THE ZENITH OF IMPERIALISM

11. THE ZENITH OF IMPERIALISM
The most striking fact of this period must be considered to be the extraordinary, global expansion of European power. Other changes – the growth of nationalism, of democracy and socialism, of science and pseudo-science – were more profound and are with us still, whereas the European empires have disappeared. But it was European imperialism that spread these profounder developments throughout the world, and thereby made possible the transformation of the world in the image of European culture and the European revolution that we see today.
“By 1914,” writes J.M. Roberts, “more than four-fifths of the world’s land surface outside Antarctica was under either a European flag, or the flag of a nation of European settlement.”157
“On the eve of the First World War,” writes Ferguson, “Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, which among them accounted for less than 1 per cent of the world’s land surface and less than 8 percent of its population, ruled in the region of a third of the rest of the world’s area and more than a quarter of its people. All of Australasia, 90 percent of Africa and 56 percent of Asia were under some form of European rule, as were nearly all the islands of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. And although only around a quarter of the American continent – mainly Canada – found itself in the same condition of dependence, nearly all the rest had been ruled from Europe at one time or another in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In both the north and the south, the polities of the American republics were fundamentally shaped by the colonial past.
“Nor do these calculations about the extent of the West European maritime empires tell the whole story of nineteenth-century empire. Most of Central and Eastern Europe was under Russian, German or Austrian imperial rule. Indeed, the Russian empire stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and from Warsaw to Vladivostok. And still intact, though in a position of increasing inferiority to the European empires, were the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and the Chinese empire in the Far East. Independent nation-states, in short, were the exception to a worldwide imperial rule. Even Japan, the best-known example of an Asian state that had resisted colonization (though its economy had been forcibly opened to trade by the United States), had itself already embarked on empire building, having conquered Korea. And… the United States, though forged in the crucible of an anti-imperial war, had taken its first steps on the road to empire, having annexed Texas in 1845, California in 1848, Alaska in 1867 and the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Guam in 1898. Indeed, its nineteenth-century history can be told as a transition from continental to hemispherical imperialism. ”158
The last phase of this European conquest of the world that ended in 1914 was marked especially by the “Scramble for Africa”, “a spreading of European power into the non-European world unrivalled in extent and pace since the sixteenth-century Spanish conquests in the Americas. Outside Algeria or South Africa, for most of the nineteenth century only a little of Africa behind a few coastal enclaves had been in European hands. In 1879 the arrival of a British army in Egypt registered yet another setback for the Ottoman empire, of which that country remained formally a part, and also a change in the continent’s fate; to the south, even before the century ended, Anglo-Egyptian rule had been pushed deep into the Sudan. Elsewhere, southwards from Morocco round to the Cape of Good Hope, the African coastline was by the beginning of the twentieth century entirely divided between Europeans (British, French, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese and Belgians) with the exception of the isolated black republic of Liberia. The empty wastes of the Sahara and Sahel became nominally French, Tunisia was a French protectorate. The Belgian king enjoyed as a personal estate (and his agents acted atrociously) most of the rest of the Congo, which was soon to prove some of the richest mineral-bearing land in Africa; the Belgian state was to take over responsibility from him for what was called the ‘Congo Free State’ in 1906. Further east, apart from the Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State over which the British government claimed suzerainty, British territories ran almost continuously from the Cape of Good Hope up to the Rhodesias, which were hemmed in by the Belgian Congo and German and Portuguese East Africa (Tanganyika and Mozambique). The last two cut them off from the sea, but further north, from Mombasa, Kenya’s port, a belt of British territory stretched throughout Uganda to the borders of the Sudan and the headwaters of the Nile. Somalia (divided between the British, Italian and French) and Italian Eritrea isolated Ethiopia, the only African country other than Liberia still to escape European domination. This ancient Christian [Monophysite] polity was ruled by the only African monarch of the nineteenth century to avert the European threat by a military success, the annihilation of an Italian army at Adowa in 1896. Other Africans could not prevail, as the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of the Sudan in 1898, and, in the next century, the Portuguese mastery (with some difficulty) of insurrection in Angola in 1902, the British destruction of the Zulu and Matabele in 1907, and, most bloodily, the German quelling of Tanganyika in 1907 and massacre of the Herrero of south-west Africa in the same year, were to show.”159
Most of these imperial ventures were not state-sponsored, but led by individual adventurers. That is why they did not lead to European wars with all the terrible devastation that such a war would undoubtedly have caused. Only occasionally were major interests involved. Thus the British and the French nearly fought over Egypt, with its vital strategic asset of the Suez Canal, and the British did fight the Boers over the diamond-rich Transvaal. But the Marxist prediction that European imperialism would lead to European war was not fulfilled – even in 1914.
