contrasted imperial systems, the Dutch had fallen into the background,
content with the rich dominion which they had already acquired; and the
Spanish and Portuguese empires had both fallen into stagnation. New
competitors, indeed, now began to press into the field: the wildly
exaggerated notions of the wealth to be made from colonial ventures
which led to the frenzied speculations of the early eighteenth century,
John Law's schemes, and the South Sea Bubble, induced other powers to
try to obtain a share of this wealth; and Austria, Brandenburg, and
Denmark made fitful endeavours to become colonising powers. But the
enterprises of these states were never of serious importance. The
future of the non-European world seemed to depend mainly upon France
and England; and it was yet to be determined which of the two systems,
centralised autocracy enforcing uniformity, or self-government
encouraging variety of type, would prove the more successful and would
play the greater part. Two bodies of ideas so sharply contrasted were
bound to come into conflict. In the two great wars between England and
Louis XIV. (1688-1713), though the questions at issue were primarily
European, the conflict inevitably spread to the colonial field; and in
the result France was forced to cede in 1713 the province of Acadia
(which had twice before been in English hands), the vast basin of
Hudson's Bay, and the island of Newfoundland, to which the fishermen of
both nations had resorted, though the English had always claimed it.
But these were only preliminaries, and the main conflict was fought out
during the half-century following the Peace of Utrecht, 1713-63.
During this half-century Britain was under the rule of the Whig
oligarchy, which had no clearly conceived ideas on imperial policy.
Under the influence of the mercantile class the Whigs increased the
severity of the restrictions on colonial trade, and prohibited the rise
of industries likely to compete with those of the mother-country. But
under the influence of laziness and timidity, and of the desire quieta
non movere, they made no attempt seriously to enforce either the new or
the old restrictions, and in these circumstances smuggling trade
between the New England colonies and the French West Indies, in
defiance of the Navigation Act and its companions, grew to such
dimensions that any serious interference with it would be felt as a
real grievance. The Whigs and their friends later took credit for their
neglect. George Grenville, they said, lost the colonies because he read
the American dispatches; he would have done much better to leave the
dispatches and the colonies alone. But this is a damning apology. If
the old colonial system, whose severity, on paper, the Whigs had
greatly increased, was no longer workable, it should have been revised;
but no Whig showed any sign of a sense that change was necessary. Yet
the prevalence of smuggling was not the only proof of the need for
change. There was during the period a long succession of disputes
between colonial governors and their assemblies, which showed that the
restrictions upon their political freedom, as well as those upon their
economic freedom, were beginning to irk the colonists; and that
self-government was following its universal and inevitable course, and
demanding its own fulfilment. But the Whigs made no sort of attempt to
consider the question whether the self-government of the colonies could
be increased without impairing the unity of the empire. The single
device of their statesmanship was--not to read the dispatches. And, in
the meanwhile, no evil results followed, because the loyalty of the
colonists was ensured by the imminence of the French danger. The
mother-country was still responsible for the provision of defence,
though she was largely cheated of the commercial advantages which were
to have been its recompense.
After 1713 there was a comparatively long interval of peace between
Britain and France, but it was occupied by an acute commercial rivalry,
in which, on the whole, the French seemed to be getting the upper hand.
Their sugar islands in the West Indies were more productive than the
British; their traders were rapidly increasing their hold over the
central plain of North America, to the alarm of the British colonists;
their intrigues kept alive a perpetual unrest in the recently conquered
province of Acadia; and away in India, under the spirited direction of
Francois Dupleix, their East India Company became a more formidable
competitor for the Indian trade than it had hitherto been. Hence the
imperial problem presented itself to the statesmen of that generation
as a problem of power rather than as a problem of organisation; and the
intense rivalry with France dwarfed and obscured the need for a
reconsideration of colonial relations. At length this rivalry flamed
out into two wars. The first of these was fought, on both sides, in a
strangely half-hearted and lackadaisical way. But in the second (the
Seven Years' War, 1756-63) the British cause, after two years of
disaster, fell under the confident and daring leadership of Pitt, which
brought a series of unexampled successes. The French flag was almost
swept from the seas. The French settlements in Canada were overrun and
conquered. With the fall of Quebec it was determined that the system of
self-government, and not that of autocracy, should control the
destinies of the North American continent; and Britain emerged in 1763
the supreme colonial power of the world. The problem of power had been
settled in her favour; but the problem of organisation remained
unsolved. It emerged in an acute and menacing form as soon as the war
was over.
