Colonial Empires and Armies 1815-1960 (Volume 4)

War and European Society #4

by Victor G. Kiernan

V.G. Kiernan examines the manner in which the wars were conducted and their impact not only on the conquered societies but also on the societies which launched them. Kiernan addresses the ideology of empire - the concept of the civilizing mission, the triumph of civilization over barbarism - that the missionary organizations ardently supported. In reality, material profit was the prime motive, and he argues that colonialists and their propagandists did much to work up the nationalist rivalries and hatred which exploded in World War I. Interweaving brilliant sketches of imperial and colonial life with analysis of the changing balance of economic and political power, Kiernan concludes by describing how the colonial liberation movements turned the tables in the aftermath of World War II.

Genres: History, European History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Professor Victor Gordon Kiernan was an English Marxist historian and a former member of the Communist Party Historians Group with a particular focus on the history of imperialism. He was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh.

Reviews

[Simon Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

EMPIRES AT WAR

The Marxist historian, V.G.Kiernan wrote this volume for the now long forgotten "Fontana History of War and European Society" series nearly thirty years ago. Despite its venerable age, the book is still an excellent introduction to the subject of Imperial Europe (Britain, France, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Germany, etc) and their Wars in the non-European world from the end of the Napoleonic Wars up until the point when the book was originally written.

No doubt it was an interesting read upon publication in 1982, but the continued pertinence of Kiernan's observations and apposite quotations, in light of more recent imperial adventures can hardly be doubted. During Britain's Burma campaign of 1886, an imperial functionary remarks that it is Government policy to try "to win over the population of the newly acquired territory more by kindness than severity" - an early stating of the "Hearts and Minds" philosophy? The official then goes on to state that it is not possible for the soldiers to follow this thinking to the letter.

Later, we have Kiernan's observation with regard to another British imperial campaign, this time in what is now Sri Lanka: "It was marked by two miscalculations that Britons frequently fell into: they expected to be welcomed by people groaning under a hated yoke, and they tried to set up an unwanted pretender to the throne as a puppet." Shades of the United States and Britain's recent Mesopotamian adventures? And for confirmation of the old adage that there is nothing new under the sun, we have the Bush administrations policy on "unlawful" combatants stated with regard to "New Zealand in 1869 [where] Prendergast, Attorney General and later Chief Justice, argued that laws of war amongst civilized nations could not apply to a contest with the Maoris." Along with those observations on the past that are relevant to the present, Kiernan book is fill with gems of observation, and facts such as his observation on the concept of prestige: "This curious word, signifying an entity almost apotheosized as tutelary deity of empire, came into English in the seventeenth century, through French, from a low Latin term for a deception, or a conjuring trick". Deception? Conjuring trick? Wasn't protecting Nato's "prestige" one of Blair's favourite exhortations with regard to that organizations adventures in the Balkans?

A brilliant book, briskly traversing a century and a half of imperialism, full of quotations from the people on the spot, summaries of campaigns that have been long forgotten, observations on the differences and similarities of different countries imperial warfare within a broad context that includes social, cultural and political factors. Not only does Kiernan cover imperial wars, he finds space to summarize the Liberation movements in the post 1945 world. If there is a weak point it is the occasional harshness that Kiernan exhibits with regard to the Natives and their difficulties in standing up to the European empires, but as an antidote to imperial nostalgia from the likes of Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and Gordon Brown this book is priceless, and well worth reading.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is difficult to review long, dense tomes of history so instead I'm just going to write a semi-essay out of the highlights I took.

tldr; the book is solid but lacking a forceful thesis or compelling flow, the writing is detached and doesnt veer enough into polemic but also isn't as thorough as similar books on the period. The main thing it has going for it is that it is Correct.

"In one aspect the wars of 1793–1815 were the culmination of all Europe’s previous strife over colonies, and furnished good practice for the next era, when European arms were thrust against other continents."

The rebound of European imperialism back to itself (we call that blowback now in America) is consistent. I wish Kiernan pulled at this thread even more, he doesn't do so really until near the end of the story.

"Native recruits could reach grades equivalent to NCO or slightly higher: they were even more necessary here as intermediary between upper and lower. But there were other, more impalpable attractions. Old societies, above the tribal level, offered little or nothing in the way of membership of any collective more stimulating, or more pertaining to free choice, than village or clan or caste. Entry into a powerful army, or respected regiment, even in the service of foreigners, could satisfy a craving, by conferring a share in a common purpose and spirit, heightened by martial music, banners, uniforms."

