The 400 million people of the British Empire
had reached different stages of advancement to
independence by the close of the nineteenth cen-
tury. The division of the empire was largely on
racial lines. The white people of the empire, where
they predominated or even formed a significant
minority of the country, were granted ‘self-
government’, only a step short of total independ-
ence. In practice, ‘self-government’ was brought
about by applying the pattern of British parlia-
mentary government to these countries; this,
together with a federal structure, created the
Dominions: Canada in 1867, New Zealand in
1876, the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901
and, in 1909, seven years after the conclusion of
the bitter Boer War, the Union of South Africa.
The responsibility to protect the ‘native’ inhabi-
tants of lands conquered and colonised by Euro-
peans was recognised by Britain. But little that was
effective was done by the imperial government
in London. Indians in Canada, Maoris in New
Zealand and Aborigines in Australia were largely
left to struggle alone for their rights. In southern
Africa, the black Africans formed the majority of
the inhabitants but democratic rights were denied
them and they were left to the control of the white
peoples. British governments in London were not
prepared to jeopardise their relations with the
white ruling inhabitants. Racial discrimination was
a grievous flaw in the British Empire, though a
paternalistic concern for the ‘natives’ was perfectly
genuine. Those parts of the empire not granted
self-government were controlled and ruled in a
bewildering variety of ways, more the result of
accident than design, as Crown colonies (in the
Caribbean and West Africa, for instance) or indi-
rectly through local rulers – as, originally, in the
Indian states, and later in the Malay states and the
protectorates of tropical Africa. Of these ‘realms in
trust’ the most populous and extensive was India.
Ruled by British viceroys under the Crown as a
separate empire, some 300 million Indians were
Britain’s responsibility from 1858 until 1947.
In 1900, a British Empire that did not include
India would have seemed as unlikely as London
without the Tower. But already the voice of India
had been heard calling for autonomy and inde-
pendence. In 1885 the first Indian National
Congress had met. Those who gathered repre-
sented the Western viewpoint and admired the
British. But rule by the British was seen as alien
rule, and independence through the stage of
Dominion status as an achievable goal for the
future. The British brought unity, external and
internal peace to India, and with the active co-
operation of those Indians who had traditionally
ruled the various states, established an incompara-
ble administration all over the subcontinent. It
was made possible by the marriage of Anglo-
Indian traditions. But India was exploited too.
Little was done for the masses of the poor.
Economically, India was a dependency of Britain.
The splendour of the British Raj never stilled
British doubts about their role, so strongly rein-
forced by the Indian mutiny of 1857; the British
were conscious that they, a mere handful of aliens,
were ruling over millions of people. Would the
people always so consent? In 1905 a senior mem-
ber of the British ruling caste of India summed up
the general view held by those responsible for
British policy in India: British rule, he wrote,
rested on ‘its character for justice, toleration and
careful consideration of native feeling’, but it was
also based on bayonets, on the maintenance of an
‘adequate’ force of British soldiers in India and the
absolute command of the sea. If Britain weakened,
its domination of India would come to an end
through an uprising, perhaps helped along by a
hostile foreign power, in all probability Russia.
That was regarded as the ultimate disaster.
The dynamic colonial secretary, Joseph
Chamberlain, was the principal advocate of an
imperial movement for greater unity. In his great
‘tariff reform’ campaign from 1903 to 1905 he
sought to win British support for a protected and
preferential empire market which he believed
would cement imperial relationships; but, as it
would also have entailed higher food prices for
the British people, he failed to carry the whole
country. In a different way, the attempt to create
a more unified system of imperial defence also
failed; the self-governing Dominions were not
willing to give up their independence. The cause
of imperial unity was destined to fail. But in the
era from 1900 to 1945, the British Empire
remained very much a reality, as the prodigious