the Empire "Once there was an Empire that governed roughly a quarter of the world’s population, covered about the same proportion of the earth’s land surface and dominated nearly all its oceans. The British Empire was the biggest Empire ever, bar none. The Empire was the nearest thing there has ever been to a world government. How an archipelago of rainy islands off the northwest coast of Europe came to rule the world is one of the fundamental questions not just of British but of world history." (Empire by Niall Ferguson, 2002) That question crossed my mind many times. Ferguson is trying eloquently and factually to work out the answer but through about four hundred pages predominantly answers are to how not why.
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In the European race for empire, the English were late beginners (see the map on the right). It should never be forgotten that the British Empire began in a maelstrom of seaborne violence and theft: ‘buccaneers’ were pirates stealing the proceeds of someone else’s empire. But why were the British such good pirates? Not how but why. The Empire had begun with the stealing of gold and progressed with the cultivation and trade of sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco, and raw cotton. It was a transition from piracy to political power based primarily on the economy. Of course, gunboats were the insurance of monopolistic trade but why were the British such successful traders and politicians? Not how but why. |
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At one point, Ferguson comes close to an answer of my liking: "The new imports transformed not just the economy but the national lifestyle. As Defoe observed in his Complete English Tradesman: ‘The tea table among the ladies and the coffee house among the men seem to be the places of new invention ...’ What people liked most about these new drugs was that they offered a very different kind of stimulus from the traditional European drug, alcohol. Alcohol is, technically, a depressant. Glucose, caffeine and nicotine, by contrast, were the eighteen-century equivalent of uppers. Taken together, the new drugs gave English society an almighty hit; the Empire, it might be said, was built on huge sugar, caffeine and nicotine rush - a rush nearly everyone could experience."
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