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Lord Cromer's ‘Ancient and Modern Imperialism’: A Proconsular View of Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

M. E. Chamberlain
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Extract

In 1909, two years after his retirement as British Consul-General in Egypt, Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer — knighted in 1883, he was created Baron Cromer in 1892, viscount in 1899 and earl in 1901 — was invited to be the President of the Classical Association. It was a duty which he took very seriously and he prepared his Presidential address on “Ancient and Modern Imperialism” with immense care. In the course of this preparation he consulted many of the most distinguished scholars of the times, among them Gilbert Murray, then Professor of Greek at Oxford, J. B. Bury, then Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, F. J. Haverfield, the Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford, Sir William Ramsay, the Regius Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen University, Edwyn R. Bevan, a Hellenistic scholar much interested in Indian questions, Gertrude Bell, an archaeologist and expert on the Near East and Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, one of the most famous journalists of his day and an authority on Russia. After he delivered the address in January 1910 Cromer entered into further correspondence with the Conservative leader, A. J. Balfour; John Buchan who, although he is probably best remembered today as a writer of adventure stories, had been Alfred Milner's private secretary in South Africa, 1901-03 and was subsequently to be Governor General of Canada, James Bryce, the author of the classic The Holy Roman Empire, a former cabinet minister and at this time British Ambassador in Washington; and Sir William Ridgeway, the President of the Royal Anthropological Institution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , November 1972 , pp. 61 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1972

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References

1. Besides being an eminent classicist, Gilbert Murray, an Australian by birth, was one of the foremost liberal thinkers of his time. He published a long series of studies of current problems from his contribution to Liberalism and the Empire (London, 1900)Google Scholar to Hellenism and the Modern World (London, 1953)Google Scholar; Times, 21 May 1957; Who was Who, (London, 1958)Google Scholar.

2. Bury, J. B. was best known for his edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1896)Google Scholar and The Idea of Progress (London, 1920)Google Scholar. He succeeded Lord Acton as Regius Professor at Cambridge and planned both the Cambridge Ancient and the Cambridge Medieval Histories. D.N.B. Suppl. 1922–1930, pp. 144–47Google Scholar.

3. F. J. Haverfield was a disciple of the German historian, Mommsen, and an expert on the archaeology of Roman Britain. According to Gilbert Murray, he reviewed almost every important classical book that appeared. D.N.B. Suppl. 1912-21, pp. 244-45.

4. Sir William Ramsay was a classical scholar and an expert on Asia Minor. Before going to Aberdeen he had held a Chair of Classical Archaeology at Oxford. Like Bury, he was a notable linguist and had studied Sanskrit. D.N.B. Suppl. 1931-40, pp. 727-28.

5. Edwyn Bevan was a man of independent means who had travelled widely in India. In 1913 he published Indian Nationalism, a sympathetic study in which he tried to assess the impact of the West on India. He later became a lecturer at King's College, London, D.N.B. Suppl. 1941-50, pp. 74-76.

6. Gertrude Bell became interested in the East on visits to Teheran and Jerusalem in the 1890s. She wrote a classic “Review of the Civil Administration in Mesopotamia,” published as a White Paper in 1921. D.N.B. Suppl. 1922-30, pp. 74-76; Burgoyne, E., Gertrude Bell, from her personal papers, (London, 1958, 1961)Google Scholar.

7. Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace spent the years, 1870-75, in Russia and published a well-known account in 1877. He became a Foreign Correspondent of the Times and visited Egypt in the autumn of 1882. The following year he published his Egypt and the Egyptian Question. In 1901 he accompanied the future George V, as his private secretary, on a tour of the British Dominions and published an account of this in Web of Empire (London, 1902)Google Scholar. D.N.B. Suppl. 1912-21, pp. 549-50; History of the Times (London, 1841–1984), II, 464Google Scholar; (London, 1884-1912), III, passim esp. 125-57.

