The growth of the empire : a handbook to the history of Greater Britain

Preface

" The name of this book, I hope, sufficiently expresses its object It is an attempt to portray, interestingly if possible, accurately as far as may be, the growth of that British Empire of which we are all free citizens ; to show it in all its stages from acorn to oak as an organic whole, stirred by the same winds of fluctuating policy, nourished in every leaf by the same springing sap of British blood. We have histories enough, large and small, of India and Canada and Australia and South Africa: we still lack the Imperial historian, the man who shall do for Seeley what the Herschels did for Newton. We lack him, but we need him ; and it may be that the very imperfections of a mere outline sketch, such as this is, will rouse the right man to do the work that is waiting for him.

For my own work, I make bold to hope this fate at least — that it may interest the busy man, stimulate the indifferent man, and whet the appetite of the student ; and that every one who reads it, be he young or old, may feel himself a product and a part of what he reads about, — in whose life the fact of the Empire's existence, and the methods of its growth, have been and are an important and a determining influence. We are of the viii PREFACE

race and nation of the Empire-builders, and it is our business to understand their building in order rightly to maintain it."

So much of the original preface I may, perhaps, be pardoned for quoting ; both because I have found no new way of describing my aims and my hopes, and because the favourable reception of two editions in Australia encourages one to believe that the hopes are being fulfilled. Here, at any rate, is the book as it was originally planned — not cut short in the sixties, and ended off with the merest resum^ oi all modern Imperial work, but giving a record of British expansion up to the present time in such a form as to show from our past history the inevitableness of recent failures and successes. To deal with so vast a subject in so confined a space, one must be content to neglect a mass of interesting matter; and my principle of selection has been always to choose for description those events, those lines of policy, those currents of opinion in the past which throw most light on events and policies and opinions of to-day.

In this edition the first seven chapters (the Introductory and I. -VI.) stand much as they did in earlier editions. Chapter VII. — on Africa — has been very largely re-written after a closer study of original authorities in South Africa itself Chapters VIII. and IX. are almost entirely new, and include not only a fuller treatment of recent events within the Empire, but also some account of Imperial work in Egypt and China. The maps are designed specially to illustrate the text, by giving in clearly visible form informa-

PREFACE It

tion which the ordinary atlas either omits or hides among a crowd of details.

There are many people whom I ought to thank for hints and criticisms, which have added much to whatever value this work possesses: personal friends, reviewers, fellow-students in the same subject. If they chance upon the book in its new form, they will know that no hint and no criticism have been neglected, that all have contributed directly or indirectly to its re-shaping. That, 1 believe, is the best way in which I can thank thera. A. W. J.

Table Of Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER: THE BRITISH EMPIRE-

A. WHAT IS ITf .

B. HOW DID IT COME INTO BEING? .

C. BRITONS AS COLONIZERS .....

PAGE

vii

Chapter I : Beginnings Of The Empire

A. THE ELIZABETHAN ADVENTURERS

B. NEW ENGLAND

C. OTHER MAINLAND SETILKMENTS

D. THE WEST INDIES .

E. THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM .

F. EASTERN TRADE AND STATIONS

Chapter II : England And France In America

A. THE LAND AND THE NATIVES

B. INDIAN WARS

C. THE TREATY OF UTRECHT AND ITS RESULTS .

D. NORTH AMERICA, 1714-48 ....

E. THE FRENCH ADVANCE ALL ALONG THE LINE V. MISMANAGED WAR . , . , . >S'. WILLIAM PITT . I c . .

24 27

34 45 48

58 62 69 76 81 88 xii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Iii: British Canada

A. THK NEW RULE IN CANADA ....

B. DISAFFECTION IN THE COLONIES ,

C. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ....

