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However they approach this question, the historian must be aware of the undertones which inevitably inform any discussion of it: that is, the value-based judgements about whether the empire was a `good thing' or a `bad thing', whether it was an admirable enterprise or a morally reprehensible exploitative endeavour, or whether it was the embodiment of some abstract `British spirit' or the product of impersonal and inevitable economic imperatives. The aim here will not be to explore the way in which these various ideas have been explored in the literature. Rather, the intention is to perform something closer to a `meditation', which discusses these issues as they can be seen to impinge in popular culture and in the broad cultural assumptions that (British) historians might be exposed to.
To this writer, the very idea that a historian can be `pro-' or `anti-' empire is suggestive of a broader dichotomy for the historian: their ability or inability to be objective - emotionally or judgementally detached from the material that they are studying. The dialectic between theory and evidence is a complex one, and must always, in this writer's view, be an amalgam of the inductive and the rationalist approaches, an assumption which is commonly made and which is, for the most part, rendered transparent by the trust which we tend to place in our discipline where, with the aid of scholarly apparatus and open debate the bad - i.e. the baldly subjective or unsupported assertion - will always be driven out by the good. The study of the British empire is a subject area where the presumed objectivity and consensual approach is starkly shown up to be a convention and nothing more. This area of study raises questions of objectivity and almost forces the historian into the `pro-` or `anti-` imperialist camps. But, for this writer, one's emotional or moral pro- or anti-imperialism must be separated - as far as one is able to do so - from the academic approach to the subject. This is because the baggage that we bring with us in this respect can skew our judgement in a number of ways: it makes us think `ahistorically', in the sense that we judge others by the standards of our own time, rather than seeing them in the true light of their own time; we tend to be `overselective' in our use of evidence; and, perhaps most crucially, we create a frame of reference which rests on polarisation rather than perspective. Surely the historian's central role is to analyse and explain, not to indulge in polemic. The latter might provide good book sales and promote appearances on the chattering circuit, but does it make for `good history'? The British empire existed. The experience of empire was real, in the historical past. It happened, it passed, it left behind a series of legacies which continue to exercise their influence to this day. The core of our study, it seems to me, should be the analysis of what happened, why it happened, and what the effects were. What we think of the empire is, essentially, irrelevant to us as historians. As political animals, or as moralists, or as philosophers of human nature and development, we might be well-advised to stress our attachments, but before we can form judgements in these contexts, we must be sure of our ground in fact. When, amongst the host of identities that we assume, we don the hat that says `historian' I believe that our moral or ideological convictions should only act as a spur to our studies, not as the end in itself. It is in the spirit of consideration, of seeing things in the round, that this writer - who generally frowns on the activities of imperialists, whatever their nation or their political stripe - presents the following meditation.
The legacies of the empire fall into two main areas: the metropole and the periphery. In my view the metropolitan area is somewhat easier to deal with, since the advanced industrial societies which were the main protagonists of the imperial process (Britain included) were - generally - much better articulated and diversified than the metropolitan societies that made up their colonies and vassal territories. Here again, one might draw a distinction between the (white) self-governing dominions of the British empire and the territories largely populated by their indigenous peoples.
The legacies left to Britain after the dissolution might be headed under two categories: economic, and political/psychological. Economically, it has been argued that Britain's imperial possessions acted as a buffer against the vicissitudes of global economic change, providing Britain with captive or compliant markets which could be utilised to the benefit of the metropole. Interpretations on this line might range from a Hobsbawmian Marxist analysis to a more sober analysis based on, say, post-world war two Colonial Office documentation on African development strategies. A series of negative interpretations are possible in the economic sphere: Britain's imperial economy, created on the basis of mercantilism and, later, on the free trading dominance that Britain enjoyed in the nineteenth century, acted to create a false sense of economic security which contributed (famously) to the `decline of the entrepreneurial spirit' and which created the preconditions for Britain's relative economic decline once `tame' imperial economies achieved economic and political independence. All this accepted, the (still) relatively modern nature of Britain's economy and its adaptability meant that it was able to move along (painfully) with the changes in the global economy that gathered pace from 1970 onwards, when the bulk of the imperial possessions had already gone.
