Ruling the Waves

Sir Wilfred was a throwback to another time and another world, that of the British empire. He could have stepped out of the pages of British historian Jeremy Black’s new sprawling brick of a book on the origins of the empire, its rise and decline, and how it affected all aspects of society, exploration, science, and the arts.

While British intellectuals tend to be masochistic about their former empire, blaming it for a host of modern woes, books on the subject enjoy an increased interest in the United States these days, as America has inherited Britain’s traditional role as the world’s guarantor of stability.

Britain is an island nation and its empire was based on its maritime strength, hence the title–The British Seaborne Empire–which echoes the titles of classic works on the Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish empires. When reading the book, it is a good idea to have a globe next to you, preferably one of those old Victorian ones where everything British is marked in red.

In the Middle Ages, according to Black, the English kings had been dead set on conquering France, but the loss of Normandy and Gascony to Charles VII and the defeat at Castillon in 1453 put an end to that. So they started looking across the oceans for new possibilities. Compared with Spain or Portugal, England was not as well situated, nor as experienced in deep sea navigation, but with its large population of fishermen, there was a strong maritime base on which to build.

IT TOOK A WHILE getting shipshape, so to speak. In 1545, Henry VIII had the unpleasant experience of watching, from the shore, his great top-heavy Mary Rose–as much a piece of gorgeous woodcarving as a functioning warship–capsize right before his eyes. She had just left Portsmouth harbor and was about to engage the French, when a sudden gust of wind caused her gunports to be flooded. Improvements in ship design, however, gradually improved the odds of survival.

England needed its navy partly to defend against invasion and partly to protect its trade from the Spaniards and the Portuguese, while attacking theirs. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the navy and a strong “Protestant” wind defeated the Spanish Armada, and Francis Drake became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. For his services, he was knighted by the queen in 1581 on board his ship, The Golden Hind. In retrospect, this was a defining moment in the history of the British empire, recognizing Sir Francis, with his talent for piracy, as the embodiment of English courage and resourcefulness.

But naval advancement was not up to the swashbucklers alone. At the time of the Restoration, Samuel Pepys was made Clerk of the King’s Ships and rose to become secretary to the admiralty. When not frolicking with his mistresses or attending the theater, the famed diarist was striving mightily to improve the efficiency of the Royal Navy, laying the foundation for it to play an important role on the world stage.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, Black writes, an ideology of empire began to develop in Britain. Protestantism, economic growth, and increasing maritime power all contributed to the sense that the British were a chosen people. The writers of the day were keen students of history, and they believed that Britain’s emphasis on liberty set it apart from other empires past and present, and guaranteed that it would not perish in corruption and tyranny.

This pride manifested itself in a variety of ways, as when Samuel Johnson extolled the past glories of the navy in his early poem “London,” and when he and his friend Richard Savage, too poor to pay for lodgings but “brimful of patriotism,” would walk around St. James Square at night and resolve that they would “stand by the country.” Or when the former sea captain Thomas Coram established The Foundling Hospital in London. Foundlings made such capital sailors, the good captain thought.

THERE WERE SETBACKS, OF COURSE. The loss of the American colonies, triggered by an attempt to extract taxes to pay for the Seven Years’ War, produced momentary doubts about Britain’s strength as a world power and forebodings of imminent disaster. But catastrophe did not happen. Indeed, before long, Britain established trade relations with the newly independent states.

Victory over France in the Napoleonic wars helped restore Britain’s confidence. Once again, the British saw themselves as the agent of Providence, bringing civilization to a benighted world. The British empire represented the high point and the conclusion of the historical process.

Evangelicalism, the missionary movement, and the reform-minded middle class also played an important part in the development of Britain’s sense of moral achievement. Under their combined enlightening influence, slavery came to be understood as an abomination: Participation in the slave trade was made a felony and slavery was abolished in the colonies in 1833. Yet the British still saw themselves as racially superior.

During the nineteenth century, Britain’s imperial focus shifted from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Expansion took place mainly on land, though, as Black notes, such expansion of course relied on naval hegemony: Britain was not involved in any major naval struggle until 1914. Geographically, the spotlight was on India, and towards the end of the century, on Africa.

INDIA WAS THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN–and a great gig for many young men. If you were number two in the inheritance lineup, unfit for book studies due to dyslexia, or merely burdened by gambling debts, India was the place for you. It certainly represented a challenge. Two hundred thousand administrators and seventy thousand soldiers controlled an area eighteen times the size of Britain. For an officer, life consisted of endless dinners in the officers’ mess, gin and tonics, polo, and tiger hunting, interrupted only by an occasional rebellion.

With boundless curiosity towards their surroundings, the Victorians exhibited self-assurance, fortitude, and an unwavering commitment to empire. They practiced their own brand of muscular Christianity, as opposed to what they saw as the irrational mysticism of the native populations. “I do not worship crocodiles / Or bow my knee to clay,” as Kipling memorably wrote. General Gordon’s death in Khartoum by the Mahdi’s forces provided the inspirational example of the supreme sacrifice.

In the year 1900, the empire, at its zenith, covered one-fifth of the globe’s land surface. Empty bottles of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce that made rancid meat edible have since been found everywhere the British went. But already there were signs of unease.

Black quotes the British director of military operations: “We are governing with a mere handful of white officials vast populations alien to us in race, language and religion. The authority of these officials rests on no other basis than a belief in the invincibility of the British government and confidence in its promises.”

The First World War placed a heavy burden on Britain’s finances, making it increasingly hard to sustain the empire. Britain, which had been the world’s leading creditor, was now its leading debtor, and the United States had taken over its exports to Canada and Latin America.

But France, Germany, and Russia had suffered even worse in the war, and during the interwar years the empire still looked relatively impressive. But only on the surface. In India, Gandhi through his nonviolent tactics, was already undermining the British position.

In World War II, the British suffered a string of defeats to the Japanese, culminating in the surrender of Singapore in 1942, where it became painfully clear that the British were not infallible gods. After the war, Britain, financially and emotionally spent, withdrew from India.

And in 1956, after the Anglo-French invasion of Suez had ended in ignominious withdrawal because of American opposition, the British lost all appetite for acting on their own. From then on, the Americans were running the show.

After decades of cultural relativism, historians are not exactly lining up to praise the British empire, but it did have some positive aspects, chiefly the emphasis on the rule of law in British constitutionalism. On this point, Black quotes fellow historian Niall Ferguson: “No organization in history has done more to promote the free movement of goods, capital and labour, and to impose western norms of law, order and governance around the world.”

LIKE THE BRITS, the Americans believe in the benefits of trade, and they also have a sense of destiny, as the spreaders of freedom and democracy. The advantage of the American ideology is that it is based on universal human rights.

Still, there is the temptation for the United States to turn its back to the world, which is what happened after World War I and what almost happened again after Vietnam. It was never really an option, and it is certainly not an option after 9/11. The United States has to look out for the world, a task that demands self-confidence, stamina, and stoicism. And here one can learn a thing or two from the British in their heyday.

Henrik Bering is a journalist and critic.