D. THE NEW ':ONSTITUTION ....

K. CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLES AND RKFORMS . F. BOUNDARY SETTLEMENTS ....

Chapter Iv: India

A. THE COUNTRY IN I74O

B. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE

C. THE BRITISH GAIN A FOOTHOLD IN BENGAL .

D. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT RULING , . . , re. THE PRESIDENCY OF WARREN HASTINGS

F. MAHRATTA AND MYSORE WARS . , ,

Chapter V: British India

A. CORNWALLIS AND REFORM IN BENGAL . •

B. WELLESLEY CREATES OUR INDIAN EMPIRE

C. WELLESLEY's SYSTEM COMPLETED . . ,

D. BRNTINCK AND INTERNAL REFORM . ,

B. WARS AGAIN ,

P. DALHOUSIE . , H , • , .

G. THE MUTINY . • • < n • •

Chapter Vi: Australasia

A. EARLY DISCOVERIES . » ,

E. THE CONVICT SETTLEMENT , ,

C. THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS ,

D. THE BEGINNINGS OF FREEDOM , ir, THK DAUGHTER COLONIES . , P. OTHER AUSTRALASIAN SETTLEMENTS O. THE GRANTING OF CONSTITUTIONS,

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter VII : Africa

1. WEST AFRICA

II. EAST AFRICA AND THE LAKES , , ,

III. SOUTH AFRICA —

A. THE DUTCH SEITLEMENT . . ,

B. BRITISH RULE BEGINS ....

C. THE ZULU TERROR . , . . ,

D. THE PHILANTHROPISTS ....

E. THE GREAT TREK .....

F. THE SHAPING OF SOUTH AFRICA , ,

Chapter VIII : The Developing Of Africa

A. DIAMONDS AND FEDERAL SCHEMES.

B. THE UNQUIET TRANSVAAL . .

C. THE RUSH FOR AFRICA ....

D. CHARTERED COMPANIES ....

E. THE NILE VALLEY . . . . .

F. CECIL RHODES

Chapter IX : Imperial Developments

A. THE AMERICAN COLONIES

B. AUSTRALASIA . . . , ,

C. THE INDIAN EMPIRE

D. CEYLON AND FURTHER INDIA

E. TRADE ROUTES AND THEIR DEFENCE

APPENDIX A : COLONIAL ARTICLES OF IMPORTANT TREATIES APPENDIX B : BRITISH COLONIES AND THEIR CONSTITUTIONS INDEX OF NAMES, ETC. ........

fAGE 270

283 289

296 301

319 322

333 341 347

MAPS

The Empire in 1901 . .

The Weimar map, showing the Pope's line

Verazzano's map of North and Central America (i

The Early Partition of America .

The West Indies ....

The Canadian Borderlands .

The Empire in 1698 .

Eastern North America in 1754 .

The Empire in 1763 .

America after the Quebec Act

Boundary Questions in Maine and Oreg

India — Physical Features

India as left by Clive (1767)

India as left by Wellesley (1805) •

India as left by Lord Hastings (1823)

India as left by Dalhousie (1856) .

Australasia— Physical Features

Australia in 1826 ....

Australia about 1842 . .

New Zealand in 1843 .

Africa — Physical Features , xiv

Frontispiece

Tofacepa^e 16

» 31

>. 192

,, 210

„ 240

„ 260

MAPS XV

Africa in 1843 .... . . To face page rj^

f The Empire in 1815 ,,290

South Africa in 1854 Page SM

Africa in 1879 To face page 325

Africa in 1901 n 34°

Boundary Disputes in Western Canada , . . Page 363

Australia in 1863 To face page 368

New Zealand in 1875 „ 37°

Oceania in 1901 t> 372

The Indian Empire in 1901 . , » • • * Page 381

GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE

INTRODUCTORY

THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

A. What is it?

When one begins to study a subject seriously, it is well to commence (like Euclid) with a few definitions of the terms in most frequent use. And few phrases need a clearer definition, and more do we constant remembrance of that definition, than "British the phrase which heads this chapter. There have been so many Empires, and so many of them have been associated with ideas of tyranny, that the name has sometimes an evil odour ; and the word " Imperial," which should nowadays proudly sum up the achievements of a nation, retains shreds of a worn-out meaning and suffers from our prejudice against individual and irresponsible rule.

