GREAT BRITAIN'S ENTRY INTO THE PACIFIC
Off the coast of China at a point where, in a strategical map the
"spheres of influence" of Japan and the United States and Germany would
impinge, is the island of Hong Kong, the Far East station of the British
Empire. Further south, in the Malay Peninsula, is Singapore, standing
guard over the entrance to the Indian Ocean. On these two coaling
stations British naval power in the North Pacific is based. The
abandonment of either of them is unthinkable to-day, yet neither was
taken possession of until the nineteenth century--Singapore in 1819,
Hong Kong in 1841. In the South Pacific there was shown an even stronger
hesitation in acquiring territory.
Why Great Britain entered so reluctantly into the Pacific as a
colonising Power may probably be explained by the fact that at the time
the ocean came to be exploited British earth hunger had been satiated.
The unsuccessful war which attempted to hold the American colonies to
the Mother Country, had made her doubtful whether overseas dominions
were altogether a blessing and whether the advantage to be gained from
them outweighed the responsibilities which their holding entailed. It
seemed to be the natural conclusion from the American War of
Independence, that once a colony or a group of colonies arrived at the
stage of growth which allowed it to be of some use to the Mother
Country, the inevitable next development was for it to throw off the
bonds of kinship and enter upon a career of independence at the price of
an expensive and humiliating war to its parent. Thus, whilst British
sailors were to the front in the exploration of the Pacific, British
statesmen showed a great reluctance to take any advantage of their
discoveries; and it was a series of accidents rather than any settled
purpose which planted the Anglo-Saxon race so firmly in this ocean.
India, it must be noted, a century ago was a country having very little
direct concern with the Pacific. The holding of the Indian Empire did
not depend on any position in the Pacific. That situation has since
changed, and Great Britain would be forced to an interest in the Pacific
by her Indian Empire if she had no other possessions in the ocean.
In an earlier chapter on Japan, something has been written concerning
the reasons which would argue for the absence of an Imperial impulse in
the Japanese islands and its presence in the British islands. The
inquiry then suggested as to the instincts of expansion and dominion
which were primarily responsible for the growth of the British Empire is
full of fascination for the historian. If it comes to be considered
carefully, the Empire-making of the British people was throughout the
result of a racial impulse working instinctively, spasmodically, though
unerringly, towards an unseen goal, rather than of a designed and
purposeful statesmanship.
The racial origin of the British people dictated peremptorily a policy
of oversea adventure, and that adventure led inevitably to colonisation.
In the beginning Britain was a part of Gaul, a temperate and fertile
peninsula which by right of latitude should have had the temperature of
Labrador, but which, because of the Gulf Stream, enjoyed a climate
singularly mild and promotive of fecundity. When the separation from the
mainland came because of the North Sea cutting the English Channel, the
Gallic tribes left in Britain began to acquire, as the fruits of their
gracious environment and their insular position, an exclusive patriotism
and a comparative immunity from invasion. These made the Briton at once
very proud of his country and not very fitted to defend its shores.
With the Roman invasion there came to the future British race a benefit
from both those causes. The comparative ease of the conquest by the
Roman Power, holding as it did the mastery of the seas, freed the
ensuing settlement by the conquerors from a good deal of the bitterness
which would have followed a desperate resistance. The Romans were
generous winners and good colonists. Once their power was established
firmly, they treated a subject race with kindly consideration. Soon,
too, the local pride of the Britons affected their victors. The Roman
garrison came to take an interest in their new home, an interest which
was aided by the singular beauty and fertility of the country. It was
not long before Carausius, a Roman general in Britain, had set himself
up as independent of Italy, and with the aid of sea-power he maintained
his position for some years. The Romans and the Britons, too, freely
intermarried, and at the time when the failing power of the Empire
compelled the withdrawal of the Roman garrison, the south of Britain was
as much Romanised as, say, northern Africa or Spain.
Thus from the very dawn of known history natural position and climate
marked out Britain as the vat for the brewing of a strenuous blood. The
sea served her "in the office of a wall or of a moat defensive to a
house" to keep away all but the most vigorous of invaders. The charm and
fertility of the land made it certain that a bold and vigorous invader
would be tempted to become a colonist and not be satisfied with robbing
and passing on.
