Lew. Wallace - "The Prince of India"

A.R. Narayanan - "Truth and the Myth"

Woodrow Wilson - "Why We are at War"

From Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 - "Se quo yah"

The Expansion Of Europe

R >> Ramsay Muir >> The Expansion Of Europe




But although the extension of the representative system to India
neither was nor could be attempted in this age, very remarkable
advances were made towards turning India in a real sense into a
self-governing country. It ceased to be regarded or treated as a
subject dominion existing solely for the advantage of its
conquerors. That had always been its fate in all the long
centuries of its history; and in the first period of British rule
the trading company which had acquired this amazing empire had
naturally regarded it as primarily a source of profit. In 1833 the
company was forbidden to engage in trade, and the profit-making
motive disappeared. The shareholders still continued to receive a
fixed dividend out of the Indian revenues, but this may be
compared to a fixed debt-charge, an annual payment for capital
expended in the past; and it came to an end when the company was
abolished in 1858. Apart from this dividend, no sort of tribute
was exacted from India by the ruling power. India was not even
required to contribute to the upkeep of the navy, which protected
her equally with the rest of the Empire, or of the diplomatic
service, which was often concerned with her interests. She paid
for the small army which guarded her frontiers; but if any part of
it was borrowed for service abroad, its whole pay and charges were
met by Britain. She paid the salaries and pensions of the handful
of British administrators who conducted her government, but this
was a very small charge in comparison with the lavish outlay of
the native princes whom they had replaced. India had become a
self-contained state, whose whole resources were expended
exclusively upon her own needs, and expended with the most
scrupulous honesty, and under the most elaborate safeguards.

They were expended, moreover, especially during the later part of
this period, largely in equipping her with the material apparatus
of modern civilisation. Efficient police, great roads, a postal
service cheaper than that of any other country, a well-planned
railway system, and, above all, a gigantic system of irrigation
which brought under cultivation vast regions hitherto desert--
these were some of the boons acquired by India during the period.
They were rendered possible partly by the economical management of
her finances, partly by the liberal expenditure of British
capital. Above all, the period saw the beginning of a system of
popular education, of which the English language became the main
vehicle, because none of the thirty-eight recognised vernacular
tongues of India either possessed the necessary literature, or
could be used as a medium for instruction in modern science. In
1858 three universities were established; and although their
system was ill-devised, under the malign influence of the analogy
of London University, a very large and increasing number of young
graduates, trained for modern occupations, began to filter into
Indian society, and to modify its point of view. All speaking and
writing English, and all trained in much the same body of ideas,
they possessed a similarity of outlook and a vehicle of
communication such as had never before linked together the various
races and castes of India. This large and growing class, educated
in some measure in the learning of the West, formed already, at
the end of the period, a very important new element in the life of
India. They were capable of criticising the work of their
government; they were not without standards of comparison by which
to measure its achievements; and, aided by the large freedom
granted to the press under the British system, they were able to
begin the creation of an intelligent public opinion, which was
apt, in its first movements, to be ill-guided and rash, but which
was nevertheless a healthy development. That this newly created
class of educated men should produce a continual stream of
criticism, and that it should even stimulate into existence public
discontents, is by no means a condemnation of the system of
government which has made these developments possible. On the
contrary, it is a proof that the system has had an invigorating
effect. For the existence and the expression of discontent is a
sign of life; it means that there is an end of that utter docility
which marks a people enslaved body and soul. India has never been
more prosperous than she is to-day; she has never before known so
impartial a system of justice as she now possesses; and these are
legitimate grounds of pride to her rulers. But they may even more
justly pride themselves upon the fact that in all her history
India has never been so frankly and incessantly critical of her
government as she is to-day; never so bold in the aspirations for
the future which her sons entertain.

The creation of the new class of Western-educated Indians also
facilitated another development which the British government
definitely aimed at encouraging: the participation of Indians in
the conduct of administration in their own land. The Act of 1833
had laid it down as a fundamental principle that 'no native of the
said territories ... shall by reason only of his religion, place
of birth, descent, or any of them, be disabled from holding any
place, office, or employment.' The great majority of the minor
administrative posts had always been held by Indians; but until
1833 it had been held that the maintenance of British supremacy
required that the higher offices should be reserved to members of
the ruling race. This restriction was now abolished; but it was
not until the development of the educational system had produced a
body of sufficiently trained men that the new principle could
produce appreciable results; and even then, the deficiencies of an
undeveloped system of training, combined with the racial and
religious jealousies which the government of India must always
keep in mind, imposed limitations upon the rapid increase of the
number of Indians holding the higher posts. Still, the principle
had been laid down, and was being acted upon. And that also
constituted a great step towards self-government.

