OSPA members should welcome this very readable book. It
considers empire objectively, accepting it as a historical fact that had
unintended consequences and affected Britain and not just the peoples governed. It
reflects upon our service and comments on the part we played with considerable
understanding, but, of course, the word 'empire' often conveys to others an
image different to the one we cherish. Now that our average age is twice that in
Britain and as much as four times that in the countries where we served, few
share even the memory of empire and our direct experience of serving it must
seem to belong to another world.
For Kwarteng, of Ghanaian parentage but born and educated in the UK, the
empire Is indeed remote, with its workings 'even more obscure, as is the long roll
of colonial governors and officials who administered it.' 'To show what the British
Empire was really like, from the point of view of the rulers, the administrators
who made it possible' he uses six case studies: Iraq, Kashmir, Burma, Sudan,
Nigeria and Hong Kong. Of these only Nigeria is mainstream empire. India was
so much more than Kashmir and Hong Kong, although colonial service
administered (demonstrating our versatility as city managers), was always
sui generis. Nevertheless, Kwarteng, an able historian as well as Tory MP, effectively demonstrates how all six countries, even Iraq with a mere twelve
years of direct British rule, have been affected by the legacy of empire, whose
afterlife lingers on in an 'eerie echo of its original character'.
He argues that among those who governed empire. Individual officials wielded
immense power and that this 'ultimately led to disorder and even chaos' There
was never a clear cut, single, central, coherent colonial policy. So, for example,
Britain deposed the ruling family in Burma in order to take it over while selling
Muslim Kashmir to a Hindu prince. In the Sudan, Sir James Robertson reversed
the Southern policy of his predecessor, Douglas Newbold. In Hong Kong, Mark
Young's attempts to move towards democracy were reversed by Alexander
Grantham. While most of us would agree with Kwarteng's comment that 'the
man on the spot was often, quite literally, the master of all he surveyed' we
would question his contention that this resulted in anarchic Individualism,
certainly at district level where imperial rule had most impact on people. There
were differences in style perhaps, but an underlying consistent aim for basic law
and order, the key to peaceful progress economically, socially and, latterly,
politically. He made me ponder whether our universal recollection of the
renowned Creech-Jones local government despatch of 1947 and the effort that
went into its implementation was indicative of effective central policy or of its
rarity? I also doubt If any of us, asked to name a single hero of empire, would
name Kitchener, Kwarteng's choice. But then who would we chose?
Kwarteng's Nigerian study is largely concerned with Lugard, indirect rule and
the dual mandate. He suggests that the key to understanding empire is the
idea of natural hierarchy, class and status integral to the policy of indirect rule.
Any notion of democracy was far from anyone's mind. While his contention is
true of the first centuries of empire (applying then in equally strong measure in
Britain) and right up to its high noon, it has little bearing on empire after the
Second World War.
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