The emergence of a global British Empire: causes, connections and consequences

There was of course no grand strategy or master plan involved in the creation of Britain's overseas empire, and such were the different spheres of activity that, on the face of it, there seems to be little if anything to link expansion in, say, North America and India.

If an overseas empire is, at least in part, an outward manifestation of the metropolitan power that first created it, then the establish­ment of Britain's global empire cannot be understood without consideration being given to developments that occurred in Britain itself during the eighteenth century. Indeed when Cain and Hopkins sought to re-examine the reasons that lay behind the growth of Britain's overseas empire, they were motivated by a strong belief that explanations of expansion should always begin at home. Accordingly, they challenged many of the existing orthodoxies by advancing a powerful case based upon the emergence in Britain of a form of 'gentlemanly capitalism' created by an alliance of mutual benefit forged between the representatives of land, trade and finance during the course of the eighteenth century.² Gentlemanly capitalists were located at the very heart of the expansionist process, notably in the City of London's burgeoning financial service sector, from where they were able to deploy resources, shape opinion and influence decision-making.

Defining and tracing the emergence of metropolitan gentlemanly capitalists with a keen interest in overseas activity is, of course, as relevant to the study of imperialism as it is to our understanding of elite formation within British society, but this does not by itself explain how and why Britain was able to establish a global empire by 1815. After all, many of the eighteenth-century gentlemanly capitalists described by Cain and Hopkins never left Britain and were thus not in any real sense active agents driving forward the expansionist process in the wider world. They can be represented as the back-seat drivers of the imperial vehicle who paid for the fuel and supplied a route map but were unable to exercise tight control on the steering wheel.

The chief aim of our interpretation is to establish the context within which actions took place; that is, to understand why actors of a certain kind were where they were when they were, and why their views of the world inclined them to act in the way they did.⁵

Unfortunately for students of the eighteenth century, however, their necessarily compressed treatment of that important period meant that they were perhaps not able to explore as fully as they would have liked the interplay and associations that existed between those in Britain and those who moved in the wider world. As a result, although they eventually concluded in the first edition of British Imperialism that 'The configuration of wealth, status and power that materialised in gentlemanly forms of enterprise' made its mark on the overseas empire, both on the Atlantic colonies and on India,⁶ they did not provide case studies of eighteenth-century expansion similar to those offered for the years after 1815.⁷ This remains so in the recently published second edition of British Imperialism and thus there is still a need to examine further any relationship that might have existed between the post-1688 emergence of gentlemanly cap­italism and the increasingly global exertion of British power and influence during the eighteenth century. In particular, it is necessary to establish the extent to which gentlemanly capitalist forces were felt in the wider world, and how, if at all, they served to influence the development of British activity in different regions.

During the eighteenth century, Britons at home and abroad did not invest the word 'empire' with an exact meaning. This was a reflection

of the fact that, as David Armitage has recently remarked, 'The unifying [political] concept of the British Empire left generous room for different conceptions of the Empire.'⁹ Armitage's study of the emergence of conceptions of an empire that by the 1740s was characterized as being Protestant, commercial, maritime, and free adds much to our under­standing of why the word 'empire' was not, as later, used narrowly or exclusively in relation to the conquest of territory and the rule of alien people. Rather, as historians have long recognized, it was a word with multiple meanings applied across a range of overseas contexts, and as British activity changed and expanded during the eighteenth century so too a variety of different connotations and associations came into being.¹⁰ In the early part of the century, for example, contemporaries often wrote or spoke of the 'empire of the seas', a reflection of the importance of the North Atlantic fisheries and the 'nursery of seamen' that provided manpower for the Royal Navy.

Although Britain's widely scattered overseas empire took many forms during the eighteenth century, expansionist tendencies were often at work simultaneously at different points of the compass. The growth of trade and commerce went hand in hand with the applica­tion of military and naval power to ensure that new possessions were acquired, frontiers were extended, and markets were established.

Of course, not all were convinced about the advantages to be gained from empire and those who feared the consequences of over-expansion were to be heard loudly proclaiming the virtues of caution and retrenchment. Yet although the gathering American crisis and signs of a French recovery ensured that any general mood of imperial optimism was short-lived, Britons acknowledged and reflected upon their global interests and possessions. The horizons of the gentlemanly classes were greatly furthered after 1763 as the editors of journals and the writers of pamphlets encouraged a 'swing to the east' in outlook by placing before their readers copious amounts of information relating to diverse British activities in India, China, the East Indies, the South Pacific and Australasia.¹² As this happened, the more practically minded politicians and commentators endeavoured to identify the connections that existed between different forms of overseas endeavour. The potential economic interdependence of different overseas possessions was expli­citly stated and rudimentary attempts at imperial integration were made in an attempt to draw together and better exploit in far-distant peripheries.¹³ Commercial and cultural integration had long been a feature of the Atlantic world, and it has received much attention from historians, but efforts were also made to establish sustainable economic connections between British Asia and the American colonies. That this failed in the short term when disaffected American colonists threw East India Company tea into Boston Harbour to trigger the events leading to the American Revolution should not obscure the fact that as early as the 1760s some thought was being given to the question of how relation­ships between peripheries might be more sharply defined. Those in the metropolis who thought about such things usually did so with their own interests in mind, but they were beginning to consider the empire as the sum of its many parts rather than as simply a collection of unre­lated and randomly distributed overseas possessions. Underpinning this theoretical consolidation of the empire as a single entity or greater whole can be discerned demands for the more organized and rational ordering of possessions, the emergence of the metropolis as a more proactive agent for the reallocation of imperial resources, and the grow­ing realization that losses in one sector or area might be offset by gains elsewhere. Not only did these lines of thought represent the beginning of a new approach to empire, but they also played their part in helping to ensure that, despite fears to the contrary, Britain was able to absorb the considerable economic and commercial impact caused by the loss of America.

