"We Don't Do Empire..."

I’ve been sayin’ and sayin’ and sayin’….

This months History Today ( British Mag) has an awesome article in their Cross Current section, “We Don’t Do Empire” by Bernard Porter outlines the remarkable similarities between Britain’s foreign policy of the 19th century and the United States foreign policy now.

Unfortunately, the mag is loaner from my Mom, so the only online reference I can give you guys is the “Come subscribe to us” tease. You can’t even get in if you have a print subscription. But here are some of the more interesting passages (all errors in the text are probably typing errors from me). It pretty much speaks for itself.

The similarities between modern American ‘imperialism’ and the old British kind are too glaring to be ignored. Partly this arises from the fact that so much of the former is taking place in parts of the world, like Afghanistan and Iraq, where the British imperial bootprint can still be clearly seen. Even some Americans’ denial of it – ‘We don’t do empire’, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld – chimes in with certain illusions the Victorian British had. One can imagine Gladstone saying the same thing during the Midlothian election campaign of 1879, for example, or even, three years later, while British troops were on their way to Egypt to crush the uprising of Ahmed Arabi, an army officer who had overthrown the khedive.

Egypt in 1882, in fact, furnishes some quite uncanny parallels with Iraq in 2003. Britain was going in to rescue the country from tyranny and mismanagement. She had a ‘coalition’ along with her: initially, at any rate. She was acting on behalf of the international community (what Gladstone called the ‘Concert of Europe’), not – perish the thought! – her own narrow interests. She had no desire for territory, and would withdraw as soon as a ‘reformed’ government had been set up. She was foiled in that, howevere, by nationalist and Muslim fundamentalist opposition, and had to continue in Egypt for years thereafter, ruling through puppets. We don’t know if the last part is going to be repeated in the Iraq case. But the rest – with a little tweaking at the edges – seems to fit quite well.

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So: What are the similarities? We must be clear about this. There is something in the argument that America is less “imperialist” – by some definitions of that contentious word – than she might be. She certainly has no particular desire to rule other countries; to take over their governments, install her own proconsuls and gallivant around in Jodhpurs and pith helmets, lording it over the ‘natives’ in these obvious ways. She has no craving for foreign territory (apart from Military bases). This is probably what Rumsfeld, Cheney and the rest are getting at. Her ordinary people are not, on the whole imperialistic. All her leaders want to do is to make American safe from attack or rivalry, secure her vast economic interests, and – the more ambitious and magnanimous of them – spread America “values”, like freedom and democracy in the world. This is not the same as going out and conquering other nations for the sake of it.

The problem is, however, that that isn’t the only way imperialism works. It certainly wasn’t the way the nineteenth- century British empire worked. We have seen one example already: Britain’s denial of her own imperial motives for much of that century, just like America today, even while she was out “doing” empire, in effect. There are other comparisons. Nineteenth century Britain also though herself as the bees knees in terms of both material prosperity and liberal progress and she was anxious to spread both in the world. She was (or claimed to be) benevolent in her intentions. She talked a lot about “freeing people”. This is certainly not an ‘exceptional’ attribute of the United States. She also saw nothing ‘imperialist’ about defending her vital economic interests in the world (the Suez Canal in the Egyptian case) and pushing free trade. The great majority of her people were probably no more imperialistic than modern middle Americans are. When she took over other countries, it was usually reluctantly, after all other measures had failed, and ruling through puppets, as in Egypt. This doesn’t look so very different from what the American are doing today. Even on Gladstone’s own terms – and it is possible to be cynical about these as it is about America’s motives – all historians count this as imperialism in Britain’s case. Future historians will probably come to the same verdict about present-day America.

There are other similarities. Both imperialisms had cynical and self-serving motives as well as honorable ones. Some of these were Identical – like oil. Racism, evangelism, ‘masculinsm’ and violence played a part in both. Many of the problems each country met with in the course of its global expansion were similar: foreign threats, sometimes requiring “preemptive strikes”; ‘failed states’; and the rise of religious – specifically Muslim – fundamentalism. So were the ideologies that supported and opposed the spread of empire: there were in the late nineteenth-century clear echoes of “Straussianism”, the philosophy attached to the name of the late political theorist Leo Strauss that is supposed to lie behind the more extreme forms of modern American expansionism; and anti-imperialist ideology that has scarcely changed since J.A. Hobson published his economic critiques of empire in 1902. One interesting incidental coincidence is many of the late nineteenth century imperialist ideaolgues came from outside Britain originally, just as many of Americans modern imperialists, including Leo Strauss and Niall Ferguson, were, or are, immigrants and expatriates. Both Empires provoked similar resentments in the outside world. Many people reading about nineteenth century British imperialism from today’s vantage point, in fact, will be struck by these coincidences which are far greater and more numerous than those between the American and any other empire in history.

There are differences too. We have already mentioned the ‘territorial’ one. It is arguable, however, that some of the other make modern America seem more imperialist than nineteenth-century Britain, not less. She is certainly more dominating than Britain ever was, for example, even in relative terms. Britain was never a lone superpower and never had the overwhelming military might America possesses today. She was also probably less militaristic than the present day America. This makes a difference to the United States perception, at and rate, at what can be achieved through brute force.

I’d love to type the entire article and may do so over time if I can obtain permission (I’m sure there’s a copyright law to cover that), but it’s quite excellent. He makes some pro-aristocracy cultural observations which I don’t totally agree with, but over all his observations are scarily spot on, including his conclusion:

Then, of course, there is the ultimate lesson: Every previous empire has ‘declined and fallen’. This seems to be the iron law of empires. British imperialists of the late nineteenth century, all weaned on Gibbon (Blogger’s note: Of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire fame), used to think they could buck it by being ‘uniquely magnanimous’, just like the Americans profess their own foreign interventions to be. It did not work for them (Blogger’s note: Or the French, or the Spanish, or the Dutch, or the Soviets, the Alexandrian Greeks, or… etc., etc. etc.) It may not work (Blogger’s note: probably won’t!) for the Americans. This could be the reason why may of the overtly expansionist of them – the Straussians, for example – avoid the “I word” so assiduously. Rather like the name of ‘the Scottish Play’, it carries a curse with it.

And that's another thing. It seems that many Americans, including our current administration, cannot see that political and economic dominance move in cycles. Once upon a time, the ancient Sumerians were on top. Their empire fell and collapsed. Once upon a time the Romans were on top. Their empire fell and collapsed. Once upon a time the British were on top. Their empire fell but they did not completely collapse as their country of origin survived, though not nearly the economic powerhouse that it was. "I am Oyzamdias, King of Kings..." We’re on top right now and if we do not plan for the fall, if we do not stop repeating the mistakes other civilizations/cultures have made, we could find ourselves in a world of hurt.