the Contributors x
Introduction:
A. P. Thornton: Realism Tempered by Wit
by Nicholas Mansergh
A System of Commands: the Infrastructure of
Race Contact 8
Robin Winks
2 An Imperial Idea and Its Friends: Canadian
Confederation and the British 49
Ged Martin
3 The Imperial Historian as Colonial Nationalist:
George McCall Theal and the Making of South
African History 95
Deryck Schreuder
4 The Raj as Daydream: the Pukka Sahib as Henty
Hero in Simla, Chandrapore, and Kyauktada 159
Edward Ingram
5 Shadow and Substance: Mackenzie King's
Perceptions of British Intentions at the 1923
Imperial Conference 178
John M. Carland
6 Emergencies and Elections in India 201
D. A. Low
The Works oj A. P. Thornton prepared by George 221
Urbaniak
Index 227
v
Preface
My first sight of Archie Thornton was a great shock. I had read
The Imperial Idea and its Enemies early on as an undergraduate
and, like many others, had been impressed with the erudition,
the grand perspective and the wit to be found there. That book,
like each of those that followed, was teeming with ideas, rich in
new possibilities for eager students to pursue. Without giving it
much thought, therefore, when I showed up at the great professor's
office in 1970, I expected a white-haired antique, a man heavily
burdened by his years of scholarship and further weighed down
by the responsibilities incurred in chairing a famous department
of some eighty members. What I found instead was a young man,
even younger than his years, a man as lively and as vivacious as
his books.
To those of us who were his students 'A. P. Thornton' will
always conjure up a vision of 'Archie' sitting in his office, lost in
thought, staring out at the Toronto snow, his cigarette slowly
burning its way towards his lips, until the ash suddenly drops
and the smoker is roused into a frenzy of activity. It is hard for
a professor to remain remote while he weekly sets himself on fire
in front of his students. But Archie has never tried to elevate
himself to that lofty plane of the god professor. He has always
been as willing to share his ideas as he has his scotch. For thirty
years undergraduates and graduates alike at the University of
Toronto have been blessed by his presence, and this book of essays
is partly intended to betoken their gratitude to him; a small
thanks for leaving his Caribbean paradise to join them in the
frozen north.
But these essays, contributed by admirers from Australia,
Ireland, Great Britain, and the United States as well as Canada,
attest to an influence far greater and more widespread than
through teaching alone. Two things, I believe, explain this. First,
Archie was in the vanguard of those who rescued imperial history
from the ineffable boredom of the Whig interpretation upon
Vll
Vlll Preface
which so many of us were reared. After the publication of The
Imperial Idea it became impossible for any imaginative student of
the subject to continue to adhere to that dull progression from
representative to responsible government, from the Durham
R.eport to the British Commonwealth. Instead, imperial history
became a study of the ideas, the ambitions and the follies of real
men; complexity and irony replaced simplicity. Secondly, in the
books that followed, in Doctrines of Imperialism, The Habit of
Authority and Imperialism in the Twentieth Century, in numerous
essays and reviews (some of them reprinted in For the File on
Empire) Archie has steadfastly maintained that there is a subject
in imperial history. While many have succumbed to the under
standably alluring temptation of writing national, regional and
local histories set in the age of empire, he has consistently
reminded us that there are themes and problems, ideologies and
structures, that can be properly appreciated only when viewed
from the larger perspective of the whole imperial phenomenon.
He has allowed his mind to roam widely over the vast terrain
involved imperialism, sometimes breaking new ground, more
often throwing new light on ground we thought familiar until he
showed us that we had never really looked at it before. Neither
of these effects would have been so pronounced, however, had
his thoughts not been expressed in some of the liveliest and most
engaging prose written by an historian in this century.
These essays attempt to show some of the directions in which
Archie's work has led us. Here are familiar favourites: the
difficulties of relations between foreign cultures when one takes
the role of master and compels the other to play the part of slave;
the ambitions of colonials enamoured of the imperial connection;
the role of cultural imperialist played by the historian who
imagines himself to be objective; the fusion offact and fiction and
the utility of literature as a source for the historian; the rise of
colonial nationalists who come to suspect everything connected
with 'empire'; and finally, the legacies of imperialism - not all of
them bad - in the contemporary world. I think it is unlikely that
essays of this kind would have been written, or found a receptive
audience, had it not been for the stimulus proved by A. P.
Thornton.
My main regret in presenting these essays to him is that many
who wished to contribute were prevented from doing so, mainly
from lack of space: J. S. Galbraith, Keith Sinclair, John Cell,
Preface
IX
Roger Louis and the late Eric Stokes should be numbered among
those wishing to pay their respects; I withdrew my own essay to
make room for others. But no testimonial could ever be entirely
satisfactory, and we hope that this imperfect one will suffice in
signifying the gratitude of the profession and the affection of his
students.
GORDON MARTEL
Notes on the Contributors
Gordon Martel is Associate Professor of History at Royal Roads
Military College in Victoria, British Columbia. Educated at
Simon Fraser University and the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto
under the supervision of A. P. Thornton. He is editor of The
International History Review and author of Imperial Diplomacy:
Rosebery and the Failure of Foreign Policy. His articles have appeared
in the Historical Journal, Middle Eastern Studies, and the Journal oj
Imperial and Commonwealth History.
Nicholas Mansergh, O.B.E., was the first Smuts Professor of
the History of the British Commonwealth, Cambridge from 1953
to 1970, and Master of St John's College, Cambridge from 1969
to 1979. He is an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford,
and Trinity College, Dublin. He has worked in the Empire
Division of the Ministry of Information between 1941 and 1946,
and was Assistant Secretary of the Dominions Office from 1946
to 1947. He has been Visiting Professor at the Australian National
University, the University of Toronto, Duke University, the
Indian School of International Studies at New Delhi, and at
Jawaharlal Nehru University. His published works include The
Irish Speeches on Commonwealth Affairs, 1931 - 62; The Commonwealth
Experience; and Prelude to Partition. Since 1967 he has been editor
in-chief of the India Office Records on Constitutional Relations
between Britain and India: the Tranifer of Power, 1942 - 47.
Robin W. Winks is the Randolph W. Townsend Jr. Professor
of History at Yale University and Master of Berkeley College.
He attended the University of Colorado, Victoria University
(New Zealand), and received his Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins
University. He has taught at Yale since 1957, except for leaves
of absence to serve as US Cultural Attache to the American
Embassy in London; as chairman of the National Parks Advisory
x