British attitudes to empire
one’ 126 he was a profoundly frustrated man at the age of thirty, having been wounded in a skirmish in Assam with the East India Company, and dreamed of sailing to the far East. On his father’s death in 1835 he came into a £30,000 inheritance and purchased a ship, the Royalist and sailed for Singapore. On reaching Singapore he heard of the Rajah of Sarawak, in northern Borneo, who was kindly disposed towards English and Dutch sailors. James Brooke met the Rajah and in return for defeating local pirates was given governorship over Sarawak and later proclaimed Rajah. What is most interesting about his story though is what he wrote home to his mother after accepting rule over the island: If, by dedicating myself to the task, I am able to introduce better customs and settled laws, and to raise the feeling of the people so that their rights can never in future be wantonly infringed, I shall indeed be content and happy. 127 James Brooke was not a missionary, he didn’t attempt to convert his new subjects to Christianity, but there is still a new morality present in his governance of Sarawak. He established eight basic laws guaranteeing property rights, rule of law as well as rights to mine minerals for sections of the population and his own trade rights with Britain. This displays a genuine desire to improve the lives of the natives and a departure from the exploitative capitalism typical of earlier colonies. Not every colony was run in this fashion, although Stamford Raffle’s governance of Singapore in 1819 128 was similar. However what he represents are the new colonialists of this period, men whose economic aims are supplemented and in many ways enforced by the moral and cultural attitudes of the time. The new Imperialism of the Victorian era was not just expressed through these ‘men on the spot’. In 1858 the Government of India act came into force, this took the rule of India out 126 Payne, Robert The White Rajahs of Sarawak p. 15 127 Payne Robert The White Rajahs of Sarawak p. 53 128 Raffles drafted Singapore’s first constitution in 1823 outlawing slavery and crimes based on race, he also created a legal system drafting laws and outlining what constituted a crime.
of the hands of the East India Company and made Queen Victoria Empress of India. This was the second turning point in British government’s attitudes to its colonies, the first being the Slave trade’s abolition. The aim of the government of India act was to try and improve the governance of India for the benefit of the native population whilst maintaining British trade rights. However, this created a contradiction where education was introduced to create an effective civil service but in fact created the middle classed that would later push for independence in the early 20 th century. The British government’s attempt to take over colonial rule, even if it was from a distance, showed the paradox of colonial rule in this era: the overall aim was to create more trade and profit for Britain but a sense of duty and morality often had unforeseen consequences as seen with education in the British Raj. In conclusion, the attitudes of the British to their Empire had changed substantially by 1900. It became more popular with public as many more people chose to emigrate outside of Europe to Britain’s colonial and former colonial holdings. Within the empire Victorian values were projected onto colonies through missionaries, policing the slave trade and a new colonizers such as Brooke and Raffles. The effects of these changes in attitude was a ‘World System’ that was rather chaotic, Darwin points out that at the turn of the century ‘of the half-dozen states whose loyalty was most valuable… only one could be given direct orders from London’. 129 The British Empire was at its heart still an economic enterprise but the Victorian morality introduced during this century conflicting aims between securing trade rights and abolishing the slave trade; improving living conditions for the colonized and cementing British rule. A study of British social attitudes in the 19 th century can inform our understanding of this chaotic system in the way a purely economic approach cannot, showing that often decisions were not governed by economics but by the opinions of the British people and the ‘men on the spot’ who created much of the Empire’s expansion.
129 Darwin, John The Empire Project 2009 Preface
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