THE FALL OF BRITISH EMPIRE
ESSAY
In the last five or six thousand years Empires
have risen and fallen, each with its own specific history. In this paper I will
try to analyze nationalism, education, WW2 and even British debt, as factors to
British fall, forcing it, to abandon its colonies one by one. It is important
to cite a famous quote written by Lord Roseberry: How marvelous it all
is! Built not by saints and angels, but the work of men's hands; cemented with
men's honest blood and with a world of tears, welded by the best brains of
centuries past; not without the taint and reproach incidental to all human
work, but constructed on the whole with pure and splendid purpose. Human, and
yet not wholly human -- for the most heedless and the most cynical must see the
finger of the Divine.
During
its peak, the British Empire had become one of the biggest power in the world. Sir
John Robert Seeley is famously quoted as saying that the British Empire was
developed in a "fit of absence of mind," implying that through
multiple disjointed ventures, such as looking for a place to send convicts, or
attempting to find gold, the British one day awoke to discover they ruled over
20% of the world. However, it can be
factually argued that all the endeavors of the British that led to the empire
were purposeful, and aimed at land and largely at profit.
The
concept of nationalism is often associated with the idea of a nation. Nationalism
is the loyalty and devotion towards a nation, while a nation is usually a group
of people with a feeling of common nationality living within defined boundaries
of an independent and sovereign state. (“Nationalism is a doctrine invented in
Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century…Briefly, the doctrine holds
that humanity is naturally divided into nations, that nations are known by
certain characteristics which can be ascertained, and that the only legitimate type of
government is national self-government.” (Kedourie, 1960, p. 9)
One may
ask how nationalism emerged in India. The British ruled two thirds of India for
nearly two centuries. India, as one of Britain‘s largest colony had profited from that which helped to build
the British Empire. Since the mid 50s of the nineteenth century the idea of
nationalism started emerging visibly as more people educated, political groups
emerged and the colonial rule toward India got harsh. Protests against the
British colonial rule started as nationalist movement became active and the
struggle for self-governance took life.
Mohandas K. Gandhi had become a
leader in the Indian independence movement and in the Indian National Congress,
which was the most important Indian political
organization. Gandhi persuaded the Congress to adopt his program of
‘’nonviolent disobedience’’, also known as ‘’nonviolent noncooperation’’. (www.britannica.com.) Gandhi's program asked Indians to boycott
British goods, to refuse to pay taxes, and to stop using British schools,
courts, and government services. As a result, some Indians gave up well-paying
jobs that required them to cooperate with the British. Gandhi changed the
Indian National Congress from a small party of educated men to a mass party
with millions of followers. (Simon Panter-Brick pg70)
Let begin by examining education as a factor for the development of
civilization. In my opinion, educating people is one of the most important
mechanisms to organize a community for achieving ideals of given country. There is a public that
finds this procedure to its taste, but it is not to be confused with a
scientific approach to the subject. Historians often use empirical data to
analyze and then to move to a broader conclusion. My own work is not to advance a theory of nation-building, but
rather to develop effective methods for the classification and assessment of
experiences of nation-building as a process set within a wider social and
cultural history. (I will not focus on American and Canadian history.) In 1934 Ghandi, in place of political activity, he now concentrated on his “constructive program”
of building the nation “from the bottom up”—educating rural India, which
accounted for 85 percent of the population; continuing his fight against
untouchability; promoting hand spinning, weaving, and other cottage industries
to supplement the earnings of the underemployed peasantry; and evolving a
system of education best suited to the needs of the people. (www.britannica.com)
Generally, every colony of British Empire fought to make
parallels -- use intellectualism to find out a path to realize their ideals of
nation, which they proudly belong to. In Nigeria, in 1920s there were several types of associations that
were ostensibly non-political. One group consisted of professional and business
associations, such as The Nigerian Union of Teachers, which provided trained
leadership for political groups; the Nigerian Law
Association, which brought together lawyers, many of whom had been educated in
Britain; and the Nigerian Produce
Traders’ Associations led by Obafemi Awolowo. (www.workmall.com. ) The result is clear -- the remaining colonies made
the effort to become independent on the idea of education, building the nation state to diminish British
Imperial pride.
With the end of the WW1, even as Britain acquired new
protectorates, the imperial patchwork was undeniably coming apart at the seams.
It was as if, in Beatrice Webb's words, the empire began to suffer from
"a sort of senile hypertrophy", reaching new heights of brutality
with the Amritsar massacre of 1919 and new peaks of decadence in expat enclaves
from Kenya to Shanghai. (www.britannica.com). (Ben Welsh 1996 pg4)
However, I would like to focus more on WW2 which accelerated the crash.
On hearing of the Japanese bombing of the causeway that linked Singapore to
the mainland, people asked, what all the noise was. "That," replied
Lee Kwan Yew, Singapore's future prime minister, "is the end of the
British empire." Many colonies went to war with Britain on the condition of being granted self-governance after the war ends. As promised, after the war, many of the possessions received
statehood, entering into a “commonwealth” state with Great Britain.
In 1946, the Labor government in Britain saw its resources exhausted by
the recently concluded World War II. The leaders realized Britain had neither
the mandate at home; the international support; nor the reliability of native forces to continue controlling an
increasingly restless India. In
February 1947 Prime Minister Clement
Attlee announced that the British
government would grant full self-governance to British India by June 1948 at
the latest. Naturally, this was a slap in the face of British pride and of
British dominance as one of the most powerful Empire in the world of that
century. ( http://www.preservearticles.com)
Under
the British Commonwealth, the King or Queen is the figurehead, but has little
political power over the other nations in the commonwealth. It is mainly a
group of former British colonies who have come together to expand economically
and democratically. www.commonweallth.com.
Following Ghandi’s non violent protest India, (surely not all the countries with the same history)
Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria, Sierra Leone,
Tanganyika, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, The Gambia, Botswana, and Swaziland
all became independent. (www.hyperhistory.net).
British
philosophy to leave its acquisitions with their own
traditions and to take a more paternal relationship with them came to the final
stage and Britain could no longer deny
them their right to administer their own land.
In
short, the rise and fall of any nation can be looked at in terms of cycles, and Great Brittan is
no exception. (DR. Piers Brendon). The fall of any nation is never the
result of one single defining event but a series of foolish decisions made by
complacent, ignorant, entitlement minded people willing to ignore the lessons of the
past.
So, we would
have thought British would have learned their lesson by WW1 that found Britain
unprepared to fight, but by WWII the unthinkable was again at their doorstep
and again they were caught with their pants down. Only in June 4-1940 Winston Churchill,
delivered his famous speech: We shall defend our Island. We shall fight on the
beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fights in the streets
and the fields, we should carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, with
all its power and might, steps for the rescue and the liberation of the old. (www.winstonchurchill.org).
After
WW2, UK was financially exhausted and heavily in debt to the US. This left it
almost impossible to defend its far-flung colonies by force. The US capitalized
on its position of banker and forced the UK to abandon the empire by threat of
economic collapse. This was so that vast markets were opened to American
companies and to weaken the UK in general. Social reforms were undertaken and yet Attlee’s Britain became more dependent on
the wealth and might of United States. ( Andrew Marr pg 9). In
conclusion, with nationalism, education, World War2 and even British
debt, I will finish my work citing Pall Mall Gasete: Babylon and
Assyria left us their monuments, Egypt her Pyramids, Carthage her Queen and
Rome her law. So too Britain bequeathed to posterity her world-wide language.
Nuredin Nuredinaj