With the decay of the Roman Empire, and the withdrawal of the Roman
legions to the defence of Rome, the Romanised Britons were left
helpless. Civilisation and the growth of riches had made them at once
more desirable objects of prey, and less able to resist attack. The
province which Rome abandoned was worried on all sides by the incursion
of the fierce clans of the north and the west. A decision, ultimately
wise, judged by its happy results, but at the moment disastrous, induced
some of the harried Britons to call in to their aid the Norsemen
pirates, who at the time, taking advantage of the failing authority of
Rome, were swarming out from Scandinavia and from the shores of the
Baltic in search of booty. The Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, were
willing enough to come to Britain as mercenaries, even more willing to
stay as colonists. An Anglo-Saxon wave swept over the greater part of
England, and was stopped only by the mountains of Wales or of Scotland.
That was the end of the Britons as the chief power in Britain, but they
mingled with their conquerors to modify the Anglo-Saxon type with an
infusion of Celtic blood. In the mountainous districts the Celtic blood
continued to predominate, and does to this day.
The Anglo-Saxons would have been very content to settle down peacefully
on the fat lands which had fallen to them, but the piratical nests from
which they themselves had issued still sent forth broods of hungry
adventurers, and the invasions of the Danes taught the Anglo-Saxons that
what steel had won must be guarded by steel. They learned, too, that any
race holding England must rely upon sea-power for peaceful existence.
After the Danish, the last great element in the making of the present
British race, was the Norman. The Normans were not so much foreigners
as might be supposed. The Anglo-Saxons of the day were descendants of
sea-pirates who had settled in Britain and mingled their blood with the
British. The Normans were descendants of kindred sea-pirates who had
settled in Gaul, and mingled their blood with that of the Gauls and
Franks. The two races, Anglo-Saxon and Normans, after a while combined
amicably enough, the Anglo-Saxon blood predominating, and the British
type was evolved, in part Celtic, in part Danish, in part Anglo-Saxon,
in part Norman--a hard-fighting, stubborn adventurous race, which in its
making from such varied elements had learned the value of compromise,
and of the common-sense principle of give-and-take. One can see that it
was just the race for the work of exploration and colonisation.
When this British people, thus constituted, were driven back to a
sea-frontier by the French nation, it was natural that they should turn
their energies overseas. To this their Anglo-Saxon blood, their Danish
blood, their Norman blood prompted. The Elizabethan era, which was the
era of the foundation of the British Empire overseas, was marked by a
form of patriotism which was hard to distinguish in some of its
manifestations from plain robbery. The fact calls for no particular
condemnation. It was according to the habit of thought of the time. But
it is necessary to bear in mind that the hunt for loot and not the
desire for territory was the chief motive of the flashing glories of the
Elizabethan era of seamanship; for that is the explanation why there
was left as the fruit of many victories few permanent settlements.
Drake was the first English naval leader to penetrate to the Pacific.
His famous circumnavigation of the world is one of the boldest exploits
of history. Drake's log entry on entering the Pacific stirs the blood:
"Now, as we were fallen to the uttermost parts of these islands on
October 28, 1578, our troubles did make an end, the storm ceased, and
all our calamities (only the absence of our friends excepted) were
removed, as if God all this while by His secret Providence had led us to
make this discovery, which being had according to His will, He stayed
His hand."
On this voyage Drake put in at San Francisco, which he named New Albion.
He went back to Europe through the East Indies and around Africa. But
Drake made no attempt at colonisation. Looting of the Spanish treasure
ships was the first and last object of his cruise. What was, according
to our present lights, a more honourable descent upon the Pacific was
that of Admiral Anson in the eighteenth century. He, in 1740, took a
Fleet round the stormy Horn to subdue the Philippines and break the
power of Spain in the Pacific. The force thought fitting for such an
enterprise in those days was 961 men! Anson did not subdue the
Philippines; but they were guarded by the scurvy, which attacked the
English Fleet, rather than by the Spanish might, and the little
disease-racked English squadron was able to cripple the Spanish power in
the Pacific by the mere dread of its presence. Anson took prizes and
made them masquerade before the enemy's coast as hostile warships, and
paralysed the Spanish commerce in those seas. He returned to England
with only 335 men out of his original complement of 961. Practically all
the deaths had been from disease. But again the idea of the Pacific
expedition was not to colonise but to strike a blow at a rival European
Power. It was not until the nineteenth century that Great Britain
established herself on the western flank of the North Pacific.