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The main threat to the European empires came from ethnic nationalism, which, as Dominic Lieven writes, “played a big role in undermining all the great empires that existed in 1900 both inside and outside Europe.”160
Take the case of Ireland and the British Empire. ”Eighteenth-century Ireland’s British rulers had known that they were hated by the native Irish. Having destroyed the old Catholic landowning class and replaced it with a Protestant Anglo-Irish elite, London was nevertheless confident that nothing short of a major French invasion could shake its hold on Ireland. In the nineteenth century, the modernization of Ireland’s economy and the emergence of a vibrant Irish civil society transformed the situation. British policy in nineteenth-century Ireland often combined repression and concession in intelligent fashion. It never attempted to simply ignore and repress the political implications of modernization. It compromised with the Catholic Church, handed over local government to the new Catholic middle classes, and bought out the Protestant landowning class, which was only possible because in that era Britain had the richest taxpayers in the world. But British policy could not head off ever-growing demands for Irish autonomy. From the mid-1880s, the two main British parties – Liberals and Conservatives – were divided on how to respond to this demand. Liberals argued that ‘home rule’ would satisfy Irish aspirations, not least because most Catholic Irishmen of the professional classes welcomed Ireland’s connection to the world’s greatest empire; their Conservative and Unionist opponents insisted that it would give power, confidence, and patronage in Ireland to a movement that was driven by deep cultural and historical enmity toward England and that would never be satisfied with anything less than independence. Similar debates about whether devolution and federalism would strengthen or weaken imperial unity were to occur in other empires in the twentieth century…”161
Nationalism was on the rise throughout the world, and the imperialists had to work out a defence of their dominance over other nations that was a little more profound than simply a conviction of their own racial superiority. The best they could do was to claim that imperialism brought "Christianity, commerce and civilization" (in David Livingstone's phrase) to the benighted peoples of the world. Let us look at the evidence for this statement first in relation to commerce.
Imperialism certainly greatly increased commercial relations between Europe and the non-European world. But the initiative did not come from the governments: the imperialists usually followed where the businessmen had gone before, to protect them and consolidate their gains. The classic case is South Africa, where the discovery of gold and diamonds led the British to conquer the Transvaal. But while increasing their own commerce, the imperialists often destroyed the indigenous commerce. The classic case is India. In the eighteenth century Indian textiles flooded the British market. But then, with the help of cheap imports of raw cotton from the Southern United States and the new machines of the industrial revolution that drastically reduced the price of yarn, British textiles reversed the flow and destroyed the indigenous Indian textile industry. The British then gradually conquered India in order to protect the valuable markets they had created.162
As regards the most important argument in favour of imperialism, its spread of Christianity, we may agree that the spread of empire undoubtedly gave a boost to Christian missions. Missionaries used the opportunities opened up by imperialism to penetrate the furthest corners of the earth: often they were there before the secular administrators and armies. The biggest missionary drives came from the biggest imperial empires: those of England (Protestant), France (Catholic) and Russia (Orthodox); but the United States and other European nations made contributions.
Jean Comby writes: "When missionaries again began to leave Europe in the years from 1815 to 1820, European public opinion was not very interested in colonies in distant lands. The missionaries had few means at their disposal and put themselves on the level of travellers and explorers. Sometimes rivalries between Protestants and Catholics or the persecution of Christians involved the intervention of European governments pushed by religious groups (as in Oceania and Indo-China).
"After 1870, the European powers rivaled one another in the conquest of new territories: in 1885 the Treaty of Berlin divided Africa into areas of influence. Article 6 recognized the freedom of preaching under the protection of the colonial powers. Colonization opened up an immense field to evangelization and mission could favour colonization. Colonial powers and missions joined together in a common task: building schools, hospitals, and so on. The colonizers wanted the missionaries to be of their own nationality. When the territory changed hands, the old missionaries were replaced by those of the new owner.
"However, there was not always perfect agreement between the missionary, the administrator, the soldier and the colonist. While loyal to the occupying power, the missionaries did not pay any less attention to the abuses of colonization, and the administrators thought of the missionaries as a rival power. The latter were closer to the people by their presence among them and by their knowledge of the language. They protested against the forced labour and an industrialization which destroyed traditional structures."163
The western empire that probably attached the greatest importance to Christian - in this case, Catholic - mission was France. The French saw the success of such a mission as part of the glory of France, and tried more than other imperial nations to integrate their colonials fully into the mother country. This attitude is discernible even in the republican period, when French rulers officially espoused the revolution rather than Catholicism.
Thus, as Andrew Wheatcroft writes, "if Louis-Philippe, the victor of the 1830 Revolution, did not share his predecessor's exalted Catholicism, he was nonetheless addicted to national glory. He saw a direct connection between the heroic France of the First Crusade and the triumphs of the new crusade and conquest in Algeria of the 1830s, in which his sons played an active part. The essence of this new crusade was later painted by Horace Vernet, a particular favourite of the new king, in The First Mass in Kabylia, which depicts a field service. The troops kneel respectfully as the celebrant holds up the Host for them to see; symbolically the body and blood of Christ subdue the lowering mountains which form the background, while a group of Arabs sit sullenly in the foreground. In 1837, as the conquest advanced, Louis-Philippe began to remodel the great palace of Versailles to create a national history museum celebrating the many centuries of French military triumph. Vernet's work would feature prominently among the vast canvases that covered the walls.
