The Second British Empire in the Crucible of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The Second British Empire in the Crucible of the Twentieth Century. By Timothy H. Parsons. Critical Issues in World and International History. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Press, 2014. Pp. xii, 240, timeline, notes, bibliography, index. $38.00 cloth.Timothy Parsons has written a wide-ranging survey of the British Empire in the twentieth century rich in detail, and with one regional exception, in its comparative analysis of the impact of British rule on its foreign subjects. After an overview of the empire through World War I, the book is divided into chapters on the interwar period, the 1940s, "The Final Retreat from Empire, 1950-1970," and then "The Global Legacies of the British Empire." The book's scope extends from the West Indies to Malaya with most attention focused on developments in Africa and in India with respect not only to British policies and their justification, but also to local reactions to these policies. Throughout, Parsons is careful to note competing views and factions both within the British governments of the time and in the various regions of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, as well as when considering developments in Ireland and the West Indies.Several themes reappear. One, stressed at the beginning of the book when discussing the pomp surrounding the 1911 Durbar in India held to celebrate Britain's imperial power, is the inherent fragility of British rule and of imperial holdings generally as considered in hindsight. The intended impression of stability and power masked the underlying reality that the empire had already inspired resistance in many regions, opposition that would only expand as the decades wore on, especially since expected financial rewards from investments were often unmet. For Parsons, the end of empire, symbolized in the handing over of Hong Kong to China in 1997, discussed in his Introduction, has a feeling of inevitability fueled by the transformation of global power sectors and the relative decline of the British economy, especially after World War II.Much of his book thus traces British debates as to how officials should respond to local protests. Parsons discusses at length the Amritsar killings of 1919 and General Dyer's firm belief that force was the only means to impress Indians of British might and command obedience, set against fears that such actions further inflamed the resistance of subject peoples; a balance had to be struck between assertion of authority and encouragement of local cooperation. A strength of the book is Parsons's argument that Ireland's resistance to British rule served as an inspiration to peoples elsewhere with Indian revolutionary groups establishing themselves in the United States in the early twentieth century. Another is Parsons' inclusion of references to the role of women in African economies along with noting that West African farmers were far more efficient in their agricultural productivity than British-inspired schemes, a fact London and its colonial officials were often reluctant to acknowledge.Racial paternalism pervaded imperial administration. And, as Parsons notes at the end of the book, the granting of independence to many colonies, such as Ghana, did not lessen the dependence of such areas on their former rulers because their local economies and bureaucracies had never been developed to a level of self-sufficiency and sustainability, a pattern seen in former French possessions as well. Economic vulnerability, coupled with intensified nationalist feelings, led African rulers and their subjects to turn against the Indian residents who had long dominated local commerce, leading to mass immigration of Indians and Pakistanis to England from Africa and other possessions, along with a major West Indian influx as well that, as Parsons' notes, had a major impact of the British music scene in the 1970s and 1980s. These references to music attest to Parsons's awareness of the complexity of the imperial interactions. …