An example will suffice. After the split over the question of repealing the Corn Laws in the year 1846, the Conservative Party in England, reconstituted around Stanley, Bentinck, and Disraeli, was in an extremely difficult situation. During long years of unbroken dominance, ever since the Napoleonic wars, it had at bottom lacked even a single positive plank in its platform. Its entire program may be summarized in the word “No!”1 Its best heads soon recognized that they could get away with such a policy in wartime, but not under normal circumstances. Canning was the first to grasp this truth, and it was he who created that highest type of Conservative policy which consists in refusing to shrink from the great necessities of the day, and instead seizes upon them realistically and constructs Conservative successes on what would otherwise have become Conservative defeats. One of his two great accomplishments was his struggle for national freedom throughout the world—a struggle that created a background of international good will that was to mean so much in the future; the Catholic emancipation was the other. When Peel moved up to leadership, he could not follow the same policy, for his followers would have rebelled. He chose to fight against electoral reform, which played into the hands of the Whigs under Lord Grey and helped them to their long rule. Yet at the height of his power (1842-1846) Peel did conduct himself in the spirit of Canning. He made the cause of free trade his own. The great undertaking succeeded—an accomplishment I have always regarded as the greatest of its kind in the history of domestic politics. Its fruits were a sharp rise in prosperity, sustained social peace, sound foreign relations. But the Conservative Party was wrecked in the process. Those who remained loyal to Peel—the Peelites—first formed a special group, only to be absorbed by the legions of Liberalism later on. Those who seceded formed the new Conservative Party, for the time being essentially agrarian in character. But they lacked a platform that would have attracted a majority, a banner to be flung to the breezes of popular favor, a leader whom they trusted. That was shown after the death of Lord George Bentinck, who at least had been a convinced partisan of the Corn Laws; and it was shown especially in 1852 when the chances of the parliamentary game put Stanley (by then Lord Derby) and Disraeli in the saddle. To strengthen their minority—they could not hope for a majority—they dissolved Parliament. But in the ensuing election campaign they were so unsure of their cause that their opponents were able to claim with some justification that Derby candidates were protectionist in rural districts and free trade in urban ones. It could scarcely have been otherwise, for it was not hard to see that a return to the Corn Laws was out of the question, while the Conservative Party had nothing else to offer to the hard core of its followers. Failure was inevitable under such circumstances, nor was it long delayed. Thus when Disraeli picked up the reins a second time, once again with a minority (1858-1859), he ventured along a different course. He usurped the battle cry of electoral reform. This was a plausible policy from the Conservative point of view. An extension of the franchise was bound to give a voice to population segments that, for the time being at least, were more susceptible to Conservative arguments than the bourgeoisie which did not begin to swing over to the Conservative side until the seventies. At first Disraeli failed, but in 1866-1867 he succeeded all the better. Again in the minority, facing the latent hostility of his own people, reviled as no English statesman had been since Bute and North, beset with problems on every side, he yet revolutionized the electoral law—an unparalleled triumph of political genius. Disraeli fell, but in the midst of disaster the essence of victory was his. True, it was Gladstone’s hour. All the forces and voices of victory fought for him. But as early as 1873 it was plain that the meteoric career of his first cabinet—or his second, if he be counted the actual head of Russell’s cabinet—was drawing to a close. Reform legislation always brings in its wake a renascence of conservative sentiment. The Conservative election success of 1874 was more and more clearly foreshadowed. And what program did Disraeli, the Conservative leader, have to offer? The people did not ask for much in a positive way. They wanted a breathing space. Criticism of Gladstone’s acts was highly rewarding under the circumstances. Yet some positive policy had to be offered. What would it be?
The Conservative leader spoke of social reform. Actually he was only reverting to Conservative traditions (Ashley) which he himself had helped to shape in earlier years. Besides, such a policy might split off a few radicals from Gladstone’s camp. A certain kinship between the Conservatives and the radicals was of long standing—did not, in fact, cease, until the radicals had got the better of the Whigs within the Liberal Party. But the situation was unfavorable for “Tory democracy.” For the moment, Gladstone had done more than enough in this field. The slogans were shopworn. There was prosperity. The working people turned every official trip of Gladstone’s into a triumphal procession. No, there was little capital to be made on that score. It was no better with the Irish question—the cause of the Ulstermen and the High Church. In this predicament Disraeli struck a new note. The election campaign of 1874—or, to fix the date exactly, Disraeli’s speech in the Crystal Palace in 1872—marked the birth of imperialism as the catch phrase of domestic policy.
