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ABSTRACT
It is contended that British Idealists, New Liberals and Liberal Imperialists were all in favour of imperialism, especially when it took the form of white settler communities. The concession of relative autonomy was an acknowledgement of the potential of white settler communities to go the way of America by severing their relationship with the Empire completely. Where significant differences emerge in their thinking is in relation to non-white territories in the Empire where native peoples comprised the majority, and the British Government and its agents administered in trust ‘lower’ peoples on the scale of civilisation with the ostensible goal of guiding them towards self-determination in the Empire. The differences in degree of commitment to these ideals were largely expressed in terms of the pejorative categories of ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ imperialism, which were flexible and manipulated for political gain, rather than analytic precision. Liberal Imperialists and New Liberals were opposed to each other in terms of the degree to which they supported imperialism, whereas British Idealists aligned themselves on both sides of the divide.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 See Peter P. Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: Selected Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); David Boucher and Andrew Vincent, British Idealism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2012); W. J. Mander, British Idealism: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); S. Panagakou, ‘The Philosophical Theory of the State: Bernard Bosanquet on Ethical Citizenship and the Idea of the State’, In Depth 9, no. 1. I am indebted to Peter Nicholson, Camilla Boisen and Rhianwen Daniel for their generosity in identifying and tracking down some of the sources for the argument of this article. This article was written for a conference entitled ‘The Prelude to Decolonisation’ which I organised with Ayesha Omar at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, 2017. I would like to thank Peter Vale, the Director for his encouragement and generous support, and for the sponsorship of the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Johannesburg where I am a Distinguished Visiting Professor. Thanks are also due to Lawrence Hamilton whose BA/NRF Chair provided additional support.
2 Richard Burdon Haldane, An Autobiography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929), 135.
3 Eric Stokes, The Political Ideas of English Imperialism: An Inaugural Lecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 16; Peter Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 73.
4 Mark Hampton, ‘The Press, Patriotism, and Public Discussion: C. P. Scott, the “Manchester Guardian”, and the Boer War, 1899–1902’, The Historical Journal 44 (2001), 184.
5 ‘The War and After – Conditions of Settlement – Various Views’, Daily News, March 26, 1900, and ‘Manifesto in the Interests of Peace’, The Manchester Guardian, March 26, 1900. The latter has a different preamble explaining the origins of the ‘manifesto’ which began circulation in November of 1899, but its publication and collection of signatures were postponed until after certain reverses suffered by British troops were retrieved.
6 Peter Baxter, Gandhi, Smuts and Race in the Empire: Of Passive and Violent Resistance (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2017), 107–8.
7 J. H. Muirhead, ‘What Imperialism Means’, The Fortnightly Review 404, no. 1 (August, 1900).
8 Peter Johnson, A Philosopher at The Admiralty: R. G. Collingwood and the First World War. Vol. 1 A Philosopher at War (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2012), 64–6; and, Mollie Carnie, A Worcestershire Parish at War (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2010), 18–19. Fladbury was home to Belgium refugees during the First World War, and Collingwood while at the Admiralty Intelligence Unit worked on its Manual of Belgium and Adjoining Territories between the Spring of 1917 and February, 1918. Teresa Smith, private collection, #[FLTR0536] May 9, 1919, 41 Berkeley Square. Letter to father. ‘Tomorrow I go down to a place near Evesham where there is to be a great conference of Belgium students on the future of Belgium: I am to give them an address, which I have been composing in agony of spirit and disgracefully turgid style for a week past.’
9 R. G. Collingwood, ‘The Spiritual Basis of Reconstruction’, 10th May, 1919. Collingwood Ms. Bodliean Library, Oxford University, DEP 24, fol. 8. Folios 8–16 are reproduced in R. G. Collingwood, Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. David Boucher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 201–6. David G. Ritchie, among British Idealists, remarks: ‘The Roman Empire is the first real example of an empire which gave laws and institutions and citizenship to its subjects’. Ritchie, Studies in Political and Social Ethics (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1902).
10 One of the earliest explicit distinctions between ‘true’ and ‘false’ Imperialism was that of Lord Carnarvon. He equates Foreign Imperialism with false imperialism which is correlative with ‘vast standing armies’. Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, and Lord Carnarvon, ‘Imperial Administration’, Fortnightly Review 24 (December, 1878), 760–64; Extract reprinted in Cain, Empire and Imperialism, 292–6, cited at 294. ‘Sir E. Grey at Berwick, The Times, Thursday, September 27, 1900, 6. L. T. Hobhouse, ‘The Foreign Policy of Collectivism’, Economic Review (Christian Social Union) IX (1899), 220; L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction (London: Harvester, 1973), 22, 37.
11 Peter Cain, ed., Empire and Imperialism: The Debates of the 1870s (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999), 11.
