The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (9 page)

And a good thing too, thought the essayist Richard Addison, who wrote that it served a spendthrift aristocrat right if he was forced to sell out and make way for an ex-merchant who ‘deserves the estate a great deal better when he has got it by industry’.

Much of the colonial merchant’s industry was, like Crusoe’s, routine and dull and could only be undertaken with a high degree of self-discipline and dedication. The diary kept by Anthony Beale, ‘a very careful, honest man’, the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s River Port trading post during 1706, is a record of what must often have been a tedious existence in an extremely remote region where a very strong sense of duty was essential for men to survive.
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There was a staff of forty-six at the fortified settlement, nearly all skilled artisans, who were paid annual wages of between £20 and £48.

The highlight of their year in terms of activity was midsummer when the Company’s ships arrived to unload supplies and collect the furs and beaver pelts which were brought to the post by local Indians and exchanged for manufactured goods. There followed the frozen winter of the tundra when the only occupations were fishing and shooting and trapping game which seems to have been plentiful. A stock of sheep and goats, cheeses and a garden planted with imported turnips, radishes, spinach, chervil, cress, cabbage and lettuce provided a varied and healthy diet. A tenuous and emotional link with home was the celebration on 23 April of Queen Anne’s birthday when the Union flag was hoisted and every man was given ‘a bottle of strong beer’.

Governor Beale’s daybook also reveals a busy world of commerce with meticulously kept accounts and inventories of supplies and barter stock which included needles, powder horns, fish hooks and, for the vainer Indian, fifty Ostrich feathers, presumably purchased in London from a merchant trading in Africa – a nice example of intercolonial trade. Exchanges were made according to strict rules in which the unit of currency was the beaver pelt; two secured a pair of scissors, a hatchet or an ostrich feather, four a gallon of brandy and between seven and ten a musket. There was another scale of barter for furs: four marten furs equalled one beaver, as did two deerskins, and one bear pelt was worth two beavers.

Like Crusoe, Beale existed in an isolated wilderness. His vegetable garden like Crusoe’s barley field was a minor triumph; there were many others wherever colonists overcame even the most inclement environment and made it work to their own advantage. They did so for many complex reasons, not least necessity and nearly all attributed their success to the intervention of a just God who rewarded faith and industry. When Captain Leonard Edgcombe sailed from London to Hudson’s Bay in 1691, the Company’s directors commanded him to call his crew to prayer every morning and evening ‘from which we may hope and expect a Blessing from Almighty God’.
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Just over forty years later, an anonymous correspondent wrote in the
National Merchant
(January 1736), ‘I look upon our Colonies as a charitable Benefaction bestowed on this nation by
God
 … which if rightly improved, must needs make us a great, happy and flourishing people.’

But God’s gifts could only be made fruitful by the application of human labour. Whether or not they possessed the qualities and sense of dedication displayed by Robinson Crusoe – and many indentured servants, transported convicts and slaves certainly did not – those who laboured in the colonies had, by the end of the seventeenth century, created a thriving empire. This word was not in general usage until well into the eighteenth century, when it began to replace ‘colonies’ or ‘plantations’.

Psychologically the change of title was important, carrying with it notions of grandeur and power on a world scale. And yet the period which witnessed the first growth of Britain’s colonies also saw the first germination of that aggressive, self-confident patriotism which flowered during the next two hundred years and facilitated further imperial expansion. Seventeenth-century colonial expansion had taught the British how to make money overseas, given impetus to ideas about national destiny and God’s mandate to colonists, and produced archetypes like Robinson Crusoe who demonstrated what could be accomplished by men of energy and dedication.

What was achieved fascinated subsequent generations who attempted both to romanticise the founders of empire and invest all of them with qualities they never possessed. During the late-Victorian surge of empire-building, the stories of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century settlers and seafarers were retold in a form designed to inspire the young to follow their example. Drake, Morgan and the American pioneers were endowed with such contemporary virtues as manly courage, fortitude, comradeship and a love of adventure for its own sake, and the ruthless pursuit of profit was underplayed or left unmentioned. This was a distortion both of the men and their motives, but an attractive one which, during this century, has been given a new lease of life through Hollywood’s popular, swashbuckling movies in which dashing pirate captains swing from halyards with merry smiles on their faces.

In a more serious vein, American historians have minutely examined the world of the early colonists to find evidence in support of theories that today’s social attitudes and political systems were rooted in the assumptions and behaviour of the Anglo-Saxon settlers rather than the later frontier experience or the ethnic multiplicity that followed mass immigration in the nineteenth century. What has been revealed is, not surprisingly, a rich diversity of outlook and motive among the settlers; if anything bound them together it was a common urge for self-improvement coupled with a determination to master their environment.

PART TWO

P
ERSIST AND
C
ONQUER
1689–1815

1

Rule of the Main: The Making of British Seapower, 1689–1748

On the ceiling above the main staircase of the Commissioner’s House at Chatham Dockyard is a large painting set there in about 1705. It is baroque in style and triumphant in mood; Mars receives a crown of shells from Neptune, while, in the foreground, stand symbolic figures of Peace, Plenty, Justice and Charity. The whole piece is an allegory of Britain, a prosperous, just and Christian nation which thrives under the protection of the ruler of the oceans. What would have struck onlookers most forcefully was the majestic figure of Neptune, whom they would have immediately identified as a symbol of the Royal Navy’s mastery of the seas. This allusion was understood by Britain’s enemies; in 1775 a French official, regretting the growth of British seapower, observed that, ‘Neptune’s trident has become the sceptre of the world.’
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The Chatham painting was executed during the first phase of a sequence of global wars against France which had started in 1689 and would continue until 1783. They were: the Nine Years War (1689–97), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–14), the War of the Austrian Succession (1739–48), the Seven Years War (1756–63) and the American War of Independence (1775–83) in which the French intervened in 1778. What added up to over forty years of fighting consisted of two parallel struggles, one fought to prevent France from establishing a hegemony in Europe, the other to enlarge Britain’s overseas trade and colonies at the expense of France and Spain.

