III. Milnerism

Extract

As a result of recent studies English imperialism has come to acquire a somewhat surprising reputation for sobriety and restraint; that is English imperialism considered as a serious and responsible political movement in contrast to its occasional ally, jingoism, which Stead aptly termed ‘imperialism sodden with gin’. So far from being marked by ‘earth hunger’ and the lust for limitless expansion, the imperialist attitude is now regarded as primarily a defensive one, originating as an impulse of defiant self-assertion to safeguard existing British overseas interests from injury or extinction. The elements of exaggeration in the older picture have been carefully toned down. The swing in British policy is now held to have been more gentle, more limited in extent and duration, more seriously checked by the traditional regulators of Gladstonian finance and the priority of European affairs than was allowed for in the polemics of the older view. Just as the swing in British policy and opinion was less violent, so the distance that divided the Little Englander from the Big Englander is seen to have been much narrower than the party controversies of the nineties would suggest. Dr R. E. Robinson, who has been among the leading exponents of the new view, adopts the terms ‘forward school’ and ‘consolidationists’ rather than ‘imperialists’ and ‘anti-imperialists’. Certainly there were no voices among the prominent Radicals and Little Englanders prepared to advocate the liquidation of the Empire; their concern was rather to prevent its further extension in the form of subject tropical dependencies. Some indeed, like John Bright and Leonard Courtney, were willing to desert Gladstone over Irish Home Rule because they saw it as a measure striking at the integrity of the Empire. Courtney, who came to regret his assent to intervention in Egypt in 1882 and stood out as the most unflinching opponent of the Boer War, was nevertheless no disintegrationist. In 1887 he wrote to his friend, John Scott, in India: voter would think no more of giving up India than of giving up Ireland, not caring to inquire seriously what would be the fate of either when abandoned.