12 Richard Koebner and Helmut Dan Schmidt, Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), xiii–xv.
13 Peter D. Jacobson, ‘Rosebery and Liberal Imperialism, 1899–1903’, North American Conference on British Studies 13 (1973), 104.
14 ‘Mr Morely on the Political Situation’, The Times, January 18, 1899, 6.
15 Cited in D. A. Hamer, John Morely: Liberal Intellectual in Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 292.
16 J. A. Spender, The Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), 257.
17 Evaluative/descriptive terms may carry a negative or positive evaluation, and its descriptive aspect may be manipulated to extend the range of the referents to appropriate the favourable connotations. Democracy, for example is a case in point. In modern times it is what Maurice Cranston calls a hooray term, which even the most dictatorial leader appropriates and extends in order to benefit from its favourable connotation.
18 Hobhouse, ‘Foreign Policy of Collectivism’, 215.
19 Ibid., 219.
20 J. S. Mackenzie, ‘The Source of Moral Obligation’, The International Journal of Ethics 10 (1900), 469.
21 J. H. Muirhead, The Service of the State (London: John Murray, 1908), 104.
22 Muirhead, ‘What Imperialism Means’.
23 John Ruskin, Lectures on Art, delivered at Oxford, Hilary Term, 1870 (London: George Allen, 1891), 34–9; Citation, 37. Cf. Neville Masterman, The Forerunner: The Dilemmas of Tom Ellis 1859–1899 (Swansea: Christopher Davies, 1972), 154.
24 ‘Lord Rosebery on Great Britain and America’, The Times, Friday, July 8, 1898, 8. The Leader of the Liberal Party elected in January 1889, Campbell-Bannerman, was far more ambiguous, and careful not to reveal his position clearly in public.
25 Cited in John Strachey, The End of Empire (London: Victor Gollancz, 1959), 146.
26 Ritchie, Studies in Social and Political Ethics, 164.
27 ‘Mr Haldane in Glasgow. The Influence of Imperialism on Politics’, Glasgow Herald, October 24, 1900.
28 ‘Haldane in Glasgow’, October 24, 1900.
29 ‘Britain's Coming “Colour Question”: The Treatment of the Kaffirs’, The Manchester Guardian, Tuesday, November 4, 1902, 9.
30 Mackenzie, ‘The Source of Moral Obligation’, 469, 478.
31 Ibid., 478.
32 Bernard Bosanquet, ‘The Function of the State in Promoting the Unity of Mankind’, in Social and International Ideals, ed. Bosanquet (London: Macmillan, 1917), 294. J. H. Muirhead, Bernard Bosanquet and His Friends (London, Allen and Unwin, 1915), 95.
33 Colin Tyler, Idealist Political Philosophy: Pluralism and Conflict in the Absolute Idealist Tradition (London: Continuum, 2006), 126–7.
34 Edward Caird, Lay Sermons (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1907), 114. He nevertheless believed that we should not be complacent and hold our government to task when we believe that it is corrupting the higher principles of imperialism. Lay Sermons, 254.
35 Henry Jones, ‘Idealism and Politics’, in The Working Faith of the Social Reformer, ed. Jones (London: Macmillan, 1910), 184.
36 J. H. Muirhead, ‘What Imperialism Means’; J. H. Muirhead, The Service of the State (London: John Murray, 1908), 106–10.
37 J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, third edition with an introduction by Jules Townshend (London: Unwin Hyman), e.g. 11, 55, 65, 200, 246.
38 J. A. Hobson, ‘Capitalism and Imperialism in South Africa’, The Contemporary Review LXXXIV (July–December, 1900): 1–17. Reprinted in J. A. Hobson, Writings on Imperialism and Internationalism, ed. Peter Cain (London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1992).
39 ‘Mr Cecil Rhodes on the Future of South Africa’, Manchester Guardian, April 20, 1891, 6.
40 Hobson, ‘Capitalism and Imperialism in South Africa’, 16.
41 Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 45.
42 J. M. Robertson, Patriotism and Empire (London: Grant Richard, 1899), 145.
43 Hobson, Imperialism, 246.
44 Miles Taylor, ‘“Imperium et Libertas”? Rethinking the Radical Critique of Imperialism during the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 19 (1991): 4–5.
45 ‘Grey at Berwick’, 9. Rosebery believed that closer ties between Britain and America imperative at a time when Britain had to ‘hold her own in the great struggle for the division of the world which seems immediately impending over us. How little of the world in a very short time there will remain to divide!’. ‘Lord Rosebery on Great Britain and America’, The Times, July 8, 1898, 8.
46 ‘Mr Morley on the Political Situation’, 6.