On the surface, Britain and France appeared unequal adversaries. In 1700, the population of France was 19.2 million, and in 1780 it was 25.6 million, while that of Britain rose from 6.9 to 9 million during the same period. Britain’s total of foreign trade in 1700 was £9 million, France’s £13 million, figures that increased to £22 million and £23 million respectively during the next eighty years. For each country a century of permanent rivalry and intermittent war was also a time of steady economic growth.

These figures are deceptive in terms of resources available for war, particularly public credit. Britain was always the stronger power because, at times of crisis, she could raise huge amounts of money without resort to additional taxation. The British method of paying for wars was an emergency measure introduced in 1692–3 when it seemed that existing arrangements for obtaining credit were on the verge of collapse. Then, the government adopted the expedient of what became known as the national debt. Corporations and individuals were invited to loan money to the government in return for stock which paid an annual dividend. Investors received a reliable source of income and the government found the wherewithal to pay for armies and navies whenever they were needed. Each successive war added to the debt; in 1757 it stood at £57 million, and by 1787 it had risen to £240 million. In that year interest payments cost the Treasury £9.4 million, a large sum for a nation with an annual income from taxes and customs duties of just over £13 million.

Nevertheless, the burden of servicing the national debt was more than offset by the advantages it offered to British statesmen and commanders. It freed them from anxieties about public opinion, which would have inevitably reacted adversely to emergency taxation or extra customs duties that might easily have harmed trade and triggered inflation. Unity among the political classes was vital for any war effort and this was only possible if the king’s ministers took account of opinions expressed in parliament and by newspapers and journals.

The deposition of James II in 1688 and the accession of the Dutch
stadtholder
William of Orange and his wife Mary in 1689 had witnessed an irreversible shift in the balance of power between the crown and parliament. The legislation of what was called the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 placed executive authority in the hands of the king’s ministers, who in turn depended upon the support of a majority of members of the House of Commons. The actual process by which ministers assumed their new responsibilities was gradual, and throughout the eighteenth century the crown continued to exert often considerable influence over the shaping of policy.

What mattered was that neither kings nor ministers could ignore the voice of the Commons, an assembly whose members spoke up both for their own interests and what they saw as the country’s. The largest sectional interest within the Commons and the Lords was land, but it never enjoyed a complete dominance. Aristocrats and country squires had to share power with merchants, shippers and financiers from the City of London which, since the 1690s, had developed rapidly as a centre for stock-dealing, banking and marine insurance. There was also a strong presence in both houses of men with direct and indirect colonial interests such as plantation owners, former Indian traders, directors of the East India Company and naval and army officers, of whom nearly three hundred served as MPs between 1754 and 1790. Commercial and colonial interests could and did exert a strong pressure on the king’s ministers which they ignored at their peril.

By and large, the commercial and colonial lobbies wholeheartedly endorsed aggressive, acquisitive, anti-French and anti-Spanish policies. They did so because they regarded them as serving the national interest; wars that ended with annexations offered fresh opportunities for overseas trade and investment, as George III reminded the Commons in his speech from the throne in 1762. ‘My territories are greatly augmented,’ he told members, ‘and new sources open for trade and manufacture.’ Wars also stimulated domestic productivity, particularly ship-building and the expanding metallurgical industries of the Midlands; Birmingham-made muskets and swords armed the troops of the East India Company. Increased trade meant more revenue from customs that satisfied the dominant landed class which was spared increases in land taxes.

During the eighteenth century, there emerged a significant concert of interests among the politically active classes, irrespective of individual attachment to Whig or Tory factions. They believed that it was necessary, even desirable for Britain to go to war in order to become richer and to assert her mastery of the seas. No one ever objected to increases in the annual vote of funds for the navy. More importantly, the national debt meant that a belligerent foreign policy caused no undue distress to taxpayers, businessmen or manufacturers.

France was less fortunately placed when it came to waging war. It was impossible for her governments to harness national resources effectively, thanks to a system of public finance which had become ossified and grossly inefficient. Wholesale tax exemptions were enjoyed by the clergy and aristocracy who resolutely defended their privileges, with the result that, whenever a national emergency occurred, the government had no choice but to borrow from the money markets and pay back loans and interest from increased imposts. These fell heavily on imports, exports and domestic commercial transactions and had the effect of strangling commerce.

In 1697, when France was facing economic exhaustion after a nine-year war effort, an envious Frenchman wondered why Britain, superficially a poorer nation, ‘bears a burden of debt larger than ours’. The question was asked again and again throughout the eighteenth century, and in Britain the government took a keen interest in the overdue and abortive efforts of the French to overhaul their fiscal apparatus. Details of the reforms proposed during 1775 were reported, along with other economic intelligence, to London by the Admiralty’s Paris spy or ‘correspondent’ as such creatures were then called.
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The imbalance between French and British resources did not guarantee automatic British success; far from it. Throughout this period, France could field a formidable army and, when the occasion demanded, a powerful fleet, as well as large numbers of privateers who harassed British trade. Moreover, and this was a permanent headache for the élite of ministers who devised British strategy, if France allied with Spain then their combined fleets could overturn the maritime balance. In this situation, Britain could not be strong everywhere and the government would face uncomfortable choices as to where to concentrate its ships and where to allow its enemies superiority.