Burt A. The Evolution of the British Empire and Commonwealth From the American Revolution
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Reform
and
Expansion
in
India
335
from
which
Dost
Mohammed
had
driven
him
many
years
before. In
the summer
of
1838
the
governor
general
entered
into
the
Tripartite
Treaty
with
Shah
Shuja
and
Ranjit
Singh,
the
plan
being
that the
exile's
adherents
with
the
aid
of
Sikh
allies
would
effect the
restoration.
But when
Auckland
learned,
as
he
soon
did,
that
these
means were
inadequate,
he
decided
to
send a
British
army
to
do the
work
at
the
very
time
when
British
pressure
in
Moscow
and on
the
Persian
Gulf
persuaded
Russia
to
abandon
Kabul
and
Teheran
and
to call off
the
siege
of
Herat.
The
First
Afghan
War,
in
which
Auckland
persisted,
was
therefore
without
justification
from
its
beginning;
and
in
the
end it
proved
to be
as disastrous as
it
was
immoral.
British
bayonets
put
Shah
Shuja
back
on
his throne
in
1839;
but
they
had
to
remain in
order
to
keep
him
there
even
though
his
rival
surrendered in
1840,
to be
treated
as
an
honored
prisoner
in
India.
The
British
occupation,
disgracefully
mis-
managed,
roused
Afghan
hostility
to
an
explosive
pitch
by
the
winter
of
1841-42,
when a
Kabul
mob
murdered
the
British
resident;
his
successor
negotiated
a
humiliating
agreement
for
evacuation,
and he
too
was
murdered;
a
new
and
equally
bad
treaty
for
withdrawal was
made;
and
Afghan
treachery
turned the
British
retreat
into
a
sickening
massacre.
A
new
governor
general
retrieved the
disaster,
the
worst
that
British
arms
had
suffered in
India.
He
sent
in a
fresh
army
which
retook
Kabul,
rescued the British
who had been
held
as
hostages,
did
much
unnecessary
damage
to
property,
and
effected a
complete
with-
drawal from the
Afghan
hornets' nest.
Dost
Mohammed
was
allowed
to return
to his
throne
unconditionally;
and for
the
rest
of his
long
life
he
remained,
with
one
inconsequential
lapse,
on
good
terms
with
the
British,
who had
wasted
twenty
thousand lives
and fifteen
million
pounds
to
get
rid of him.
The
conquest
of
Sind was a
sequel
of
the
Afghan
War.
The
strategic
location of
this
territory
tempted
Auckland to
send
troops
through
it
in
flagrant
violation of the
treaty
of 1832,
Having
decided
that,
he
had
to secure his communications
through
the
country
of
the
amirs,
and
to this
end
he
imposed
a new
treaty upon
them
early
in
1839.
It
took
them
formally
under British
protection
and
bound
them
to
pay
an
annual tribute of three lakhs of
rupees
to
help defray
the
cost
of
main-
taining
a
British force
in their midst.
They
were too
weak to
resist but
not to resent
this
highhanded
treatment.
Though
the
Afghan
explosion
against
the
British did not
release
a
rising
in
Sind,
it
magnified
the
rumors of
disaffection
there and moved
the
British to
strengthen
their
336
CHAPTER
NINETEEN:
hold
upon
the lower
Indus. The chosen
instrument
was Sir
Charles
Napier,
who
dictated
a
new
treaty
late
in
1842,
substituting
cessions
of
territory
for
the
annual
tribute,
requiring
the
provision
of
fuel
for
British steamers
on the
river,
and
transferring
to
the
British the
right
of
uttering
coinage,
a
recognized
attribute
of
sovereignty.
Early
in
1843
continued British
goading
at
last
produced
the
rising
that
the
Afghan
example
could
not;
Napier got
his
desired excuse for
war;
Brit-
ish
forces soon
smashed all
resistance;
and
Sind
was annexed in
August.
Napier's
famous
telegram
peccavi
I have
sinned was
more
than
an
innocent
pun;
for he had earlier
written in his
diary,
"We
have
no
right
to
seize
Sind,
yet
we
shall do
so,
and
a
very
advantageous,
useful,
humane
piece
of
rascality
it
will be."
The
whole transaction
has
been
condemned,
often in
unmeasured
terms,
by
almost
every
British
writer
from that
day
to this.
Yet,
if
judged by
the
practical
results,
which
Napier
could not
help
foreseeing,
it
stands
in a
very
different
light.
The
amirs,
who
were sent
packing,
were
degenerate
despots
whose
only
idea
of
ruling
was to
plunder
and
oppress
and
whose
only
right
to
rule
rested
on a
conquest
of
sixty years
before. The
people
of
Sind
benefited
enormously
from
the
substitution
of
civilized
government
by
Napier,
who
administered the
province
until 1847
and
of
whom the
following
illustrative
anecdote is
told. When
Brahmins
objected
that
his
prohibi-
tion
of suttee
was
interference with
a
pious
religious
custom,
he
replied
that
if this
was
so the
custom
must
be
allowed to
continue,
but
his
own
people
also
had a
custom that
would
have
to be
observed
with
it:
"When
men
burn
women
alive
we
hang
them."
