I suppose I was the last generation which went through school being taught that the “sun never set on the British Empire”.
And this was despite the fact that India “the Jewel in the Crown of Empire” had become two independent countries two years before I was born, followed during the 1950s and early 60s by a big chunk of that red.
Not that this had been arrived at entirely peacefully.
The resistance of indigenous peoples through the 19th and early 20th centuries to British rule was matched by the colonial independence movements that followed the Second World War, with groups in Palestine wanting an independent Jewish state, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya and EOKA in Cyprus.
All of which was recognized by Harold Macmillan in his “winds of change” speech in February 1960 which was made against the backdrop of France’s defeat in Indo China and its continuing brutal colonial war in Algeria.
So while Britain may have divested itself of most of its empire with a degree of good grace, it wasn’t entirely done without a measure of resistance, which was overlooked by those teaching us the history of Empire.
Nor of course were we made privy to the degree of exploitation and savagery which marked the acquisition of that empire, all of which is now presented in scholarly and expensive books, some of which are more readable than others.
What they have in common of course is that the story is over, and while we still live with the legacy of empire, from the debates around Black Lives Matter, to the continued impoverishment of certain Commonwealth countries, the debate on what should happen to the Empire is over.
Not so in 1945, when Alexander Campbell published his book It’s Your Empire, which was a Left Book Club Edition.*
Britain had only just come out of the war, a war which had been prosecuted by units of the armed forces drawn from almost all of the Empire many of whom were volunteers.
So I was intrigued by Mr. Cambell’s book which has sat on a shelf for over 40 years, but which I have never read.
The Manchester Guardian described it as “a rapid and up-to-date survey of current Colonial problems in their current guise. The reader is conducted from the West India to the Mediterranean, the Middle East & Africa; then to India & Ceylon, the Fra East & the Western Pacific. Nor are the outlying islands such as Mauritious & St Helena overlooked. It is a full your of the dependent Empire. The result is a valuable and vivid conspectus …. By the author of Empire in Africa & Smuts and the Swastika”.**
And at the outset, Mr. Campbell dispels a serious of myths and misunderstandings about the Empire and its history, beginning with that much hawked myth that “the British are supposed to have acquired it in a fit of absentmindedness”, and that the public were well informed about all things Empire.
Going on to point out that “large parts of the Empire were ‘collected’ comparatively recently, with huge tracts of Africa and many Pacific islands becoming British possessions only in the last few decades”.
This he cites as one reason for the public’s ignorance about Empire, along with the events of two world wars and the Depression, which perforce had concentrated minds on more pressing things.
To which he adds that people had been very badly informed. “In schools, children have been told that the Empire is a big happy , united ‘loyal’ family and that the burning ambition of every little Indian, African and Malayan boy is to die for the Union Jack”.
But the book is more than just a broad diatribe on the Empire, and instead looks at each of the British possessions, examining the present as well as the historical economic background, supported by a bank of Government statistics which point to to the unequal relationship of many of the indigenous peoples to the ruling elite and the way that those “home peoples” have and were being exploited.
My own interest in the Middle East drew me to his section on Palestine and the conflict between the Arab and Jewish populations, but those on the other parts of the Empire are equally instructive.
And as ever the book was at its best when quoting the figures which dispel some of the myths, like “One third of all registered deaths in the British Colonial Empire are caused by tuberculosis, pneumonia and bronchitis; pellagra and scurvy are widespread , worm infestations almost universal in many regions and in West Africa, venereal disease afflicts 50 to 90 per cent of the population.
In every colony many if not most children suffer from malnutrition, and in some some African and Eastern towns the infantile death-rate is between 40 and 50 percent. Conditions in India are no better. These facts are culled from the official report of the Committee on Nutrition in the Colonial Empire”.
But the book looks to a positive and optimistic future, where the colonies become independent, but need to be supported arguing, “The colonies have ceased to be what they were in the past -treasure-houses of loot.
The treasures have been removed; they went to to build Liverpool and Manchester. If the colonies are not to become the world’s waste lands, gigantic sums will have to be spent on combating soil erosion, rooting out disease, banishing malnutrition, and rehousing, reclothing and educating the people”.
And the book draws on the voices of those indigenous peoples like that from the manifesto of the Federation of Trade Unions of Nigeria which concluded, "The free peoples of the world look forward with intense eagerness to the fast approaching post-war years, when attention will be focused on the extermination of poverty, unemployment, excessive hours of work , and low wages, and Nigeria is not an exception …. [we shall] tenaciously explore all available constitutional means with a view to achieving for the average worker such favourable conditions as ensure to a citizen under the British flag”.
So an interesting book, written a full two years before the independence of India, just months after the end of the war.
And a book still available.
Pictures; Ceylon, 1944 from the collection of Bob Ward
* It’s Your Empire, Alexander Campbell, 1945, Left Book Club Edition, Victor Gollancz
**It’s Your Empire, Manchester Guardian, October 14th, 1945