In common language, an empire is the combination of a number of countries under one central government ; strictly speaking, it should have a smgle head with absolute power. The empires three great empires oi antiquity — the rersian, Macedonian, and Roman — were all empires in the strictest sense of the word, and had four points in

A '

common. They all originated from conquest. Some small state or tribe, more warlike than its

won by . i_ i • t_ J

conquest; neighbours, became aggressive, establisnea first an ascendency and then an absolute control over the nearest tribes, and, by absorbing their fighting men into its ranks, created an army large enough to extend its dominion far and wide. Again, the conquered tribes were retained in subjection. This was necessary from the very fact of their sub- "Aubrect jugation ; in the most enlightened of the three — the Roman empire — it was a sign of weakened control when foreigners were admitted to the citizenship, and the very admission but hastened the ruin of the empire. Each empire was won by the superior fighting power of the conquering nation^ not by virtue of its higher culture. The Persians were distinctly inferior in the arts of peace to yen?©"" the Medians, Assyrians, and Egyptians, all civiiiza- of whom they conquered ; Macedon could not boast of higher culture than Greece or the Persia of its day ; the early Romans were below the Etruscans, and the later below Greece and Egypt, in all that pertained to science and philosophy. In every case superior fighting power, and that alone, paved the way for rule. And in every case, tribes and nations being then small, the dominion was stretched and of a ^^^^ many nationalities^ and was practically nS°" based, as long as it stood firm, on the fear aiity. of the Roman name — to take one instance — and the pride of Roman citizenship. Summing up, it may be said that ancient empires were uniform, being acquired by conquest, founded on the complete subjection of the conquered, independent of their superior culture, and unconnected with any sentiment among them of a common nationality.

WHAT IS IT? 3

Modern empires, on the contrary, are anything but uniform; and each differs in several of these points from its ancient fellows. The German empire, Modem for instance, of to-day represents strongly pj^^"., the feeling of common nationality. Much such"° as some of the other German states disliked similarity. Prussian supremacy, they yearned for German unity more ; and there results a compact, coherent ^j^^ aggregate of states differing largely in reli- German: gion and interests, but linked together by strong ties of blood and language. Contrasted with this we find in the Austrian empire a heterogeneous assemblage ^^^ of states, diverse in blood, language, interests, Austrian: religion, and united only by their ruler, — to whom they came mostly by converging inheritance of his ancestors, partly by diplomatic treaty arrangements, because they happened to lie on his borders. The third great empire of modern Europe is a composite one. Russia, like Germany, is a mass of small states more completely absorbed than the German ^^^ into one great body, depending for its coherence Russian: not only on blood and language, but even more securely on unity of religion; but added to this great Slav dominion there is another empire of conquest, Asiatic Russia, founded distinctly upon the superior civilization of the conquerors. It, too, is compact, bound up like Germany and Austria within one continuous frontier line. We may also notice, in passing, the now extinct colonial empire of Spain, which shows clearly the results of applying ^^e the ancient Imperial system to an empire of s'panSr^ colonies ; for it is to be noticed that the ex- Empire. tension of a dominion by colonization is a purely modern phenomenon. So Spain, the first of the great modern colonizing powers, spoilt an opportunity unparalleled in the history of the world, and ruined her new wine by pouring it into the old bottles of conquered and subject empire. And her acquisitions, ruled by the old method, fell from her in the historic way. Like the provinces of Macedon, partitioned among Alexander's generals, where the conquering race was soon absorbed in the greater mass of the resident population, the South American Republics became the prey of a succession of dictators, and the intrusive Spaniard became gradually indistinguishable from the Indian races over whom he had once held sway.

Apart from all these stands the British Empire of the present day, resembling them in many points, but distinguished by its complex composition, British the wide severance and dissimilarity of its parts, is more and the curiously incongruous character of the than any ties which Unite them to the mother country. For convenience we may consider it under two heads — the colonial empire (which is not, except in the case of purely Crown colonies, an empire in the technical sense at all) and the Indian empire.

The colonial dependencies of Britain fall into three groups — {a) the great self-governing dominions, federated ^^^ or not, Canada, Australia, and South Africa ; (b)

Colonies, the mass of small colonies* administered by officials from home, but possessing a voice in the making of their own laws (in training, as it were, for future self-government) ; and {c) the military stations under complete control of the Home Government, which, together with a few districts such as the West African settlements, where the native element is disproportionately strong, compose the real " British possessions." They are nearly all colonies of conquest, but of a peculiar

* Rhodesia is large in area, but small as regards its white population.

