Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:22:08.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nationalisms and the Crisis of Empire, 1919–1922

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

John Gallagher
John Gallagher
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Once the British Empire became world-wide, the sun never set upon its crises. The historian who studies any of these crises in isolation does so at his peril, for their consequences tended to interlock. In the astounding geometry which the British Government constructed across the map of tropical Africa, many of the lines they drew were guided by pressures far away, in Ireland, in Egypt and in India. During the years between 1919 and 1922 a new and more elaborate set of crises marched indefatigably on through the body politic of Empire, like gout through the enfeebled frame of a toper. By this time Britain was threatened by the rolling up of her old interests in East Asia as well as by the phasing out of her new interests in West Asia; while in the classical centres of disaffection Zaghul Pasha, Gandhi and Mr de Valera pursued the old aims by new methods. No analysis of any of these crises will be complete without establishing its interplay with the others. Each joined in the rataplan which frayed the minds and the nerves of the policy-makers. But at a deeper level, each of them was part of a general problem; and there is much to be said for studying problems, not regions. In the case of underdeveloped subjects, such as African or Indian history, it is important not to study them as though they were merely the annals of the parish.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 1981 , pp. 355 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Milner, was ‘just a typical product of Balliol’; Marquess of Crewe, Life of Rosebery (1931), I, 215.Google Scholar

2 Taylor, A. J. P., ‘Politics in the First World War’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1959, 86–7; but Mr Taylor misses the connection between imperialism and modernization.Google Scholar

3 Journal of Scott, C. P., 1 March 1919, quoted in Stein, L., The Balfour Declaration (1961), 387.Google Scholar

4 Amery: ‘Note on the Possible Terms of Peace’ Austen Chamberlain Papers.Google Scholar

5 The Asquith ministry had already set up a Territorial Changes Committee; but that had been a low-powered affair made up of civil servants only.Google Scholar

6 ‘Committee of the Imperial War Cabinet on Territorial Desiderata, second meeting, 18 April 1917’; Austen Chamberlain Papers. It is gratifying to find Smuts in 1917 pursuing the same argument which has been advanced in Robinson, R. E. et al. , Africa and the Victorians (1961).Google Scholar

7 In which case we should doubtless have been regaled with books proving that this second Partition was economically inevitable.Google Scholar

8 There is an edited version of the Report in Parliamentary Papers, 1920, Cmd. 1131. Copies of the full text, which is rather less respectful to the intelligentzia, are in the Milner Papers and the Montagu Papers. For another statement of his view, see Milner to Lloyd George, 28 December 1919 (a letter full of candid Milnerisms);Google ScholarGollin, A. M., Proconsul in Politics (1964), 590–1.Google Scholar

9 Milner, Cabinet Memorandum, ‘The Egyptian Proposals’, Secret, 16 September 1920, Montagu Papers.Google Scholar

10 Allenby (High Commissioner, Egypt) to Curzon, 8 April 1921; Lloyd, Lord, Egypt since Cromer (vol. II, 1934), 40.Google Scholar

11 For an account of this captivity, see Wilson, T., The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935 (1966), 187–204. Many of the Coalition backbenchers made a dead set against Montagu, for example during the debates over the retiring of General Dyer after the Amritsar shootings.Google Scholar

12 Churchill, Cabinet Memorandum, ‘The Egyptian Proposals’, 24 May 1920, Montagu Papers.Google Scholar

13 Montagu to Griff, 17 November 1921, Ibid.

14 Roos-Keppel to Harcourt Butler, 12 June 1919, Butler Papers.Google Scholar

15 Montagu to Lloyd George, 8 September 1919, Montagu Papers.Google Scholar

16 Milner to Montagu, 2 December 1919, Confidential, Montagu Papers.Google Scholar

17 Government of India Records H[ome] P[olitical], 1920, June, 78, Deposit, Weekly Report by Director, Central Intelligence Bureau, 10 May 1920.Google Scholar

18 Butler to Reading, 23 November 1921, Butler Papers.Google Scholar

19 Lloyd to Chamberlain, 24 March 1922, Private, Austen Chamberlain Papers.Google Scholar

20 Wilson's Diary, 21 May 1920, Callwell, C. E., Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (1927), II, 240–1.Google Scholar

21 E.g. Wilson's diary, 5 August 1920, 22 March and 31 May 1921, ibid., II, 255, 281, 293.

22 Wilson's diary, 13 September 1921; ibid., II, 305.

23 Memorandum by General Staff, 5 May 1920, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, 1st series, vol. XIV, 90–1.Google Scholar

24 The history of Persia during these years is intricate and entertaining. During the years German agents lived dangerously, trying to stir up war against the British troops there. The outbreak of peace saw a complex struggle between Persian Cossacks, officered by stateless Russians, and the South Persian Rifles, led partly by Swedes. Over all this wreckage the Shah presided with imperturbable lethargy.Google Scholar

25 Memorandum by Hardinge (Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign Office), 20 May 1920, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, 1st series, vol. XIII, 487–8.Google Scholar

26 War Office to General Haldane, 23 December 1920, ibid., 670–1.

27 This theme is discussed, rather disapprovingly, in India and Communism, compiled in the Intelligence Bureau, Home Department, Government of India (Simla, 1935, restricted);Google Scholar and more coolly in Kapur, Harish, Soviet Russia and Asia, 1917–27 (Geneva, 1966).Google Scholar

28 Chelmsford to Montagu, Telegram No. 107, S., 22 January 1921, Documents, 1st series, vol. XIV, 705.Google Scholar

29 H.P. 1921, May 19, Deposit, Memorandum by Director of Intelligence Bureau, 14 January 1921.Google Scholar

30 Montagu to Reading, Telegram 5657, 4 November 1921, Montagu Papers.Google Scholar

31 A similar argument might be made from the standpoint of the white Dominions. It was Smuts who warned the British that, unless these lands were given absolute selfgovernment, they would go the way of Ireland.Google Scholar

32 Quoted in Pyarelal, , Mahatma Gandhi, the Last Phase (Ahmedabad, 1958), I, 581.Google Scholar