8. For a study of Balfour's attitude to imperial questions see Judd, D., Balfour and the British Empire, (London, 1968)Google Scholar.

9. Although John Buchan reached his widest public with adventure stories like The Thirty-Nine Steps and Prester John, he also wrote a number of historical works and biographies, including lives of Julius Caesar and the Fourth Earl of Minto, Viceroy of India. As Lord Tweedsmuir, he was Governor-General of Canada until his death in 1940. Times 12, 13 Feb. 1940; D.N.B. Suppl. 1931-40, pp. 110-14; for an analysis of his views on empire see Sandison, A., Wheel of Empire (London, 1967)Google Scholar.

10. James Bryce was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1886), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1892-94), President of the Board of Trade (1894-95), Chief Secretary for Ireland (1905-07) and British Ambassador to the United States (1907-13). He also held the Regius Chair of Civil Law at Oxford, 1880-93. D.N.B. Suppl. 1922-30, pp. 127-35; Fisher, H. A. L., James Bryce (London, 1927)Google Scholar.

11. William Ridgeway held the Disney Chair of Archaeology at Cambridge. He was particularly interested in comparative anthropology and read a paper to the British Academy in 1907 on “Who were the Romans?” In 1915 he published Dramas and Dramatic Dances of the Non-European Races, using examples from China, Japan, Australia, Central Africa and the Esqimaux. D.N.B. Suppl. 1922-30, pp. 720-22.

12. Cromer delivered a shortened version of the lecture to the Classical Association on 11 January 1910. The complete version was published simultaneously. The correspondence is in PRO, F.O. 633/12.

13. LordZetland, , Lord Cromer (London, 1932), pp. 19–85Google Scholar; Sanderson, T. H., “Evelyn, Earl of Cromer” in Proceedings of British Academy, VIII (1917–1918), 552–80Google Scholar; D.N.B. Suppl. 1912-21, pp. 20–28; Times, obituary by Lord Curzon, 30 January 1917; Gosse, E., “Lord Cromer as a man of letters” in Fortnightly Review, March 1917Google Scholar, copy in PRO, F.O. 633/37; PRO, “Military Service of Lord Cromer, supplied by the War Office,” F.O. 633/38.

14. The classic British accounts are in Cromer, , Modern Egypt (London, 1908)Google Scholar; A., , England in Egypt (2nd Ed.; London, 1899)Google Scholar; Milner, A., The Making of Modern Egypt (London, 1906)Google Scholar. For a much more hostile interpretation see Blunt, W. S., My Diaries (London, 1919–1920)Google Scholar. For modern views see Tignor, R. L., Modernization and British Colonial Rule in Egypt, 1882-1914 (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar and Marlowe, J., Cromer in Egypt (London, 1970)Google Scholar.

15. See, among many examples, PRO, Sir George Birdwood's letter to Cromer of 12 April 1907 in which he reminds him that under the Romans Egypt was the Praefectus Augustalis and classes Cromer with Curzon, Kitchener and Milner as the “four ‘most worshipful’ of Imperial British Paladins,” F.O. 633/12; cf. PRO, E. Gosse, “Lord Cromer as a man of letters,” F.O. 633/37.

16. Cromer continually warned the British government that they must make substantial concessions in order to get a settlement, otherwise the financial administration of Egypt would collapse. The correspondence is preserved in PRO, F.O. 633/6. Much of it was printed in Gooch, G. P. and Temperley, H. W. V., British Documents on the Origins of the War (London, 1927–1938), II, 298, 307, 323, 339, 359, 364Google Scholar; cf. Monger, G. W., The End of Isolation (London, 1963), pp. 128-29, 136-37, 144-45, 157–59Google Scholar.

17. D.N.B. Suppl. 1912-21, p. 27. Sir Edward Grey was his cousin, and had, briefly, been his private secretary in 1884, Trevelyan, G. M., Grey of Falloden (London, 1937), p. 22Google Scholar.

