Tactical Withdrawal or a Hasty Retreat of the British Empire - Coursework Example

Decolonization in Britain: The Tactical Retreat British imperialism was presented with two major problems at the end of the IInd World War. The first was the humiliation and embarrassment associated with being the junior partner in a wartime alliance and being placed in a position of financial obligation to the United States, that was once a British colony1.(Clarke, 2008). In the year 1945-46, Britain discovered that after waging a practically lone battle against Hitler for so long and finally gaining the crown of victory, the country was left financially bankrupt and had to arrange a loan of $3.47 billion dollars from America to protect itself from debt. But Americans made no secret of their antipathy for British imperialism as expressed through its colonies in India and its oppressive regime sin Palestine and Greece. As a result, Americans were unwilling to support Britain, even with commercial rates of interest, while British imperialism existed and this placed Britain in an embarrassing position, so that it was forced to reconsider its imperial policies from a tactical perspective, to preserve its dignity and face in the world comity of nations. The indications of the decline of the British empire were already evident in the dwindling British financial position after the long drawn out IIrd world war, as well as the outdated and underproductive machinery and factories in the colonies. The British predicament was made worse by its need to remain in the good graces of its former colony, the United States which favored an anti-imperial position. Combined with insistent independence initiatives, angered anti-imperial activists and an endangered economic England, the Labor Party of the British Parliament called for a tactical retreat from colonialism and for the refocusing of financial energies and resources on the English homeland. Before the First World War, Britain’s main competitors were the United Sates and Germany. The United States of American had won the Spanish American War of 1898, built the Panama Canal and industrialized rapidly with its new Pacific Territory. Building its resources almost as fast as the United States was Germany, which was also an imperial nation like Britain. Britain’s colony India was one of its prime sources of wealth, but during the period immediately preceding and after the IInd World War, India was struggling for its freedom. Territory that was owned by the British Empire in the pacific regions also declared independence, since Britain realized that its devastated economic state after World War II could not support its many colonies, and provide the required industrialization, infrastructure and improvement to make them as productive as the United States of America, which, thanks to impressive entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie and Jonathan D. Rockefeller, had leaped into a new technological era. Most American colonies had also declared their independence, so, the retreat from imperialism was a prolonged and premeditated affair stretching over half a century and across several continents. The driving forces behind this decolonization movement were the impoverishment of Britain as a result of the two World Wars and the rising tide amongst colonial people for independence.2 A prime example of the tactical underpinnings of strategic withdrawal was the British Empire’s decision to relinquish its hold over India. After the Government of India Act of 1858, Indians were allowed to hold more positions under the British Raj, a concession that had been granted to them by Queen Victoria to keep them from revolting again. As a result, a new class of educated middle-class Indian natives was formed, who were initially loyal to the British, but who in time began to request for more and more freedoms for their fellow colonists3. A.O. Hume, a retired British civil servant, suggested that these Indians who were successful western-educated provincial elites engaged in professions such as law, teaching, and journalism, form a committee to request reforms from the British. Thus, in 1885 the Indian National Congress was founded. Initially, it functioned more as a debating society that met annually to express its loyalty to the British Raj and pass resolutions on less controversial issues. But in the late 19th century, extremism began to develop among Congress members. In 1905, when Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal, extremism spread, and displayed itself in the Swadeshi and Boycott Movements. The British Empire sent its soldiers into Bengal hoping to calm the angst and stop the destruction of British products. They knew that they would need India’s help in their impending movement against Germany. Thus they made every effort to calm the Congress and gained their help in the First World War, promising to give India self government within the British Empire in exchange for Indian soldiers, raw materials, ammunition and food supplies. But after the war, Britain refused to give India self government, added to which the aftermath of the World War I, high casualty rates, soaring inflation compounded by heavy taxation, a widespread influenza epidemic, and the disruption of trade during the war, escalated human suffering in India. Britain decided to step back a bit more to ensure the Congress’s good will. In August 1917, Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India, made an