It was put in the form of “Imperial Federation.” The colonies—of which Disraeli in 1852 had written: “These wretched colonies . . . are a millstone round our necks” (Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, p. 343)—these same colonies were to become autonomous members in a unified empire. This empire was to form a customs union. The free soil of the colonies was to remain reserved for Englishmen. A uniform defense system was to be created. The whole structure was to be crowned by a central representative organ in London, creating a closer, living connection between the imperial government and the colonies. The appeal to national sentiment, the battle cry against “Liberal” cosmopolitanism, already emerged sharply, just as they did later on in the agitation sponsored by Chamberlain, on whom fell Disraeli’s mantle. Of itself the plan showed no inherent tendency to reach out beyond the “Empire,” and “the Preservation of the Empire” was and is a good description of it. If we nevertheless include the “Imperial Federation” plan under the heading of imperialism, this is because its protective tariff, its militarist sentiments, its ideology of a unified “Greater Britain” all foreshadowed vague aggressive trends that would have emerged soon enough if the plan had ever passed from the sphere of the slogan into the realm of actual policy.
That it was not without value as a slogan is shown by the very fact that a man of Chamberlain’s political instinct took it up—characteristically enough in another period, when effective Conservative rallying cries were at a premium. Indeed, it never vanished again, becoming a stock weapon in the political arsenal of English Conservatism, usurped even by many Liberals. As early as the nineties it meant a great deal to the youth of Oxford and Cambridge. It played a leading part in the Conservative press and at Conservative rallies. Commercial advertising grew very fond of employing its emblems—which explains why it was so conspicuous to foreign (and usually superficial) observers, and why there was so much discussion in the foreign press about “British Imperialism,” a topic, moreover, that was most welcome to many political parties on the Continent. This success is readily explained. In the first place, the plan had much to offer to a whole series of special interests—primarily a protective tariff and the prospect of lucrative opportunities for exploitation, inaccessible to industry under a system of free trade. Here was the opportunity to smother consumer resistance in a flood of patriotic enthusiasm. Later on, this advantage weighed all the more heavily in the balance, for certain English industries were beginning to grow quite sensitive to the dumping tactics employed by German and American exporters. Of equal importance was the fact that such a plan was calculated to divert the attention of the people from social problems at home. But the main thing, before which all arguments stemming from calculating self-interest must recede into the background, was the unfailing power of the appeal to national sentiment. No other appeal is as effective, except at a time when the people happen to be caught in the midst of flaming social struggle. All other appeals are rooted in interests that must be grasped by reason. This one alone arouses the dark powers of the subconscious, calls into play instincts that carry over from the life habits of the dim past. Driven out everywhere else, the irrational seeks refuge in nationalism—the irrational which consists of belligerence, the need to hate, a goodly quota of inchoate idealism, the most naive (and hence also the most unrestrained) egotism. This is precisely what constitutes the impact of nationalism. It satisfies the need for surrender to a concrete and familiar super-personal cause, the need for self-glorification and violent self-assertion. Whenever a vacuum arises in the mind of a people—as happens especially after exhausting social agitation, or after a war—the nationalist element comes to the fore. The idea of “Imperial Federation” gave form and direction to these trends in England. It was, in truth, a fascinating vision which was unfolded before the provincial mind. An additional factor was a vague faith in the advantages of colonial possessions, preferably to be exploited to the exclusion of all foreigners. Here we see ancient notions still at work. Once upon, a time it had been feasible to treat colonies in the way that highwaymen treat their victims, and the possession of colonies unquestionably brought advantages. Trade had been possible only under immediate military protection and there could be no question that military bases were necessary.2 It is because of the survival of such arguments that colonialism is not yet dead, even in England today, though only in exceptional circumstances do colonies under free trade become objects of exploitation in a sense different from that in which independent countries can be exploited. And finally, there is the instinctive urge to domination. Objectively, the man in the street derives little enough satisfaction even from modern English colonial policy, but he does take pleasure in the idea, much as a card player vicariously satisfies his primitive aggressive instincts. At the time of the Boer War there was not a beggar in London