History 10b (1351)

Western Economies, Societies and Polities:

From 1648 to the Present

Lecture 7:

Anglobalization: The Rise of the British Empire

Rule, Britannia

When Britain first, at heaven's command,Arose from out the azure main,Arose, arose, arose from out the azure main,This was the charter, the charter of the land,And guardian Angels sung this strain:Rule Britannia!Britannia rule the waves.Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.The nations, not so blest as thee,Must in their turn, to tyrants fall,Must in their turn, must in their turn, to tyrants fall,While thou shalt flourish, shalt flourish great and free,The dread and envy of them all.

Rule, Britannia

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;All their attempts to bend thee down,All their attempts, all their attempts to bend thee down,Will but arouse thy generous flame,But work their woe and thy renown.Rule Britannia etc.The Muses, still with freedom found,Shall to thy happy coast repair,Shall to thy happy coast, thy happy coasts repair,Blest isle! with matchless beauty crowned,And manly hearts to guard the fair.

Music by Englishman Thomas Augustine Arne (1710-1778) and words by Scotsman James Thompson (1700-1748) for the masque Alfred, performed before German Prince of Wales Frederick (1740)

Benjamin West, Death of Wolfe [Quebec, 1759] (1770)

Benjamin West, Death of Nelson [Trafalgar,1805] (1806)

Unknown artist, Government house, Calcutta (c. 1810)

Thomas Barker, The Secret of England's Greatness (1863)Queen Victoria presenting a bible to a kneeling African chief

M. Formerly, The British Empire (1886)

Sigismund Goetze, Britannia Pacificatrix (1920)

How it looked to others: Yoruba carving of Queen Victoria

Albion’s True Face, L’Assiette au Beurre (September 28, 1901)

Cecil Rhodes’s Legacy, L’Assiette au Beurre, June 28, 1902

Memorial to Boer victims of British concentration camps (1913)

How it looks today: New Delhi, Bengal Lancers

La Martinière school, Lucknow

Hyde Hall (former plantation), Jamaica

Convict barracks, Sydney

Londonderry courthouse

Why Britain?

“Why … the ascendance of this minor country on the northwest corner of Europe, which in 1700 had a population less than one-third that of France, and about 4% that of both China and India, to the position of world dominance it achieved by 1850 …? (Greg Clark, Farewell to Alms)

1. Imperial expansion from c. 1600

2. Industrial revolution from c. 1780-1800

Why Britain?

• An environmental advantage?

• A cultural advantage?

• A social advantage?

• An institutional advantage?

Why Britain?

• An environmental advantage?– Massachusetts not Mexico (Elliott)

• A cultural advantage?– “English individualism” (Macfarlane)

• A social advantage?– Different demographics … (Jones, Clark)

• An institutional advantage?– Dutch institutions scaled up (North, Weingast)

1. An empire of over-population

The British baby boom

• In 18th century, average age of first marriage declined [for both men and women] from 26 in 17th century to 23 by 1800-50

• Percentage of women never marrying declined to 7%• Illegitimate births also went up• Net reproduction rate rose from 1.93 children/woman in

1650s to 2.68 by 1800• By 1790s population was already 37% higher than in the

1740s• English population rose from 6 million in the 1740s to 20

million in the 1860s, more than tripling

Source: Clark, Farewell

Source: Clark, Farewell

The Malthusian trap

• Rising population and more or less static grain production traditionally meant higher rents, lower wages, hunger and premature death

The imperial escape

• The New World offered cheap land (abundant acres) and high wages (scarce labor)

• The Caribbean offered nutritious sugar for those who stayed behind

• Rising incomes increased the demand for Asian luxuries

English Net Emigration, 1601-1801

0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

140,000

1601-11

1611-21

1621-31

1631-41

1641-51

1651-61

1661-71

1671-81

1681-91

1691-1701

1701-11

1711-21

1721-31

1731-41

1741-51

1751-61

1761-71

1771-81

1781-91

1791-1801

Source: Emmer, OHBE I

Total 1.2 million

The British Empire: Population in 1750/51

-

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

England Ireland Scotland N. America W. Indies

49%

Source, Price, OHBE II

Chances of Dying in Different Parts of the British Empire ('1 in Y')(British soldiers circa 1817-1838)

117

65 65 62 6156

47

4035 33

29 27

21

14 14 128

2

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

New

Zea

lan

d

Gre

at B

rita

in

Cap

e C

olo

ny

Can

ada

Mal

ta

Str

aits

Set

tlem

ents

Gib

ralt

ar

Ion

ian

Isla

nd

s

Ber

mu

da

Mau

riti

us

Co

asta

l Bu

rma

Bo

mb

ay

Mad

ras

Cey

lon

Ben

gal

Win

dw

ard

s an

dL

eew

ard

s

Jam

aica

Sie

rra

Leo

ne

1 in

Source: Curtin, Death by Migration

2. A Celtic empire

• “great Brittaines imperial crown” (James VI & I)– Union of Crowns (1603) and Parliaments (1707)– The Darien disaster and the failure of Scottish empire