announcement in Parliament that the British policy for India was "increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire"4. However, this preventive measure was too late as Gandhi, who was already known for his humanitarian activities in South Africa, had already been called upon to help his own brethren in India. With the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, where a British General, Reginald Dyer opened fire on an unarmed audience killing 500 people, Gandhi obtained his chance to advocate his policies of satyagraha and ahimsa as a form of retaliation, in the Non- Cooperation Movement. Britain had to tread a fine balance between ensuring that its supply of wealth and resources from its Indian colony remain uninterrupted, while simultaneously ensuring that its power base in the colony was not disturbed. But in the face of the rising success of Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience movement, coupled with the depleting financial resources of the british after the World wars, Britian realized that from a tactical perspective, a withdrawal from imperialism might offer a means for the country to save face and preservbe its dignity. This was even more so after the Iind World War, when it was forced to seek financial assistance from America, which was unwilling to cooperate with Britian while it was continuing its imperial policies. Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement when he found out that Britain had entered India into World War II without the approval of the Indian National Congress or the Muslim League. Although his efforts failed, Gandhi continued on a non-violent path to Independence. Britain’s attempt to forbid BBC from casting the limelight on the executed INA soldiers caused more uprisings and bloodshed. At the end of the war, Britain had been personally attacked by Hitler’s Blitzkrieg and was virtually bankrupt. The Pound Sterling currency lost out to the mighty dollar and British rule in India was on its last legs. Indian rebellion had gained too much strength for Britain to fend off, when they were suffering from enormous financial losses themselves. On 3 June 1947, Viscount Louis Mountbatten, the last British Governor-General of India, announced the partitioning of the British Indian Empire into a secular India and a Muslim Pakistan. On 14 August 1947, Pakistan was declared a separate nation from them. At midnight, on 15 August 1947, India became an independent nation, and Britain turned its attention towards the repair of its own economy5. In 1941, Britain and America signed the Atlantic Charter, which also contained a provision introduced by Roosevelt, i.e, the autonomy of the imperial colonies6. At the end of World War II, where Britian was placed in the position where it was anxious to please its new American ally, especially to secure the necessary finances to reconstruct its economy, its imperial policy and colonies became an ambarrassment in the new era of democracy being propagated by American policy. While Britain’s colonial hold on India was slipping, West African regions also declared their independence from the British7. Nigeria had gained its freedom at relatively the same time Indian Independence became a reality. However, many European settlers in East Africa i.e. Kenya and Central Africa or the Central African Federation wanted independence from the British Empire. Although the Conservative Party in Britain had been partial to the maintenance of colonialism into the 21st century, it realized by 1951 that its ties to the United States of America were pulling it farther and farther away from its imperial ambitions. It owed a lot of money to the United States and had taken loans under the Marshall Plan to reinstate its economy. For better or for worse, Britain’s revival was tied to America’s approval8. Also, pressure from the European settlers of Africa threatened the stability of the Conservative Party; hence they thought it a strategic move to retreat from Africa. As a result, in accordance with the policy of the United States, Britain began to encourage the emancipation of Africans and multiracial parties in the Parliament. In Kenya, the majority of the European settlers were civil servants, farmers and businessmen who saw the economic advantage in the emancipation of Africans. There were problems in the Federation of European settlers and African natives, where many of the upper class European settlers felt their industrial and agricultural territory was bring encroached upon by African natives. However, African nationalism combined with calls for emancipation from the British Parliament was a strong rival for the racist European settlers who controlled the Central African Federation. The Federation officially ended on 31 December 1963, when Northern Rhodesia gained independence from Britain as the new nation of Zambia and Nyasaland gained independence as the new nation of Malawi. Kenya declared independence on December 12th 1963. Britain’s policy of increasing decolonization was closely linked to its economic policies and its need to maintain the strength of the sterling in the world economy. Due to the preparations for the IInd World War, by 1939, the sterling was no longer automatically convertible into other currencies because it had lost much of its value9. The cost of financing colonial development was no longer a viable option for Britain and it was facing increasing pressure from its anti-imperialist ally, America. Hence Britain, acting in accordance with its new international outlook, retreated from Kenya and the Central African Federation; it established itself as a western democratic nation, which encouraged the same values as America i.e. democracy, capitalism and the establishment of world nations from prior colonies. After decolonizing its African territories, Britain also slowly granted independence to its colonial Pacific territories as well. The changing times had strong effects on Britain’s equally long lasting Conservative Party, which had always supported imperialism. Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England sn a member of the Conservative Party, had a particular loathing for relinquishing Britain’s position at the forefront of world affairs. For example, during the first half of the 1930s, Churchill was outspoken in his opposition to granting Dominion status to India. He was one of the founders of the India Defense League, a group dedicated to the preservation of British power in India. He also disliked Mahatma Gandhi and once said: “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle-Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace...to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor”10 with reference to the Gandhi –Irwin Pact making conference. But Churchill’s friendship with Ameircan President Roosevelt compelled him from a tactical standpoint, to adopt anti-colonial policies although this was against the Conservative policy of imperialism. In the 1940’s the Conservative Party and the Liberal party of the British Government, formed a coalition government. The Liberals pushed for giving the colonies their freedom since the World Wars had drained Britain’s finances. India gained its independence when Churchill was not in power. In Malaya, a rebellion against British rule had been in progress since 1948. Churchills government inherited a crisis, and Churchill chose to use direct military action against those in rebellion while attempting to build an alliance with those who were not. While the rebellion was slowly being defeated, it was equally clear that colonial rule from Britain was no longer sustainable. Winston Churchill was a great leader during the World Wars, and foresaw the danger of Hitler before any one else did, but he is a prime example of Englishment favoring imperialist policies of the Conservative Party, who did not wish the British Empire to relinquish its hold over the world. Yet, after the financial devastation of both the World Wars, most parliamentary members realized that their limited finance had to be utilized for building a new Britain, on capitalistic and democratic lines, in order to preserve Britain’s economic strength. Slowly, Britain began to retreat from all its colonies so that it would not be dragged down by constant rebellions, economic losses and American disapproval. Therefore, this was a tactical policy also linked to economic reasons, as further detailed below, rather then a hasty withdrawal from the colonized nations. The reasons for Britain’s premeditated retreat from imperialism were tied up with the British economy. Whether imperialism was encouraged or deflected, it was favored or forgotten was based on the monetary scales prevalent at the time. During the First World War, Britain used up a huge amount of money for artillery, food supplies, soldiers and other war related materials and lost at least a quarter of their amassed wealth. Failure to realize the damage done to the British economy led to the pursuit of traditional liberal economic policies, which plunged the country further into economic dislocation with high unemployment and sluggish growth. Wall Street crashed in 1929, affecting Britain severely. Where Britain had once championed the concept of the free market economy when it was a superpower, it gradually withdrew to adopting Tariff Reform as a measure of protectionism. By the early 1930s, the depression again signaled the economic problems the British economy faced. Britain was not alone, with equal economic troubles affecting most European countries, most powerfully Germany. Britain did not nip Hitler’s increasingly fascist tendencies in the bud because delaying a commitment to war was a means of buying time to divert scarce economic resources into the production of military hardware and armaments. During the war, Britain imposed exchange controls. It decided to sell its gold reserves and dollar reserves to pay for ammunition, raw materials and industrial equipment from American factories. In 1940, the volume of British exports was down 37% compared to 1935. Although the British Government had committed itself to nearly $10,000 millions of orders from America, Britains gold and dollar reserves were near exhaustion. Churchill’s friendship with Roosevelt helped relations between the two countries, and America decided to help Britain avoid bankruptcy. On 10 January 1941 they produced a Bill that became an Act known as Lend-Lease, whereby America would lend Britain equipment which she would pay for once the war had finished. However, Lend-Lease created problems in reviving Britains exports after the war, because under this new agreement with the American Government, Britain agreed not to export any articles which contained Lend-Lease material or to export any goods—even if British-made—which were similar to Lend-Lease goods In the first month British gold and dollar reserves had dwindled to their lowest ever point, $12 million. By 1944 British