who did not speak of “our” rebellious subjects. These circumstances, in all their melancholy irony, are serious factors in politics. They eliminate many courses of action that alone seem reasonable to the leaders. Here is an example: In 1815 the Ionian Islands became an English protectorate, not to be surrendered until 1863. Long before then, however, one foreign secretary after another had realized that this possession was meaningless and untenable—not in the absolute sense, but simply because no reasonable person in England would have approved of the smallest sacrifice on its behalf. Nevertheless, none dared surrender it, for it was clear that this would have appeared as a loss and a defeat, chalked up against the cabinet in question. The only thing to do was to insist that Corfu was a military base of the highest importance which must be retained. Now, during his first term as head of the government, Gladstone had frequently made concessions—to Russia, to America, to others. At bottom everyone was glad that he had made them. Yet an uncomfortable feeling persisted, together with the occasion for much speech-making about national power and glory. The political genius who headed the opposition party saw all this—and spoke accordingly.
That this imperialism is no more than a phrase is seen from the fact that Disraeli spoke, but did not act. But this alone is not convincing. After all, he might have lacked the opportunity to act. The crucial factor is that he did have the opportunity. He had a majority. He was master of his people as only an English prime minister can be. The time was auspicious. The people had lost patience with Gladstone’s peace-loving nature. Disraeli owed his success in part to the slogan we have been discussing. Yet he did not even try to follow through. He took not a single step in that direction. He scarcely even mentioned it in his speeches, once it had served his purpose. His foreign policy moved wholly within the framework of Conservative tradition. For this reason it was pro-Austrian and pro-Turkish. The notion that the integrity of Turkey was in the English interest was still alive, not yet overthrown by the power of Gladstone’s Midlothian speeches which were to change public opinion on this point and later, under Salisbury, invade even the Conservative credo. Hence the new Earl of Beaconsfield supported Turkey, hence he tore up the Treaty of San Stefano. Yet even this, and the capture of Cyprus, were of no avail. A tide of public indignation toppled his rule soon afterward.3
We can see that Beaconsfield was quite right in not taking a single step in the direction of practical imperialism and that his policy was based on good sense. The masses of the British electorate would never have sanctioned an imperialist policy, would never have made sacrifices for it. As a toy, as a political arabesque, they accepted imperialism, just so long as no one tried it in earnest. This is seen conclusively when the fate of Chamberlain’s agitation is traced. Chamberlain was unquestionably serious. A man of great talent, he rallied every ounce of personal and political power, marshaled tremendous resources, organized all the interests that stood to gain, employed a consummate propaganda technique—all this to the limits of the possible. Yet England rejected him, turning over the reins to the opposition by an overwhelming majority. It condemned the Boer War, did everything in its power to “undo” it, proving that it was merely a chance aberration from the general trend.4 So complete was the defeat of imperialism that the Conservatives under Bonar Law, in order to achieve some degree of political rehabilitation, had to strike from their program the tariffs on food imports, necessarily the basis for any policy of colonial preference.
The rejection of imperialism meant the rejection of all the interests and arguments on which the movement was based. The elements that were decisive for the formation of political will power—above all the radicals and gradually the labor representatives as well—showed little enthusiasm for the ideology of world empire. They were much more inclined to give credence to the Disraeli of 1852, who had compared colonies to millstones, than to the Disraeli of 1874, to the Chamberlain of the eighties rather than the Chamberlain of 1903. They showed not the least desire to make presents to agriculture, whether from national or other pretexts, at the expense of the general welfare. They were far too well versed in the free-trade argument—and this applies to the very lowest layers of the English electorate—to believe the gloomy prophecies of the “yellow press,” which insisted that free trade was sacrificing to current consumer interests employment opportunities and the very roots of material welfare. After all, the rise of British export trade after 1900 belied this argument as plainly as could be. Nor had they any sympathy for military splendor and adventures in foreign policy. The whole struggle served only to demonstrate the utter impotence of jingoism. The question of “objective interest”—that is, whether and to what extent there is an economic interest in a policy of imperialism—remains to be discussed.5 Here we are concerned only with those political notions that have proved effective—whether they were false or true.