WHAT IS IT? 5

kind of conquest. Either, as in the case of Australia and of those colonies which are now the United States, the conquest was gradual, an occupation of land which the original inhabitants were too few to fill and too unskilful to use to the full ; or it was a conquest not of the original owners at all, but of a previously invading race, such as took place in Canada and at the Cape. And in this latter style of acquisition lay a great danger, not yet entirely overcome ; for Canada was even during this century disturbed by attempts of some French colonists to regain their lost power, and in South Africa the Boer element has long been a serious hindrance to the closer union of the colonies there.

Thus even among the self-governing colonies we have to draw a line between those which are linked to Britain by blood and language and those which are kept in the empire by little else than its superior civilization, its moral prestige, and a certain amount of community in interests. In the less independent colonies the tie of nationality is weaker still. Negroes in the West Indies, Malayans and Chinese in the East, savage tribes in all the outlying settlements, complicate the relations between government and governed ; and the diversity of races is far surpassed by the diversity of religions.

Turning to the Indian empire, we are in a different atmosphere altogether. India, apart from British rule in it, is simply a geographical expression — a large piece of the earth cut off by high mountains from the rest of Asia, and so conveniently spoken of under one name — peopled by tribes of different tongues, different origins, different religions, constantly (in old times) at war with each other, an aggregation of the least similar constituents that were ever crowded together on the face of the earth. Mountaineers and plain-men, warriors and philosophers, snake - worshippers, Brahminists and

Mohammedans, with many others, are all included under one head when we talk about India; and the solitary bond between them is their subordination to British rule. Here, then, we have an empire proper, administered by a central government composed entirely of an alien race ; an empire ^^P^ ^^1 check partly by alien forces, partly by iht^o\d ^ judicious utilisation of internal differences ; style, governed on alien principles, and very largely with alien institutions, which must help to give the alien higher privileges than the native. In fact, we have the nearest approach possible in modern times to the old Roman system of empire, but with one great difference but with ii^ favour of British rule. For the last hundred TmpSt years it has been the theory in our government of difference, j^dia, to which the practice has more and more approximated, that India is to be governed for its own benefit. Though more completely a British possession by right of conquest than any large territory in our dominions, we hold it for its own sake far more than for ours ; and the growing trade which constitutes its chief value for the rest of the empire, and which, it must be confessed, would probably be ruined by any separation, has been allowed to increase naturally, unfettered since the British nation has governed India by any selfish and restrictive laws. .

B. How DID IT COME INTO BEING?

How did this complicated political system come into being ? It is a question all the more interesting because not so long ago no one would have dared to predict such a state of things. Its growth is a matter of two sp™es in or three centuries only ; and though we are apt history. ^^ think of everything before the French Revolution as very ancient history indeed, a century in a nation's

HOW DID IT COME INTO BEING? 7

life is no more than ten years in a man's. It is a useful rule for getting at the proportions of things in history to divide all your time-spaces by ten, and to remember that modern politics were no more born at the French Revolution than a young man of twenty was born when he first got into trousers.

So we must remember that the British Empire is a very modern thing indeed. Barely four hundred years have passed since there began to stream out of Europe a long line of adventurers and explorers, hundred traders and settlers, all eager for great deeds and great discoveries and great rewards, for the spices of the East Indies and the precious metals of the West. Southern Asia and the African coast fell to the share of Portugal ; all the New World lay open to the will of Spain. What Spain neglected France explored ; Holland snatched a great trade-empire when Portugal lost her freedom. After a hundred and fifty years of this European enterprise Britain alone of the Western powers was lagging behind ; her colonies were comprised in two strips of the North American seaboard, with hostile powers on either flank and Dutch and Swedish settlements between them.