The establishment of connections between the different branches of Britain's expanding empire was not only made by those who looked out at the world from the metropolis. As in the wheel of a contemporary wagon, Britain's eighteenth-century empire was given shape and defin­ition by its rim as well as by the spokes that centred upon the axle. To a lesser or greater degree, and indeed sometimes only tenuously, provinces became linked with other provinces as well as to the imperial core, a process that was facilitated by increasingly long-distance flows of people, goods and information around the empire, and this enabled some of those at the outer edges to place themselves within a much greater whole. Those in the Atlantic colonies benefited from the material benefits of expansion in other parts of the world; they gloried in the success of British arms in far-distant theatres of war; and they believed themselves to be sharing the same rights and privileges as all other Britons, whether at home or abroad. Moreover, some within the overseas empire played a full part in the 'emergence of a pan-Atlantic conception of the British Empire',¹⁴ and during the 1760s they, like their metropolitan counterparts, began tentatively to locate themselves within a broader, global empire.¹⁵

Informing the preliminary and often very hesitant attempts to come to terms with the practical realities of global imperialism was a grow­ing awareness that financial and military resources derived from the overseas empire were becoming deeply embedded in the processes that sustained the strength of the metropolitan state and economy. The increased levels of trade and investment directed towards the empire were an obvious manifestation of this, but many in the metropolis were now expecting to draw some benefit from some of the more explicitly 'imperial' forms of endeavour that were being pursued by Britons overseas. This became abundantly clear as Britain began to accumulate possessions acquired by military conquest rather than set­tlement, notably in India where the East India Company's greatly expanded private army established control over Bengal and the sur­rounding provinces during the 1760s. Not only did the Company's Indian army represent a considerable cost-free addition of strength to the metropolitan state that could be deployed in the global struggle against the French, but the Company's deep involvement in the col­lection of territorial revenues after 1765 offered the prospect of a sub­stantial surplus being remitted to Britain as a form of 'tribute'. The government fully expected to receive a share of this surplus, with the fruits of empire being distributed among the members of a mutually beneficial public-private partnership established between the state and the Company. Although the Company's financial and political diffi­culties ensured that such a relationship never properly developed, the matter greatly exercised the minds of some who began to regard the overseas empire as a fiscal cash cow that could be milked to the great benefit of a nation struggling with mounting financial problems. Revenue income derived from the periphery could be applied to the spiralling national debt, thereby easing the domestic tax burden and notionally offsetting some of the costs that had been incurred by the state in support of overseas activity.

With the empire being written into calculations of national wealth, strength, and prosperity, developments in the wider world could no longer be thought to have only a marginal effect upon the domestic economy. Historians have hotly debated the extent to which trade and imperialism influenced the growth of the eighteenth-century economy, but after the 1760s contemporaries were inclined to consider the empire as capable of exerting a major influence upon the economic well-being of the metropolis. Yet although the economic benefits of expansion were plain for some to see, others raised awkward questions about the ultimate value of trade in exotic goods and luxury items. Anxieties were also expressed about crisis at the periphery of the empire having a devastating financial impact upon the metropolis. It was thought, for example, that with considerable amounts of investment capital committed to the East India Company a serious setback in India could destroy confidence and badly damage the City of London. Some well-informed thinkers went as far as to suggest that imperial crisis could well serve as a prelude to national bankruptcy, and although events following the loss of America proved otherwise, such fears were usually sufficient to convince ministers that the state had some degree of responsibility for underwriting and sustaining those overseas activ­ities deemed to be of importance to the national interest. As a result, although the establishment of Britain's fledgling global empire was never in any sense a state-sponsored or state-directed enterprise, the influence of the metropolitan state could always be felt in a number of different ways.