18. Cromer felt very strongly on this subject, see Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism (London, 1910), pp. 53–54Google Scholar; PRO, cf. his letter to Gilbert Murray of 4 March 1909; referring to “recent scandals” in Uganda, he wrote, “I pointed out over and over again to the Foreign Office the danger of appointing third-rate Englishmen with very low salaries to these parts … if once you lower the character of the European, you run the risk of cruel and unsympathetic treatment of the subject race, and also a risk of corruption of one sort or another creeping into the service.” He had always tried to get “the pick of the military services and of the Universities” for the Sudan and pay them well and he had never had any scandal, F.O. 633/12.

19. These are preserved in PRO, F.O. 633/12. His well-wishers included Joseph Chamberlain (who thought him assured of “a distinguished place” among “the Empire builders of the Victorian Age”), Lord Lansdowne, Lord Curzon, Lord Ripon, the journalist Valentine Chirol, numerous associates in Egypt including Sir Edward Malet and Sir Aukland Colvin, an impressive array of his subordinates who write with real affection and regret at his departure (see especially P. R. Phipps to H. Boyle, 17 April 1907, a letter not intended for Cromer's eyes) and numerous societies and organizations in Cairo, French as well as English. W. H. T. Gairdner of the Church Missionary Society told him that people felt that they had lost “the last of the Pharaohs.”

20. D.N.B. Suppl, 1931-40, Buchan, p. 111; Milner, , England in Egypt, esp. pp. 356–57Google Scholar; Halperin, V., Lord Milner and the Empire (Eng. trans., London, 1952), pp. 52-85, 201Google Scholar; Wrench, J. E., Alfred, Lord Milner (London, 1958) pp. 96–110Google Scholar.

21. Garvin, J. L., Life of J. Chamberlain (London, 1933), II, 447-48, 451–56Google Scholar.

22. PRO, G. Murray to Cromer, 2, 4 Feb. 1909 encl. F. Haverfield to Murray, 3 Feb. 1909, F.O. 633/12.

23. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 15, 18Google Scholar.

24. Ibid., pp. 19-20.

25. Ibid., p. 22.

26. Ibid., p. 25. General Skobeleff, a militant panslavist, served with great distinction in Turkestan, 1866-77, 1879-81, and in the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 but he was twice recalled for exceeding his orders.

27. PRO., “Memorandum on the Central Asian Question,” 8 Jan. 1877, F.O. 633/16.

28. Bryce, James discussed this point in his “The Roman and the British Empire in India” in Studies in History and Jurisprudence (New York, 1901), I, 12–17Google Scholar. Cf. Fraser-Tytler, W. K., Afghanistan (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1953), p. 13Google Scholar, Fraser-Tytler, who went out to India as a Second-Lieutenant in 1910 and retired as British Minister in Afghanistan in 1941, gives a classic statement of the contiguity theory, concluding that the British and Russian empires found a stable frontier on the Hindu Kush.

29. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, p. 27Google Scholar; Bryce, , Studies in History and Jurisprudence, I, 9Google Scholar.

30. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, p. 27Google Scholar; Lewis, G. Cornewall, The Government of Dependencies with Introduction by Lucas, C. (Oxford, 1891), pp. xvi-xvii, xx–xxiGoogle Scholar.

31. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 34–35Google Scholar.

32. Sithole, N., African Nationalism (London, 1959), pp. 146–47Google Scholar.

33. Cross, C., The Fall of the British Empire (London, 1968), pp. 42–44Google Scholar.

34. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 41-43, 45Google Scholar.

35. Ibid., pp. 44-45, 65-69.

36. Dutt, R. C., Economic History of India in the Victorian Age (London, 1903)Google Scholar.

37. Cramer himself was well aware of Dutt's charges and rejected them, Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, p. 113Google Scholar. For an attempt to arrive at a balanced statement cf. Coupland, R., India; A restatement (London, 1945), pp. 64–70Google Scholar.

38. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 47–48Google Scholar.

