Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power is the book that serves Niall Ferguson as a foundation for (1) why the British Empire was largely a good thing; and (2) why the United States should pick up the White Man's Burden and continue in its tradition.#

There is a massive amount of commentary on Empire (and the second book Colossus) out there on the Internet. For example, Christopher Lydon interviewed Niall for The Whole Wide World and Benjamin Wallace-Wells quotes Ferguson as calling his own books "edutainment."#

Ferguson, like a retreating army, is now shooting his slow horses. First, in "Colossus," he pulled back from the idea of American empire that has, so far, come to define his career for many Americans. In a frank, similar move, he told me that "Colossus" was "vulnerable to attack," and that his books on empire were "edutainment at best." There are not many authors willing to spend their publicity junkets openly denigrating the books they are ostensibly trying to sell.

Additionally, Benjamin characterizes the style of the book very well:

With "Empire", a breezy, optimistic history of the British empire accompanied by a vociferous essay urging the United States to colonize the world in order to guarantee security, free trade, and development, this tendency went pathological. "Empire," which was designed as a companion to a six-part series on Channel Four which Ferguson also executive produced, looks and reads like a coffee-table book, with no footnotes, great photos, and a lively text which focuses heavily on biographical sketches of key imperial figures.

But, I will largely focus on the interesting things I learned from the book and not so much whether or not American should become an empire formally. I plan to tackle this issue with greater depth when I read the next of Ferguson's books, Colossus, which currently sits on my desk.#

Introduction#

In this first chapter, Ferguson is very clear, from page one, that it is addressed to Americans who have an image of the British Empire as a "Bad Thing" and its purpose is to offer an argument that the British Empire was good, not only for the world at large, but the colonies and the colonists as well.

Ferguson's explanation of opposition to the Empire is interesting:

The central nationalist/Marxist assumption is, of course, that imperialism was economically exploitative: every fact of colonial rule, including even the apparently sincere efforts of Europeans to study and understand indigenous cultures, was at root designed to maximize the surplus value that could be extracted from the subject peoples. The central liberal assumption is more paradoxical. It is that precisely because imperialism distorted market forces - using everything from military force to preferential tariffs to rig business in favour of the metropolis - it was not in the long-term interests of the metropolitan economy either. In this view, it was free economic integration with the rest of the world that mattered, not the coercive integration of imperialism. [p. xvii]

He states that his primary argument will be that the British Empire was the best empire, during its reign, to be conquered by because all the others were far-worse: far more destructive of local environments and of local peoples. Thus the British Empire was the best possible and practical choice, but maybe not the best in an ideal or perfect world that does not exist.

(To recall the purpose of the book, this seems to suggest that the Americans are the best in comparison to something else. What? Muslim fundamentalism, I imagine is Ferguson's reply.)

1 Why Brittain? (Pirates)#

It should not be forgotten that this was how the British Empire began: in a maelstrom of seaborne violence and theft. It was not conceived by self-conscious imperialists, aiming to establish English rule over foreign lands, or colonists hoping to build a new life overseas. Morgan and his fellow 'buccaneers' were thieves, trying to steal the proceeds of someone else's Empire. [p. 1]

This was how it got started in the Western Hemisphere, while in the Eastern (India primarily) it grew from English merchants groveling for crumbs from the Mughal Emperor.

In 1700 the population of India was twenty times that of the United Kingdom. India's share of total world output at that time has been estimated at 24 per cent - nearly a quarter; Britain's share was just 3 per cent. The idea that Britain might one day ruler India would have struck a visitor to Delhi in the late seventeenth century as simply preposterous. [p. 22]

While the growth was not all "done 'in a fit of absence of mind'" (p. 43) it had roots not in the government but of the private sector of both sides. Only later did the British trading companies request support from the Crown and only did the ruling governments willingly pass control (particularly in India) to the British.

After this foundation in trade came the deliberate colonization promoted and sometimes enforced (Australian) by the British.

2 White Plague (Planters)#

This is just hilarious:

In his pamphlet 'A Good Speed to Virginia', the Chaplain to the Virginia Company Robert Gray asked: 'By what right or warrant can we enter into the land of these Savages, take away their rightful inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their place, being unwronged or unprovoked by them?' Richard Hakluyt's answer was that the native Americans were a people 'crying out to us ... to come and help' them. The seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company (1629) even had an Indian waving a banner which read 'Come over and Help Us'. [p. 55]

It is in the chapter where Ferguson explains the American Revolution in very interesting terms: It was primarily a British civil war fought in one of its less important colonies. (Jamaica was five times more profitable than all the American colonies combined prior to the war, p. 61.) And because it was a civil war, there were many who disagreed on both sides of the Atlantic, most famously the British who ensured that Canada would not remain 'New France.'