What effect the present war will have in this respect remains to be seen. For our purposes what has still to be shown is how this anti-imperialist sentiment—and especially anti-imperialism in practice—developed in England. In the distant past England did have imperialist tendencies, just as most other nations did. The process that concerns us now begins with the moment when the struggle between the people and the crown ended differently in England from the way it did on the Continent—namely, with the victory of the people. Under the Tudors and Stuarts the absolute monarchy developed in England much as it did at the same time on the Continent. Specifically, the British Crown also succeeded in winning over part of the nobility, the “cavaliers,” who subsequently sided with it against the “roundheads” and who, but for the outcome of the battles of Naseby and Marston Moor, would surely have become a military palace guard.6 Presumably England, too, would then have seen the rise of an arbitrary military absolutism, and the same tendencies which we shall discover elsewhere would have led to continual wars of aggression there too. That is why the defeat of the king and his party represent so decisive a juncture for our subject, a break in continuity. For by way of Charles I’s scaffold, of Cromwell, of the Restoration, and of the events of 1688, the way led to freedom—at first, it is true, to the freedom of only one class, even to the dominance of a privileged class. But this was a class that could maintain its position only because—and so long as—it assumed leadership of those segments of the population which counted in politics—the urban population (even those without the franchise had ways of making themselves felt), yeomen, farmers, clerics, and “intellectuals.” It was a class, in other words, that very soon had to learn how to behave like a candidate for public office. It might on occasion depart from such an attitude, but each time it paid dearly. The crown might seek to intervene, but each time such an effort ended in a more or less humiliating setback. The electorate may have been very narrowly circumscribed, but the ruling class depended on it—and even more on public opinion—much as on the Continent it was dependent on the monarch. And that made a great difference. In particular, it turned foreign policy into something altogether different from what it was on the Continent. The entire motivation of continental monarchial policy gave way to something different. This does not mean that a policy made by the monarch and his courtiers was impossible—it merely became one of many factors. It had to curry favor, was strictly controlled, and, if it transcended the formulated will of a party that commanded a sufficiently powerful segment of the public, always succumbed in the end to a storm which no minister’s nerves could stand up to.7 From that time on, secret diplomacy in England survived only in the literal sense—in the sense that a circle of professionals rallied around the man responsible for foreign policy, a circle that was susceptible to irresponsible influences of various kinds and often, in ways that were obscure to the public, acted in a manner that would never have been approved, had the true facts of the matter become known. But there was no secret diplomacy in the deeper sense, no circle that was able, in secret, to determine the whole course of foreign policy, as the councilors of a continental sovereign could. As soon as the results of their actions came to light, British statesmen were subject to the verdict of Parliament and of public opinion, which were able to mete out punishment where they did not approve. This made foreign policy part and parcel of partisan politics, the concern of the people who mattered in a political sense.
It is important to grasp the full implications of these facts. The parties succeeded each other in power, and each one had different aims and policies. One might declare war and wage it victoriously, only to be brought down by the other, which might at once conclude peace and surrender some of the gains which had been won. One might enter into alliances which the other would dissolve. One might bask in national glory, while the other would calculate the costs to the people. In this way England, since 1688, has lacked an unbroken, planned political line. If there was the appearance of such a thing, it was only the consequence of the fact that certain iron necessities prevailed in the face of all deliberate efforts to escape them; in part, also, the consequence of biased interpretation. True, even the policies of continental states were not necessarily governed by strict logic. But in the case of the advisers of such sovereigns the driving forces, interests, traditions, and motivations behind policies were firmly fixed. They brought a certain consistency to the whole picture, while in England it was precisely the driving forces and interests that so frequently alternated. There was only one point on which the parties were always in agreement. This was to prevent the rise of a professional army; and when that rise had become unavoidable, to keep the army as small as possible and prevent it from growing into a separate occupational estate with independent power and distinct interests. This element always worked in the same direction: it served to eliminate any factor that might have continually pressed for aggression.