His
rejoinder
effectively
removed the
objection.
It
may
also
be
noted
that
die
annexation
of
Sind
coincided
with the
abolition
of
slavery
in
British
India.
Provision
for
emancipation
by
1837
had
been
dropped
from
the
Charter
Act of
1833 because
slavery
in
India,
being complicated
by
caste
and
by
both
Hindu and
Moslem
law,
was
different
from
slavery
in
the
West
Indies;
but the act
directed the
governor
general
and
council
to
do
away
with
it
as soon
as
possible.
Another
humane
reform
that
was
being
success-
fully pushed
at
that
time
was
the
stopping
of
female
infanticide.
After
Sind came
the
Punjab,
but
that
is a
different
story.
Ranjit
Singh
had
forged
a
powerful
instrument
in
his
army.
In
size,
training,
and
equipment,
it
resembled the
British
army
in
India
and
was
its
only
possible
rival.
Trouble
ensued
when
this
instrument
became
the
mas-
ter.
For
five
years
before
the
Sikh
ruler
died in
1839,
his
control over
the
army
and
the
government
was
slipping.
His
health
was
wrecked
by
drink
and
debauchery,
he
suffered
two
strokes
of
paralysis,
and
every-
Reform
and
Expansion
in
India
337
one
knew
that he
had
no
heir
fit
to
succeed him
only
an imbecile
son
and
a vicious
grandson.
The
next
six
years
were
a
nightmare
in the
Punjab.
Murder
soon
wiped
out
son
and
grandson.
Then came
the
turn
o the
imposters,
the
first
of
whom
implored
Auckland
in 1841
to
rescue
him
from
his
own
soldiers.
The
last
of
his
successors
all
pup-
petswas
a
five-year-old
son
of
a
wicked
woman who fawned
upon
the
army
in
order
to
remain
regent.
She
and
some
other
highly
placed
individuals,
who
were
afraid of
being
devoured
by
the headless
military
monster,
saw
their
best
hope
in
turning
it
against
the
British,
while
the
monster's
natural
appetite
for
new
conquests
and fresh
plunder
also
urged
it
to
pounce
upon
the
British.
Two
other influences were
the
encouragement
offered
by
the
Afghan
War
and the
warning
of
what
happened
to
Sind;
but
these
seem
to have
played
little
part
in
hurling
the
Sikh
army
across the
Sutlaj
in
December 1845.
It
was a clear
case
of
unprovoked
attack.
The
Sikhs
thought
to
surprise
the British
and
march on Delhi.
Though
the
First
Sikh War
lasted
only fifty-four
days,
it was
by
far
the stiffest
military
test
that
the British
had
ever
faced
in
India. It was
a
breath-taking
revelation of the
magnificent
fighting
qualities
of
the
Sikhs and
of their
skill
as
artillerymen
and
engineers. During
a
"night
of horrors"
in
the
middle of a fierce
two-day
battle,
"the
fate
of
India
trembled
in the
balance." In the
last
pitched
battle
the
British
artillery
shot
away
all its
ammunition
without
silencing
the
opposing guns,
and
the British
infantry
had
to take them
with a
desperate
bayonet
charge.
That
day
cost the Sikhs
10,000
lives
as
well as all
their
guns,
and
it
was
decisive. It
opened
the road
to
Lahore,
their
capital,
where
the
governor general
dictated
peace
in
March
1846. He did
not
annex the
country, partly
out of
respect
for the
memory
of
a
faithful
ally
of
former
days
and
partly
because
he
doubted
if he
had
enough strength
to
take over
such a
large
and difficult
prize.
He
trimmed off the
southern
edge
of Sikh
territory
everything
on
the
British side of the
river and some
pieces
on the other.
He cut off
Kashmir,
which he sold
to
a
friendly
rajah
for
a
million
pounds.
He exacted an
indemnity
of
half a million
from the
Sikhs;
and he
limited
their
army
to
20,000
infantry
and
12,000
cavalry,
less
than
half
what
it
had
been. The
Sikh
government
was
allowed
to
continue,
its
autonomy
being
qualified by
the
presence
of
a
British
resident and
a
British
garrison.
The Second
Sikh
War,
1848-1849,
was
the inevitable
result of this
compromise
settlement,
which was
essentially
unstable. The
Sikhs
were
determined
to
reverse
the decision of
1846,
and
it was not
by
338
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
much
that
they
failed
to
do
so.
Somehow
they managed
to
put
con-
siderable
artillery
in
the
field;
and
with
Peshawar
as
bait
they
hooked
Dost
Mohammed,
once
their
bitterest
foe,
as
their
ally.
Their own
guns
were
much more useful. The account
of
the
first
big
battle,
which
was
almost
a
draw,
roused consternation
in
England
and
caused
the
recall
of the
commander in chief
and
the
promotion
of
Napier
to
take
his
place.
In
the
final
great
battle,
the
Sikhs
numbered
50,000
much
more than the
British but the
British
were then
for the
first
time
superior
in
artillery,
and
without
much
cost
to themselves
they
inflicted
a
crushing
defeat
on
their foes.