exports had gone down to 31% from 1938. Because of all these economic hassles, Britain was extremely concerned with maintaining the value of the pound sterling, and its position as an important global currency11. The British parliament members felt that as long as their currency was still strong, they could remain a great nation. This is why theyhad previously tried to hang on to their colonies like India, parts of Africa and the Pacific. India had always produced a lot of money for England considering that raw materials were taken from this colony to be utilized in British factories and then the natives were forced to buy the finished merchandise at exorbitant rates. Goods made by Indian merchants were charged high export tax, but hardly any import tax was charged on British goods. This attempt to reinstate the pound did not work, due to the fact that the Indian Rebellion targeted the British economy rather than the British military as could be seen from the Boycott, Civil Disobedience and Quit India Movements. When the pound was devalued in 1949, Britain also hoped it could turn Malaya and West Africa into dollar earning economies so as to strengthen the value of the pound. By 1953, Britain began to realize that the colonies were an encumbrance that they could ill afford and that economic liberalization was the new mantra for retaining political standing. The critical factor here was the collapse of the previous assumption that colonial development could be financed from the sterling balances that accumulated when colonial produce was sold for dollars that were retained in London’s ‘dollar pool’ and credited as pounds in the colonies’ accounts. Once the colonies’ produce began to earn a smaller dollar income (as prices fell), and local political demands became more pressing, the economic rewards of colonial rule began to disappear.12 Britain would also have to invest heavily in the colonies, if they were to produce anything at all. If the colonies failed to produce properly, Britain would be saddled with more debts. The imperial sterling lost its value after 1957, but Britain still managed to pull through and remain one of the richest and most successful nations of the world, because it slowly relinquished its imperial hold once it was understood that there was no economic advantage in them. In my opinion, Britain did not hastily retreat from Empire building until it had considered the financial viability of the colonies and monetary status of its own Treasury. Britain’s aim was to preserve the value of the pound and to find a method to funnel money into their war torn land. So long as the colonies were generating wealth for Britian, retaining them was a viable option. But when the colonies became liabilities that would only drain Britain’s meager economic resources and prove an unreliable source of funds to Britain due to rebellions against British authority, Britain decided it was better to align itself with its new ally the United States of America than to practice imperialism in a world which no longer seemed to tolerate it. The British Parliament did not suddenly decide to give India independence; the Raj had gradually been withdrawing itself from the many riots and revolts that plagued it in India. Economically it was a sounder proposition to give Africans rights in Kenya and the Central African Federation, because it would provide more economic opportunities for the majority of the population rather than limiting economic success by limiting it to only a few white minorities. It willingly gave up its Pacific territory as with the new trade and marketing balances, being the only imperial nation in a free world would have injured Britain’s international standing. The world was changing, and the British Parliament realized that if they did not change as well their broken economy would never recover. The survival of Britain as an economic power even after two financially crippling world wars, reveals how the British policy of withdrawal was a tactical measure designed to preserve the value of its currency and accommodate itself to a changing world where democracy was assuming more importance and the policy of imperialism was being viewed unfavorably. Works Cited: 1. Brinkley, Douglas and Facey-Crowther, David R. The Atlantic Charter: The world of the Roosevelts, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. 2. Birmingham, David. “The decolonization of Africa”, Routledge, 1995. 3. Clarke, Peter. The last thousand days of the British Empire, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008. 4. Darwin, John. "Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies 1947-58. Book Review: By Gerold Krozewski. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. xiv, 311 5. Donnelly, Fred. "When empires collapse.” Telegraph-Journal [Saint John, N.B.]. Published: September 4th, 2007. Accessed: 8th August 2008. 6. Gilbert, Martin. Winston Churchill: The Wilderness years. U.S.A: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. 7. Hinds, Allister. Britain’s sterling policy and decolonization, Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. 8. Masani, Rustom Pestonji. Britain in India: An Account of British Rule in the Indian Subcontinent. London: Oxford University Press, 1960. 9. Murphy, Philip. Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951-1964. London: Oxford University Press, 1995. 10. Mordecai, John. Federation of the West Indies. U.S.A: Northwestern University Press, 1968.. Read More