• Ireland as laboratory of plantation economics– English settlers; English law; English capital– But Scots settlers indispensable

• The Irish exported– Two fifths of all British emigrants between 1701 and

1780 were Irish– In the 1800s, Bengal army was 34 per cent English,

11 per cent Scottish and 48 per cent Irish

Scots in India

• Of 249 writers appointed by the Directors to serve in Bengal in the last decade of Warren Hastings’s administration of EIC, 119 were Scots

• Of 116 candidates for the officer cadres of the Company’s Bengal army recruited in 1782, 56 were Scots

• Of 371 men admitted to work as “free merchants” by the Directors, 211 were Scots. Of 254 assistant surgeon recruits to the Company, 132 were Scots

A Celtic empire

• By 1900 around three quarters of the population of Great Britain lived in England, compared with a tenth in Scotland and a tenth in Ireland

• But Scots constituted around 23% of the British-born population in New Zealand, 21% in Canada and 15% in Australia

• The Irish constituted 21% of the British-born in Canada and New Zealand, and fully 27% in Australia

3. An empire of consumption

• Cod from Newfoundland

• Fur from Hudson’s Bay

• Sugar from Barbados and Jamaica

• Tobacco from Virginia

• Tea from China – 1660 Pepys’s first cuppa, but breakthrough in

1740s

• Textiles from India

The imperial sugar rush

• Sugar– In 1775 total sugar imports accounted for

nearly a fifth of all British imports – By end of 18th century per capita sugar

consumption was 10 times what it was in France (20 pounds per head per year c/w 2)

– from 2% of British caloric intake in 1800 to 14% by 1900

4. A maritime-fiscal empire

• The strategic motivation – Insecurity as the motive for expansion (Colley,

Captives) – The Elizabethan scramble for El Dorado and

privateering – fear of Spain– Cromwell’s “Western Design” against the

Dutch– The second Hundred Years’ War against

more populous France

Critical Review (1756)

“Every Briton ought to be acquainted with the ambitious views of France, her eternal thirst after universal dominion, and her continual encroachments on the properties of her neighbours ... [O]ur trade, our liberties, our country, nay all the rest of Europe, [are] in a continual danger of falling prey to the common Enemy, the universal Cormorant, that would, if possible, swallow up the whole globe itself.”

A self-perpetuating empire

• Monopoly companies use violence against foreign rivals, provoking war …

• War leads to demand for new colonies to pay costs, leads to more war …– Wars against Dutch (1652-74): Jamaica, New

York– Seven Years’ War (1756-63) as the first World

War: Quebec, Floridas, Windward Islands – and Bengal

The Seven Years’ War

European Navies: Total Tonnage of Vessels above 500 tons, 1775-1815

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

1775 1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815

tho

usa

nd

to

ns

dis

pla

cem

ent

Britain

France

Spain

Russia

Netherlands

The fiscal foundation

• Extraordinary expenditure covered by increasing the national debt

• War and debt service dominated expenditures• Half the increase in British govt. revenues from

1670 to 1800 came from customs revenue• 2/3s of customs revenue and 22% of yield from

all major taxes came from duties on tea, sugar, Indian cloth, raw silk, tobacco and foreign spirits (rum) 1788-92

British Military and Public Expenditure as a pecentage of National Income, 1685-1810

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

16

85

16

90

16

95

17

00

17

05

17

10

17

15

17

20

17

25

17

30

17

35

17

41

17

45

17

52

17

60

17

66

17

70

17

80

17

86

17

90

17

96

18

00

18

05

18

10

Total expenditure as % of nationalincome

Military expenditures as % nationalincome

Debt interest (LHS) and debt (RHS) as percentages of gross national product, 1688-1821

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

1688 1698 1708 1718 1728 1738 1748 1758 1768 1778 1788 1798 1808 1818

0%

50%

100%

150%

200%

250%

300%

Debt interest as % of GNP

National debt as % of GNP

Daniel Defoe

“Credit makes war, and makes peace; raises armies, fits out navies, fights battles, besieges towns; and, in a word, it is more justly called the sinews of war than the money itself. … Credit makes the soldier fight without pay, the armies march without provisions … it is an impregnable fortification … it makes paper pass for money … and fills the Exchequer and the banks with as many millions as it pleases, upon demand.”

But: An unnecessary empire?

• Artificial devices (drawbacks and bounties) to accumulate silver and gold

• Monopoly companies “the worst of all governments for any country whatever”

• Colonies “arose from no necessity”; “utility … not altogether so clear and evident”

• Enumerated commodities from colonies have to exported to Britain

• Prohibition on steel production in colonies

• Navigation Acts to promote English merchant shipping

• Slavery an evil

(Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations … 1776)

Next week

Revolutions