This is an interesting insight, although I don't know how backed up by subsequent scholarship it is. It does remind me of people who go to school to work in the State Department or other modern organs of imperialism, not out of patriotic fervor but to do something out of the small fishbowl of their hometown, so it tracks with personal experience.

"Lines of race were far less closely drawn than in British territories. Cossacks often came by local wives, and a mixed progeny resulted. An Ali Khan was easily metamorphosed into an Alikhanov. Individuals of any breed who proved trustworthy and able could rise high."

And it was and remains Russia who is seen as the barbaric outskirts of a civilized Europe, as if they were tainted at birth.

"to a very remarkable extent the decisive weapon was the bayonet, descendant of the pike which it supplanted early in the 18th century. French soldiers gave it the endearing pet-name of ‘Rosalie’, or Rosy, from its blushing hue on the battlefield. A British ranker long in India referred to it affectionately as ‘the queen of weapons’, ‘that ugly bit of cold steel’."

And it is hilarious that of all the innovations talked about in basic history courses, pre-college and otherwise, it's mostly the existence of technologies like the combustion engine, firearms, artillery, etc that get the attention. The bayonet is just a fancier sword. The shock of massed closed quarters capable fighters, disciplined from constant abuse, is what broke defending armies. So, the conquest of the world wasn't done from a distance but up close and as bloodily as possible.

"The shadow lay over India for years to come. One day in the 1870s two British soldiers making their way through a forest in the Deccan fell into talk about the Mutiny, and worked themselves up into such a state of mind that they vowed to kill the first ‘[censored]’ they met; they did so – a harmless tradesman jogging along on his pony – failed to keep their secret, and ended on the gallows."

It was a shallow empire. Within a few decades, the great mutiny in India (the greatest or second greatest achievement of European imperialism) had eroded the ability of England and colony to trust in their relationship. Without the assistance of mass death and quick white integration and settlement (like in Spanish america), it seems like the rapaciousness and naked brutality made things fragile immediately.

"the Crown instead of the Company made it more a matter of course to utilize its army far away from home, at Indian expense. There was now no intermediate authority to object to such use or misuse of Indian revenue. Without this facility, imperial adventures would have been less light-heartedly ventured on. John Bull might love his army and empire, but not well enough to want to pay for them. Bengal had been made to pay for too much of the conquest of the rest of India, at the cost of a relatively huge Indian debt piling up, nearly £45 millions by 1815. Then the process was repeated further afield, with all India footing a good part of the bill."

An Empire, in the case of the British, that could only pay for itself via the extraction of resources from other conquered territories.

"At any rate, from the more mountainous east revolt spread gradually westward. Spanish defeat was foreseeable by the time the USA went to war with Spain, nominally to rescue the Cubans, really to safeguard American investments. After Spain’s defeat and three years of American occupation the upper classes were prepared to accept control by Washington as an insurance against social reform."

The ruling classes even just by the late 19th century were casting about looking for compromises, in Latin America it was tying their privileges and power to letting American capital do whatever it wanted. European empires as they crumbled tried to cut similar deals where they could, but mostly had to be content with creating world-spanning hegemonic institutions that accomplished something similar but more obliquely (like the IMF).

"Among Europeans there were clashing ambitions, and mutual suspicions, as in 1859–60 when Spaniards were convinced that Britain, with Gibraltar in mind, was secretly aiding Morocco. Nevertheless, as a rule they were ready to endorse, and sometimes assist, one another’s colonial activities.
by and large there was a prevalent European sympathy for Britain, and it was warmly shared by Americans as liberal-minded as Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was convinced that Delhi, like Carthage, merited annihilation.
1891 Italy was given leave to land forces at the British port of Zeila, as a second point of access to Abyssinia; a British force was allowed to disembark at the Italian port of Obbia during the wild goose chase in Somaliland. German troops dealing with stiff-necked tribes in east Africa were permitted to bring in stores through adjacent colonial territories."

These passages do reinforce that, above all, was European and racial solidarity when white prestige was at stake. Not just for racist reasons but to prevent a shaking of the edifice that smothered their subjects.

"A machine-gun, it has been pointed out, was an economical weapon, enabling small forces to subdue and then hold down large populations.8 It belonged to the labour-saving technology of the USA, and the colonial settlements too were short of labour and had to economize on it. Africans were coming to see Maxim-guns as ‘magical gifts of the gods to the white man’. To others they might look like gifts to capitalists and policemen at home. A socialist with army experience, H. H. Champion, warned his colleagues in 1886 that if they went in for street-fighting and barricades now they would be ‘just like savages, who, with their arrows and bows, array themselves against Gatling and Nordenfeldt guns.’"