We see this even at the outset of the new era. A peace party as such arose at once, and has persisted ever since, to act as a brake on any policy of aggression. At first it consisted of the Tories, the clerical party, the small landowners, the yeomen, the farmers. All of them wanted to go riding and hunting, or till the soil, in peace. They looked on all war as sheer Whig deviltry. European policies and overseas struggles were matters of supreme indifference to them, which was not at all true of the tax burden which at that time fell primarily on them.
The Whigs, for their part, were all the more belligerent. They were the party of the great lords on the one hand, and the City on the other. For, in the first place, colonial possessions at that time really meant more than they do today. War was then still something it has no longer been since about the time of the French Revolution—good business. Again—and this is something that is overlooked unbelievably often—it behooved the Whigs to defend the newly won freedom—and with it their own position—against unquestionable aggressive intentions on the part of France. Finally, it was up to them to hold those national positions throughout the world that had been captured by their individual co-nationals rather than by the state as such.
These last two factors make it appear doubtful whether it is proper to speak of eighteenth-century English imperialism in our sense. At the very least, it would be a very special imperialism, quite different from the continental brand. As in the case of Spain, England at first merely defended itself against France. True, the defense was so successful that it passed over into conquest. And it is also true that appetite appeared in the eating. The first of our three factors certainly supported any and every predisposition toward war. The wars of that period were commercial wars, among other things, but to describe them only as commercial wars is simply historically untrue—for the French as well as the English side of the question. It is noteworthy, furthermore, that it was not the English state that conquered the colonial empire. Usually the state intervened in a protective capacity—generally with extreme reluctance and under duress—only when a colony was already in existence. More than that, it cannot even be said that it was “the people” who conquered the whole empire, that the leading men embarked on conquest to the plaudits of the public. The conquerors were of an altogether different stripe—adventurers who were unable to find a solid footing at home, or men driven into exile. In the latter case there was the simple necessity for finding a new home. In the former it was a question of elements who, on the Continent, would have joined the armies of the sovereigns and vented their belligerent instincts on their own people or on some other European state. Since England had no sovereign who could have hired or paid them, they ventured out into the world and waged war on their own—“private imperialists,” as it were. But the people refused to go along. No one was more unpopular than the slave trader, or the “nabob” who returned with his pockets full of plundered gold. Only with great effort could such a man secure social position. The public attitude toward him was similar to the reaction toward “war profiteers” nowadays. As often as not, he was haled into court. But of course it is true that every war creates groups interested in that war. Armaments always create a predisposition toward war. And every war is father to another war.
England’s attitude toward revolutionary France, like that of the continental states, was doubtless in part determined by lust for booty. But that attitude is seen in its true light only when it is compared with the character of the rule of the younger Pitt before the French Revolution. That character was most clearly expressed in the French Treaty of 1786. Pitt was a typical minister of peace. It was to peace, free trade, and the dissolution of mercantilism that England aspired under his leadership. Thus the English attitude toward the France of the Revolution and of Napoleon must be understood as a departure from the prior trend rather than as a step along that line of evolution.8 The period that followed showed that the Napoleonic wars were but an interlude. At first, England followed in the wake of the Holy Alliance,9 which was anything but imperialist. And the earliest stirrings of an independent policy—in Huskisson’s campaign for free trade—were linked to Pitt’s prerevolutionary principles. As for Canning, his Greek policy struck a new note which, as we can see today, was intimately linked with free-trade trends and which may be summarized in the single word: anti-imperialism.
