The ‘second’ British empire
Outline
• Introduction
• Wars with France: arenas of war: West
Indies; North America; East Indies; Latin
America; India and its approaches
• India: trade and territory
• Britain’s imperial position in 1815
• Good or Bad?
What were the characteristics of
this ‘second empire’
• From an empire based on trade and primarily focused on
the Atlantic and Caribbean to one based on territory,
more global in its interests (especially in the east), more
diverse, more authoritarian, less tolerant?
• Expansion of dominion. Earl of Shelburne 1784: ‘trade
with informal control if possible; trade with rule if
necessary’.
• Last week we looked at the imperial dilemma posed as a
result of the Seven Years War.
• But not necessarily planning to be an imperial power –
war was vital in shaping the emergence of empire – but
now much more of a blueprint of ambition
Wars against France 1792-1815
• Continental
– Involving Russia, Prussia, Austria and Spain
– Mutual rivalries
– Problem of Britain’s lack of allies (1803-5 fighting France alone
and again 1807-8). Coalition only in 1814, producing defeat of
France; and only as a result of huge subsidies to allies (£26.5m
1813-15; GB paying for half the allied force. National debt
increased from £239m in 1792 to £861m in 1815).
• but also imperial war
– Lord Aukland 1799 ‘The security of Europe is essential to the
security of the British empire. We cannot separate them’. Henry
Dundas said the West and East Indies were ‘of infinite moment,
both in the view of humbling the power of France and with the
view of enlarging our national wealth and security’.
Redrawing the map
• Shattering and reconstruction of old empires:
Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and French
– American revolution had seen fracturing of British
empire;
– the French empire began to disintegrate in 1790s
before rising again in a new, primarily European form;
– In South America the Spanish empire began to
crumble.
• GB emerged dominant global empire
The arenas of war
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West Indies
North America
East Indies
Spanish America
India and its approaches
West Indies
• Need to defend British colonies
• Aim to deprive France of wealth – economic warfare [Dundas ‘all
modern wars are a contention of the purse’]
• Rebellion in St Domingo 1791
• GB occupied almost all French West Indies by 1794
• But 1795 France regained Guadaloupe; by 1801 Toussaint
l’Ouverture headed St Domingo after successful slave rebellion.
French attempt to regain it temporarily succeeded but 1803 French
force surrendered and Haiti became independent.
• But GB also occupied Dutch Guiana and Demarara in South
America.
• Exports of GB goods to West Indies boomed: from £2.2m in 1790-2
to £3.6m 1799-1801; imports from West Indies grew from £3.9m to
£5.1m.
• Economic success there enabled GB to defeat Napoleonic France’s
attempt at blocking trade.
North America
• 1800 Spain ceded Louisiana to France
• 1803 sold by France to America for $3m
• Americans increasingly resentful of British
naval blockades and disruption to trade;
and America had thoughts of annexing
Canada.
• 1812-14 war
Louisiana purchase
The Battle of Queenston
Heights, Oct. 1812
Burning Washington, 1814
Latin America
• Spain internally weak (Carlos IV)
• Disastrous intervention in French revolution – forced into peace in
1795 and into alliance with France in 1796, bringing it into war with
GB; Spanish fleet defeated at Trafalgar, leaving its colonies open to
attack.
• 1806 GB descent on Buenos Aries; second attack 1807 also
repulsed.
• GB therefore supported revolutionaries to subvert Spanish power.
• 1807 France seized Spain, breaking lines of communication with
South America
• 1810 saw 4 major revolts in Spanish America, but only successful in
Argentina.
• 1820s saw Spanish empire in South America collapse
• Portuguese court had fled (on French invasion in 1807) to Brazil
under GB escort, so in return GB given trading privileges there
East Indies
• Dutch supremacy there shattered by French invasion
and domination by 1795.