India in 1878 was governed, under the terms of a code of law based
upon Indian custom, by a small body of British officials, among
whom leading Indians were gradually taking their place, and who
worked in detail through an army of minor officials, nearly all of
Indian birth, and selected without regard to race or creed. She
was a self-contained country whose whole resources were devoted to
her own needs. She was prospering to a degree unexampled in her
history; she had achieved a political unity never before known to
her; she had been given the supreme boon of a just and impartial
law, administered without fear or favour; and she had enjoyed a
long period of peace, unbroken by any attack from external foes.
Here also, as fully as in the self-governing colonies, membership
of the British Empire did not mean subjection to the selfish
dominion of a master, or the subordination to that master's
interests of the vital interests of the community. It meant the
establishment among a vast population of the essential gifts of
Western civilisation, rational law, and the liberty which exists
under its shelter. Empire had come to mean, not merely domination
pursued for its own sake, but trusteeship for the extension of
civilisation.

The period of practical British monopoly, 1815-1878, had thus
brought about a very remarkable transformation in the character of
the British Empire. It had greatly increased in extent, and by
every test of area, population, and natural resources, it was
beyond comparison the greatest power that had ever existed in the
world. But its organisation was of an extreme laxity; it possessed
no real common government; and its principal members were united
rather by a community of institutions and ideas than by any formal
ties. Moreover, it presented a more amazing diversity of racial
types, of religions, and of grades of civilisation, than any other
political fabric which had existed in history. Its development had
assuredly brought about a very great expansion of the ideas of
Western civilisation over the face of the globe, and, above all, a
remarkable diffusion of the institutions of political liberty. But
it remained to be proved whether this loosely compacted bundle of
states possessed any real unity, or would be capable of standing
any severe strain. The majority of observers, both in Britain
itself and throughout the world, would have been inclined, in
1878, to give a negative answer to these questions.





VII

THE ERA OF THE WORLD-STATES, 1878-1900


The Congress of Berlin in 1878 marks the close of the era of
nationalist revolutions and wars in Europe. By the same date all
the European states had attained to a certain stability in their
constitutional systems. With equal definiteness this year may be
said to mark the opening of a new era in the history of European
imperialism; an era of eager competition for the control of the
still unoccupied regions of the world, in which the concerns of
remote lands suddenly became matters of supreme moment to the
great European powers, and the peace of the world was endangered
by questions arising in China or Siam, in Morocco or the Soudan,
or the islands of the Pacific. The control of Europe over the non-
European world was in a single generation completed and confirmed.
And the most important of the many questions raised by this
development was the question whether the spirit in which this
world-supremacy of Europe was to be wielded should be the spirit
which long experience had inspired in the oldest of the colonising
nations, the spirit of trusteeship on behalf of civilisation; or
whether it was to be the old, brutal, and sterile spirit of mere
domination for its own sake.

On a superficial view the most obvious feature of this strenuous
period was that all the remaining unexploited regions of the world
were either annexed by one or other of the great Western states,
or were driven to adopt, with greater or less success, the modes
of organisation of the West. But what was far more important than
any new demarcation of the map was that not only the newly annexed
lands, but also the half-developed territories of earlier European
dominions, were with an extraordinary devouring energy penetrated
during this generation by European traders and administrators,
equipped with railways, steam-boats, and all the material
apparatus of modern life, and in general organised and exploited
for the purposes of industry and trade. This astonishing
achievement was almost as thorough as it was swift. And its result
was, not merely that the political control of Europe over the
backward regions of the world was strengthened and secured by
these means, but that the whole world was turned into a single
economic and political unit, no part of which could henceforth
dwell in isolation. This might have meant that we should have been
brought nearer to some sort of world-order; but unhappily the
spirit in which the great work was undertaken by some, at least,
of the nations which participated in it has turned this wonderful
achievement into a source of bitterness and enmity, and led the
world in the end to the tragedy and agony of the Great War.

The causes of this gigantic outpouring of energy were manifold.
The main impelling forces were perhaps economic rather than
political. But the economic needs of this strenuous age might have
been satisfied without resort to the brutal arbitrament of war:
their satisfaction might even have been made the means of
diminishing the danger of war. It was the interpretation of these
economic needs in terms of an unhappy political theory which has
led to the final catastrophe.

On a broad view, the final conquest of the world by European
civilisation was made possible, and indeed inevitable, by the
amazing development of the material aspects of that civilisation
during the nineteenth century; by the progressive command over the
forces of nature which the advance of science had placed in the
hands of man, by the application of science to industry in the
development of manufacturing methods and of new modes of
communication, and by the intricate and flexible organisation of
modern finance. These changes were already in progress before
1878, and were already transforming the face of the world. Since
1878 they have gone forward with such accelerating speed that we
have been unable to appreciate the significance of the revolution
they were effecting. We have been carried off our feet; and have
found it impossible to adjust our moral and political ideas to the
new conditions.

