SUPERPOWER BULLIES AND NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY-9
Created | Updated May 9, 2016
BRITISH IMPERIALISM “IN A DOUBTFUL DEATH-STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY, HUMANITY AND PEACE”
When Lord Acton held up in 1895 an historical example of “the supreme manifestation of the modern state, according to the image which Machiavelli had set up, the state that suffers neither limit nor equality, and is bound by no duty to nations or to men, that thrives on destruction, and sanctifies whatever things contributed to increase of power” he almost certainly had in mind the new German Empire that had announced itself in 1871 disappointing the hopes and dreams of German Liberal and Parliamentary Nationalists, as it continued to do, especially under Kaiser Willhelm II.
And by 1895 Bismarck’s Prussia and then Germany had exemplified his “law of the modern world, that power tends to expand indefinitely, and will transcend all barriers, abroad and at home, until met by superior force”, the violation of Belgian territorial integrity that had been guaranteed by a “scrap of paper” almost eighty years before just happening to touch the English people in a way that Queen Victoria’s grandson might have been expected to appreciate. Had Queen Elizabeth, in a great age of Shakespearean English, not summed it up exquisitely? A hostile force just there was “A dagger pointed at the heart of England”.
In fact, in the midst of the Naval Estimates Crisis early in 1894 Gladstone had gone to the south of France for a much needed break, but one of his party had been Lord Acton and it is very probable that the two men had thought much the same about the probability of triggering an international Arms Race that would make war more rather than less likely: and, as Philip Magnus observed in his biography of Gladstone that “It is greatly to be regretted that he [Acton] never employed his vast learning to compose an exposition of the intellectual premises of liberalism, which is one of the twentieth century’s most conspicuous wants”, it seems likely that he too believed that the holiday the Gladstone family took at Tegernesee with the Actons and Dr. Dollinger, the German historian, whom Acton treated as his “master”, in the autumn of 1879 before Gladstone’s “Finest Hour” had a crucial influence on his barnstorming Midlothian Campaign.
Dollinger and Acton were united in their support for German liberalism in both politics and their Roman Catholic faith, and would have certainly encouraged Gladstone in the personal campaign that won the General Election for the Liberal Party, and, resulted in its official leader insisting on 22 April 1880 to Queen Victoria, who “was not amused” by Gladstone, that, in fact, the popular mandate to form a government was actually his.
For his first speech denounced the government for spending too heavily in pursuit of glory through foreign adventures. It had annexed the Transvaal and Cyprus, it had joined together with France in establishing a joint power in Egypt, it had made war on the Zulus, and had assumed widespread responsibilities in the Turkish Empire, including most of Arabia, and it had invaded Afghanistan and “broken that country into pieces”, and in concluding he urged “every one of us…[to] do his best to exempt himself from every participation in what he believes to be mischievous and ruinous misdeeds.” (page 262)
The next day he took up the theme of the “overwhelming weight of business” that now impacted on the good working of the Houses of Parliament as an effective forum for informed and educated debate of the age of Macaulay and the young Disraeli. Now that the State interfered so much and so intimately in the lives of the citizenry there was, he suggested, a good case for a modicum of ‘Home Rule’, not just for Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but also for portions of England as well so that the people could “deal with questions of local and special interests to themselves.” And a second speech returned to the theme of war and “the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan…is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.”
A further speech took up the theme of profligate use of public money, with a Chancellor of the Exchequer who did not worry about “candle-ends and cheese-parings” (page 263), a Prime Minister who created a post worth £2,000 pa in order to do what had been done before for nothing, Victorian’s assumption of the title of Empress of India ( because her daughter now outranked her as Empress of Germany) was “theatrical bombast and folly”, and “”Moneys voted for the relief of famine in India had been used to drive Afghan ‘mothers and children from their homes to perish in the snow’. “Disraeli’s policy was ‘pestilent’ in every corner of the globe. What was the crime of the Zulus? Ten thousand of them had been slaughtered ‘for no other offence than their attempt to defend against your artillery with their naked bodies, their hearths and homes, their wives and families’” (page 264)
But once in he was back in 10 Downing Street in this age of high protection, extreme nationalism and rampant militarism Gladstone found that policy in a world of dramatic global changes and readjustments was often driven by “events, dear boy, events”, and the legacy of previous decisions like some of those foreign interventions he had condemned, where initiatives undertaken under the impulse of nationalism invited an “equal and opposite reaction”. Such was the case in Egypt where the France of Napoleon III had engineered and funded the Suez Canal that opened in 1869, something of such implications for British economic, military and financial power that Disraeli had seized the opportunity to buy up a controlling interest in the Canal Company, which resulted in both France and Great Britain becoming so deeply interested in the affairs Egypt that ‘aliens’ became the target of a revolt in 1881, when 50 foreigners were massacred in a riot.
