An absolute layperson’s takeaways from the concept of empire

An absolute layperson’s takeaways from the concept of empire


I have just completed the book “Empire” on the subject of British Empire by British historian Niall Ferguson. As a layperson who also happen to be an interested student in history , I asked myself what are the things I can take away from the system of an empire as Niall Ferguson depicts the system of British empire. These are the following points I would like to give special importance.

Why empires come into picture – There is no single cause behind the emergence of empires. Some empires come into existence because a powerful and strong leader wants to dominate others and achieve everlasting glory beyond his death. Most of the ancient empires can be categorized under this category. Hellenic empire came into being mostly because of the glory seeking by Alexander the great whereas in ancient China it was one Han emperor who conquered and thereby united all other warring tribes of China under the yoke of one united Han nation. The ancient Persian empires of Akamens and the Sassanids came into being chiefly because of the strong leaderships of men like Cyrus the great and Artaxerexes.
In the medieval world , the personal glory seeking was replaced by the zeal of spreading a faith acorss the oceans and seas. The early Islamic conquests and subsequent Islamic empires in Persia , Byzantine and Spain were based upon the main idea to propagate the faith. This tendency of creating empires based upon ideas continued in modern world also with the formation of Soviet Union. Even modern America can be considered as a sort of ideological empire based upon the concepts of Puritan beliefs.

The most common reason behind the creation of empires though is commercial. The tendency to seek raw materials as well as markets for exporting goods can be considered the most important reason over history for seeking empires. Most of the modern Western empires including the most important of them i.e. the British empire was created primarily upon these notions. In the case of the British , it was the need to compete with its European rivals like the Dutch and the Spanish in the beginning and later the French and much later the Germans that provided the basic drive for the British to seek overseas empires.

How to successfully run an empire : the art of collaboration – The British mastered this art. At the heyday of the British Raj in India only a handful (in early hundreds) of British civil servants and a relatively small British army (total approximately around 1,60000 , most of its footsoldiers were Indians) ruled hundereds of millions (around 350 million) Indian subjects. Even a formiddable foe like Adolph Hitler , was astonished by this appearent success by the British to rule so many with so few. The British had built up very useful collaborative relationships with the Indian Maharajas and Nawabs , so that these people were dependent upon the British for their existence and naturally they collaborated with the British furthering the British rule. The British also played the art of “divide and rule” masterfully by sometimes playing one tribe against another like deploying loyal Sikh and Gurkha regiments during the 1857 mutiny against the rebel Maratha and Muslim factions.The British had built up another very loyal base of support among the English-speaking and modernizing Indians in particular among the Bengali tribe. This was the group to whom , the British civil servants generally sub-contracted the job of running the day-to-day functionalities of the empire. The art of empireship here was to ensure that the native collaborators always end up with a small fraction of the revenues and other booties that come about while running the empire. The maintenance of the political status of the collaborator was also a very important task for the British. The British rulers of India ensured that the Maharajas , Nawabs and the Bengali babus were entrusted with just about enough revenues and titles which allow these important British assets in India to place themselves just above their native countrymen. As a result, these Maharajas , Nawabs and the Bengali babus accepted and cherished their subordination to the British Raj.

How to successfully run an empire : learning from past mistakes – It is one thing to build an empire and it is another thing to sustain it. The British empire sustained so long because the British were always looking for opportunities to learn from their mistakes and quickly correcting them. In the beginning of their Empire , the Dutch were the primary competitors of the British in India , the British had fought wars to dispose the Dutch but in the end failed to defeat them. They were astonished that how could a much smaller country like the Dutch ; which was basically a breakaway faction from the Spanish empire due to religious war ; could punch much above its weight. They later found out that it was the superior financial system of the Dutch whereby instead of imposing suffocating taxes upon the population the Dutch brought the necessary finances for war by borrowing money in terms of government bonds. They quickly adopted this technique and instead of fighting with the Dutch , merged their finances with them.This later helped the British to win the seven year war against the French.