The great material achievements of the last two generations have
been mainly due to an intense concentration and specialisation of
functions among both men of thought and men of action. But the
result of this has been that there have been few to attempt the
vitally important task of appreciating the movement of our
civilisation as a whole, and of endeavouring to determine how far
the political conceptions inherited from an earlier age were valid
in the new conditions. For under the pressure of the great
transformation political forces also have been transformed, and in
all countries political thought is baffled and bewildered by the
complexity of the problems by which it is faced. To this in part
we owe the dimness of vision which overtook us as we went whirling
together towards the great catastrophe. It is only in the glare of
a world-conflagration that we begin to perceive, in something like
their true proportions, the great forces and events which have
been shaping our destinies. In the future, if the huge soulless
mechanism which man has created is not to get out of hand and
destroy him, we must abandon that contempt for the philosopher and
the political thinker which we have latterly been too ready to
express, and we must recognise that the task of analysing and
relating to one another the achievements of the past and the
problems of the present is at least as important as the increase
of our knowledge and of our dangerous powers by intense and narrow
concentration within very limited fields of thought and work.

In the meantime we must observe (however briefly and
inadequately), how the dazzling advances of science and industry
have affected the conquest of the world by European civilisation,
and why it has come about that instead of leading to amity and
happiness, they have brought us to the most hideous catastrophe in
human history.

Science and industry, in the first place, made the conquest and
organisation of the world easy. In the first stages of the
expansion of Europe the material superiority of the West had
unquestionably afforded the means whereby its political ideas and
institutions could be made operative in new fields. The invention
of ocean-going ships, the use of the mariner's compass, the
discovery of the rotundity of the earth, the development of
firearms--these were the things which made possible the creation
of the first European empires; though these purely material
advantages could have led to no stable results unless they had
been wielded by peoples possessing a real political capacity. In
the same way the brilliant triumphs of modern engineering have
alone rendered possible the rapid conquest and organisation of
huge undeveloped areas; the deadly precision of Western weapons
has made the Western peoples irresistible; the wonderful progress
of medical science has largely overcome the barriers of disease
which long excluded the white man from great regions of the earth;
and the methods of modern finance, organising and making available
the combined credit of whole communities, have provided the means
for vast enterprises which without them could never have been
undertaken.

Then, in the next place, science has found uses for many
commodities which were previously of little value, and many of
which are mainly produced in the undeveloped regions of the earth.
Some of these, like rubber, or nitrates, or mineral and vegetable
oils, have rapidly become quite indispensable materials, consumed
by the industrial countries on an immense scale. Accordingly, the
more highly industrialised a country is, the more dependent it
must be upon supplies drawn from all parts of the world; not only
supplies of food for the maintenance of its teeming population,
but, even more, supplies of material for its industries. The days
when Europe, or even America, was self-sufficient are gone for
ever. And in order that these essential supplies may be available,
it has become necessary that all the regions which produce them
should be brought under efficient administration. The anarchy of
primitive barbarism cannot be allowed to stand in the way of
access to these vital necessities of the new world-economy. It is
merely futile for well-meaning sentimentalists to talk of the
wickedness of invading the inalienable rights of the primitive
occupants of these lands: for good or for ill, the world has
become a single economic unit, and its progress cannot be stopped
out of consideration for the time-honoured usages of uncivilised
and backward tribes. Of course it is our duty to ensure that these
simple folks are justly treated, led gently into civilisation, and
protected from the iniquities of a mere ruthless exploitation,
such as, in some regions, we have been compelled to witness. But
Western civilisation has seized the reins of the world, and it
will not be denied. Its economic needs drive it to undertake the
organisation of the whole world. What we have to secure is that
its political principles shall be such as will ensure that its
control will be a benefit to its subjects as well as to itself.
But the development of scientific industry has made European
control and civilised administration inevitable throughout the
world.