The political and psychological legacies are, in my view, more complex and more problematic. Politically, the possession of the empire loomed large in the policy-making principles of several generations, and influenced the international political `self-image' of Britain. This political self-image is mirrored in popular culture, where many people over the age of - say - forty continue to associate Britain's previous global pre-eminence with the possession of the empire. Additionally, imperial status is seen as somehow coterminous with the social standards that seemed dominant at the time when the empire was still intact. The long-term legacy of the empire might be seen to be still highly important in the way that it influenced the development of a `British' identity, an identity which, as Linda Colley has pointed out, is probably not a permanent one and which, from this writer's perspective, can be seen to be decaying into a brand of insular, little-Englander chauvinism which is all too evident in much of our national life and political discourse. Thus the cultural effects of imperial status are deep-rooted and are very much `long-run' processes.
The legacies of empire in the colonies are, in this writer's view, more profound and more important than those in the metropole. This is because the colonised territories were less well-equipped to adapt and react to the changes that colonisation, decolonisation, and their aftermath brought with them. This is particularly true in Africa, where the imperial legacy continues to be writ large and is evidenced on an almost daily basis in the continuing sagas of economic, political and social instability in that continent. It might be said that as far as former British colonies go, the effects appear at first sight to be less severe than many of the other former European colonies, but what follows below can be taken to be universal.
`We brought civilisation to these people,' we are often told by pro-imperialists. The products of western/northern civilisation and culture in this context are usually taken to be education, democracy, health, transport, trade, technology, organisation, and wealth production: that is, many of the factors which continue to typify our contemporary existence and with which Francis Fukyama for one would find little to quarrel. It is indeed true that in the process of colonisation and control there was considerable infrastructure development which boosted the imperialists' ability to administer the territories and opened up those territories to economic development and interaction with the rest of the world. Democracy was espoused at independence and the administrative machinery that had been created by the imperial power was handed over to nationalists with a popular mandate. Thus the territories were given their `natural freedom' and invited to participate in the global economy. All of these supposed `benefits' rest on two assumptions: that western/northern civilisation is best - or at least desirable - and that it is natural for all the world to develop along these same lines. These bald assumptions have been severely challenged by the series of disasters that have overtaken independent African countries since decolonisation.
In my view, these disasters - civil wars, famines, dictatorships - can be seen to be rooted in the effects of imperialism and colonisation. In establishing imperial control, colonising nations relied largely on coercion, force, or on co-operation from client groups in the colonies. These groups were key figures in helping the (numerically small) colonists and officials establish the discrete, stable and adminsterable territories that the metropolitan governments needed to `do business with'. In using (or creating) elite groups who would either do their bidding or help facilitate their wishes, colonial governments overlaid new structures of power and authority over pre-existing, traditional ones. These traditional structures were often of a completely different type to western ones, based on tribal or territorial schema. Economically too, alien concepts such as the wage economy and regular hours of work were imposed at the behest of imperial governments and their agents. The elites or collaborative groups had a strong stake in these structures. The imposition of alien structures and systems created new fracture lines in colonial societies, and deepened fissures that already existed. After decolonisation, when the policing authority of the colonial power was gone, the newly independent nations - perhaps rather like the Republics of the former Soviet Union - had (have) a process of conflict to go through to resolve these problems. For this writer, these conflicts - the result of alien cultural conceptions imposed and normalised - are the greatest legacy of empire.
Another important legacy is the economic one. It is true that many previously isolated and economically backward nations were incorporated into the burgeoning world economy, but their status on entry had profound effects on their subsequent development: many were developed as monocultural regions, using techniques that produced unsustainable development, and which left them highly vulnerable to shifts in prices and demand in the world market. This is as true for the `informal empire' of South and Latin America as for the `formal empire' of Africa. Africa especially is still reaping the harvest of this economic development which can be traced back to imperial policies.
In conclusion, I would climb down from the fence and suggest that although the imperial legacy at home in Britain is a powerful and long-lived one, it is in Africa that we can perhaps see the starkest legacies of the imperial age. In many respects, the former imperial powers have been able to walk away from their imperial entanglements. The gaining of independence marked the end of the colonial powers' responsibilities to their wards. But subsequent developments in economics and politics have shown that the imperial legacy is still working itself out, based on a set of pre-conditions imposed from without which have generated their own momentum as former colonies try to integrate into the world economy and achieve some measure of economic and political viability at home. Often, these goals conflict, usually to the cost of the non-elite groups and the poor. The `washing of the spears' in Africa has given way to the `washing of the hands' in the west and the north.
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