The eighteenth-century British state was, by instinct, non-interven­tionist and it exercised only a light touch on the development of over­seas enterprise. At times, of course, the force of British arms and ships was felt in North America, the West Indies, India and elsewhere but for the most part Crown troops and administrators were conspicuous by their absence from the outer reaches of empire. Governments had inherited from their seventeenth-century predecessors a legacy that had established the outline features of overseas enterprise through legisla­tion granting monopolies and privileges to a variety of trading compa­nies, 'projectors', and territorial proprietors. Little direct control was exercised by the state over overseas possessions, and few efforts were made to direct or control the course of expansion. Instead, considerable autonomy had been devolved to local authorities such as the assemblies in North America and the West Indies or the East India Company in Asia. Indeed, there were no Crown or state representatives at all in Asia during the early part of the eighteenth century, and there was little by way of regulation or routine supervision of the Company in Britain. Yet this should not be construed as long-term indifference by the state towards overseas activity. Monopolies and the Navigation system had been established to enhance national financial and maritime power, and governments were usually prepared to commit manpower resources, at least on a temporary basis, to various peripheries in support of hard-pressed outposts routinely policed and defended by locally raised troops or militias. Although it can be argued that as a result of the harsh strategic reasons learned during the War of American Independence the navy remained reluctant to disperse its main forces to distant waters,¹⁶ expeditions and squadron continued to be dispatched to the wider world and Britain retained the capacity to bring pressure to bear upon colonial theatres of war. There was no clearer indication of this than during the global warfare of 1793-1815, when not only were French threats to the empire decisively thwarted but Britain also emerged victorious as Europe's predominant imperial and maritime power.¹⁷

When pressed, the state also offered financial support to enterprises considered to be vital to national interests. This was most notably the case with the East India Company. The Company had been present at the birth of the eighteenth-century state during the 1690s when it loaned considerable sums of money to a hard-pressed wartime govern­ment. As such, it was embedded at the very heart of the system of public credit, and came together with the Bank of England to form the powerful 'monied interest', which represented the institutional meet­ing point between the worlds of private and national endeavour. Because of this, and because of the economic potential thought to be offered by the Company's expansion in India, the state was prepared to grant considerable financial support to the Company when it ran into trouble during the late eighteenth century. In return, the state began to exercise closer supervision of the territory being brought under Company control, but it did so at arm's length and the Company long continued to act as Britain's official agency in Asia. Governments were wary of the political problems associated with any challenge to the sanctity of chartered rights, but they were also all too aware of military and administrative realities. They did not have the resources, expertise, or capacity to govern vast tracts of overseas territory, and their attempts to assert authority over the 13 American colonies during the 1760s had only drawn them into crisis and a costly war. It was thought far better to continue to devolve power to others, such as the East India Company, who could act as representatives of British interests. This policy ran obvious risks when the Company pursued aims that were not in the wider national interest or was unable to control its own employees, and thus after 1773 Parliament began to establish the metropolitan bureaucracy necessary to supervise East Indian affairs. In the aftermath of American war, fears for the future of the empire combined with the anxieties of the revolutionary era led to similar developments becoming evident in other spheres of overseas activity. This is held to have heralded the beginning of a new authoritarian era in which more robust metropolitan attitudes towards the empire were translated into the establishment of the institutional apparatus of control and audit.¹⁸ This was undoubtedly the case, but much tighter imperial regulation at the centre was not yet matched by effective control at far-distant peripheries, and the influence of the British state often remained very limited at times other than when troops and ships were deployed in support of local British representatives or communi­ties. The limited overseas reach of the state was no better illustrated than in the case of India where the East India Company, despite its gradual loss of commercial privileges after 1793, remained firmly in place as a semi-autonomous governing agency.

Although the existence of a global empire began slowly to impress itself upon the minds of Britons everywhere, Britain's overseas pos­sessions remained diverse in form, were scattered around the world, and could only be loosely controlled from the metropolis. Such char­acteristics militated against the development of closer imperial ties, but over time, and in spite of many differences borne out of a vari­ety of local conditions, Britain's imperial possessions began increas­ingly to adopt patterns of sociocultural configuration that were similar to those evident in the metropolis itself. This served to impose some basic coherence and order upon an otherwise frag­mented empire, and also helped to bind overseas territories to the imperial core and metropolitan society. Indeed, the unsuccessful attempts to redefine Britain's relationship with her American colonies during the 1760s and 1770s underscored the point that the Atlantic empire could be better sustained and exploited through the development of informal ties and associations than it ever could be by heavy-handed assertions of metropolitan authority that could not be backed by force.

In recent years, historians have begun to approach the study of eighteenth-century British imperialism from a range of new perspectives, and this is reflected in the number of terms they have employed to describe the defining features of the empire. Generally speaking, attention has shifted away from the imperialism that manifested itself in the administrative, constitutional and military studies of earlier gen­erations of scholars. Much more emphasis is now placed upon the cultural and material aspects of imperialism, and Britain's Atlantic possessions are now thought to have belonged to an 'empire of goods' or an 'empire of paper'.¹⁹ In different ways, these terms suggest the emergence of 'anglicized' overseas societies whose path to maturity was determined by powerful impulses emanating from the metropolis as well as by local conditions. Indeed, historians of colonial America have been ever more willing to draw comparisons rather than contrasts between economic and social development at the core and peripheries of the Atlantic empire.²⁰