So far as the South Pacific was concerned British indifference was
complete, and it was shared by other nations. In the days when the
fabled wealth of the Indies was the magnet to draw men of courage and
worth to perilous undertakings by sea and land, there was nothing in the
South Pacific to attract their greed, and nothing, therefore, to
stimulate their enterprise. The Spaniard, blundering on America in his
quest for a western sea-passage to the ivory, the gold, and the spices
of India, found there a land with more possibilities of plunder than
that which he had originally sought. He was content to remain, looting
the treasuries of the Mexicans and of the Peruvians for metals, and
laying the forests of Central America under contribution for precious
woods. He ventured but little westward, and the Hawaiian Islands
represented for a time the extreme western limit of his adventures.
Following him for plunder came the English, and they too were content to
sweep along the western coast of South America without venturing further
towards the unknown west.
From another direction the sea-route to India was sought by Portuguese,
and Dutch, and English and French. Groping round the African coast, they
came in time to the land of their desires, and found besides India and
Cathay, Java, the Spice Islands, and other rich groups of the Malay
Archipelago. But they, just as the Spaniards, did not venture west from
South America; and neither Portuguese, Dutch, French nor English set the
course of their vessels south from the East Indies.
It was thus Australia remained for many years an unknown continent. And
when at last navigators, more bold or less bound to an immediate greed,
touched upon the shores of Australia, or called at the South Sea
Islands, they found little that was attractive. In no case had the
simple natives won to a greed for gold and silver, and so they had no
accumulations of wealth to tempt cupidity. In the case of Australia the
coast-line was dour and forbidding, and promised nothing but sterility.
The exploring period in which the desire for plunder was the chief
motive passed away, having spared the South Pacific. It was therefore
the fate of Australia, of New Zealand, and of most of the islands of
Polynesia and Melanesia, to be settled under happier conditions, and to
be spared the excesses of cruelty which marked the European invasion of
the West Indies and the Americas. The Newest World began its
acquaintance with civilisation under fairly happy auspices.
It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that a scientific
expedition brought the South Pacific before the attention of Britain. A
transit of Venus across the sun promised to yield valuable knowledge as
to the nature of solar phenomena. To observe the transit under the best
conditions, astronomers knew that a station in the South Seas was
necessary, and Lieutenant Cook, R.N., an officer who had already
distinguished himself in the work of exploration, was promoted to be
Captain and entrusted to lead a scientific expedition to Otaheite. Added
to his commission was an injunction to explore the South Seas if time
and opportunity offered. Captain Cook was of the type which makes time
and opportunity. Certainly there was little in the equipment of his
expedition to justify an extension of its duties after the transit of
Venus had been duly observed. But he took it that his duty was to
explore the South Seas, and explore them he did, incidentally annexing
for the British Empire the Continent of Australia.
That was in 1770. But still there was so little inviting in the prospect
of settlement in the South Seas that it was some eighteen years before
any effort was made to follow up by colonisation this annexation by
Captain Cook. When the effort was made it was not on very dignified
lines. The American colonies had at one time served as an outlet for the
overflow of the British prisons. The War of Independence had closed that
channel. The overcrowding of the British prisons became desperate, and,
because it was necessary to find some relief for this--not because it
was considered advantageous to populate the new possession--the First
Fleet sailed for the foundation of Australia in 1788.
We shall see in subsequent chapters how the reluctance of the governing
Power of the British race in the Home Country to establish an Empire in
the South Pacific found a curious response in the stubborn resoluteness
of the colonists who settled in Australia and New Zealand to be more
English than the English themselves, to be as aggressively Imperialistic
almost as the men of the Elizabethan era. (What might almost be called
the "Jingoism" of the British nations in the South Pacific must have a
very important effect in settling the mastery of that ocean.) In the
present chapter the establishment of the British Power in the North
Pacific chiefly will be considered.