Which brings us back to this, blowback. Not for the ruling classes, who just replicated strategies learned on the frontier to their backyard, but for the working classes, many of whom enthusiastically supported empire. Only global solidarity could bring about change.

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unusual book on warfare and history, Kiernan's European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, 1815-1960 traces the major wars that defined Europe's advance into Asia, Africa, and the Pacific – then to a discussion of the characteristics of the warfare that enabled it – and last to the subsequent collapse of these great colonial empires.

This anyway, describes the progress the book makes. The question all this history provokes is why? Why set this as the course for the book? What question does Kiernan search for in answer? What inquiry inspires the discussion? In full candor, the answer to this is unclear. Kiernan himself is ambivalent about his book’s purpose. It is not really a book about Europe's rise and fall. And it is not really a book that deliberates on the reason for Europe’s imperial expansion. Nor could the book be characterized as a summary of colonial warfare. Kiernan's book may possess qualities of each of these, but in the main it could not identify with any one.

If Kiernan's book has any main motif it is that of empire. It is only the seductions of empire that can explain the great marvel of European expansion during this time; that can distinguish the pattern of European expansion in the time before Napoleon from the time after; that gives credit and puts in proper perspective the great exertions of human effort and courage throughout the crucible of the wars of empire; that can account for the specimen of colonial warfare and the spectacle of national resistance and revolution that followed. For Kiernan, empire is the wonderful but terrible enchantress of powerful states. This, if there is any, is the lofty theme that inhabits the whole of the book.

European Empires then is a book about warfare, but only incidentally so. Kiernan traces these different wars, not so much because they illuminate the logic of the politics and history of the 19th and 20th century, but because they reveal a great hysteria that quietly had taken hold of the European imagination. The effects of empire and imperial hysteria were not necessarily bad. Nevertheless, the result was a terrific distortion of Europe’s politics and interests. If this basic understanding of Kiernan is right (and it may not be), it presents an interesting historical thesis; but one that essentially is borrowed from the school of Marx, and the like, who look on Europe's politics with a cynical, rather than a sympathetic, eye.

Whatever may be the best interpretation of Kiernan writ large, the details of his book can be described with more confidence. Britain, Russia, and France, are the looming characters in this book. They are the actors that occupy the stage of Europe’s imperial drama.

Each of the three—Britain, Russia, France—engages in wars early on that come to define the beginning of their empires. For the British, it was their conquest of India; for Russia, the advance into the Ottoman-Persian Caucus; and for France it was Louis Philippe's adventure into Algeria. All of these expeditions whet the appetite of imperial ambition, rather than satiate or upset it. Britain turned its armies then on Burma, the Punjab, and on China in the First Opium War; Russia moved its marauding armies onto the Kazakh steppe and began to confront the inner Asian khanates of Bokhara and Kokand; and France expanded its conquests in Algeria and supported the insubordinate Egyptian Pasha against the Sultan.

These were the first post Napoleonic experiments in empire. And after the Crimean War, the Second Opium War, and the Berlin Congress of 1885, Europe increasingly cast her energies outward, aggressively intruding into the once distant frontiers of Central Asia, China, and inner Africa. This was European empire at its height.

Of course, to advance these imperial goals, colonial warfare was the single most important means. Variety of innovations in technologies and military weapons helped maintain imperial combat superiority. Unlike the conquistadors in America three hundred years before, Asians and Africans were not awed by European weapons. Many of the Asiatic princes could draw on the same basic arsenal European armies could. But rapid changes in weaponry, along with European brilliance for adapting fighting doctrine, helped to maintain the European edge in material warfare. Things such as the rifle, expanding bullets, exploding ordinance, magazines, light artillery, the machine gun, innovations in field fortifications, railway, heliograph, balloons, development of field medicine, combined with important changes in tactical doctrine for fighting colonial campaigns all confirmed the advantage of imperial armies over local, indigenous forces.

But what distinguished colonial warfare from the more traditional, classic European, continental warfare were not so much the tangible changes, but those that were intangible. Kiernan says the most important difference was the total reliance on improvisation—recruiting troops and gathering supplies not as planned, but on the go—this was an essential characteristic of the campaigns of colonial warfare. But improvisation was not the only one. Long tours; dispersed, very remote, deployments; mixed composition of units, often with native enlistees and European officers; emphasis on an economy of force; contempt for the laws of war, such as: indiscriminate bombardment, no quarter, summary execution of prisoners, collective punishment, weapons that inflicted gratuitous suffering, severe reprisals, and universal practice of plunder and pillage—these were the features that distinguished colonial from continental warfare.