During the course of these two wars, and in the interval between them,
an extraordinary series of events had opened a new scene for the
rivalry of the two great imperial powers, and a new world began to be
exposed to the influence of the political ideas of Europe. The vast and
populous land of India, where the Europeans had hitherto been content
to play the part of modest traders, under the protection and control of
great native rulers, had suddenly been displayed as a field for the
imperial ambitions of the European peoples. Ever since the first
appearance of the Dutch, the English, and the French in these regions,
Northern India had formed a consolidated empire ruled from Delhi by the
great Mogul dynasty; the shadow of its power was also cast over the
lesser princes of Southern India. But after 1709, and still more after
1739, the Mogul Empire collapsed, and the whole of India, north and
south, rapidly fell into a condition of complete anarchy. A multitude
of petty rulers, nominal satraps of the powerless Mogul, roving
adventurers, or bands of Mahratta raiders, put an end to all order and
security; and to protect themselves and maintain their trade the
European traders must needs enlist considerable bodies of Indian
troops. It had long been proved that a comparatively small number of
troops, disciplined in the European fashion, could hold their own
against the loose and disorderly mobs who followed the standards of
Indian rulers. And it now occurred to the ambitious mind of the
Frenchman Dupleix that it should be possible, by the use of this
military superiority, to intervene with effect in the unceasing strife
of the Indian princes, to turn the scale on one side or the other, and
to obtain over the princes whose cause he embraced a commanding
influence, which would enable him to secure the expulsion of his
English rivals, and the establishment of a French trade monopoly based
upon political influence.
This daring project was at first triumphantly successful. The English
had to follow suit in self-defence, but could not equal the ability of
Dupleix. In 1750 a French protege occupied the most important throne of
Southern India at Hyderabad, and was protected and kept loyal by a
force of French sepoys under the Marquis de Bussy, whose expenses were
met out of the revenues of large provinces (the Northern Sarkars)
placed under French administration; while in the Carnatic, the coastal
region where all the European traders had their south-eastern
headquarters, a second French protege had almost succeeded in crushing
his rival, whom the English company supported. But the genius of Clive
reversed the situation with dramatic swiftness; the French authorities
at home, alarmed at these dangerous adventures, repudiated and recalled
Dupleix (1754), and the British power was left to apply the methods
which he had invented. When the Seven Years' War broke out (1756), the
French, repenting of their earlier decision, sent a substantial force
to restore their lost influence in the Carnatic, but the result was
complete failure. A British protege henceforward ruled in the Carnatic;
a British force replaced the French at Hyderabad; and the revenues of
the Northern Sarkars, formerly assigned for the maintenance of the
French force, were handed over to its successor. Meanwhile in the rich
province of Bengal a still more dramatic revolution had taken place.
Attacked by the young Nawab, Siraj-uddaula, the British traders at
Calcutta had been forced to evacuate that prosperous centre (1756). But
Clive, coming up with a fleet and an army from Madras, applied the
lessons he had learnt in the Carnatic, set up a rival claimant to the
throne of Bengal, and at Plassey (1757) won for his puppet a complete
victory. From 1757 onwards the British East India Company was the real
master in Bengal, even more completely than in the Carnatic. It had
not, in either region, conquered any territory; it had only supported
successfully a claimant to the native throne. The native government, in
theory, continued as before; the company, in theory, was its subject
and vassal. But in practice these great and rich provinces lay at its
mercy, and if it did not yet choose to undertake their government, this
was only because it preferred to devote itself to its original business
of trade.
Thus by 1763 the British power had achieved a dazzling double triumph.
It had destroyed the power of its chief rival both in the East and in
the West. It had established the supremacy of the British peoples and
of British methods of government throughout the whole continent of
North America; and it had entered, blindly and without any conception
of what the future was to bring forth, upon the path which was to lead
to dominion over the vast continent of India, and upon the tremendous
task of grafting the ideas of the West upon the East.
Such was the outcome of the first two periods in the history of
European imperialism. It left Central and South America under the
stagnant and reactionary government of Spain and Portugal; the eastern
coast of North America under the control of groups of self-governing
Englishmen; Canada, still inhabited by Frenchmen, under British
dominance; Java and the Spice Islands, together with the small
settlement of Cape Colony, in the hands of the Dutch; a medley of
European settlements in the West Indian islands, and a string of
European factories along the coast of West Africa; and the beginning of
an anomalous British dominion established at two points on the coast of
India. But of all the European nations which had taken part in this
vast process of expansion, one alone, the British, still retained its
vitality and its expansive power.
IV
THE ERA OF REVOLUTION, 1763-1825
'Colonies are like fruits,' said Turgot, the eighteenth-century French
economist and statesman: 'they cling to the mother-tree only until they
are ripe.' This generalisation, which represented a view very widely
held during that and the next age, seemed to be borne out in the most
conclusive way by the events of the sixty years following the Seven
Years' War. In 1763 the French had lost almost the whole of the empire
which they had toilsomely built up during a century and a half. Within
twenty years their triumphant British rivals were forced to recognise
the independence of the American colonies, and thus lost the bulk of
what may be called the first British Empire. They still retained the
recently conquered province of French Canada, but it seemed unlikely
that the French Canadians would long be content to live under an alien
dominion: if they had not joined in the American Revolution, it was not
because they loved the British, but because they hated the Americans.
