BETTS ON SOME 19th CENTURY NOTIONS OF IMPERIALISM

Excerpts from Raymond F. Betts' 1973 The False Dawn : European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century . Notice that this passage refers mostly to the high imperialist 1880-1900 era.

   Dedicated imperialists in the nineteenth century were proportionately few, and their audiences were not extensive. However, both formed an active minority which represented a number of interest groups. Aside from the jingoes -- those strident and unclassifiable nationalists who furthered any cause cloaked in the flag -- the promoters of imperialism were the educated and the prosperous. It was an affair of the upper and middle classes. If there was any distinction to be drawn in attitudes, it was probably the one Lord Milner discerned when he differentiated between imperialists of the "blood-red type" and those for whom imperialism was a "business proposition."
   The blood-red types were, of course, the deeply dedicated zealots, who attempted to lift imperialism from the crass to the noble and to invest it with historical purpose.  Most obvious among their ranks were members of the English aristocracy who, by social temperament and ideals inculcated at home and in school, found a calling in empire.  The upper echelons of imperial administration were well served by noblemen; for instance, eleven of the fourteen viceroys of India in the sixty-year period from 1838 to 1918 had been peers by birth. If the spirit that moved such men eastward was not always nobility of purpose, it was for many an obligation to imperial trust. Lord Curzon vividly describes his own dedication first aroused at Eton when a visiting speaker declared that India in itself was a greater empire than Rome and that "the rulers of that great dominion were drawn from the men of our own people, that some of them might perhaps he taken from the ranks of the boys who were listening to his words. Ever since that day ... the fascination and, if I may say so, the sacredness of India have grown upon me."
   If, then, empire was not a cause that shaped or shook majority opinion in the nineteenth-century European nations, it was one that had a wide range of social appeal, primarily because it provided some assurance against an uncertain future. To the general public, however, empire was a fact of modern life. Like gas lighting or city slums, it was a by-product of the expansive industrial system.
   Yet in the very last years of the nineteenth century and in the first few of the twentieth there was a truly popular mood of imperialism. "Today," wrote W.F. Monypenny, "power and dominion rather than freedom and independence are the ideas that appeal to the imagination of the masses -- and the national ideal has given way to the Imperial." Although he was referring to Great Britain, the proposition could have been extended to the entire Western World. Between Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1903, there was a flurry of imperialist excitement and activity. This was the time when Americans rejoiced in their military prowess and new significance in the world as a result of the Spanish-American War (1898-99); when Kaiser Wilhelm II made a pretentious trip to the Near East (1898), appearing in the guise of a latter-day Teutonic knight; when Sir Edward Elgar composed his imperialist march "Pomp and Circumstance" (1901); when Rudyard Kipling wrote his best known imperialist poem "The White Man's Burden" (1899); when the Greater Britain Exhibition was held in Earl's Court, London, with the official guide stating that "Greater Britain ... is the synonym of the greatest nation which has become the greatest empire the world has ever seen" (1899); when a well-attended International Colonial Congress was held on the occasion of the Internation Universal Exposition in Paris (1900); and when the grand race for one of the last pieces of unclaimed territory, the North Pole, was started and completed (1906).
   The imperial power of Europe was at its zenith.  If the pessimistic philosophers and political theorists wondered how long the condition could last, the public at large perceived a long run ahead.  Robert Owen, at mid-century, had compared European civilization to a railroad train moving swiftly and comfortably toward the future. Most people would still have agreed with him. The century's emphasis on power, both industrial and metaphysical, seemed well placed, and empire therefore fit in effectively, if not perfectly.  Few, however, imagined how fragile and artificial the European imperial systems were.  Like the bronze statues of rulers standing in colonial squares around the world, empire was much larger than life, but it also rang hollow. ...

   As the described genius of the West was technological and organizational, so the lack of material innovation was considered proof of the inferior status of other peoples.  In the sardonic words of the French colonial novelist Pierre Mille, "The Chinese, having no railroads, no mechanical textile machinery, no Napoleon and no Moltke, are extremely inferior to us."  Where seriously entertained, such a line of thought carried the corollary that the indigenous populations were all in need of regular work habits and material values like those which had made the West great. That most enterprising of European monarchs, Leopold II, gave simple structure to this general idea when he praised the Dutch use of forced labor in Java by stating that it was "the only means by which to civilize and moralize these indolent and corrupt peoples of the Far East."
   As a component of the social logic of the day regular work was made an obvious characteristic of civilized behavior and, consequently, a precondition of success in colonial development.  Leopold was hardly the only commentator to describe the peoples of the Far East as irresponsible or corrupt in their work habits. But most attention was directed toward Africa where the parent-child metaphor was constantly employed and where, in Victorian mood, the need for discipline was deemed a categorical imperative.  For every Albert Schweitzer given to romantic sketches of the black African as a child of nature who only had to reach about him to satisfy his basic needs, there was a troupe of critics who saw the African as primitive, to the point of lacking the westerners' organizational capacity.  Expressing the prevalent environmental thesis, one Belgian in the service of Leopold remarked: "The Congolese Negro is not just the indolent imagined... He is in addition given to irregular work habits.  His primitive customs have not allowed him to know the value of time. His easy existence has not imposed upon him punctuality... His commercial instinct, when developed, will provide him with a sense of money which will incite him to work; his extraordinary aptitude for imitation will assure him rapid and numerous improvements."  [In similar vein, Cecil Rhodes remarked on the advantages of a money tax: "You will remove (the Africans) from that life of sloth and laziness you will teach them the dignity of labor and make them contribute to the prosperity of the State and make them give some return for our wise and good government." ]
   Because of the assumed incompetence of the non-European to superintend modern economic activities without guidance, there soon followed the argument that the European had to unearth the treasures still untouched and unappreciated by indigenous populations.
   Supporting such an assertion of the need for all the world's regions to participate fully in the European-directed market system, many critics joined Kidd in anticipating Lord Lugard's famous "dual mandate", the provision of European civilization in return for the extraction of colonial resources.  Of course, in the thinking of many imperialists this could and did necessitate an economic interdependence of unequals. The new colonial situation, defined hy the laws of natural adaptation and those of the marketplace, suggested a modern-day variation of the old Pauline organic metaphor of social organization.  "The civilized," a French author stated, "is the brain which thinks; the native is the arm which performs...."
   ...Assimilation as a cultural objective was everywhere discarded, and nowhere with more doctrinaire pronouncements than in France.  Denounced as naive or idealistic in theory and as disruptive in practice it was replaced by sterner theories of social relations. Justice, not indulgence, was the key word; its complement was respect for, not interference with local customs.
   More recently defined "native policy" thus traded the older humanistic universalism for a stiff scientific acceptance of persistent and only slowly yielding cultural differences.  Earlier hopes for grand imperial amalgams now faded, brightening again only rhetorically on glorious occasions such as "Empire Day."  To the scientifically bent colonial theorist the new empires were destined to be temporary affairs, even though no one at the time anticipated the quick end that did indeed befall them.  "Only one thing is possible," argued a French colonial administrator, "and that is to find the most effective means of making human beings accept a condition of temporary subordination from among the choice of affection, force or interest."
   In retrospect it can be seen that little affection was deeply generated, and mutual material interest was primarily restricted to only a few, a native elite introduced to and allowed to enjoy on a large scale the material benefits of the Western World. Force, however sparingly or symbolically displayed, was the ultimate cohesive, in fact as well as in the minds of many authors at the turn of the century.

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