39. Ibid., pp. 69-70. John Buchan entirely agreed with Cromer's strictures, PRO, Buchan to Cromer, 2 Feb. 1910, F.O. 633/12; Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Sir Gerald Portal to his wife, 16 January 1893, Portal Papers, II. Cf. Flint, J., Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria (London, 1960) esp. ch. 6 and 7Google Scholar; Hemphill, M. de Kiewiet, “The British Sphere, 1884-94” in Oliver, R. and Mathew, G. (eds.), History of East Africa (Oxford, 1963), I, 391–432Google Scholar; Morris, J., Pax Britannica (London, 1968) pp. 83–96Google Scholar.

40. Woodruff, P., The Men Who Ruled India (2nd Ed.; London, 1963), I, 15–16Google Scholar; II, 15.

41. A case which probably came to Cromer's ear occurred when one of his own subordinates, Sir Gerald Portal, was temporarily seconded to Zanzibar and found that the man he was replacing had accepted presents from the Sultan. Portal wrote home, “My diplomatic official hair has been made to stand straight on end,” Oxford, Portal to Lady Alice Bertie, 28 June 1889, Portal Papers, I.

42. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, 45-57, 63-64, 85–87Google Scholar.

43. Ibid., pp. 72-73.

44. Ibid., pp. 36-38.

45. Ibid., pp. 35-36, 38-41, 70-71, 30.

46. Ibid., pp. 93-94.

47. In a number of cases the man had been lynched, Ibid., pp. 90-91, 138-9; PRO, H. Boyle to Cromer, 21 October 1909, Cecil Spring-Rice to Cromer, 2 December 1909, F.O. 633/12. The marriage of a Christian woman to a Moslem was acceptable to Moslems.

48. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 73–77Google Scholar.

49. Ibid., pp. 79-81; PRO, Mackenzie Wallace to Cromer, 12 February 1909, F.O. 633/12.

50. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 82–3Google Scholar; Boissier, M.I.A.G., L'Afrique Romaine (Paris, 1896) p. 354Google Scholar.

51. Cromer, , Modern Egypt, II, 234–250Google Scholar. Cromer's strictures on the “Gallicised Egyptian” roused some protests even from Alfred Milner when he first read the book in draft in 1896, PRO, Milner to Cromer, 21 May 1896, F.O. 633/12.

52. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 97–107Google Scholar; cf. Tignor, R. L., Modernization and British Colonial Rule in Egypt, 1882-1914, pp. 325–27Google Scholar.

53. Ibid., pp. 102-03; PRO, S. H. Butcher to Cromer, 26 April 1909, F. C. de Sumichrust to Cromer, 6 June 1910, F.O. 633/12.

54. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, p. 15Google Scholar.

55. PRO, Cromer to Murray, 2, 4 March 1909, (See p. 3, n. 4 above), Murray to Cromer, 3, 8 March 1909, Mackenzie Wallace to Cromer, 12 February 1909, Bevan to Cromer, 10 November 1909, F.O. 633/12.

56. PRO, Sir William Ramsay to Cromer, 17 November 1909, F.O. 633/12.

57. PRO, Ramsay to Cromer, 26 November 1909, F.O. 633/12.

58. PRO, Bevan to Cromer, 4, 6 November 1909, F.O. 633/12.

59. PRO, Haverfield to Cromer, 2 November 1909, F.O. 633/12.

60. Fisher, H. A. L., James Bryce (London, 1927), I, 333–4Google Scholar; Bryce, J., Studies in History and Jurisprudence, I, 1-71 esp. 54Google Scholar; Bryce, J., Race Sentiments as a Factor in History (London, 1915), esp. p. 29Google Scholar; PRO, Bryce to Cromer, 26 February 1910, F.O. 633/12.