Another great example of the British learning from their mistakes was that after losing her American colonies , Britain decided to allow more local autonomy to the English-speaking colonists in Canada , Australia , New Zealand and much later South Africa , all of whom were white Anglo-Saxon protestant communities. These colonies were allowed to become dominions whereby they were given a representative legislature through which they elected their own representatives through competitive elections and made their own rules instead of being dictated from London.

One of the primary reasons behind the 1857 mutiny was the missionary zeal showed by some British evangelists to spread their version of Anglizcized Christianity upon the Indians ; this threatened the traditional Indian sepoys , who feared about losing their age-old ways of life to their British masters and as a consequence they rose up in arms against the British rule in India. After suppressing the mutiny the British decided to put a stop to the missionary activities of the more-zealous missionaries. The East India company’s role of governing India was taken over by the British policymakers in London so as to ensure that no repeatation of the causes of 1857 mutiny ever takes place. The assertive , bleeding-heart missionary groups were discouraged to interfere in the body politic of India and the British left the Indians to their own conditions. This ensured that there were no major mutiny in the British Indian military for close to a century.

How to successfully run an empire : entrusting the experts – The British always did well to entrust the job of empire building to the local forces who were deployed in the areas in question. Whther it was the Buccaneers and pirates like Sir Henry Morgan or the unconventioanl generals like Robert Clive or for that matter pioneering men like Cycil Rhodes , Charles “Chinese” Gordon or T G Lawrence , the British empire was built upon the guiles and exploits of these men who were seeking glory and fortune overseas. The job of the policymakers in London was just to give them enough encouragement so that in the end, London can benefit from the exploits of these men.

Whenever the important job of decision making was entrusted to people without enough knowledge of the situation , the result was disastrous. The Boston tea party that ultimate led to Britain losing her American colonies came about as a consequence of imposing a transaction tax (although very small) on the continental colonists from faraway London without taking the consents of the people who were supposed to pay the taxes. Even during the American War of Independence , instead of depending upon the British loyalists for military leadership , the British entrusted a man from the mother country i.e. Lord Cornwalis to lead the British forces in America which ultimately led to Britain losing the War and losing her American colonies.In the initial buildup to the First World war , despite strong reservations from the experienced diplomats in the area , the British policymakers in London , led by Sir Winston Churchill decided to take unwise decisions like seizing the two Turkish state-of-the art Battleships the Reshadieh and Sultan Osman I which the Turkish government had paid for and entrusted the British to manufacture and hand over to them , leading Turkey to join forces with Kaiser’s Germany thereby expanding the theatre of what was essentially an European War and as a consequence creating more casualties and future complexities for the British to handle.

Why Empires Fall – There are two basic reasons which can be attributed to the downfall of the empires. The conflicts with their rival empires have historically brought about the downfall of the empires. The empires need to be careful to choose which wars to fight and which wars to stand down. The historians still debate whether it was wise enough for the British to participate in the two World wars which led them to confront aggressive empires like Germany and Japan who were on their ascendancy at the time. Although the British managed to end up in the winning side in both the World wars but ultimately it was the resultant drainage in terms of money and men that made it impossible for the British to continue to run their empire. This also leads us to the second most important reason behind the fall of the empires i.e. a lack of financial resources needed to run the empire. A very good example of this particular type of Empire collapse is the collapse of Soviet Union in our times. Although the Soviet Union did not have to face the humiliation of ending up in the losing side of any World War but it was the financial destitution of the Soviet economic system that ultimately led to the Soviets losing the cold war.

All the empires do possess one common characteristics , they are gigantic enterprises of men with respect to great ideas , endevors , dreams and visions. They produce colorful characters and towering leaders in their wake. Yet they are not flawless as they leave the global stage with collective scars on global human psyche like the Holocaust , Atlantic Slave trade and the genocide of the Natives in the Americas. Empires are more like individuals who want to be different than others , who want to reach the sky and fill up the stars with their glory but in the end when they leave the world , they find out that they cannot vanquish their own mortality to which his fate has consigned for him.