The French Revolutionary wars brought further changes. One result of
these wars was that the Dutch lost Cape Colony, Ceylon, and Java,
though Java was restored to them in 1815. A second result was that when
Napoleon made himself master of Spain in 1808, the Spanish colonies in
Central and South America ceased to be governed from the
mother-country; and having tasted the sweets of independence, and still
more, the advantages of unrestricted trade, could never again be
brought into subordination. By 1825 nothing was left of the vast
Spanish Empire save the Canaries, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippine
Islands; nothing was left of the Portuguese Empire save a few decaying
posts on the coasts of Africa and India; nothing was left of the Dutch
Empire save Java and its dependencies, restored in 1815; nothing was
left of the French Empire save a few West Indian islands; and what had
been the British American colonies were now the United States, a great
power declaring to Europe, through the mouth of President Monroe, that
she would resist any attempt of the European powers to restore the old
regime in South America. It appeared that the political control of
European states over non-European regions must be short-lived and full
of trouble; and that the influence of Europe upon the non-European
world would henceforth be exercised mainly through new independent
states imbued with European ideas. Imperial aspirations thus seemed to
that and the next generation at once futile and costly.
Of all these colonial revolutions the most striking was that which tore
away the American colonies from Britain (1764-82); not only because it
led to the creation of one of the great powers of the world, and was to
afford the single instance which has yet arisen of a daughter-nation
outnumbering its mother-country, but still more because it seemed to
prove that not even the grant of extensive powers of self-government
would secure the permanent loyalty of colonies. Indeed, from the
standpoint of Realpolitik, it might be argued that in the case of
America self-government was shown to be a dangerous gift; for the
American colonies, which alone among European settlements had obtained
this supreme endowment, were the first, and indeed the only, European
settlements to throw off deliberately their connection with the
mother-country. France and Holland lost their colonies by war, and even
the Spanish colonies would probably never have thought of severing
their relations with Spain but for the anomalous conditions created by
the Napoleonic conquest.
The American Revolution is, then, an event unique at once in its
causes, its character, and its consequences; and it throws a most
important illumination upon some of the problems of imperialism. It
cannot be pretended that the revolt of the colonists was due to
oppression or to serious misgovernment. The paltry taxes which were its
immediate provoking cause would have formed a quite negligible burden
upon a very prosperous population; they were to have been spent
exclusively within the colonies themselves, and would have been mainly
used to meet a part of the cost of colonial defence, the bulk of which
was still to be borne by the mother-country. If the colonists had been
willing to suggest any other means of raising the required funds, their
suggestions would have been readily accepted. This was made plain at
several stages in the course of the discussion, but the invitation to
suggest alternative methods of raising money met with no response. The
plain fact is that Britain, already heavily loaded with debt, was
bearing practically the whole burden of colonial defence, and was much
less able than the colonies themselves to endure the strain. As for the
long-established restrictions on colonial trade, which in fact though
not in form contributed as largely as the proposals of direct taxation
to cause the revolt, they were far less severe, even if they had been
strictly enforced, than the restrictions imposed upon the trade of
other European settlements.
It is equally misleading to attribute the blame of the revolt wholly to
George III. and the ministers by whom he was served during the critical
years. No doubt it is possible to imagine a more tactful man than
George Grenville, a more far-seeing and courageous statesman than Lord
North, a less obstinate prince than George III. himself. But it may be
doubted whether any change of men would have done more than postpone
the inevitable. The great Whig apologists who have dictated the
accepted view of British history in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries have laboured to create the impression that if only Burke,
Chatham, and Charles Fox had had the handling of the issue, the tragedy
of disruption would have been avoided. But there is no evidence that
any of these men, except perhaps Burke, appreciated the magnitude and
difficulty of the questions that had been inevitably raised in 1764,
and must have been raised whoever had been in power; or that they would
have been able to suggest a workable new scheme of colonial government
which would have met the difficulty. If they had put forward such a
scheme, it would have been wrecked on the resistance of British
opinion, which was still dominated by the theories and traditions of
the old colonial system; and even if it had overcome this obstacle, it
would very likely have been ruined by the captious and litigious spirit
to which events had given birth among the colonists, especially in New
England.
