Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (13 page)

This puzzle should not distract us from other, equally interesting elements of the book. There is a very striking passage near the beginning in which he reflects on the disparity between the noble aspirations of imperialists and the sordid realities that arose when attempts were made to put them into practice: ‘The inevitable gap between conquest and dominion becomes filled with the figures of the greedy trader, the inopportune missionary, the ambitious soldier, and the lying speculator, who disquiet the minds of the conquered and excite the sordid appetites of the conquerors.’ His way of reconciling himself to this problem was simply to assert that, nonetheless, the desire to conquer was an innate and healthy part of the human condition.
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Such reflections, together with Churchill’s sensitive portrayals of General Gordon and even of the Mahdi, show that he was not content merely to churn out the standard imperial propaganda. Again, some reviewers approved.
¹³⁹
Churchill rejected the idea – and here was a contrast with his writings on the frontier revolt – that the original Mahdist rebellion had simply been a product of fanaticism. In his opinion, the Sudanese had had legitimate grievances against Egyptian rule. He also denied that the reconquest had been fought either to avenge Gordon – a popular view – or to ‘chastise the wickedness of the Dervishes’. Rather, its justification was simple: ‘Certain savage men had invaded the Egyptian territories, had killed their inhabitants and their guardians, and had possessed themselves of the land. In due course it became convenient, as well as desirable, to expel these intruders and reoccupy these territories.’
¹⁴⁰
This explanation begged a number of questions – were the Egyptians themselves not intruders in the Sudan? – but it was seen at the time as refreshingly lacking in cant.
¹⁴¹

Churchill’s description of his hopes for the future of the Sudan is revealing of his conception of the link between empire, race and economic development. He suggested that after the war, as the population of the country gradually recovered, pressure on land and the local inhabitants’ demand for the products of civilization would bring the less fertile areas into cultivation. As a result, the condition of the people would gradually improve and they would – over a very extensive period – experience biological and cultural evolution. Their ‘type and intelligence’ would improve and their ideals and morality would become purer and less degraded. (Churchill confessed himself unable to explain why they should be obliged to toil and not stay ‘contented, if degraded’; but he argued that proof that there was no such obligation would amount to ‘a very good case for universal suicide’.)
¹⁴²
The book thus married the belief that non-white races were
currently
inferior with the conviction that they had the potential to advance in the future and deserved guidance, in the form of British rule, towards that end. Admittedly, it would not be easy to attract to the Sudan the kind of men who could give that guidance. Churchill conceded that a proportion of British officers were adherents of ‘what is known as “the damned nigger” theory’. But, he claimed, this view almost always disappeared as soon as the officers realized that their honour was dependent on the condition of the people under their control being satisfactory.
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Empire, therefore, helped improve the rulers as well as the ruled. Defenders of Churchill’s racial attitudes correctly point out that throughout his career he often spoke up for the welfare of indigenous peoples. His humanitarianism did not imply a belief in racial equality, though, but rather accompanied a conviction that ‘degraded’ races were susceptible to improvement over the very long run.

Success in the Sudan helped the government recover ground it had lost over the Indian frontier uprisings. The unequivocal military victory reminded people of Gladstone’s humiliation over Gordon’s death, and divided the opposition. The Liberals split between those such as John Morley, who were sceptical of what they saw as a policy of indefinite imperial expansion, and those such as Sir Edward Grey, who held that the expedition had been necessary. At the same time the government sent a clear message to the other great powers. It dramatically faced down France, who had sent a force to Fashoda on the Upper Nile to lay claim to a vast tract of territory; for a time, until France retreated, it seemed that war might break out. (Churchill described the French actions as a ‘vile intrigue’.)
¹⁴⁴
All this generated British self-confidence – what Churchill called the ‘Imperial spark’.
¹⁴⁵
If the Sudan had impressed on him some of the darker aspects of Empire, it had not shaken his fundamental faith in its civilizing mission. He remained optimistically certain – as he had put it in
The Story of the Malakand Field Force
– that the credulity and fanaticism of indigenous peoples could be driven from the earth ‘under the combined influences of Rationalism and machine guns’.
¹⁴⁶
But Britain’s next war, in South Africa, was to demonstrate that imperial optimism could easily verge into hubris.