• Stadtholder William V fled to GB and ordered all Dutch
colonies to surrender peaceably to GB, to keep them out
of French hands (Cape of Good Hope; Trincomalee)
• Java – GB did not have enough man-power; period of
semi-independence. 1811 GB mounted force in
response to French presence there and Thomas
Stamford Raffles became Leiut-Gov, intent on
reorganising Java with view to keeping it after the war for
the East India Company (lucrative coffee!).
India – the background
• East India Company founded 1600
• 1613 established port of Surat on west coast, Madras and Calcutta.
• 1661 Bombay gained as part of marriage dowry of Catherine of
Braganza
• Silk, cotton, salt-petre, peppers and tea
• Periods of expansion:
– 1756 Calcutta attacked by Nawab of Begal and Robert Clive sent to
recover it – victory at Plassey in 1757
– 1764 defeat of combined Indian army at Buxar, and treaty of Allahabad
the following year, gave GB near sovereignty over Bengal, Bihar and
Orissa. Governor of province, with tax-raising powers.
Expansion took place vs wishes of company and parliament
– 1767 secretary of the Company ‘we do not want conquest and power; it
is commercial interest only we look for’
– 1782 Parliament passed resolution against ‘schemes of conquest’ there
Growth of Indian trade
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1697 £263,000 of imports
1712 £457,000
1744 £743,000
1748 £1,098,000
1760 £1,786,000
1763 £1,059,000
1776-80 £1,303,000
1781-5 £2,030,000
1791-5 £4,024,000
1795-1800 £4,834,000
The expansion of GB control in India:
late C18
• French presence, wars with France and
disintegrating Mughal empire allowed and
encouraged GB expansion in India
• By 1793 the French settlements in India had
been seized
• But France aided Tipu Sultan of Mysore – GB
invaded 1799 and annexed part of Mysore [Tipu
had defeated GB forces in 1779]
• North of Mysore lay the pro-French Nizam of
Deccan – he was forced to expel French troops
• The Nawab of the Carnatic had been in
negotiation with Tipu, so Carnatic also seized.
The expansion of GB control in
India: late C18
• Mq of Wellesley: ‘No greater blessing can
be conferred on the native inhabitants of
India than the extension of British
authority, influence and power’
• By 1813 GB ruled 50-60m people
The expansion of GB control in
India: late C18
• Fear of French influence with the Maratha
confederacy led to further intervention
1800-2 – GB victory under Arthur
Wellesley, future duke of Wellington. GB
forces reached Delhi.
• 1815 France regained settlements but
under strict conditions – no fortifications or
troops and recognition of East India
Company control.
Protecting the approach to India
• Malta – important staging post
• Egypt – Napoleon invaded 1798 and captured
Cairo; Nelson, battle of the Nile trapped
Napoleon there until escape in 1799.
• Mauritius – captured 1810
• Cape of Good Hope
• Ceylon – capture of Trincomalee in 1795. 1818
war led to death of 10% of population and
repression of Buddhist culture
Britain’s imperial position in1815
• GB did not keep all territorial acquisitions – Guadaloupe,
Senegal, Reunion, Martinique were returned to France;
Java and Surinam to Dutch.
• But GB colonies increased from 26 in 1793 to 43 in
1815 (Malta; Saint Lucia; Cape; Mauritius; Ceylon;
Ionian islands)
• French enthusiasm for overseas colonisation temporarily
over
• Spanish empire a husk and commercially vulnerable to
British encroachment
• Holland unable to compete with GB
British North America
• 1774 Quebec act continued system of
government without assembly and special
status given to civil law and to Catholicism
(leading to protest in London).
• 1791 act divided Canada into Anglophone
and Francophone, each with an elected
assembly and legislative council BUT
latter not responsible to former!
The Question of India
Should GB culture and governance be imposed/exported?
