10 Propositions on Empire (defending Warren Hastings)

Some notes for a BBC R4 Great Debates outing due for broadcast 31 December, 2004 and repeated 1 January, 2005

My prejudices: I'm interested in defending Empire not so much against the arguments of "native peoples" but against anti-Imperialists of my own tribe. I admire the people who did Empire: brave and bloody minded and adventurous, and yes, that sometimes went with brutality. I prefer them to lefty-liberals who hate change, commerce and activity and whose profession is complaint. The British imperialists were almost always and everywhere preferable to the alternative.

1) The "hue and cry" argument
I don't like the Burke/Sheridan hue and cry against Warren Hastings - it is characteristic of populist and mobbish witchhunts then and now. Hearing the case against WH is like listening to Conrad Black's accusers: one supsects they're right but one prefers him.

2) The "get real" argument
If you want progress, you have to have history, and history isn't made by whimps. Likewise: complaining about US style in Iraq is largely redundant. Actions always take the style of the actor.

3) The impossibility of Empire now
Empire can't work now: it could not operate without consent and can't include it. That is: the EU and the UN can't be Empires because they are committed to being federations, unions or republics. Empire can't be Voluntary or Virtual: it's too solid for that. The US can't do Empire because a) Empire can't be done, b) Empire suits no-one now and c) the US defines itself as anti-Imperial. (In Vietnam and Latin America it didn't seek Empire, but convenient governments.) As Pitt said: the way we treat Indians (and slaves) is as bad as the way the Romans treated Anglo-Saxons - and as indefensible. That is: in the Enlightement world, Empire is impossible (which didn't stop us doing it, but did lead to reforms).

4) Burke's prejudices
Burke's logic on his famous causes:
On the French Revolution: order must be legitimate, natural, and convivial (not solely aristocratic and not solely plebian).
On America's Independence: order and taxation cannot be imposed without consent.
On Ireland as colony: The Irish catholics have a right to good treatment and perhaps self-government
On India's Empire: Warren Hastings was trampling on indigenous culture and order and sought no consent. The subtext is that WH moved the worst of the European - autocracy and corruption - to India. Rubbish, they had them inb spades already.
(This reading owes a lot to Conor Cruise O'Brien's biography of Burke.)

5) Impeaching Blair (in the manner of WH)
Impeaching Blair is wholly redundant granted how much each of his decisions will be analysed to death and he will be "punished" for them. What's remarkable about American and British military bad behaviour is the degree to which it is exposed, agonised-over and punished. Blair went to war with the support of a dim-witted Parliament. Answer: vote for better MPs.

6) Modern interventions and influences
We are right to do good where we can and where it suits us. Globalization spreads liberalism directly; Empire spread it by reaction more than by intent.
It's no use hating globalisation as though it were Empire, and no use hating Empire as though it were done by modern people.

7) Burke and Hastings
Both were modern.
Burke was applying Enlightenment logic to a Roman or Medieval approach to government, and about ancien regime corruption at home and abroad. But WH was a modern respecter of ethnicity and good government.

8) A defence of Empire: There's nothing we took from the Empire which its countries are now short of, and nothing we gave them which they wish we'd take away. We didn’t bring militarism to India (or Africa); rather, we fell in love with the military traditions we found there (and manipulated them). We didn't introduce unaccountable abuse of The People in Empire; we co-opted long-standing abuses for own purposes (while reforming them).

9) Burke was half right, of course
Burke coins the valuable, Lockean, Enlightenment ideas: "geographical morality" (which can't be allowed) and "state morality" (which sets high standards). We're all Burkeans now. The impeachment led to reform. Burke's his Irish anti-colonialism which seems so American -modern - now.

10) In general
Good quote: "Well, then, I may venture to say to you, that I believe it utterly impossible for anyone, not particularly engaged on the contrary side, ever to enter a court of justice, and not instantly and involuntarily wish well to the prisoner" - Fanny Burney
Good quote: "Such is the profligacy of the ruling manners, that there are multitudes who get their bread by detraction; but so little of system is there in this vile science, that even the similitude of character is scarce ever preserved in the features which are held forth to the public in such compositions; and for the newspapers, even indifferent anecdotes of persons are often published without a spark of truth to justify them - letter, dated 22/9/1785

ends