On the far-flung frontier of a benevolent and great-souled empire there arises a near-despotic ruler – or, at least, he is said to be such. A crusty old bastard with fanatical religious beliefs, this ruler refuses to negotiate in good faith with the empire’s representatives, no matter how many times they move the goal posts. They get very tired from changing the rules and shifting the goal posts, and consequently become very cross.
This ancient fanatic and his people have already defeated the good purposes of the empire a decade earlier. But even that was not the beginning of their wrongdoing. For almost two generations they have sought to put themselves beyond the authority, power, and well-meant measures of their imperial betters, with some success. They are rather proud of this achievement. They clearly stand in need of stern but (ultimately) kind correction.
Worse, the cunning old despot has begun negotiating with the empire’s civilized rivals, and is acquiring Weapons of Modest Destruction. Clearly, he seeks to undermine the authority of the empire in an entire region, with no concern for the Larger Good of civilization.. He also represses (but does not gas) “his own people,” who turn out, on examination, to be not so much his own people but a mob of foreign riffraff belonging to the empire. They went there of their own free will, to be sure, but nevertheless they are being inconvenienced from time to time. Can the empire shirk its duty of humanitarian intervention?
Back in the imperial metropolis, the Press Gang – by which I mean the high-minded gentry of the newspapers, and not the fellows who used to scrape prospective soldiers up off the pub floor in Ireland – start baying at the top of their lungs. The old despot presides over a society that is inherently evil, they cry. It is utterly backward, a terrible embarrassment at the beginning of a glorious new century, they say. Further, the old despot's supporters abuse the help, they complain, something that would never happen under imperial management.
It is of course only the most innocent of accidents that the old despotic patriarch and his backward, ramshackle “state” are sitting athwart certain very valuable mineral resources. It is mere chance that this dictatorial old rustic and his government are blocking the inevitable transfer of these resources into hands better able to develop and produce them for the benefit of All Mankind. It is certainly wrong of these atavists to resist Progress and Development, but that does not mean that the empire's leaders are driven by something as common as the desire for material gain. That would be bourgeois.
Oh no. The empire always has higher ends in view. Just ask its employees, friends, and beneficiaries.
Look, mate, these resources just need to be in the hands of chaps the chaps can trust (stealing a phrase from Yes, Minister).
And now a final crisis looms. Even now, the old reprobate still seeks to thwart the empire's wholesome attempts at cutting off his country's trade with the outside world, an effort aimed only at bringing about better behavior. It seems more and more plain that nothing short of a “regime change” will do, even if that cliché is not on hand.
During the final round of “negotiations,” the old fellow – obviously putting on an act – complains that “it is my country that you want.”
Any day now, the old despot with his Weapons of Modest Destruction might manage to build a railroad connection to the sea, wickedly by-passing the imperial stranglehold on his republic's foreign trade. Time is growing short. The repressive old patriarch may soon break through – to Delagoa Bay.
And now you see, the old fundamentalist despot is none other than Oom (“Uncle”) Paul Kruger (1825-1904), President of the South African Republic (Transvaal), and the time is the late 1890s. Once again that romantic historical figure, “die Boer met sy roer” (“the farmer with his gun”), goes “on commando,” rides and shoots, putting up a valiant resistance, but nevertheless goes down to defeat in a great Moral Victory for All Mankind.
Once the Brits began conducting themselves like the Duke of Cumberland in the Highlands, or Sherman and Sheridan in the Confederacy, the stakes underwent a considerable raising along the ever-popular lines of Total War. 27,000 Afrikaner women and children perished in concentration camps because of this brilliant counterinsurgency campaign. The Boers gave in because, as one of them put it, “you live to fight but we fight to live.” They did not, however, actually change their minds about the merits of British hegemony.
A great many dire consequences stemmed directly from this struggle, the Second Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1903. The empire of that day – the British one – naturally denied, and still denies, even now, all causal connection with any unfortunate outcomes. And why not? In the same neighborhood, having given Cecil Rhodes a mercantilist charter in the late 19th century to conquer the northern frontier, it was nothing at all for the Brits to scuttle their creation, Rhodesia, in the 1970s. It's just business: political business.
In all the current wailing about President Mugabe's campaign against the last few white farmers, no one has paused to read the memoirs of Ian Smith. Smith of course is not unbiased, if that matters, but his recently published book tells you all you need to know about how empires create, abandon, or even actively destroy the people whom they entice into their short-run projects. If you need any further convincing, watch Breaker Morant.
Of late, the British imperial analogy is all the rage. A recent number of the oh-so-Establishment Wilson Quarterly goes on at length about the joys of prospective U.S. empire (they say “American,” but I try to reserve that word for actual Americans). The British Empire is their role model of choice. And now that “we” are in the “Great Game” in Afghanistan, there is a certain fit. A few brave souls go for comparisons with the Roman empire, but most folks find it harder to put a happy spin on that particular “social formation.”
So be it. Every man his own analogizer. Let a thousand imperialist comparisons bloom.
But try to remember that there were certain, er, drawbacks to the British Empire, just as there are drawbacks to any empire. If the well-wishers of empire want to claim the tarnished prestige of Queen Victoria's ministers' enterprise, that only puts the historical critique of the British Empire on the front burner. Americans used to understand these things. For fairly trivial reasons, as measured globally, our ancestors fought that empire. Only a few of them wished to supplant it with an empire of our own.
Unluckily for Americans, that small number of pith-helmet-wearing Americans now runs the foreign policy of the U.S. state apparatus.
I do not claim of course that historical analogies are exact. There are many differences. In 1899, gold and diamonds were at stake and it was worth a lot of bloodshed, to some people, to have the profits from these commodities in the hands of the proper chaps. Now, some say, oil plays a role.
Oom Paul was deeply Calvinist in the Dutch Reformed tradition. The proposed enemy of the moment, Saddam Hussein, seems to be a rather secular, political fellow. It does him no good, however. Under the present rules, having a secular state only wins points for those very useful Turks.
Thus there are many differences between the situation today and that in 1899, but the thread that ties them together, and ties up the robber's bundle (as Tom Paine would say), is empire.
For my part, I'm tired of the empire and its endless causes. I'm tired of its holidays. This year I think I'll celebrate Paul Kruger's birthday, October 10th. I grant that his critics were not entirely wrong. He was crusty, difficult, Calvinist, etc. On the other hand, he stood against the empire.
Kruger once said, “Geboren onder de Engelsche vlag, wens ik niet daaronder te sterven”: “born under the English flag, I do not wish to die under it.” He got that wish; he died in exile in Clarens, Switzerland, on July 14, 1904. The British, too, got what they wanted – his country.
September 12, 2002