1784 Sir William Jones founded Asiatic Society. Belief that India was better
governed the more it was understood. Warren Hastings (governor 1772-85): ‘the
people of this country do not require our aid to furnish them with a rule for their
conduct or a standard for their property’. But Hastings also accused of accepting
bribes (part of local custom?)
1793 Permanent Settlement imposed GB law.
Rising missionary pressure. William Wilberforce urged evangelism to make converts
to Christianity – Hindu divinities were ‘absolute monsters of lust, injustice,
wickedness and cruelty’.
Charles Grant thought evangelism would boost trade: he hoped to diffuse ‘the lights
and benign influence of the truth, the blessings of a well-regulated society, the
improvements and comforts of active industry’.
GB desire to re-shape India. James Mill’s History of British India (1806) complained
that the compendium of Hindu law was disorderly.
Would exposure corrupt British virtue?
Was direct governance needed to impose
restraint on East India Company?
• 1688 enjoyed Crown support of James II;
company split into two factions, united with
parliamentary charter 1709
• With acquisition of territory came dilemma of
how to rule via a state-sponsored private
corporation (but one that acted like an
independent state).
• 1759 Clive suggested direct rule over Bengal:
‘so large a sovereignty may possibly be an
object too extensive for a mercantile company;
and it is to be feared that they are not of
themselves able, without the nation’s assistance,
to maintain so wide a dominion’.
Was direct governance needed to impose
restraint on East India Company?
• 1773 act to create Governor General with
a supreme council – first participation of
Govt in administration: Treasury and
secretary of state oversaw actions of
governor and council.
• 1784 board of commissioners to oversee
all dispatches sent to India but GB state
had no control over commercial matters
• 1793 Cornwallis Code: restricted ranks of
government to Europeans
• 1813 Company monopoly broken
South Atlantic and Pacific
exploration
• 1764 garrison Falklands islands
• 1766 Samuel Wallis landed on Tahiti
• Cook’s voyages, first to Tahiti (1769)and then to
New Zealand and east coast of Australia, 1771;
second voyage 1772-4 across Pacific. 3rd
voyage 1776-7, Hawaii, western coast of North
America
• 1787 penal colony established at Botony Bay
• 1795 London Missionary Society – 30
missionaries to Tahiti in 1796
Cook’s Three Voyages
So, was the British Empire a ‘Good thing’?
• Controversialist Niall Ferguson, Empire (2003):
‘Today, the principal barriers to an optimal allocation of labour,
capital and goods in the world are, on the one hand, civil wars and
lawless, corrupt governments – which together have condemned so
many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia to decades
of impoverishment – and, on the other, the reluctance of the United
States and her allies to practise as well as preach free trade, or to
devote more than a trifling share of their vast resources to
programmes of economic aid.
By contrast, for much (though
certainly not all) of its history, the British empire acted as an agency
for imposing free markets, the rule of law, investor protection and
relatively incorrupt government on a roughly a quarter of the world.
The empire also did a good deal to encourage those things in
countries which were outside its formal imperial domain but under its
economic influence through the 'imperialism of free trade'. Prima
facie, there therefore seems a plausible case that empire enhanced
global welfare – was, in other words, a Good Thing’.
So, was it a ‘Good thing’?
• Priyamvadha Gopal: ‘Ferguson's 'history' is a fairytale
for our times which puts the white man and his burden
back at the centre of heroic action. Colonialism - a tale of
slavery, plunder, war, corruption, land-grabbing, famines,
exploitation, indentured labour, impoverishment,
massacres, genocide and forced resettlement - is
rewritten into a benign developmental mission marred by
a few unfortunate accidents and excesses’.
• Andrew Porter: ‘Ferguson’s own ‘on-balance-beneficial’
legacy of empire offers no new insight but rather the
refurbishment of a much older conventional – some
would say Whiggish – wisdom. Far from updating our
view of empire, in highlighting the interplay of ‘liberty’
and ‘slavery’, Ferguson looks backward to an outdated
literature, and at times is consequently wide of the mark’