The Imperial Governance of British Empire

In the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, the Colonial Office concerned itself primarily with the emigrant colonies, but toward the end of that century those colonies were in most cases self-governing, and Colonial Office attention was directed toward the management of colonies not merely under British sovereignty but under British rule. Defenders of the British Empire have often emphasized its liberal character, and in so doing have directed attention to the emigrant colonies, or Dominions as they became.

Responsible government, which meant colonial government in which a colonial ministry was responsible to the legislature and the London-appointed governor was bound to accept the advice of the ministry, was introduced by stages in Canada, but it is generally reckoned to have been permanently established in 1848. Shortly thereafter, responsible government was extended to most of the Australian colonies in 1853, and became effective in New Zealand in 1856. It was granted, under a property franchise that largely but not completely excluded Africans, to the Cape Colony in 1872. The liberal institutions established throughout the settler Dominions customarily excluded natives. However, they created a series of pro-British white Dominions that contributed materially to the empire’s strength during the world wars. Ireland has been viewed by some historians as England’s first colony.

The Norman kings had claimed the island in the twelfth century but did not succeed in imposing direct authority beyond the pale of Dublin. Schemes of “plantation,” in the language of the time, under Elizabeth I in the late sixteenth century offered incentives for English settlers to colonize Ireland, the aim being to create populations loyal to the English crown. By the end of the seventeenth century, most of Ireland was in Protestant English hands. The Irish parliament set up in 1782 was abolished by William Pitt ’s Act of Union, which brought Ireland into a legislative union with England, Wales, and Scotland, the aim being to prevent further Irish rebellions by assimilating the Irish into the British state. The policy was hindered by the fact that most Irish, even those few meeting the property qualifications for the franchise, were Catholic.

The Catholic Emancipation of 1829 followed by the successive reforms bills of the nineteenth century enfranchised increasing numbers of Irishmen and led to a rising demand for Home Rule. In 1886, the Gladstone government proposed to meet this demand, thereby splitting the Liberal Party and putting the Conservative Party, or Unionists, in power for most of the next 20 years. The idea of separate status for Ireland was an affront to the legal egalitarianism of many Liberals; to the Conservatives, breaking up the union presaged the fragmentation of the empire that they wished to unite. Ireland was granted Dominion status in 1922 as a result of civil war, a process notably divergent from the gradual assumption of self government in the other Dominions. Although British contemporaries saw Ireland as a poor and disorderly part of Britain, in the eyes of Irish nationalists and many current scholars it was in fact not merely the first colony conquered but the first to obtain independence.

The most powerful and influential successor state to the British Empire is of course the United States. American nationalism originally defined itself against the empire, although at the same time, it derived many of its core characteristics, including its hostility to the state and to centralized authority, from the British constitutional tradition. The Anglo-American War of 1812 heightened anti-British opinion in the United States. In the same period, however, Anglo-American trade and cultural links grew rapidly, trade having rapidly doubled its pre-War of Independence volume after the peace of 1783. Anglo-American tensions bubbled to the surface throughout the nineteenth century, but neither country had an interest in war.

The seizure of Confederate representatives from a British ship almost led to war between Britain and the Union during the American Civil War in the 1860s, but the United States backed down. In the 1890s, Britain gave way as a result of Anglo-American tensions in British Guyana and Panama. Throughout the era of imperialism, Anglo-American trade grew, and Britain became the largest investor in the United States. Anglo-American ties reached their closest point during World War II, but the United States in this era had a profoundly ambivalent attitude to the British Empire, being in theory anti-imperialist but at the same time needing a strong ally.