The root of the matter was that the old colonial system, which had
suited well enough the needs of the colonies as they were when it was
devised by the statesmen of Charles II.'s reign, was no longer suitable
to their condition now that they had become great and prosperous
communities of freemen. They enjoyed self-government on a scale more
generous than any other communities in the world outside of Britain;
indeed, in one sense they enjoyed it on a more generous scale than
Britain herself, since political rights were much more widely exercised
in the colonies, owing to the natural conditions of a new and
prosperous land, than they were to be, or could be, in Britain until
nearly a century later. No direct taxation had as yet been imposed upon
them without their own consent. They made the laws by which their own
lives were regulated. They were called upon to pay no tribute to the
home government, except the very indirect levy on goods passing through
England to or from their ports, and this was nearly balanced by the
advantages which they enjoyed in the British market, and far more than
balanced by the protection afforded to them by the British fleet. They
were not even required to raise troops for the defence of their own
frontiers except of their own free will, and the main burden of
defending even their landward frontier was borne by the mother-country.
But being British they had the instinct of self-government in their
blood and bones, and they found that the control of their own affairs
was qualified or limited in two principal ways.
In the first place, the executive and judicial officers who carried out
the laws were not appointed by them but by the Crown in England: the
colonies were not responsible for the administration of their own laws.
In the second place, the regulations by which their foreign trade was
governed were determined, not by themselves, but by the British
parliament: they were not responsible for the control of their own
traffic with the outside world. It is true that the salaries of the
executive officials and the judges depended upon their grant, and that
any governor who acted in the teeth of colonial opinion would find his
position quite untenable, so that the colonists exercised a real if
indirect control over administration. It is true also that they
accepted the general principles of the commercial system, and had
reaped great benefits from it.
But it is the unfailing instinct of the citizens in a self-governing
community to be dissatisfied unless they feel that they have a full and
equal share in the control of their own destinies. Denied
responsibility, they are apt to become irresponsible; and when all
allowance has been made for the stupidities of governors and for the
mistakes of the home authorities, it must be recognised that the
thirteen American colonial legislatures often behaved in a very
irresponsible way, and were extremely difficult to handle. They refused
to vote fixed salaries to their judges in order to make their power
felt, simply because the judges were appointed by the Crown, although
in doing so they were dangerously undermining judicial independence.
They refused in many cases to supply anything like adequate contingents
for the war against the French and their Indian allies, partly because
each legislature was afraid of being more generous than the others,
partly because they could trust to the home government to make good
their deficiencies. Yet at the same time they did nothing to check, but
rather encouraged, the wholesale smuggling by which the trade
regulations were reduced to a nullity, though these regulations were
not only accepted in principle by themselves, but afforded the only
compensation to the mother-country for the cost of colonial defence. It
is as unscientific to blame the colonists and their legislatures for
this kind of action, as it is to blame the British statesmen for their
proposals. It was the almost inevitable result of the conditions among
a free, prosperous, and extremely self-confident people; it was,
indeed, the proof that in this young people the greatest political
ideal of western civilisation, the ideal of self-government, had taken
firm root. The denial of responsibility was producing irresponsibility;
and even if the Stamp Act and the Tea Duties had never been proposed,
this state of things was bound to lead to increasing friction. Nor must
it be forgotten that this friction was accentuated by the contrast
between the democratic conditions of colonial life, and the
aristocratic organisation of English society.
It ought to have been obvious, long before Grenville initiated his new
policy in 1764, that the colonial system was not working well; and the
one circumstance which had prevented serious conflict was the danger
which threatened the colonists in the aggressive attitude of the French
to the north and west. Since the individual colonies refused to raise
adequate forces for their own defence, or to co-operate with one
another in a common scheme, they were dependent for their security upon
the mother-country. But as soon as the danger was removed, as it was in
1763, this reason for restraint vanished; and although the great
majority of the colonists were quite sincerely desirous of retaining
their membership of the British commonwealth, the conditions would
inevitably have produced a state of intensifying friction, unless the
whole colonial system had been drastically reconstructed.
Reconstruction was therefore inevitable in 1764. The Whig policy of
simply ignoring the issue and 'not reading the dispatches' could no
longer be pursued; it was indeed largely responsible for the mischief.
George III. and Grenville deserve the credit of seeing this. But their
scheme of reconstruction not unnaturally amounted to little more than a
tightening-up of the old system. The trade laws were to be more
strictly enforced. The governors and the judges were to be made more
independent of the assemblies by being given fixed salaries. The
colonists were to bear a larger share of the cost of defence, which
fell so unfairly on the mother-country. If the necessary funds could be
raised by means approved by the colonists themselves, well and good;
but if not, then they must be raised by the authority of the imperial
parliament. For the existing system manifestly could not continue
indefinitely, and it was better to have the issue clearly raised, even
at the risk of conflict, than to go on merely drifting.