It did not, however, necessarily follow from these premises that
the great European states which did not already possess extra-
European territories were bound to acquire such lands. So far as
their purely economic needs were concerned, it would have been
enough that they should have freedom of access, on equal terms
with their neighbours, to the sources of the supplies they
required. It is quite possible, as events have shown, for a
European state to attain very great success in the industrial
sphere without possessing any political control over the lands
from which its raw materials are drawn, or to which its finished
products are sold. Norway has created an immense shipping industry
without owning a single port outside her own borders. The
manufactures of Switzerland are as thriving as these of any
European country, though Switzerland does not possess any
colonies. Germany herself, the loudest advocate of the necessity
of political control as the basis of economic prosperity, has
found it possible to create a vast and very prosperous industry,
though her colonial possessions have been small, and have
contributed scarcely at all to her wealth. Her merchants and
capitalists have indeed found the most profitable fields for their
enterprises, not in their own colonies, which they have on the
whole tended to neglect, but in a far greater degree in South and
Central America, and in India and the other vast territories of
the British Empire, which have been open to them as freely as to
British merchants. All that the prosperity of European industry
required was that the sources of supply should be under efficient
administration, and that access to them should be open. And these
conditions were fulfilled, before the great rush began, over the
greater part of the earth. If in 1878, when the European nations
suddenly awoke to the importance of the non-European world, they
had been able to agree upon some simple principle which would have
secured equal treatment to all, how different would have been the
fate of Europe and the world! If it could have been laid down, as
a principle of international law, that in every area whose
administration was undertaken by a European state, the 'open door'
should be secured for the trade of all nations equally, and that
this rule should continue in force until the area concerned
acquired the status of a distinctly organised state controlling
its own fiscal system, the industrial communities would have felt
secure, the little states quite as fully as the big states.
Moreover, since, under these conditions, the annexation of
territory by a European state would not have threatened the
creation of a monopoly, but would have meant the assumption of a
duty on behalf of civilisation, the acrimonies and jealousies
which have attended the process of partition would have been
largely conjured away. In 1878 such a solution would have
presented few difficulties. For at that date the only European
state which controlled large undeveloped areas was Britain; and
Britain, as we have seen, had on her own account arrived at this
solution, and had administered, as she still administers, all
those regions of her Empire which do not possess self-governing
rights in the spirit of the principle we have suggested.

Why was it that this solution, or some solution on these lines,
was not then adopted, and had no chance of being adopted? It was
because the European states, and first and foremost among them
Germany, were still dominated by a political theory which forbade
their taking such a view. We may call this theory the Doctrine of
Power. It is the doctrine that the highest duty of every state is
to aim at the extension of its own power, and that before this
duty every other consideration must give way. The Doctrine of
Power has never received a more unflinching expression than it
received from the German Treitschke, whose influence was at its
height during the years of the great rush for extra-European
possessions. The advocate of the Doctrine of Power is not, and
cannot be, satisfied with equality of opportunity; he demands
supremacy, he demands monopoly, he demands the means to injure and
destroy his rivals. It would not be just to say that this doctrine
was influential only in Germany; it was in some degree potent
everywhere, especially in this period, which was the period par
excellence of 'imperialism' in the bad sense of the term. But it
is certainly true that no state has ever been so completely
dominated by it as Germany; and no state less than Britain. It was
in the light of this doctrine that the demands of the new
scientific industry were interpreted. Hag-ridden by this
conception, when the statesmen of Europe awoke to the importance
of the non-European world, it was not primarily the economic needs
of their countries that they thought of, for these were, on the
whole, not inadequately met: what struck their imagination was
that, in paying no attention to the outer world, they had missed
great opportunities of increasing their power. This oversight,
they resolved, must be rectified before it was too late.

For when the peoples of Western and Central Europe, no longer
engrossed by the problems of Nationalism and Liberalism, cast
their eyes over the world, lo! the scale of things seemed to have
changed. Just as, in the fifteenth century, civilisation had
suddenly passed from the stage of the city-state or the feudal
principality to the stage of the great nation-state, so now, while
the European peoples were still struggling to realise their
nationhood, civilisation seemed to have stolen a march upon them,
and to have advanced once more, this time into the stage of the
world-state. For to the east of the European nations lay the vast
Russian Empire, stretching from Central Europe across Asia to the
Pacific; and in the west the American Republic extended from ocean
to ocean, across three thousand miles of territory; and between
these and around them spread the British Empire, sprawling over
the whole face of the globe, on every sea and in every continent.
In contrast with these giant empires, the nation-states of Europe
felt themselves out of scale, just as the Italian cities in the
sixteenth century must have felt themselves out of scale in
comparison with the new nation-states of Spain and France. To
achieve the standard of the world-state, to make their own nations
the controlling factors in wide dominions which should include
territories and populations of varied types, became the ambition
of the most powerful European states. A new political ideal had
captivated the mind of Europe.

These powerful motives were reinforced by others which arose from
the development of affairs within Europe itself. In the first
place, the leading European states had by 1878 definitely
abandoned that tendency towards free trade which had seemed to be
increasing in strength during the previous generation; and,
largely in the hope of combating the overwhelming mercantile and
industrial supremacy of Britain, had adopted the fiscal policy of
protection. The ideal of the protectionist creed is national self-
sufficiency in the economic sphere. But, as we have seen, economic
self-sufficiency was no longer attainable in the conditions of
modern industry by any European state. Only by large foreign
annexations, especially in the tropical regions, did it seem
possible of achievement. But when a protectionist state begins to
acquire territory, the anticipation that it will use its power to
exclude or destroy the trade of its rivals must drive other states
to safeguard themselves by still further annexations. It was,
indeed, this fear which mainly drove Britain, in spite of, or
perhaps because of, her free trade theories, into a series of
large annexations in regions where her trade had been hitherto
predominant.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.