As the administration and politics of empire increased in importance, so did the effects back home in domestic, internal affairs. These colonial influences first appear with war reporting, the first occasion of which is said to have been the Crimean War. This opened a new dimension for domestic politics. Not only did public opinion take cognizance of colonial wars, but demagogues, dissidents, and other critics of government could seize on foreign affairs and exploit them for their own political advantage. As important, military officials returning from colonial campaigns began to enter into domestic politics, which tended to have the effect of militarizing issues. Spanish politics became more bellicose, more confrontational, as veterans and loyalists returned from America. In France, when Napoleon became President of the Second Republic, he relied on Algerian veterans to help him disband the French parliament and proclaim a second French Empire.

Probably the most significant political effect of imperial expansion was that it did not relax European rivalry, ultimately it accentuated it. Bismarck's peace at the Berlin Congress of 1878 seemed to recreate the halcyon peace of the Vienna Congress. But things were different now. Europeans had grown jealous of each other’s colonial possessions. In Tunis, Siam, Fashoda, Manchuria, and then Morocco, colonial disputes were expanded into European disputes. Russia turned its energies from east to west, and recommitted itself in the Balkans. Italy and Turkey skirmished over Libya and other remnants of the Ottoman Empire. These were the antecedents that set the stage for the First World War.

If one looks closely, the rot of European empire can be discerned before the First World War. But it was really after the War that the real erosion was apparent. Lenin proclaimed a revolution in Russia and disowned its imperial possessions (later to reclaim them); the Irish achieved independence from Britain, and to some extent so did the Egyptians; Nehru and his Congress party began to agitate for their own political rights. Perhaps most symbolic, Spain succumbed to civil war, in no insignificant part because returning veterans from Morocco supported the cause of General Franco against republican forces; foreshadowing events in France during the dark days of the Algerian War.

After the Second World War, Britain, Russia, and France adopted more extreme measures to suppress tumult. Britain immediately relinquished India, Palestine, Burma and Ceylon. Stalin responded differently, deporting resistant Caucus populations to Siberia en masse. France became ensnared in bloody guerilla wars in Indochina and then Algeria. Britain was more successful in Malaya and Kenya, but only slightly more, and conceded independence shortly thereafter. Even the Dutch and the Portuguese could not resist the change in temper, as their age-old colonies too were caught in the avalanche of collapsing empires. Indonesia won its independence; revolts began in Angola and Guinea. It appeared as though the great drama of European imperialism was in its final act.

In acclaim of European Empires, one can praise Kiernan's interesting, even contrarian, thesis. It is always refreshing to have a vigorously argued alternative to the conventional narrative of history. And with that comes the coverage that Kiernan gives to the wars and skirmishes that often only footnote history, rather than occupy center stage. Kiernan reverses this. The First and Second World Wars are sidelined. Instead the starring roles were given to the Burmese Wars, the Afghan Wars, the Caucasian Wars, the Zulu Wars, the Maori Wars, and so on. These conflicts are rarely given treatment, and even less so as events on to them self. It is an interesting change to see these wars elevated to the promontory of warfare. Added to this, Kiernan is able to combine great quotes and anecdotes to flavor the narrative. For example, a remark by Oliver Wendell Holmes in defense of British actions during the Sepoy Mutiny, arguing “that Delhi, like Carthage, deserved to be annihilated” (an echo of Cato the elder’s famous entreaties to Rome “delenda est carthago”). It is attributes like these that give the book charm.

All that said however, something essential in Kiernan's book is missing. It is hard to describe it. Crudely put: much of Kiernan's meaning is absent. It is as though he has supplied the brick and mortar of a building, and has even pretended at some construction of its assembly. But by the end of the book it is discovered, for all the show, nothing has been built. Reading Kiernan, the reader is left to do much of the work of making sense of the book them self. Kiernan gives account of many things that span a wide swath of history, but he has failed to explain what they all add up to. It is probably for that reason Kiernan's book is lost in obscurity. It is not because his history is bad, or because his thesis is absurd. Rather Kiernan spends no time to develop his meaning or refine his main points. When the author neglects their own treatment in such an essential way, it will inevitably offend the reader if they are left to do all the hard work them self. This is the great failure of Kiernan's book. He asks something of his reader, but requites them with nothing in return. It is almost a tease: Kiernan flirts with a lot of ideas, many of them interesting. But ultimately he pursues none of them.