Balfour Declaration (Report) "Middle Power" Mackenzie King
General J. B. Hertzog "Hoggenheimer" The 1926 Dissolution
"Autonomous Communities" Colonial Laws Validity Act Sterling Area
Statute of Westminster 1932 Ottawa Conference Appeasement
Sir Edward Northey Southern Rhodesia Leopold Amery
Closer Union United Africa Company Swarajists
"The Father, Son, & Holy Ghost" M. A. Jinnah Simon Report
The Salt Tax Round Table Conference Eamon de Valera
1935 Government of India Act "The Slums of the Empire" "Atlantic Charter"
Colonial Welfare & Develop. Act Sir Stafford Cripps "Quit India"
Anzus Pact United Nations "Concept of Power"
"Showing the Flag" Indiscriminate Chatterers Britain's Oyster
Unilever, Dunlop & Tate and Lyle Fall of Singapore
The Statue of Westminster (1931): In imperial policy the Conservatives moved uncertainly toward new positions. The secretary of state for India, Lord Birkenhead, on one occasion wrote of "our expanding destiny as leaders of mankind . . . Our destiny is inevitable where we look upon it as that which is woven on the loom of time by a higher Power, or regard it as the reflection of a mighty past, the forecast of a still mightier future." Such language and thought mar the career of a very talented individual.
This outlook is not representative of the Colonial office under Leopold Amery. While piously optimistic about the future of the Empire and though often pompous and self-important, he was a man of administrative capacity and flexible mind, and took the lead in developing a new concept of colonialism. He brought about the creation of a separate Cabinet Office for Dominion Affairs. The Imperial Conference of 1926 adopted the Arthur Balfour Report (drafted by the Inter-Imperial Relations Committee), which defined the status of Great Britain and the dominions in a surprisingly concise and unambiguous formula: "autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations." The clear import--abrogation of all British legislative control over the dominions--was not at first fully appreciated, but any uncertainty was removed by the Statute of Westminster which made this principle the law of the land. In foreign policy, in particular, this statute merely ratified an accomplished fact. At the Paris Peace Conference, the dominions had the appearance of independent states, and they had been consulted by Britain on every major policy decision thereafter.
Empire and the Concept of Power: So long as the Navy was supreme, the Army, it was thought, could be largely a colonial gendarmerie, or at best an Asian and not a European army. Within colonies armies and police were to operate wherever possible upon concepts of power rather than force; if necessary, as in the case of India, behind a defended frontier held in the almost limited war conditions of containing a challenge from less advanced peoples. . . . the Pax Britannica, it was assumed, would last for decades if not for ever, and imperial policing would remain secured by the sea and by frontiers, treaties with client border princes in the Middle East, Persian Gulf, Bhutan and Nepal. The prospect of advance towards a dominion status, it was rather vaguely assumed, would in time contain nationalist excesses in India and elsewhere. Only in the late 1930s did any appreciation of the direction in which changes in India might lead the imperial system deign to appear, but even this appreciation was very limited. In the meantime imperial authority had to be maintained by a country which had neither the population nor the political support for a large conscript army. Power, then, with the minimum actual use of force, was to be the keynote. Such power would by charisma produce the correct response from colonial peoples, who would choose to obey the orders of the system rather than be forced into so doing. As such, power was economical, since the use of raw force quickly led to its attrition. Further, force used in one place could not simultaneously be used elsewhere, while the weight of power could be felt in many places at once. Such a strategic concept could, of course, only be applied when, first, there was a not too distant memory (of which in the 1920s there were still plenty) of effective and recent applications of force to discourage any who felt power was a bluff to be challenged by revolt, and second by the speedy arrival of a new force to inflict retribution in the event of such revolt. And in the 1919-39 period the imperial order gained greatly for advances in military science enabling it to inflect such retribution. Indeed it seems certain that large areas of the empire--in its widest sense to include certain strategic or oil-producing territories nominally independent but accepting British 'protection'--would have had to have been abandoned had it not been for the new concepts of control 'without occupation', based chiefly on the use of aircraft, armoured-cars, wireless and motor vehicles.
One other very important feature of the exercise of power was its display--'showing the flag'. Warships made a considerable impression on the minds of Asian, African and Caribbean peoples--frequently the ships' crews engaged in military tournaments with army garrisons, ceremonial of some kind always offered pageantry and, less formally, the ships' crews played football against local teams. The ships were always opened to visitors, sometimes special arrangements were always opened to visitors, sometimes special arrangements were made for visits by groups thought to be potentially difficult such as Indian University students. On occasions warships arrived carrying members of the Royal Family, a time of specially impressive ceremony. A somewhat bizarre example of the concept was the 1924 visit of the Special Service Squadron including HMS Hood, the world's largest warship, one other battle-cruiser and four cruisers to Zanzibar to recoup prestige the Navy felt it had lost following the destruction there of a small cruiser by the Germans in 1914. After the visit was over, the Sultan of Zanzibar led the Squadron out to sea in his State Yacht. This Special Service Squadron's Imperial world cruise was an exercise in prestige and display; nearly two million people visited the ships. Even in South Africa Royal Navy personnel and ships were frequently to be seen, Afrikaner Nationalist leaders seeing the presence of uniformed sailors and marines marching through towns and cities as a useful reminder of white efficiency and supremacy for the non-white population. Courtesy visits of efficient British squadrons also served to emphasise continued British interest in those independent countries, in particular in Latin America, in which there were substantial British investments. Royal Air Force squadrons also played an important display role, sometimes merely by flying in formation over a restless area, sometimes by mock attacks. Frequently local rulers, chieftains or headmen would be given a brief trip in a warship or in an RAF aircraft with the object of creating an impression.. Military units generally attempted to carry out marches or field exercises in as many areas of a territory as possible once a year. These marches reinforced authority and also attracted recruits. Almost all infantry battalions (and both capital ships and large cruisers also) had their own bands. Next Page