Singapore is to-day the capital of the three Straits Settlements--
Singapore, Penang, and Malacca, but it is the youngest of the three
settlements. Malacca is the oldest. It was taken possession of by the
Portuguese under Albuquerque in 1511, and held by them until 1641, when
the Dutch were successful in driving them out. The settlement remained
under the Government of the Dutch till 1795, when it was captured by
the English, and held by them till 1818, at which date it was restored
to the Dutch, and finally passed into British hands in pursuance of the
treaty with Holland of 1824. By that treaty it was arranged that the
Dutch should leave the Malay Peninsula, the British Government agreeing
at the same time to leave Sumatra to the Dutch. When Malacca was taken
possession of by the Portuguese in 1511, it was one of the great
centres for the commerce of the East; but under Dutch rule it dwindled,
and Penang acquired a monopoly of the trade of the Malayan Peninsula
and Sumatra, together with a large traffic with China, Siam, Borneo,
the Celebes, and other places in the Archipelago. When Singapore was
established Penang in its turn had to yield the first place to the new
city.
Singapore was acquired for Britain by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, by
virtue of a treaty with the Johore princes. It was at first subordinate
to Bencoolen in Sumatra, but in 1823 it was placed under the Government
of Bengal; it was afterwards incorporated in 1826, with Penang and
Malacca, and placed under the Governor and Council of the Incorporated
Settlements. Singapore is now one of the great shipping ports of the
world, served by some fifty lines of steamers, and with a trade of over
20,000,000 tons a year. The harbour of Singapore is fortified, and the
port is indicated by one advanced school of British Imperialists as the
future chief base of a Fleet, contributed to by India, Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, and Canada, and kept to a standard of strength
equal to that available to any other two Powers in the Pacific. Captain
Macaulay, in a strategical scheme for Imperial Defence which has been
received with deep attention in Great Britain, suggests:--
"The influence which an Indian Ocean Fleet, based on Colombo and
Singapore, would have on Imperial Defence can hardly be exaggerated. The
Indian Ocean--a British Mediterranean to the Pacific--with its openings
east and west in our hands, is a position of readiness for naval action
in the Western Pacific, the South Atlantic, or the Mediterranean. In the
first case it influences the defence of Canada and the Australasian
States; in the second, that of South Africa. An Indian Ocean Fleet can
reinforce, or be reinforced by the Fleets in European waters, if the
storm centre be confined to Europe or to the Pacific. As regards the
direct naval defence of the Australasian Provinces, no better position
could be chosen than that of a Fleet based on Singapore, with an
advanced base at Hong Kong, because it flanks all possible attack on
them. An advanced flank defence is better than any direct defence of so
large a coast-line as that of Australia from any point within it.
Moreover, Singapore and Hong Kong are much nearer to the naval bases of
any Powers in the Western Pacific than those countries are to Australia
or to Canada. Hence, in operations for the defence of any Province, they
favour offensive-defensive action on our part. And offensive-defensive
is the great characteristic of naval power. Any East Asian Power
contemplating aggression against Australasian or North American
territory must evidently first deal with the Indian Ocean Fleet.
"It is impossible to ignore the strategical and political significance
of the Imperial triangle of India based on South Africa and the
Australasian States, and its influence in the solution of the new
problems of Imperial Defence. The effective naval defence of the
self-governing Provinces is best secured by a Fleet maintained in the
North Indian Ocean; and the reinforcement of the British garrison in
India is best secured by units of the Imperial Army maintained in the
self-governing Provinces. If these two conditions are satisfied, the
problem of the defence of the Mother Country is capable of easy
solution."
Hong Kong is of less strategical importance than Singapore. But it is
marked out as the advanced base of British naval power in the North
Pacific. It has one of the most magnificent harbours in the world, with
an area of ten square miles. The granite hills which surround it rise
between 2000 and 3000 feet high. The city of Victoria extends for four
miles at the base of the hills which protect the south side of the
harbour, and contains, with its suburbs, 326,961 inhabitants. It is the
present base of the China squadron, and is fortified and garrisoned.
As already stated, the conditions which some years ago made the mastery
of the Pacific unimportant to India no longer exist, and the safety of
the Indian Empire depends almost as closely on the position in the
Pacific as the safety of England does on the position in the Atlantic.
But, except by making some references in future chapters on strategy and
on trade to her resources and possibilities, I do not propose to attempt
any consideration of India in this volume. That would unduly enlarge its
scope. In these days of quick communication, both power and trade are
very fluid, and there is really not any country of the earth which has
not in some way an influence on the Pacific. But so far as possible I
have sought to deal only with the direct factors.
Having noted the British possessions in the North Pacific, it is
necessary to turn south and study the young "nations of the blood" below
the Equator before estimating British Power in the Pacific.