3

A CONVENIENT WAY OF SEEING THE EMPIRE, 1899–1901

On-board ship after his landmark conference with Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta in February 1945, Churchill fell to reminiscing about the Boer War, as he often did when he was in a good mood. ‘That was before war degenerated’, he said. ‘It was great fun galloping about.’
¹
At the close of a world war in which millions had been killed, such nostalgia for the supposedly more ‘sporting’ warfare of times past was understandable, but it did not do justice to the brutal realities of the South African conflict. At the time, moreover, Churchill had approached that war, not only with the spirit of adventure, but with a strong sense of political commitment as well. The war not only cemented his reputation as an Empire journalist,
²
it was also a formative ideological moment for him, as his initial hostility to the rebellious Boers was much tempered by his experience as their temporary captive. Of course, the boyish nature of his initial enthusiasm for the war should not be underplayed. In the autumn of 1899, as Britain and the Boer republics headed for the precipice, he wrote to Lord Curzon that he was heading to cover the likely conflict as correspondent of the
Morning Post
. He observed: ‘It is a convenient way of seeing the Empire and perhaps a memorable war, without any personal expense.’
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I

The war had been a long time in the making. The 1881 British defeat at Majuba Hill – in which the Boers of the Transvaal won back their autonomy – had been viewed by many as a national humiliation. The uneasy peace that followed was broken in 1895 by the so-called Jameson Raid – a pathetically botched attempt to stir up a rebellion by British settlers (known as ‘Outlanders’ or ‘Uitlanders’) in the Transvaal. In later years, Churchill came to see the raid as a ‘fountain of ill’, but admitted that, at twenty-one, he had been all for it.
⁴
His sense of frustration at its failure was reflected in an article he wrote in its aftermath called ‘Our Account with the Boers’, which has never been published in full. He portrayed the Boers as an intractable people, stubbornly opposed to the progress of mankind. One part of his indictment of them was their maltreatment of the African population. He placed much more emphasis, however, on the position of the Uitlanders. They, having moved to the Transvaal in growing numbers in pursuit of its gold wealth, were denied full political rights; the Boer government understandably feared that to grant them would be a step towards British domination. Churchill, interestingly, did not rage against the oppression of the Uitlanders; he claimed that in due course they would inevitably gain direction of the Transvaal government, regardless of what Britain did. ‘But if they obtain that power without British aid, they will owe no debt to the Empire, and they will bear it no loyalty.’ In that case they would lose their British identity, and seize the leadership of an ‘African United States’, to which the British-dominated Cape Colony would be ‘at best but a Canada’. Britain’s power and prestige would thus be weakened, unless it was
seen to act
in the interests of its fellow-countrymen. ‘
Imperial
aid must redress the wrongs of the Outlanders’, he wrote; ‘
Imperial
troops must curb the insolence of the Boers’ (emphasis added). Sooner or later, he concluded, whether in ‘a righteous cause or a picked quarrel’, Britain would have to fight.
⁵
In May 1899, in a speech in Cardiff, he suggested that a military solution would be no worse than removing an aching tooth: there would be ‘a wrench, a little blood’ and the pain would be over. There was, he said, ‘a limit to our patience, and the end was not far off’.
⁶
Such remarks certainly cast doubt on his claim, made during the 1900 general election, that he had ‘nearly’ been ‘a peace-at-any price man up to the time of the declaration of the war’.
⁷