The two great parties, Tories and Whigs, maintained the foreign policy positions that have been indicated about as long as they did their names, to about 1840. Even the last typical Whig foreign ministers (and prime ministers), Palmerston and Russell, were “activist” in character. Yet all that was really left to them was the old bias, for the actual direction of their “activism” was forced on them by changed circumstances. They intervened everywhere in the world, generally in a challenging tone, ready to throw out military threats. They defended even unimportant interests with aggressive vigor—the classic expression of this aspect of their policy is Lord Palmerston’s Civis Romanus speech of 1850. Toward the colonies, they stressed the claim of the central power to submission. But the people compelled them, first, to give a wide berth to what is called “economic imperialism”—a matter we have yet to discuss. Both were or became free traders. Both fought against the slave labor. And the people compelled them, second, to act on behalf of national liberation and against oppression, misgovernment, and imperialism, whenever they transcended England’s immediate sphere of interests. This they did, and thus these men, whose political genealogy certainly had its roots elsewhere, became advocates of national, political, and religious self-determination throughout the world.10 It has become the custom to describe this as “hypocrisy.” But we are not at all concerned with the individual motives of these two statesmen. Suppose they were hypocrites, in the subjective sense—though it is far from easy for anyone to pretend a whole life long. Suppose this policy was mainly determined by the realization that it would open up to England inexhaustible resources of power and sympathy—which was what actually happened. The point that concerns us is that their policy was the only one that was tenable in England, in the parliamentary sense, that it was a means for winning political victories at home. It follows that it must have been in accord with the true intentions of the “important people” and, beyond them, of the masses. And the masses are never hypocritical.
It is not difficult to find an explanation. Moral progress is here directly linked with the “conditions of production.” The sociological meaning of the process lies in the relationship between this policy and contemporary free-trade trends. The interests of trade and everyday life in England had turned pacifist, and the process of social restratification that marked the Industrial Revolution brought these interests to the fore. It was a process that only now bore all of its political fruits, and the interests it carried to the top were those of industry, in contradistinction to those of the trade monopolists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The principles of free trade were now carried to victory by Sir Robert Peel’s Conservatives and later accepted even by Disraeli’s new party. This was the original occasion for that “regrouping” of forces behind the political parties that ultimately led the industrial-capitalist class (including the banking fraternity) and almost the entire high aristocracy into the Conservative camp, while Liberalism became more and more the party of the Nonconformists and intellectuals—except for most clerics and lawyers—and, for a time, of working-class interests as well. And it was the great ministry of Sir Robert Peel that inaugurated, with complete logic, the policy that, despite many relapses into former habits, has become more and more the policy of England; a policy adopted by the Liberal Party through the instrumentality of Gladstone and under the influence of the rising power of the radicals, while the opposing trends gathered under the Conservative banner; a policy that for the first time seriously applied the full consequences of free trade,11 emancipating itself from the old notions of the tasks of diplomacy; a policy that may be summarized under the following principles: never to intervene, unless vital interests are gravely and immediately threatened; never to be concerned about the “balance of power” on the Continent; not to arm for war; to reduce, by means of understandings, those areas of friction with other spheres of interest that were particularly extensive because of the lack of planning in the global structure of empire; to relieve tension and conflict by appropriate yielding, to the point where the remaining British sphere would be at least halfway tenable. That policy encountered immense difficulties in the acquired habits of political thought and emotional reaction, in concrete situations taken over from earlier times, in individual interests, and above all in the fact that championing it in Parliament in each case was generally a thankless task, offering ready-made points of attack to the opposition. Nevertheless, in spite of all aberrations, it prevailed time and again, because it was in accord with the objective interests of the politically important segments of the population, including, after the eighties, above all the industrial workers. From Peel to Lansdowne and Grey, it continually reasserted itself, like the level of a storm-tossed ocean.
We see therefore that the imperialist wave that in recent decades has been beating against the mainland of social evolution in England did not rise from the true depths of that evolution but was rather a temporary reaction of political sentiment and of threatened individual interests. Aggressive nationalism (to which we shall revert), the instincts of dominance and war derived from the distant past and alive down to the present—such things do not die overnight. From time to time they seek to come into their own, all the more vigorously when they find only dwindling gratifications within the social community. But where, as in England, there is a lack of sufficiently powerful interests with which those trends might ally themselves, an absence of warlike structural elements in the social organization, there they are condemned to political impotence. War may call them back to life, even lead to a more closely knit organization of the country, one that appears more aggressive toward the outside. But it cannot alter the basis of social and political structure. Even in England imperialism will remain a plaything of politics for a long time to come. But in terms of practical politics, there is no room left for it there—except possibly as a means for defense—nor any support among the real powers behind the policies of the day.12