61. PRO, Bury to Cromer, 6 November 1909, Bevan to Cromer, 10 November 1909, F.O. 633/12. A modem scholar, after a careful analysis of the evidence, agrees, “Not until the nineteenth century did racism begin to acquire its popular association with colour prejudice,” Bolt, C., Victorian Attitudes to Race (London, 1970)Google Scholar. Cf. also Jordan, W. D., White over Black: American Attitude towards the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968)Google Scholar.

62. PRO, G. Farrar to “Dear Uncle Tom,” (presumably Cromer's brother, Thomas), 8 November 1909, Bevan to Cromer, 10 November 1909, Mitra to Cromer, 22 January 1910, Buchan to Cromer, 2 February 1910 F.O. 633/12. Cf. Jordan, , White over Black, pp. 37–38Google Scholar.

63. PRO, Mackenzie Wallace to Cromer, 12 February 1909; Gertrude Bell to Cromer, 23 January 1910, F.O. 633/12. One area where such inter-marriage had been very common was the East Coast of Africa, where the upper classes were almost completely Negroid in appearance but Islamic in culture and looked to Arabia as the homeland of their civilization, see Davidson, B., Old Africa Rediscovered (2nd ed.; London, 1970) pp. 171–77Google Scholar; Mathew, G., “The Land of Zanj” in The Dawn of African History (London, 1961) pp. 45–52Google Scholar.

64. Cf. Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (2nd ed.; London, 1964) pp. 3ff.Google Scholar, where he contends that it was not color prejudice that led to slavery but slavery which created color prejudice. For a more subtle analysis of the whole problem see Jordan, , White over Black, pp. 91–98Google Scholar.

65. PRO, Buchan to Cromer, 2 February 1910, F.O. 633/12.

66. PRO, Ramsay to Cromer, 17 November 1909, F.O. 633/12.

67. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 128–43Google Scholar. Some of the letters quoted above were in fact received after the publication of the book but, for convenience, have been treated with earlier letters relating to the same argument.

68. PRO, Curzon to Cromer, 10 February 1910, Morley to Cromer, 8 February 1910, Murray to Cromer, 12 January 1910, F.O. 633/12.

69. Balfour to Cromer, 29 January 1910; Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1908–1909, pp. 237–44Google Scholar.

70. PRO, Ridgeway to Cromer, 13 January 1910, F.O. 633/12; Hunter, W. W., The Indian Empire (2nd ed.; London, 1886) p. 76Google Scholar this work was a summary of the monumental 128 volumes of the Statistical Survey of India, commissioned by the British Government of India in 1869.

71. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

72. Philips, C. H., The Evolution of India and Pakistan, 1858-1947 (London, 1962), pp. 82-90, 264–65Google Scholar.

73. Cromer, , Ancient and Modern Imperialism, pp. 119–27Google Scholar; Elphinstone quoted P. Woodruff, I, 14; for similar views see Masani, R. P., Britain in India (London, 1960), pp. 27–28Google Scholar.

74. Milner, , England in Egypt, p. 33Google Scholar.

75. J. B. Bury, for example, had many reservations, see his The Idea of Progress esp. the Preface, p. x.

76. Reprinted in Fortnightly Review, new series, XXIV (1878), 751-64, esp. 759–60Google Scholar.

77. Nicolson, H., Curzon, the Last Phase (London, 1934), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

78. PRO, Haverfield to Cromer, 3 February 1909, F.O. 633/12.

79. See Bryce, , Studies in History and Jurisprudence, I, 1–71Google Scholar.

80. Williams, B., Cecil Rhodes (London, 1921), pp. 40-41, 48–52Google Scholar.

81. For a discussion of the different reactions of different classes, when confronted by a specific issue involving racial attitudes see Semmel, B., The Governor Eyre Controversy (London, 1962), esp. pp. 56-65, 89-91, 171–72Google Scholar.

82. Sithole, N., African Nationalism (London, 1959), pp. 32–33Google Scholar.

83. For excellent discussions of this question see Stokes, E., The Utilitarians in India (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar and Moore, R. J., Liberalism and Indian Politics, 1872-1922 (London, 1966)Google Scholar.