And mindful no doubt of successful ventures like the conference that created Belgium 50 years before, back in the age of the Congress System set up after 1815 to ‘keep the peace’, Gladstone tried to promote a Concert of Europe solution, only for Bismarck to say “Let the Powers interested settle it as they please, but don’t ask me how, for I neither know, nor care”. It was a comment that alarmed the French, who wondered why Germany wanted French forces tied up in Egypt: so Gladstone told the Commons in July 1882: “We should not fully discharge our duty if we did not endeavour to convert the present interior state of Egypt from anarchy and conflict to peace and order. We shall look…to the co-operation of the Powers of civilized Europe…But if every chance of obtaining co-operation is exhausted, the work will be undertaken by the single power of England.” (pages 289-90)
So Britain invaded and took military control of Egypt, but soon found like more recent politicians that “the settlement of Egypt was a matter which required time, patience, heavy expense and…caused serious embarrassment.” (page 291): and not surprisingly, given his age, and the fact that he had already retired from the leadership off the Liberal Party before the Midlothian Campaign, Gladstone was already often subject to mental depression and black moods when forced to react as a “man of the world”, a world to which he did not belong except in so far as it was capable of improvement in what he saw as the Christian spirit of Commonweal and the hopes and dreams of the Age of Progress and Improvement in which he had first stood for Parliament in 1832.
But by the 1880s even a phrase like “the single power of England” was beginning to be almost anachronistic, and one of the reasons why the Liberal Party kept turning back to the “Grand Old Man” was because it was much harder for the up and coming generation to cherish the same vision of a powerful United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in a world that had changed so much since 1832, with Britain’s declining power and standing in a changing world of nationalism and militarism being reflected in the growth of centrifugal forces that had much in common with those that were inspiring rebellious and revolutionary movements in other states and societies based around long and often more troubled histories.
But allowing the Devil to have all the best tunes is a recipe for mental depression and black moods: and not only should we not accept that First World War as “inevitable” independently of a very Germanic belief at the time in Scientific Inevitability that took over from Calvinistic ideas of ‘Predestination’ or older Classical ideas of ‘the Fates’, we should remember that by 1918 when G.M. Trevelyan wrote of Great Britain that “our imperialism was engaged in a doubtful death struggle for democracy, humanity and peace”, once again England had been able to gather together a “combination of the weak” that seemed now to be within sight of winning the war against Germanic ambitions to achieve world dominion and might yet hope to also win the peace.
When Lord Acton held up in 1895 an historical example of “the supreme manifestation of the modern state, according to the image which Machiavelli had set up, the state that suffers neither limit nor equality, and is bound by no duty to nations or to men, that thrives on destruction, and sanctifies whatever things contributed to increase of power” he almost certainly had in mind the new German Empire that had announced itself in 1871 disappointing the hopes and dreams of German Liberal and Parliamentary Nationalists, as it continued to do, especially under Kaiser Willhelm II.
And by 1895 Bismarck’s Prussia and then Germany had exemplified his “law of the modern world, that power tends to expand indefinitely, and will transcend all barriers, abroad and at home, until met by superior force”, the violation of Belgian territorial integrity that had been guaranteed by a “scrap of paper” almost eighty years before just happening to touch the English people in a way that Queen Victoria’s grandson might have been expected to appreciate. Had Queen Elizabeth, in a great age of Shakespearean English, not summed it up exquisitely? A hostile force just there was “A dagger pointed at the heart of England”.
In fact, in the midst of the Naval Estimates Crisis early in 1894 Gladstone had gone to the south of France for a much needed break, but one of his party had been Lord Acton and it is very probable that the two men had thought much the same about the probability of triggering an international Arms Race that would make war more rather than less likely: and, as Philip Magnus observed in his biography of Gladstone that “It is greatly to be regretted that he [Acton] never employed his vast learning to compose an exposition of the intellectual premises of liberalism, which is one of the twentieth century’s most conspicuous wants”, it seems likely that he too believed that the holiday the Gladstone family took at Tegernesee with the Actons and Dr. Dollinger, the German historian, whom Acton treated as his “master”, in the autumn of 1879 before Gladstone’s “Finest Hour” had a crucial influence on his barnstorming Midlothian Campaign.
Dollinger and Acton were united in their support for German liberalism in both politics and their Roman Catholic faith, and would have certainly encouraged Gladstone in the personal campaign that won the General Election for the Liberal Party, and, resulted in its official leader insisting on 22 April 1880 to Queen Victoria, who “was not amused” by Gladstone, that, in fact, the popular mandate to form a government was actually his.
