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The Economic Significance of “Constructive Imperialism”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

S. B. Saul
S. B. Saul
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

When he became Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Unionist government of 1895, Joseph Chamberlain was already the acknowledged leader of those who believed that Britain would most surely safeguard her military and economic future through closer links with the Empire and the extension of its boundaries. Yet a mere fifteen years before he had played an important part in the campaign against Disraeli's imperialist designs that had swept the Liberals back to power. The change in Chamberlain's political fortunes as a result of the Home Rule controversy needs no recapitulation here. More interesting is the process by which he was won over to those very ideas of imperial consolidation that Disraeli had propounded so frequently.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1957 , pp. 173 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1957

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References

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46 C.O., Straits Native States 1903, Vol. V, 294, paper 24019: enclosure iii attached to the report of Sir Frank Swettenham to the Secretary of State. The Standard Oil Company decided early in 1902 to build a refinery in Burma through the medium of the Colonial Oil Co. of New Jersey. Difficulties were experienced in arranging for the purchase of crude oil locally, and when the company decided to go into the producing business themselves, their application for a concession was refused. A further application through the Anglo-American Oil Co., a British company registered in 1888, was also refused. See , R. W. and Hidy, Muriel, Pioneering in Big Business, 1882–1911 (New York: Harper, 1955), p. 499Google Scholar, and the Times, November 28, 1902. It was later suggested by Lord Curzon that in view of the fierce competition for oil markets at that time, it was feared that the American company might be trying to buy rights over Burmese oil to keep it unused. See E. H. Davenport and Cooke, S. R., The Oil Trusts and Anglo-American Relations (London: Macmillan, 1923), p. 176Google Scholar.

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