Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:50:14.656Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

III. Milnerism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Eric Stokes
Eric Stokes
Affiliation:
University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As a result of recent studies English imperialism has come to acquire a somewhat surprising reputation for sobriety and restraint; that is English imperialism considered as a serious and responsible political movement in contrast to its occasional ally, jingoism, which Stead aptly termed ‘imperialism sodden with gin’. So far from being marked by ‘earth hunger’ and the lust for limitless expansion, the imperialist attitude is now regarded as primarily a defensive one, originating as an impulse of defiant self-assertion to safeguard existing British overseas interests from injury or extinction. The elements of exaggeration in the older picture have been carefully toned down. The swing in British policy is now held to have been more gentle, more limited in extent and duration, more seriously checked by the traditional regulators of Gladstonian finance and the priority of European affairs than was allowed for in the polemics of the older view. Just as the swing in British policy and opinion was less violent, so the distance that divided the Little Englander from the Big Englander is seen to have been much narrower than the party controversies of the nineties would suggest. Dr R. E. Robinson, who has been among the leading exponents of the new view, adopts the terms ‘forward school’ and ‘consolidationists’ rather than ‘imperialists’ and ‘anti-imperialists’. Certainly there were no voices among the prominent Radicals and Little Englanders prepared to advocate the liquidation of the Empire; their concern was rather to prevent its further extension in the form of subject tropical dependencies. Some indeed, like John Bright and Leonard Courtney, were willing to desert Gladstone over Irish Home Rule because they saw it as a measure striking at the integrity of the Empire. Courtney, who came to regret his assent to intervention in Egypt in 1882 and stood out as the most unflinching opponent of the Boer War, was nevertheless no disintegrationist. In 1887 he wrote to his friend, John Scott, in India: voter would think no more of giving up India than of giving up Ireland, not caring to inquire seriously what would be the fate of either when abandoned.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1962 , pp. 47 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Robinson, R. E., ‘Imperial Problems in British Politics 1880–1895’, Cambridge History of the British Empire, vol. III.Google Scholar

3 Gooch, G. P., Life of Lord Courtney (1920), 274.Google Scholar

4 Fisher, H. A. L., James Bryce, 1, 270, 275.Google Scholar

5 Edinburgh Rev. vol. 159, no. 326 (Apr 1884), 591.

6 Edinburgh Rev. vol. 165, no. 338 (Apr 1887), 579, 585.

7 Goschen, speeches to Unionist Party, 7 Dec. 1886, and at Birmingham on ‘The New Democracy 1888’; cited Edinburgh Rev. vol. 165, no. 337 (Jan 1887), 278, and vol. 169, no. 345 (Jan. 1889), 286. Cf. Dicey, A. V., ‘New Jacobinism and Old Morality’, Contemporary Rev. (04 1888).Google Scholar

8 Milner, to Montague, F. C., 14 02 1881Google Scholar, Milner MSS., box 7; Milner, to Goschen, , 18 02 1885Google Scholar; Wrench, Evelyn, Milner, 74.Google Scholar

9 Milner, to Buckell, R., Hon. Sec. Oxford Liberal Association, 4 07 1884Google Scholar, Milner MSS., box 5. (By kind permission of the Warden and Fellows, New College, Oxford. Use has also been made of photo copies of the Milner MSS. in the Archives, Union Building, Pretoria.)

10 Milner, to Goschen, , 1 02 1885Google Scholar; Headlam, , Milner Papers, 1, 19.Google Scholar

11 Milner, to Birchenough, Henry, 12 03 1889Google Scholar; Milner MSS., box 6.

12 Milner, to Dawkins, C. E., Cairo, 1 02 1890Google Scholar, Milner MSS., box 7; quoted in part, Headlam, 1, 18.

13 Milner, to Goschen, , Cairo, 22 06 1890Google Scholar, Milner MSS., box 6; quoted in part, Wrench, Evelyn, Milner, 104.Google Scholar

14 Langer, W. L., Diplomacy of Imperialism (1935), 1, 262.Google Scholar

15 Milner, to Goschen, , Cape Town, 3 05 1898, Milner MSS., vol. 5A.Google Scholar

16 The lectures were reprinted in The National Review, xcvi (Jan.–June 1931). The sentences quoted from them appear in pp. 37, 487, 642.

17 Typescript of article for Saturday Evening Post, ‘Lord Milner and Dr Jameson’, Apr (?) 1904; Stead Papers, vol. 1. Photocopies in Archives, Union Building, Pretoria.

18 Notes by Hon. W. N. Bruce, C.B. (1925–6); Milner MSS., box 7.

19 A, and Sidgwick, E. M., Henry Sidgwick (1906), 577.Google Scholar

20 ‘Lord Milner and Dr Jameson’, op. cit.

21 Milner, to Fiddes, , 3. 01 1899 (typed copy); Milner MSS., vol. 5C.Google Scholar

22 Fiddes, G. to Milner, 28 03 1899Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. II.

23 Wyndham, George to Milner, , 18 05 1899Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. 12.

24 Gell, P. Lyttleton to Milner, , 2 06 1899Google Scholar; Gell MSS., vol I. Photocopies in the Archives, Union Building, Pretoria.

25 Cook, E. T. to Milner, , 16 06 1899Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. 29.

26 Wilson, G. Fleetwood to Milner, , 22 06 1899Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol 13.

27 Gell, to Milner, , 14 07 1899Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. 29. Milner to Selborne 12 July 1899 (typed copy); Milner MSS., vol. 5B.

28 Cook, E. T. to Milner, , 20 07 1899Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. 29.

29 Milner, to Garrett, Edmund, 6 08 1899Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. 5C.

30 Milner Papers, I, 497.

31 Salisbury, to Lansdowne, , 30 08 1899Google Scholar; Newton, , Lord Lansdowne (1929), 157.Google Scholar

32 Gell, to Milner, , 21 09 (1899)Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. 29.

33 Milner, to Dawkins, C., 5 04 1902Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. 26.

34 Milner, to MissSynge, B., 19 12 1901Google Scholar; Wrench, , 233.Google Scholar

35 Milner Papers, II, 331.

36 Ibid. 425.

37 11 May 1902. Milner Papers, II, 330.

38 Gwynn, S. and Tuckwell, G., Life of Dilke, II, 496–7Google Scholar; , A. and Sidgwick, E. M., Henry Sidgwick, 581Google Scholar; Maitland, F. W., Leslie Stephen, 453.Google Scholar

39 Dicey, A. V., Law and Opinion in England (1914 edn.), 455.Google Scholar

40 Amery, L. S. to Milner, , 11 11 1907Google Scholar; Milner MSS., vol. 43.

41 Milner, to Gell, , 22 03 1899Google Scholar; Gell MSS., vol. I.

42 Robinson, Ronald and Gallagher, John with Denny, Alice, Africa and the Victorians (1961), chap. xiv.Google Scholar

43 van der Poel, J., The Jameson Raid (1951)Google Scholar; Thompson, L. M., The Unification of South Africa (1960)Google Scholar; Marais, J. S., The Fall of Kruger's Republic (1961)Google Scholar; Goodfellow, C. F., ‘The Policy of South African Confederation, 1870–1881’, unpublished Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1961.Google Scholar