To-day the empire of Spain has dwindled to a few islands and a strip of barren coast. Portugal holds, in a vague fashion, territory about as large as South Australia. The Dutch Islands in all are smaller. France, indeed, has an empire (including the Western Sahara) nearly half as large again as India ; but only about one-fiftieth of that has been hers for more than fifty years. And Britain, the seeming laggard, holds more than eleven million square miles of the earth's surface — the area of Africa inhabited by the population of Europe ; while the two colonies that barely held their own against the four other occupants of North America have developed into an aggregate of three million and a half miles more, inhabited by nearly seventy millions of people. It is easy to see why Britain was so far behind the others. Before a nation can begin to colonize it must first have consolidated itself. That is why Portugal in

the fifteenth century was ahead of Spain in nation to matters of colonizing, and why Germany has only collections just appeared on the field. Now it was under wiUnTt^^ Elizabeth that England first contained a united

nation, and under her began the acquisition of distant colonies. But it so happened that after her death there cropped up several religious and political questions of great importance, and these had to be fought out and finally settled before colonization could be taken up in earnest. So the serious history of the British Empire really begins with the eighteenth century. It was during that time that the Scottish kingdom, after fifty years of close union with England, became itself a coherent whole, and brought fresh power to the task of Empire-making : Ireland, too, which the British Government had been in the habit of treating as a distant colony — on the same lines, one might almost say, as Jamaica — was gradually admitted in practice to the rank of a sister kingdom, and took her part in the expansion of Britain. But by this time the greater part of the habitable world had been allotted. By the middle of the seventeenth century there was hardly any room left, at least for a new colonizing power.

How was room made? In two ways. In the first place, Britain at once insisted on the rule which Germany,

in a similar difficulty, revived in 1884. The land Britain belonged, said the British traders, to those who room for occupied it. It was futile for Spain to claim

general ownership of South America, or for France to nail lead-plates on half a dozen trees in the

Ohio valley. The government might sometimes yield a weak assent to such claims, but the merchant-explorers pooh-poohed them. Wherever other Christian nations had actual settlements, they were generally willing to acknowledge their prior right ; but unoccupied country (and in those days all nations meant by that " unoccupied by Christian Europeans ") was fair game. And having thus got foothold on the new countries, they took advantage of every opportunity through which an European war could be forced on the home government to extend their own area of occupation over the colonies of the countries which Britain might be fighting. They were the The imbetter able to do this because the British navy C?sSl" rapidly made itself master of all the other Euro- p°'^^''- pean navies ; and the command of the sea, which resulted from this, enabled British colonists, while drawing their own supplies of men and material from home, to cut off the supplies of their hostile neighbours.

C. Britons as Colonizers.

The detailed proof of all this will be found in the remaining chapters of this book. There is still one more question which we ought to consider here.

What made Britain a colonizing nation ? All growing nations are at some time or other bound to spread beyond their original borders : and the nation that holds g^ s^^. control of the sea routes is in the best position to ^^onl expand effectively without being broken up in ^jJo"°t the process. Yet this does not account for all ^°''"- the facts in the case we are dealing with. Within two hundred and fifty years a state occupying less than a hundred and fifty thousand square miles of land has grown into an empire that includes more than eleven million square miles ; and that is not done by sea-power only.

lo THE BRITISH EMPIRE

There are seven qualities specially useful in the work of colonization. All colonizing nations colonizing possess some of these qualities ; British success is based on the majority of them. They are —

(i.) Physical Strength. — In the competition for colonies all parts of the earth have been occupied, and that nation must be most successful which can best stand all varieties of climate and come through all dangers with least permanent harm. Such a nation will be bred in the temperate climates, and on the whole the further north the better. Britain, France, and Germany have this advantage over Mediterranean nations.

We may add here the tendency to rapid increase in population which helps to occupy rapidly, and so maintain a hold on, the comparatively waste lands where colonies are formed.

(ii.) Adventurousness, — Nations mainly continental are slow to move ; it is the maritime powers that scatter their explorers over the world. And it is a great advantage here that a nation should be composite, not all of one stock. The Spaniards who followed in the track of Columbus were a blend of many races — Gaul, Visigoth, Roman, Moor, Jew ; and in French colonization to-day it is the men of mixed blood, Normans, Bretons, Gascons, who do most of the work. The French peasant of the central districts knows nothing of colonies, and would feel it a worse than Siberian exile to go there.

