Hegemonic Peace and Empire by Ali Parchami

Author:Ali Parchami [Parchami, Ali]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Strategy, Political Science, History & Theory, International Relations, Diplomacy, Peace, Imperialism
ISBN: 9781134007042
Google: Pwt6AgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-03-04T01:15:28+00:00

Joseph Chamberlain and the Pax Britannica

The different ideological strands of the Pax Britannica were all given expression by Joseph Chamberlain in his speeches and public addresses. Perhaps the most eloquent exponent of British imperialism, Chamberlain was, arguably, the personification of the imperialist age. He was certainly one of the most ardent exponents of the notion of the Pax Britannica – a fact which is most illuminating when one considers that the contradictions of his personality, and especially of his political career, were befitting to a concept which was itself riddled with dualities. To capture what the Pax Britannica concept meant to the late Victorians and Edwardians, one has to understand what it signified to someone of the caliber of Joseph Chamberlain. His 1897 address at the Royal Colonial Institute, though a deliberation upon the concept of Empire, conveyed much of the essence of the Pax Britannica. After a brief introduction, Chamberlain distinguished between the two halves of the British Empire: the half consisting of the self-governing colonies, which ‘we think and speak of ... as part of ourselves ... united to us ... by ties of kindred, of religion, of history, and of language, and joined to us by the seas that formerly seemed to divide us’; and the ‘half consisting of the more numerous population in tropical climates’, where the British sense of possession had been replaced by a sense of obligation.84

This obligation involved carrying out the work of civilizing, which had become Britain’s national mission, and finding scope for the ‘exercise of those faculties and qualities which have made of us a great governing race’. Our countrymen, Chamberlain continued, ‘have gone forth at the command of the Queen, and ... redeemed districts as large as Europe from barbarism and superstition in which they had been steeped for centuries’. With the great Pax Britannica in place, ‘I maintain that our rule does, and has, brought security and peace and comparative prosperity to countries that never knew these blessings before’.85 In the Imperium (the dependencies), the Pax Britannica was regarded by Chamberlain as an imposed peace: British ‘conquerors ... have carried the British flag and British trade and British peace and British law to the four corners of the globe’.86 Bloodshed was acceptable – however much regretted.87 But the bloodshed that the Pax Britannica demanded was ‘a mere drop in the ocean to the bloodshed which has gone on for generations’ in such countries ‘before we ever took any interest’ in them.88

As for the empire of Libertas, the Pax Britannica represented the peace upheld by a chosen people. Chamberlain resolutely believed in the ‘destiny which is reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race’, and that the Anglo-Saxon civitas ‘would become the predominating force in the future history and civilisation of the world’.89 An important element of their contribution to civilization was the promotion of the prevailing peace within the Anglo-Saxon community. This would be achieved through closer bonds of unity, and the diffusion of Anglo-Saxon culture, values, and institutions: ‘I think that we may trust to the .

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