The war is at the very heart of Americans' conception of themselves: the idea of a struggle for liberty against an evil empire is the country's creation myth. but it is the great paradox of the American Revolution - and it strikes you forcefully when you see today's prosperous Lexingtonians trying to relive their forefathers' self-sacrifice - that the ones who revolted against British rule were the best-off of all Britain's colonial subjects. There is good reason to think that, by the 1770s, New Englanders were about the wealthiest people in the world. Per capita income was at least equal to that in the United Kingdom and was more evenly distributed. The New Englanders had bigger farms, bigger families, and better education than the Old Englanders back home. And, crucially, the paid far less tax. In 1763 the average Briton paid 26 shillings a year in taxes. The equivalent figure for a Massachusetts taxpayer was just one shilling. To say that being British subject had been good for these people would be an understatement. And yet it was they, not the indentured labourers of Virginia or the slaves of Jamaica, who first threw off the yoke of imperial authority. [p. 70]

He gives many interesting examples of how the common conception of the Revolution is not entirely accurate. And ultimately he settles that the issue was over the principle of representation, and only the rich can afford to stick to principles; and, that the Americans were right as the Durham Report of the 1830s announced in its recommendations to Parliament on how to increase representation in the colonies. (p. 92)

3 The Mission (Missionaries)#

This chapters describes the missionary societies and groups of the 19th century as the 'original NGOs' that dreamed of helping other countries and exporting 'civilization' to the dark corners of the world. It seems to me that Ferguson ranks this as the both the lowest and highest points of the Empire. Highest because they were behind abolishing the slave trade, or rather getting the British Navy to abolish it. And the lowest, because of the way they disrespected other cultures, in particular India's, and led to many bitter relations and uprisings, like the Indian Mutiny.

4 Heaven's Breed (Mandarins)#

This chapter deals with the Indian Civil Service, the British administrators totaling 900, that controlled and managed India. Ferguson sees this group of 'mandarins' as the most powerful argument for the British Empire: it worked. And thinks that this is where Americans are lacking. Not in the skill, but in the will.

Ferguson also addresses the issue of whether Empire was good for India:

[Would] Indians have been better off under the Mughals? [The Mughals were the old Muslim emperors.] Or, for that matter, under the Dutch - or the Russians?

It might seem self-evident that they would have been better off under Indian rulers. That was certainly true from the point of view of the ruling elites the British had overthrown and whose share of national income, something like 5 per cent, they then appropriated for their own consumption. But for the majority of Indians it was far less clear that their lot would improve under independence. Under British rule, the village economy's share of total after-tax income actually rose from 45 per cent to 54 per cent. Since that sector represented around three-quarters of the entire population, there can therefore be little doubt that British rule reduced inequality in India. And even if the British did not greatly increase Indian incomes, things might conceivably have been worse under a restored Mughal regime had the Mutiny succeeded. China did not prosper under Chinese rulers. [p. 182]

5 Maxim Force (Bankers)#

This chapter deals with the "Scramble for Africa" and the many bloody results of European activity on that continent. It is so named for the Maxim machine guns that proved unbeatable by the natives and the Bankers who greatly increased their gain from the gold and diamond mines in Africa.

6 Empire For Sale (Bankrupts)#

This chapter deals with the developments of the twentieth century: mainly the consequences of two world wars on the British Empire. And, they were not good.

He opens with words that Winston Churchill wrote to his classmate at seventeen:

I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world; great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger - London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence of London ... I see further ahead than you do. I see into the future. The country will be subjected somehow to a tremendous invasion ... but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and the Empire from disaster. [p. 245]

The crux of this chapter is the decline of the British Empire was a sacrifice. It was sacrificed to stop the much worse empires of the Japanese, Germans, and Italians. And it was the right choice to make, but it left a power vacuum that was filled by Russia and the United States.

But, the United States has always been against formal colonies, as evidenced by this entertaining discussion between Woodrow Wilson and British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey on Mexico in 1913:

'Suppose you have to intervene, what then?'
'Make 'em vote and live by their decisions.'
'But suppose they will not so live?'
'We'll go in and make 'em vote again.'
'And keep this up 200 years?' asked he.
'Yes', said I. 'The United States will be hear for two hundred years and it can continue to shoot men for that little space till they learn to vote and to rule themselves.'

Anything, in other words, but take over Mexico - which would have been the British solution. [p. 291]

Conclusion#

The British Empire exported the institutions invented by the West to bring prosperity and liberty to men. Ferguson, in fact, uses the listed provided by David S. Landes in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations as a template when summarizing the benefits of Empire.

For more, please refer to the discussion in the post related to Colossus: The Price of America's Empire.#