(iii.) Trading Spirit. — It is not enough to discover new lands ; the colonizer must have some motive for holding them. When Portugal in 1580 fell into the hands of Spain, all her valuable East Indian colonies were practically thrown away because the Spaniards, adventurous as they were, cared for nothing but gold-seeking. So the Dutch, the most ardent traders of that day, were able to annex nearly all Portugal's colonial empire ; and their commercial zeal has stimulated them to hold their conquests ever since.

(iv.) Settling Spirit. — After all, a trading colony like the Dutch East Indies is not our idea of a colony at all. To hold one or two towns along the coast of a big island and keep some order among the native chiefs is not work that can build up new states. The empire-making races must contain men who will open up new countries with the hope of living in them. The Frenchman in Tonquin hopes to get back to France before the best of his life is over ; so does, as a rule, the English official in India ; but the English colonist at Buluwayo is there to make himself a home.

(v.) Fighting Spirit. — This does not mean aggressiveness, but the determination to " stand no nonsense." It is the carrying out of the old advice :

" Beware Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in, Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee."

Not so long ago France and Germany had mere strips of coast side by side in the Gulf of Guinea, and the native tribes of the inland country troubled both. The Germans, brave enough when they must fight, and never over-lenient to natives, yet concluded for quietness' sake to confine their operations to the coastal districts. The French were determined to make themselves respected by their neighbours up country. And to-day the German Cameroons is shut in all round by the French Congo, which has spread north-east into Central Africa till its boundaries march with those of Egypt and British East Africa, and is edging its way round Lake Tchad to meet other French expansions from the Niger and Algeria.

(vi.) Adaptability to the native element. — The Red Indians in North America, the Bantu tribes of South

Africa, the Aztecs of Spanish America, were all important factors in the settlement of those countries ; they were too many to be despised and too warlike to be cowed. The nation that could best humour them gained an advantage over its competitors. So France, by making friends with the Indians, long held her own against overwhelming numbers of English colonists in the struggle for the Mississippi valley ; and has recently used the Senegalese with similar success in her African empire-making. To this adaptability also is largely due the Russian conquest of Central Asia. Here England is lacking. " It is not anywhere," said Lord Durham, " a virtue of the English race to look with complacency on any manners, customs, or laws which appear strange to them."

(vii.) Dominance. — You can utilize native tribes by humouring them ; but to establish an empire among them you must be able also to master them, and to do it in such a way that they will own the mastership without chafing under it. To make the men you have conquered follow you gladly — that is the secret of empire ; to be obeyed because you are trusted, and feared only by the shifty and crooked. On this all our Indian empire rests. We conquered" the Sikhs in 1848, and they stood by us in the Mutiny nine years later. We occupied Hunza- Nagar in 1890, and in 1895 the tribes marched with our men to relieve Chitral. British rule in India is based, indirectly but no less certainly for that, on the consent of the governed.

It is worth while remembering that British colonization is not carried on only with men of the British race. Britain The Same qualities that hold the empire together r^es°S" make it possible for other races to transfer colonists, themselves within the empire from continent to continent. Such migrations brought perforce the negro to his beloved West Indies, and now stock Guiana with

Hindu coolies and set the Sikh to civilize Nyassaland ; while under less fortunate stars the Banyan has invaded Natal,* and the ubiquitous Chinaman descends from a British birthplace at Singapore upon the warm lands that back Port Darwin.

We have now got some idea of the foundations which uphold this great fabric of the Empire. From end to end it has been built up by the adventurousness our Emof men always ready both to fight and to trade. Jreldonof The great colonies are British because beyond all ^^^ '^^"' others that race of men can make a home in new lands without breaking loose from the mother country. India is British because the same race supplies for its government continually men of heroic masterfulness and splendid incorruptibility. Everywhere it is the race, not the State as such, that has done the permanent work of colonization — for Australia, the one State-founded colony, has ever since been trying to forget the methods of her founding, while she bears, and private will for many years bear, marks of her origin in the insatiable craving of her people for Government aid in all their undertakings. Not so was born the proud selfreliance of New England and of British India : a private company founded Massachusetts, a private company won Bengal : and to-day on the Zambesi and on the Niger alike the strength and the resources of private citizens have added new provinces to our African Dominion.