47 Hobson, ‘Capitalism and Imperialism in South Africa’, 14–5.
48 Henry Jones, ‘The Moral Aspect of the Fiscal Question’, in Working Faith of the Social Reformer, ed. Jones (London: Macmillan, 1910), 135–6, 150; Jones, ‘Idealism and Politics’, in Working Faith of the Social Reformer, 184; Henry Jones, ‘A League of Learning’, Rice University Studies (Houston, TX: Rice Institute, 1919), 291.
49 Mackenzie, ‘The Source of Moral Obligation’, 477–8.
50 John Watson, The State in War and Peace (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1919), 274.
51 Matthew, Liberal Imperialists, 152.
52 Burrows, ‘“Sane” Imperialism’, 184.
53 Herbert Burrow, ‘“Sane” Imperialism’, South Place Magazine, Vol. V, September 1900, 184.
54 R. B. Haldane, ‘The Federal Constitution within the Empire’, in Education and Empire, ed. Haldane (London: Murray, 1902), 89.
55 James Mill, ‘Colony’, Reprinted from the Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica 1825 (London: James Innes, 1825), 6.
56 See Anonymous (Thomas Carlyle), ‘Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question’, Fraser’s Magazine, December 1849.
57 James Anthony Froude, ‘England and Her Colonies’, Fraser's Magazine 81 (January 1870): 1–16. Reprinted in Cain, ed., Empire and Imperialism, 27–49, citation at 49. James Anthony Froude, ‘The Colonies Once More’, Fraser's Magazine 82 (September, 1870): 269–87. Reprinted in Cain, ed., Empire and Imperialism, 50–76, citation at 75.
58 Carnarvon, ‘Imperialism Administration’, 295.
59 Dilke was Gladstone's Minster of Education and Secretary for Ireland.
60 Masterman, The Forerunner, 153.
61 Ibid., 153–4.
62 Henry Jones, ‘Home Rule for Wales’, Westminster Review CXXXIII (1890), 403.
63 Julius Vogel, ‘Greater or Lesser Britain’, The Nineteenth Century 1 (July 1877): 809–31. Reprinted in Cain, ed., Empire and Imperialism, 104, cited at 88.
64 Robert Lowe, ‘The Value to the United Kingdom of the Foreign Dominions of the Crown’, The Fortnightly Review 22 (November 1877): 618–30. Reprinted in Cain ed., Empire and Imperialism, 103–20, cited at 109.
65 Frederick Rogers and Lord Blachford, ‘The Integrity of the British Empire’, The Nineteenth Century 2 (October 1877): 355–65. Reprinted in Cain, ed. Empire and Imperialism, 121–233, cited at 133.
66 Julius Vogel, ‘The British Empire – Mr Lowe and Lord Blachford’, Nineteenth Century 3 (April 1878): 617–36. Reprinted in Cain, Empire and Imperialism: The Debates of the 1870s, ed. Peter Cain (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999), 134–57. Cited at 157.
67 Peter Cain, ‘Introduction’, Empire and Imperialism: The Debates of the 1870s, ed. Peter Cain (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999), 2.
68 Charles Dilke, Greater Britain, 6th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1872), 393.
69 J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (London: Macmillan, 1884), 75, 176.
70 Robin Brown, The Secret Society: Cecil Rhodes's Plan for a New World Order (Cape Town: Penguin, 2015), 43.
71 R. B. Haldane (Viscount Haldane), ‘The Soul of a People’ (1910), Selected Addresses and Essays (London: John Murray, 1928). He refers to the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish peoples as races, suggesting that when Robert Walpole led the country (1721–1742), England was ‘a long way ahead in civilisation’ in comparison with other parts of the United Kingdom, 165.
72 Lord Alfred Milner, ‘“Credo” Lord Milner's Faith’, a pamphlet reprinted from The Times, July 27, 1925, 2.
73 Cited in Robert I Rotberg with the collaboration of Miles F. Shore, The Founder: Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 150.
74 Milner, ‘Credo’, 2–3. Julius Vogel had previously argued for the unity of the ‘British race’ wherever it may find itself. Vogel, ‘The British Empire – Mr Lowe and Lord Blachford’, Nineteenth Century 3 (April 1878): 617–36. Reprinted in Cain, Empire and Imperialism, 134–57.
75 J. C. Smuts, ‘The Political Situation’, Diamond Fields Advertiser (Kimberley), August 20, 1896. Reprinted in Selections from the Smuts Papers, ed. W. K. Hancock and Jean van der Poel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), vol. 1, 80–100. Citations, 83–4.
76 David G. Ritchie, ‘The South African War’, The Ethical World, February 3, 1900, 70. He further contends: ‘the British Government will not “crush” the Dutch population, nor extinguish the Dutch language (as the Dutch have crushed native races, and as they have extinguished the French tongue of the Huguenot refugees); it will raise the Afrikander from a narrow and lower to a wider and higher citizenship’, 71.