For his first speech denounced the government for spending too heavily in pursuit of glory through foreign adventures. It had annexed the Transvaal and Cyprus, it had joined together with France in establishing a joint power in Egypt, it had made war on the Zulus, and had assumed widespread responsibilities in the Turkish Empire, including most of Arabia, and it had invaded Afghanistan and “broken that country into pieces”, and in concluding he urged “every one of us…[to] do his best to exempt himself from every participation in what he believes to be mischievous and ruinous misdeeds.” (page 262)
The next day he took up the theme of the “overwhelming weight of business” that now impacted on the good working of the Houses of Parliament as an effective forum for informed and educated debate of the age of Macaulay and the young Disraeli. Now that the State interfered so much and so intimately in the lives of the citizenry there was, he suggested, a good case for a modicum of ‘Home Rule’, not just for Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but also for portions of England as well so that the people could “deal with questions of local and special interests to themselves.” And a second speech returned to the theme of war and “the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan…is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.”
A further speech took up the theme of profligate use of public money, with a Chancellor of the Exchequer who did not worry about “candle-ends and cheese-parings” (page 263), a Prime Minister who created a post worth £2,000 pa in order to do what had been done before for nothing, Victorian’s assumption of the title of Empress of India ( because her daughter now outranked her as Empress of Germany) was “theatrical bombast and folly”, and “”Moneys voted for the relief of famine in India had been used to drive Afghan ‘mothers and children from their homes to perish in the snow’. “Disraeli’s policy was ‘pestilent’ in every corner of the globe. What was the crime of the Zulus? Ten thousand of them had been slaughtered ‘for no other offence than their attempt to defend against your artillery with their naked bodies, their hearths and homes, their wives and families’” (page 264)
But once in he was back in 10 Downing Street in this age of high protection, extreme nationalism and rampant militarism Gladstone found that policy in a world of dramatic global changes and readjustments was often driven by “events, dear boy, events”, and the legacy of previous decisions like some of those foreign interventions he had condemned, where initiatives undertaken under the impulse of nationalism invited an “equal and opposite reaction”. Such was the case in Egypt where the France of Napoleon III had engineered and funded the Suez Canal that opened in 1869, something of such implications for British economic, military and financial power that Disraeli had seized the opportunity to buy up a controlling interest in the Canal Company, which resulted in both France and Great Britain becoming so deeply interested in the affairs Egypt that ‘aliens’ became the target of a revolt in 1881, when 50 foreigners were massacred in a riot.
And mindful no doubt of successful ventures like the conference that created Belgium 50 years before, back in the age of the Congress System set up after 1815 to ‘keep the peace’, Gladstone tried to promote a Concert of Europe solution, only for Bismarck to say “Let the Powers interested settle it as they please, but don’t ask me how, for I neither know, nor care”. It was a comment that alarmed the French, who wondered why Germany wanted French forces tied up in Egypt: so Gladstone told the Commons in July 1882: “We should not fully discharge our duty if we did not endeavour to convert the present interior state of Egypt from anarchy and conflict to peace and order. We shall look…to the co-operation of the Powers of civilized Europe…But if every chance of obtaining co-operation is exhausted, the work will be undertaken by the single power of England.” (pages 289-90)
So Britain invaded and took military control of Egypt, but soon found like more recent politicians that “the settlement of Egypt was a matter which required time, patience, heavy expense and…caused serious embarrassment.” (page 291): and not surprisingly, given his age, and the fact that he had already retired from the leadership off the Liberal Party before the Midlothian Campaign, Gladstone was already often subject to mental depression and black moods when forced to react as a “man of the world”, a world to which he did not belong except in so far as it was capable of improvement in what he saw as the Christian spirit of Commonweal and the hopes and dreams of the Age of Progress and Improvement in which he had first stood for Parliament in 1832.
But by the 1880s even a phrase like “the single power of England” was beginning to be almost anachronistic, and one of the reasons why the Liberal Party kept turning back to the “Grand Old Man” was because it was much harder for the up and coming generation to cherish the same vision of a powerful United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in a world that had changed so much since 1832, with Britain’s declining power and standing in a changing world of nationalism and militarism being reflected in the growth of centrifugal forces that had much in common with those that were inspiring rebellious and revolutionary movements in other states and societies based around long and often more troubled histories.
But allowing the Devil to have all the best tunes is a recipe for mental depression and black moods: and not only should we not accept that First World War as “inevitable” independently of a very Germanic belief at the time in Scientific Inevitability that took over from Calvinistic ideas of ‘Predestination’ or older Classical ideas of ‘the Fates’, we should remember that by 1918 when G.M. Trevelyan wrote of Great Britain that “our imperialism was engaged in a doubtful death struggle for democracy, humanity and peace”, once again England had been able to gather together a “combination of the weak” that seemed now to be within sight of winning the war against Germanic ambitions to achieve world dominion and might yet hope to also win the peace.