"The first rooms of the king's museum depicted the Crusades, with a mock-Gothic style of decoration and a long list of the French Crusaders, the first heroes for France. Then came the other great figures of French military history, culminating in Napoleon's supreme achievement. But the story of glory continued after the emperor. The final galleries, the Salle de Constantine and the Salle de la Smalah, honoured the new crusade in Algeria. The official guidebook to the museum left no doubt as to what was the message the visitor was intended to receive: 'We there find again, after an interval of five hundred years, the French nation fertilising with its blood the burning plains studded with the tents of Islam. These are the heirs of Charles Martel, Godfrey de Bouillon, Robert Guiscard and Philip Augustus, resuming the unfinished labours of their ancestors. Missionaries and warriors, they every day extend the boundaries of Christendom.'
"Soon a steady stream of colonists began to settle in the nascent French Proconsulate of Algeria, providing a Christianizing presence in a terrain formerly 'infidel'. A diocese was created in Algiers in 1838, which became an archdiocese in 1866, with two subsidiary bishoprics at Constantine and Oran. Two years later a new missionary order called the White Fathers was founded with the aim of carrying the Christian message into Kabylia and south into the desert. Dressed in a white robe, or gandoura, with a mantle, they looked more like Algerian Arabs than Frenchmen. Under the direct authority of the Congregation of Propaganda in Rome, in their ardour, discipline, asceticism and energy the White Fathers resembled the Jesuits in their exultant heyday centuries before.
"This preoccupation with North Africa survived Louis-Philippe, continued through the rule of Napoleon III, and on into the Third Republic that followed him. By the end of the nineteenth century, writers could look back at a constant extension of French conquest: in Algeria, in a French Proconsulate of Tunisia and in the French (and Spanish) partition of Morocco in the 1890s. The theme of the crusade remained popular. Michaud's History had become a school textbook in 1844, with eighteen editions published by the end of the century, and in 1877 a new luxury edition appeared, which was illustrated with a set of magnificent engravings by Gustave Doré representing Christian power and dominance. This rhetoric and image of crusade in the first half of the nineteenth century was usually a mask for grubbier enterprises, but it is wrong to regard it with complete cynicism. French Algeria may have been a colony created first by accident, and then as a device to counter the unpopularity of successive governments in Paris. But many of the migrants to Algeria and even of the soldiers who fought there, and certainly the missionaries labouring in the deserts, often believed that they were following a higher calling. Nowhere else in the Islamic lands had there been such a reprise of the medieval Latin Kingdom. Once again a Christian community had been planted among the infidels. All patriotic citizens of France could rejoice that their nation, which had won Jerusalem in the First Crusade, had now brought Christian power back to the southern shore of the Mediterranean. This had been the great mission of Saint Louis, the nation's patron saint, which was finally fulfilled some seven centuries after his death.
"Nor did France ever intend to leave. Algeria became an integral part of metropolitan France, and its existence an exemplar of France's civilization and cultural destiny. That 'civilizing mission' was taught in every school in France and in the schools of the empire beyond the seas, and this unifying ideology gradually replaced the sectarian vocabulary of crusade, except in high Catholic circles. But support for French Algeria transcended the gulf between clericals and anticlericals. Many believed with an absolute conviction in France's mission in North Africa and were prepared to use any means to sustain it. Other colonial territories, such as Indochina, could be abandoned or bargained away in the 1950s. Ironically, it was Algeria, the first fruit of the civilizing mission, a land reconquered by crusade, that ultimately destroyed the French Republic."164
Many missionaries did extraordinary work. But where conversions to Christianity were superficial - as was very often the case - the result could be a syncretistic mixture of Christianity and paganism, as when Jesuit missionaries in China were forced to compromise with pagan ancestor-worship, or hybrids between Catholicism and voodoo appeared in Latin America. Or the preaching of the superiority of Christianity might be confused in the mind of the convert with the superiority of the white race or of his technological culture, as happened in New Guinea.165
Or a complete reversal might happen: the potential convert, seeing the insensitivity, materialism or cruelty of his would-be instructors, could come to the firm conclusion that their own faith and race were superior, as happened in China.166
Perhaps the most unexpected result of the European missionary movement of the nineteenth century was the phenomenon of reverse conversion - the adoption by the conquerors of the faith of the conquered. The beginning of this process may be said to date to 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny. Before that, English imperialism was determined to impose Christianity on the heathen. There was no hint of ecumenist indifference or relativism. But then came the Indian Mutiny and the bloody reprisals that followed it. Missionary zeal cooled, and racism and avarice became the dominant motives of imperial rule. "A brown skin alone sufficed to earn death, and only a tiny minority among the British protested."167
This was followed, towards the end of the nineteenth century, by the gradual adoption, whether consciously or unconsciously, of the Hindu notion of the relativity of all religions. Thus Madame Blavatsky adopted a form of Hinduism in India and then preached it in Europe. And Swami Vivekandra preached Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893...
Indeed, reverse conversion may be seen to be the most profound and long-term effect of nineteenth-century imperialism. Relativism and ecumenism, which are indigenous to eastern religion, became entrenched in the lands of the West. And resistance to them was enfeebled by the guilt that the western peoples began to feel about their imperial past...
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