77 H. C. G. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists: The Ideas and Policies of a Post-Gladstonian Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 161–2.
78 Edward Grey, The Times, September 27, 1900.
79 ‘Lord Rosebery on the British Empire’, The Times, March 5, 1896, 10.
80 Lord Rosebury, The Times, May 6, 1899.
81 ‘Lord Rosebery on Great Britain and America’, The Times, July 8, 1898, 8.
82 Ritchie, Studies in Social and Political Ethics, 160–1; David G. Ritchie, Philosophical Studies, edited with a memoir by Robert Latta (London: Macmillan, 1905), 49. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, trans. Ted Humphries (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1983), 107–44.
83 David Ritchie, ‘Another View of the South African War’, The Ethical World, January 13, 1900, 20. Facsimile reprint in Collected Works of D. G. Ritchie, ed. Peter Nicholson (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1998).
84 R. B. Haldane (Viscount Haldane), ‘The Soul of a People’ (1910), Selected Addresses and Essays (London: John Murray, 1928), 49–93, 163–89.
85 Haldane, ‘The Higher Nationality’, 68.
86 John Watson, The State in Peace and War (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1919), 273.
87 J. S. Mill, Representative Government, chapter xvi, in On Liberty and Representative Government, ed. R. B. McCallum (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948).
88 Hobson, Imperialism, 7.
89 Ibid., 6.
90 Ibid., 6.
91 Which did not literally mean uninhabited land. It meant sparsely populated and uncultivated lands, or even under-cultivated lands.
92 Charles Mills and Carole Pateman, Contract and Domination (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 35–78. Hobson visited Canada and was a frequent visitor to the Unites States of America. ‘Obituary, J. A. Hobson’, The Times, Tuesday, April 2, 1940, 10.
93 ‘This is the root fact of Imperialism so far as it relates to the control of inferior races; when the latter are not killed out they are subjected by force to the ends of their white superiors.’ Hobson, Imperialism, 253.
94 Hobson, Imperialism, 252–3.
95 Burrows, ‘“Sane” Imperialism’, 191.
96 Masterman, The Forerunner, 153.
97 Edward Dicey, ‘Our Route to India’, Nineteenth Century 1 (June 1877): 665–85. Reprinted in Cain, ed., Empire and Imperialism, 163–87. Cited at 187. Cf. Cain's ‘Introduction’, 11, 13.
98 Edward Dicey, ‘Mr Gladstone and Our Empire’, Nineteenth Century 2 (September 1877): 292–308. Reprinted in Cain, ed., Empire and Imperialism, 210–229. Cited at 229.
99 Carnarvon, ‘Imperial Administration’, 296.
100 Cain, ed., Empire and Imperialism, 15.
101 Rosebery, The Times, March 5, 1896, 10. Also cited in Matthew, Liberal Imperialists, 161–2.
102 ‘Rosebery on Empire’, 10.
103 Ritchie, Studies in Social and Political Ethics, 160.
104 Watson, The State in Peace and War, 275.
105 J. A. Hobson, ‘Socialistic Imperialism’, International Journal of Ethics XII (1902): 53.
106 ‘the self-perception of superiority comes with a self-conferred responsibility: the sacred trust of civilization or the duty to civilise those deemed savage and barbaric, underdeveloped, or premodern’. Brett Bowden, ‘“Poisons Disguised with Honey”: European Expansion and the Sacred Trust of Civilization’, The European Legacy 18, no. 2: 166. Colonel Sir Weston Jarvis. ‘Cecil Rhodes As I knew Him: A Man of Vision, Inspiration and Great Depth of Feeling’, The African World, October 26, 1935, 44.
107 E. Edmund Garret, ‘Rhodes and Milner: The Struggle for the South African Union’, in The Empire and the Century: A Series of Essays on Imperial Problems and Possibilities by Various Writers, with an introduction by Charles Sydney, Various Writers (London: John Murray, 1905), 509.
108 ‘Mr Haldane in Glasgow: The influence of Imperialism on Politics’, Glasgow Herald, October 24, 1900.
109 ‘Mr Haldane K. C., M. P., At Stoke’, Stafford Advertiser, November 16, 1901.
110 Carnarvon, ‘Imperial Administration’, 296.
111 Henry Jones, ‘Extracts from Addresses’, Rice University Studies IV: 339–40.
112 Watson, The State in Peace and War, 274.
113 Mr Haldane in Glasgow. ‘The Influence of Imperialism on Politics’, Glasgow Herald, October 24, 1900.
114 Peter Baxter, Ghandi, Smuts and Race in the British Empire, 107–8.
115 L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1942, first published 1911), 239.