Historiography of the British Empire
[2] In recent decades scholars have expanded the range of topics into new areas in social and cultural history, paying special attention to the impact on the natives and their agency in response.
[11] After the American war, says Bruce Collins, British leaders "focused not on any military lessons to be learned, but upon the regulation and expansion of imperial trade and the readjustment of Britain's constitutional relationship with its colonies.
India was in a category by itself, and its immense size and distance required control of the routes to it, and in turn permitted British naval dominance from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea.
[42] Armitage considers the following to be the British creed: Lizzie Collingham (2017) stresses the role of expanding the food supply in the building, financing and defending the trade aspect of empire-building.
In the 1900s - 1930s period the "Imperial School," including Herbert L. Osgood, George Louis Beer,[45] Charles M. Andrews and Lawrence Gipson[46] took a favourable view of the benefits of empire, emphasizing its successful economic integration.
[47] Regarding Columbia University historian Herbert L. Osgood (1855–1918), biographer Gwenda Morgan concludes: Much of the historiography concerns the reasons the Americans revolted in the 1770s and successfully broke away.
[55] Republicanism dictated there would be no royalty, aristocracy or national church but allowed for continuation of the British common law, which American lawyers and jurists understood and approved and used in their everyday practice.
The third British Empire was the construction of a 'white' dominion power bloc in the international system based on Britain's relations with its settler offshoots Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa ...
[70] John A. Hobson, a leading English Liberal, developed a highly influential economic exploitation model in Imperialism: A Study (1902) that expanded on his belief that free enterprise capitalism had a negative impact on the majority of the population.
'"[86] Oron Hale says that Gallagher and Robinson looked at the British involvement in Africa where they, "found few capitalists, less capital, and not much pressure from the alleged traditional promoters of colonial expansion.
[99] The British intellectuals and political leaders felt that they had a duty to protect and promote the human rights of the natives and to help pull them from the slough of traditionalism and cruelties (such as suttee in India and foot binding in China).
[107] Historical revisionism arrived when West Indian historian Eric Williams, a Marxist, in Capitalism and Slavery (1944), rejected this moral explanation and argued that abolition was now more profitable, as a century of sugar cane raising had exhausted the soil of the islands, and the plantations had become unprofitable.
[108] Since the 1970s, numerous historians have challenged Williams from various angles, and Gad Heuman has concluded, "More recent research has rejected this conclusion; it is now clear that the colonies of the British Caribbean profited considerably during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
[120] A serious challenge came from the intensified use of multiple transportation routes and the emergence of central hubs such as Hong Kong all of which facilitated this spread of epidemics such as the plague in the 1890s, thus sharply increasing the priority of public health programs.
BELRA, a large-scale program against leprosy, had policies of isolation in newly established leper colonies, separation of healthy children from infected parents, and the development in Britain of chaulmoogra oil therapy and its systematic dissemination.
Searching for more efficient ways of using natural resources, the British moved flora, fauna and commodities around the world, sometimes resulting in ecological disruption and radical environmental change.
[46] At about the same time in London, Sir Keith Hancock wrote a Survey of Commonwealth Affairs (2 vol 1937–42) that dramatically widened the scope of coverage beyond politics to the newer fields of economic and social history.
"[169] W. David McIntyre, The commonwealth of nations: Origins and impact, 1869–1971 (University of Minnesota Press, 1977) provides comprehensive coverage giving London's perspective on political and constitutional relations with each possession.
[178] Macintyre points out that in current historical writing: The process of settlement is now regarded as a violent invasion of a rich and subtle indigenous culture, the colonists' material practices as destructive of a fragile environment, their aesthetic response to it blinkered and prejudiced, the cultivation of some British forms timid and unresponsive.
At the suggestion of Secretary of State Lord Sydney, Matra amended his proposal to include convicts as settlers, considering that this would benefit both "Economy to the Publick, & Humanity to the Individual".
The issue was actually raised by conservative British politician Edmund Burke who in the 1780s vehemently attacked the East India Company, claiming that Warren Hastings and other top officials had ruined the Indian economy and society.
Ray accuses the British of depleting the food and money stocks and imposing high taxes that helped cause the terrible famine of 1770, which killed a third of the people of Bengal.
The perspective from British government policy-makers or from international business operations, slowly gave way to a new interest in the activities of the natives, especially in a nationalistic movements and the growing demand for independence.
An influential large-scale effort was made by George McCall Theal (1837-1919), who wrote many books as school teacher and as the official historian, such as History and Ethnography of Africa South of the Zambesi (11 vol, 1897–1919).
[226] Baines argues that the "Soweto uprising" of 1976 inspired a new generation of social historians to start looking for evidence that would allow the writing of history "from below"; often they adopted a Marxist perspective.
She shows how some West Indian migrants were repatriated; idealists volunteered to help the new nations; a wave of overseas students came to British universities; and polygamous relationships were invalidated.
[256]Ronald Hyam argues that the historiography of the British Empire reached a state of severe crisis: The early 1980s marked the end of an era ... as imperial and Commonwealth history itself everywhere became fragmented, unfashionable, and increasingly embattled.
[266] Thus there are entire chapters on economics, religion, colonial knowledge, agency, culture, and identity in the historiographical overview edited by Sarah E. Stockwell, The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (2008).
[279] Saul Dubow in H-Net noted the uneven quality of the chapters in volume III and also the difficulty of such an endeavour give the state of historiography of the British Empire and the impossibility of maintaining a triumphalist tone in the modern era.
Kale summed up her review of volumes III-V of the history by saying it represented "a disturbingly revisionist project that seeks to neutralize ... the massive political and military brutality and repression" of the empire.
