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Format: Hardback, 234x156mm, 256 pages text, illustrated with 24pp of colour and black & white plates
Price: £19.99ISBN: 978 0 85704 320 7Imprint: HalsgrovePublished: October 2017
in 1880 the British empire was at its peak of stability. no other people – not rome,nor spain nor russia – had spread their power so substantially over all five continents. And yet within less than a century, the vast imperial system had crum-bled leaving the Common-wealth as the mere ghost of its predecessor.
in this groundbreaking new study, David nicholson asks if this decline was inevitable, or – had Britain’s rulers taken different decisions, encouraged trendsor sought to prevent them – whether the strength and cohesion of the empirecould have been maintained. He examines, in particular, a series of turning pointswhich he believes to have been crucial to this process: the failure to deal withirish Home rule; over-extension in Africa; the failure to adopt Tariff reform; theBritish inability to reach an accommodation with germany before the first WorldWar; the strategic and tactical mistakes of the great War culminating in over-extension in the Middle east and ignoring of warnings about a one-sided inter-pretation of the Balfour Declaration; the errors in the build-up to the secondWorld War and its opening phase, especially those leading to the break withJapan and italy. David nicholson traces the real damage done by the 1939-45 War,leading to the final collapse of British power in india, then the Middle east and finally in Africa, as well as the weakening of the links with the “old Common-wealth”. He asks, provocatively, if the empire had not failed would Britain havebeen so attracted by membership of the european Community.
Crisis of the British empire:Turning Points After 1880 is a significant contribu-tion to imperial studies and should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand Britain’s position in the world on the brink of Brexit.
ABOUT THE AUTHORDavid Nicholson has spent his career in or on the edge of politics, but describes himself as a historian manqué: over fifty years ago, at ChristChurch, Oxford, he took a First in Modern History. He worked for ten yearsat the Conservative Research Department, briefing Ministers/ Shadow Ministers, and for another ten was MP for Taunton until the 1997 landslide
Tory defeat. Married, with three grownup children, he lives on the edge of Exmoor. He co-edited the Leo Amery Diaries Vol I (Hutchinson, 1980), Vol II The Empire at Bay (1988), andcontributed a number of entries to The International Encyclopedia of Military History (Routledge,2006, two volumes).
CRISIS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRETurning PoinTs AfTer 1880David Nicholson
CRISIS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE TURNING POINTS AFTER 1880
COUNTERING INEVITABILITYA friendly observer has remarked: “What is the core appeal of Turning Points?Given trends in twentieth century historiography, it is extremely novel to begin withthe assumption that there was nothing fundamentally inevitable about the decline,break-up and consignment to history of the British Empire. That is an easy positiontaken by authors who are, perhaps, pleased that history happened as it did. Theywill not take the contradictory line you explore because they might be shunned bytheir fanatical peers. You have an opportunity to occupy a vacant space, reinforcedby some of the counterfactuals you touch upon.”
SOME THUMBNAILS‘In this volume will be found discussion of such matters as a federal structure forthe UK to solve the “Irish Question”; the hopes for a via media in South Africa during the first half of the 20th century…the case for the much maligned Sykes-Picotagreement over the Middle East…(Regarding the First World War) what has struckme is how the most recent historians…chip away at the conventional view thatFrance and Russia were necessarily the goodies and Germany and Austria-Hungary, while undoubtedly inept in July 1914, the fundamental baddies.’
‘General Smuts, that South African former opponent of the British, later a doughtychampion of their enterprise, replying in May 1917 at a banquet in his honour, withAsquith and Churchill among those present, had used the expression ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’: “We are not an Empire. Germany is an Empire, and sowas Rome, and so is India; but we are…a community of states and of nations fargreater than any Empire that has ever existed.....not only a static system…but a dynamic system, growing, evolving, all the time towards new destinies.” ’
‘It is hard to avoid a chilling sense of inevitability…Britain was obliged to decampfrom the Subcontinent, the Middle East and Africa, in each case failing to protecther allies while conceding much to her opponents. And while India has been a greatsuccess for democracy and capitalist-led prosperity, the same cannot be said forPakistan, or much of the Middle East and Africa.’
On Indian Partition ‘Auchinleck believed that if the original timetable had been adhered to, with independence in summer 1948, it might have been possible to reconstitute forces and avoid much bloodshed…Sir Evan Jenkins, the capable governor of the Punjab, warn(ed) Mountbatten that it would take four years to splitthe Punjab peacefully.’
On Suez ‘This author…would look to that great but immoral genius Bismarck(whose) view was, if you are going to wage aggressive war, first get your victim tostart it and, second, ensure your forces are capable of speedy victory.’
On Europe and Brexit ‘Was the constitutional and commercial structure of the European Community… fatal to any continuous “wholehearted” consent by the British people to membership? And was the discrimination against “old” Commonwealth trade and loyalty, which Europe seemed to require, an enduringsource of discontent? A highly placed Australian quoted with some scorn in the autumn of 2016 words of that grand Europhile, Roy Jenkins, uttered during Britain’searlier Europhilia, and still apparently rankling – “the time of kith and kin foreignpolicy is over.” ’
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