Abstract
There is of course no need for historical research to be justified with reference to current concerns, but there is no denying the timeliness of this book. Parsons provides a lucid account of the late-nineteenth century ‘high’ period of British imperialism before moving on to describe the Empire’s subsequent decline and collapse. As I write, the campaign for the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union is in full swing and it is impossible not to notice how such contemporary disputes are unconsciously inflected by, and reproduce many of the assumptions of, the Victorian and later eras, although they have also evolved in the light of subsequent geopolitical and ideological change. On the one hand, modern debates about Britain’s world role find their antecedents in much earlier arguments. On the other hand, controversies that are ostensibly about the history of the Empire are in fact often strongly linked to current concerns. Thus, for example, those who oppose the removal of Cecil Rhodes’s statue in Oxford – as advocated by student protesters – found the idea deeply threatening, arguing that the proposal to take it down represents an illegitimate effort to ‘rewrite history’ and even an attack on free speech.
In recent years in Britain, public debate about the Empire has become increasingly lively, fueled in part by Niall Ferguson’s claims that we should view it favourably on account of its role as an agent of globalization, modernization, and economic development. Ferguson’s error, Parsons argues, was to confuse imperial rule with the organic and ongoing processes of global change that shape human history … the broad changes that Ferguson attributes to the British Empire would have eventually reached the various corners of the world on their own. (p. 200)
Arguably, Ferguson’s mistake is actually more fundamental, insofar as he assumes the superiority of the Western model of development: building roads, railways and bridges in his account becomes equivalent to spreading civilization. Parsons may fairly be described as an Empire sceptic, but from his point of view the entire notion of debating whether the institution as a whole was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is in fact redundant: ‘it is much more productive to ask who benefited from British rule and who did not’. He is, of course, entirely right to suggest that the Empire’s impact varied widely from one locale to another and according to the status and circumstances of the individuals affected, although it is important also to note that the variations were structured, not random. Equally, one can well appreciate Parsons’s frustration – which is widely shared amongst academic historians – with the simplistic way in which the debate is so often carried on. Like it or not, though, when members of the public do engage with imperial issues, they almost inevitably fall back on the good/bad dichotomy. Can one, in response, simply refuse to offer a view, or insist that they are thinking about the problem the wrong way? Perhaps, but the ‘it all depends who and where you were’ approach may itself risk slippage back towards the costs and benefits framework that Parsons and others understandably want to avoid.
The picture presented by the book – which is mainly based on published sources – is one that will largely be familiar to experts. There are, however, some interesting vignettes, such as the 1902 visit to Britain by the Bugandan nobleman Ham Mukasa, who wrote a book on his experiences. Parsons shows how, in spite of the cuts enforced by Mukasa’s editor and translator, some ‘carefully worded critiques’ of his hosts survived into the published version (p. 29). Later, in the 1930s, Mukasa published articles in the Uganda Journal which rejected colonialist allegations that his country was backward. There are also lively analyses of well-known episodes such as the 1919 Amritsar massacre. Yet notwithstanding some brief comments on Ferguson and a few other historians, there is not a great deal of discussion of the existing literature. Thus, Parsons asserts (contentiously) that ‘few ordinary Britons paid much attention’ to imperial propaganda, but fails to reference the extensive debate between John MacKenzie and Bernard Porter on this very point (p. 15). This limits the book’s usefulness, because although it could well be recommended to the general reader looking for an introductory overview, it would not be particularly helpful to students needing an explanation of the current state of the field.
In summary, the book is a lively, readable survey of an important topic. The judgments it offers are largely sound, but the failure to engage more explicitly with previous scholarship means that it does not entirely fulfil its potential.