By the summer of 1899, the British seemed ready to pick a fight. Uitlander grievances formed the pretext for much self-righteous posturing by Salisbury’s government, while the Boers remained intransigent. The build-up to war provided the backdrop to Churchill’s first election campaign. In June, soon after his final return from India, he was selected to fight a by-election at Oldham. This was a two-member constituency, previously represented by two Tories, of whom one had died and one retired. Churchill’s fellow Conservative candidate was James Mawdsley, a prominent local trade unionist. It was an implausible pairing, but it allowed the correspondent of the
Yorkshire Post
to claim that Conservatism and the workers were walking hand-in-hand in the persons of the ‘Imperialistic’ Churchill and the ‘democratic’ Mawdsley.
⁸
The staunchly Tory
Oldham Daily Standard
gave a fulsome account of how, at one of their meetings, they asked to be allowed ‘to work for the expansion of our glorious Empire [. . .] and to devote the talent that heaven has given them for the benefit of humanity’.
⁹
The Liberal
Oldham Evening Chronicle
, by contrast, poured scorn on Churchill’s credentials. ‘He has scampered across the Soudan with the Kitchener campaign and returned with a consuming desire to enter Parliament’, it scoffed. ‘This experience might have qualified him as member for the Nile division of the Soudan, but it is hardly a reason why he should come and ask Oldham electors to make a member of Parliament of him.’
¹⁰
One of the Liberal candidates, Walter Runciman, criticized Churchill for his ‘swashbucklering’ habits. He smartly replied that the Lancashire Fusiliers had fought at Omdurman. ‘They would hardly like their member [of Parliament] to welcome home a Lancashire regiment by saying they had been “swashbucklering” about the world.’
¹¹

This first Churchillian electoral battle has been imperfectly understood by historians. It is often discussed as though it was dominated by religion – doubtless because it was this aspect that a rueful Churchill emphasized in his memoirs.
¹²
During the campaign he was persuaded by his supporters to declare his opposition to the government’s Clerical Tithes Bill, which was unpopular with local Nonconformist voters. As he quickly realized, such opportunism did him no great favours either with the voters or with his party’s leaders. At least as important, though, were imperial questions.
¹³
Churchill declared that the Empire was no ‘weary titan’ but emphasized that if Britain was to keep it ‘we must have an Imperial stock’. This required a free, well-fed and well-educated population: ‘That is why we are in favour of social reform.’ (The Tory commitment to social reform was genuine, but rather limited in practical terms.) ‘The Radicals would have no Empire at all’, he claimed. ‘We would have one, and let all share the glory.’
¹⁴
Yet in spite of his attempts to paint his opponents as Little Englanders, this was no straightforward contest between pro- and anti-imperialists. Rather, the two sides both supported imperialism but interpreted it in different ways. Alfred Emmott, Runciman’s running-mate, denied Churchill’s accusation: ‘as Liberals they were anxious to preserve the Empire intact, and hand it down to future generations’. Churchill, he claimed, was enamoured of the glories of war – an accusation made throughout his career – whereas ‘The interests of the men of Oldham and of this empire were summed up in the one word “Peace.” ’
¹⁵

Debate was not conducted only in terms of generalities. Imperial questions intersected with local ones. Oldham was at the heart of Lancashire’s textile industry, for which India was the main market. In 1894, the Liberal government had reluctantly allowed the Government of India to impose a 5 per cent duty on cotton goods in order to raise much-needed revenue. Lancashire opinion was outraged at the threat to its interests, and two years later the new Tory government secured a reduction to 3½ per cent.
¹⁶
Yet even the reduced rate rankled, hence the question put to Churchill at one public meeting asking whether he would be prepared to vote for the total abolition of such duties. He did not commit himself firmly, but he did remark that ‘if he was a representative of Oldham, and was called upon to decide whether Oldham or Bombay should suffer, his opinion was [. . .] that Bombay was very likely to go to the wall’.
¹⁷
The Radicals, he claimed, were by contrast ‘prepared to sacrifice the welfare of Lancashire to the welfare of India’.
¹⁸
The theme of India’s alleged exploitation of England was to crop up again in later years. In 1943 the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, wrote mockingly of how, during discussions of Britain’s war debts to India, ‘Winston drew [a] harrowing picture of British workmen in rags struggling to pay rich Indian mill-owners’.
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