The Good Empire

The view popular on the left is that the nations of Western Europe set out in the eighteenth century to rape and pillage the rest of the world. Indeed, most of us live white males have spent the last fifty years and more living down our history of “colonialism.” Even though, for most of us, neither we nor our ancestors had anything to do with it.

But this is not what happened at all. Few in Europe ever sought an empire.

True, it was on the agenda a few centuries earlier: Back in the days of Vasco de Gama and Columbus, the Spanish plan, at least, had been to make money by exploiting foreign colonies for raw materials. Exploration and colonization were, at least, supposed to pay for themselves. This, however, did not work out—only Spain ever managed to turn a profit on its colonies, and this only for a time. Moreover, the expansion of Spain called into being almost immediately in Spain itself the School of Salamanca, which set strict criteria for just and unjust wars—something previous empires had never bothered with.

By the eighteenth century, nobody was under any delusions that colonies were moneymakers. Free trade, not colonies, was understood as the best route to national prosperity. In financial terms, colonies were seen as losing propositions.

Neither Britain nor France, therefore, though they were the two main colonial powers, had any interest in possessing an empire, nor any plans to do so. Neither did Portugal, or the Netherlands.

So how did they end up with some of the biggest empires known to man?

First, they were drawn into it by the need to preserve order. Order was necessary for trade; and in large parts of the world, basic order was lacking. One had to police the trade routes, and to control the possible pirate bases. One had to ensure the safety of traders. This is explicit in Salamanca’s rules from the start: it was a basic human right to travel freely in order to do commerce. If, then, a local potentate refused traders this right, they had the right in turn to try to force their way.

Beyond that, much was done out of concern for human rights more generally. Governments in most parts of the world were markedly oppressive, in European terms. Locals would often appeal to European forces for aid, and the home front would be galvanized into sympathy. It was all very similar to the reasoning that, more recently, drew the international community into Lebanon, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, and so forth. The School of Salamanca, again, initiated this idea: if, for example, a foreign government was slaughtering people innocent of any crime, foreigners had the right to intervene. All had a right to freedom of religion; if a foreign government prevented Christians from preaching or practicing, this too was cause to intervene. One could not, by the same token, intervene to force conversions; local religions too had to be honoured.

Finally, there were the needs of collective security. While the actual European trading posts might have been small, they relied on local allies. These allies, in turn, had enemies nearby. And they naturally appealed to their European colleagues for aid in time of war. Then, as now, this was a form of legitimate self-defense, and recognized by Salamanca.

These three factors together, combined with overwhelming European military superiority, caused empires to form quite apart from any conscious policy. It was no more rapacious or oppressive or racist, in principle and in broad strokes, than we are today. Indeed, it is the same thing that is happening today, although today the intervention is more likely to be by the World Bank or IMF, using economic rather than military means.

There are, it is true, specific examples of Imperial abuse: Ireland, Poland, the Belgian Congo, Armenia, Korea under Japan. These were generally recognized, and condemned, as such at the time.

In France, the left actively opposed an Empire, because it would tend to give more power to the army. The right opposed it because it distracted France from her real defensive needs, which were, they believed, against Germany on the continent. There was no constituency for it.

The French Empire was built on ad hoc situations like the failure, in 1882, of the de facto government of Egypt to pay its debts to French and British banks. Much of the eventual Francophone domain was called forth by the collapse of civil order in the Ottoman Empire. In this context, France, French shipping, and French nationals were subject to piracy and what we would now call terrorist attacks--as were the other unfortunate inhabitants of that part of the world.

Condemn, if you will, this supposed European “aggression.” But you must then also condemn the UN for interfering in Darfur, or Kosovo, or Bosnia, or Cyprus, or ….