by Richard Sprigg

Created on: May 17, 2009   Last Updated: May 18, 2009

The British Empire was, ironically, on its death bed by the time it came to the attention of the majority of the British public, on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee in 1897. That poet of Empire, Kipling, wrote a poem for the occasion entitled "Recessional". This word, which originally referred to the withdrawal of the clergy and choir from the chancel to the vestry, suggests an era drawing to a close.

Indeed this poem includes the lines "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!" This exemplifies this bittersweet flavour of things past; not a panegyric but an elegy.

The fact is that the Empire was rotting from within:

Maintaining an Empire requires that the administrators have an unquestioning faith in their own superiority, and that this is communicated to the Imperial subject. As soon as administrators begin to apply rules of fairness and equity, an Empire (which is by definition neither fair nor equitable) will fall into rapid decline.

The ultimate threat of every Empire has always been the possible intervention of overwhelming forces, of ignominious defeat: as soon as it becomes clear that Imperial forces are not omnipotent, the Empire is doomed.

The Imperial dream finally expired between 1899 and 1901, when a loosely organized force of farmers and planters defied the Imperial power.

The Boer war demonstrated to the world that committed cadres of individuals, who know the terrain, can engage a much larger and more powerful enemy in a long, and expensive military action, particularly if the supply lines of the foreign power are extended.

The British Empire, which was founded on the principle that each possession should be self-supporting, was particularly vulnerable to this.

Although some territory was added after the dawn of the 20th century, mainly German territories annexed after WW1, the dissolution had already begun.

Less than ten years later, when the young Mohandas Gandhi was in South Africa and becoming politically active, he went largely unmolested by Imperial forces. A more 'uncivilized' administration would simply have arranged to have him killed.

By 1930 the terribly British military figure had become a caricature, the farcical Colonel Blimp. By 1941, George Orwell, writing in "The Lion and the Unicorn" refers to the military caste as having been "losing vitality over the past 30 years".

Apart from the points raised above, the British Imperial method was to rule a subject people by supporting existing rulers and their regimes. In the 20th century, there was a major increase in radical political groups that challenged the authority of these traditional rulers and would have made governing those colonies difficult, if not impossible.

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