They pursued
them
as far as the
Afghan
frontier and clinched
the
conquest by
the
occupation
of Peshawar.
The
annexation of
the
Punjab
was
proclaimed
in March
1849,
a
fortnight
after
the remnants of the
Sikh
army
laid down
their
arms.
It
was
Lord
Dalhousie,
governor
general
from
early
in
1848,
who
took
this
momentous
step,
and
he
did
it
on his own
authority
without
con-
sulting
his
council
and without
getting
the consent of
the
directors or
the
home
government.
Of
all
who
have held
that
high
office,
he
was
the
youngest,
being
only
thirty-five
when
appointed,
and
he
was
one of
the ablest.
He
remade the
Punjab
into
a
model
province,
with
the
aid
of
a
remarkable
group
of brilliant
administrators of whom
the Law-
rence
brothers,
Henry
and
John,
are
the
most famous.
The
rule
of
Ranjit
Singh
at its best had
only
one
object,
which
was
to
build
and
keep
the
strongest
possible
army,
and it
exacted
a
land
revenue
that
was about
half
the
value
of the
cultivator's
produce.
Now
that
army
was
entirely
disbanded,
the
people
were
disarmed,
the land
tax was
cut in
half,
and the
proceeds
were
spent
upon
providing
enlightened
government.
The
result was
that
within
three
years
of
the
annexation,
Sikh
soldiers of
their
own free
will
fought
under
the
British
in
Burma;
and five
years
later,
when
the
Mutiny
shook
the
British
raj
in
India,
the
Punjab
remained
steadfast
in its
new
loyalty.
The
Second
Sikh
War
earned the Indian
Empire
up
to its
natural limit in
the
barrier of
mountains
and
deserts on
the
northwest,
and
so
completed
the
unifying
of India
by
conquest,
a
process
that
Clive
had
begun
nearly
a
century
before.
V
Chapters
THE
MID-VICTORIAN ERA
XX.
Britain on
Top
of the World and
Turning
to
Democracy
XXL The Birth of
the
First Dominion
XXII. Australian Gold and Maori
Wars
XXIII.
Readjustment
in the
Tropical
Colonies
XXIV.
The Failure
of British
Policy
in
South
Africa
XXV.
The Indian
Mutiny
CHAPTER XX
Britain
on
Top
of the
World and
Turning
to
Democracy
IN
THE
Mid-Victorian
era
Britain
sat
on
top
of
the
world,
and she was
complacently
conscious of
that
fact.
Pride
of
empire played
no
part
in
supporting
this
serene
consciousness,
for such
pride
had
vanished
almost
completely.
She
rather
felt
that
she
had
outgrown
the
empire,
that it
was a
thing
of the
past.
The main
foundation for her
self-com-
placency
was
the
position
of
industrial, commercial,
and
financial
primacy
that
she
then
enjoyed.
It
has
never
been
equaled
before or
since
by
herself
or
any
other
single country,
not even
by
the
United
States after the
Second World
War,
for Britain
in
this
earlier
age
faced
no rival such as
America
has
since
encountered in
Soviet Russia.
British
economic
supremacy
was
overwhelming,
and
there
were
many
reasons
for it.
Britain had an
enormous
lead over
all other
countries
in
the
development
of the
industrial revolution. The
first
European
country
to
become
industrialized was
Belgium,
and
there
the
process
was not
well under
way
until
the 1840's. France
and
Germany
followed in the next
two
decades,
and
the
United States later.
To estab-
lish their
own
industries,
these
other countries had to
buy
their ma-
chinery
from
Britain,
and from
her
also
they
had to
get
mechanical
experts
and skilled
workmen
to
install it
and
show
how to work it. This
demand
greatly
stimulated
British
heavy industry,
and its
efficiency
was
enormously
increased
by
the introduction of the new
Bessemer
method of
steel
production
in the fifties. Meanwhile
Britain was the
great supplier
of other
manufactured
goods
to the
rapidly
expanding
markets of the world.
Britain
was
leading
the world
in
transportation.
Gladstone,
the
inscrutable
master
of
figures,
once
said
that
70
per
cent of
his
country's
abounding prosperity
was due
to
her
policy
of
free trade
and
30
per
342
CHAPTER
TWENTY:
cent
to
her
railways.
This
nice calculation
is
open
to
serious
question;
but
of
the
important
contribution to
Britain's economic
growth
made
by
her
railways,
there
can
be no
question.
By
the
middle
of
the
century
the
little
island
had
about
8,000
miles
of
railway
with
a
paid-up
capital
of
nearly
280,000,000
sterling
and
annual
earnings
of
20,000,000,
of
which
more
than
half
was
net
profit.
At
this time
Belgium
was
the
next
best
served with
this new
method
of
transportation,
while
France
and
Germany
were
still
laying
out
their
trunk
lines
and
the
gigantic
American
system
was
only
in its
infancy.
During
the next
generation
the
mania
of
railway
building
spread
all
over
the
world;
and
the
lead
that
Britain
had
already
taken made
her
contracting
firms
the
principal
constructors,
her
industries the
main
producer
of
rails,
locomotives,
cars,
and
other
railroad
equipment,
and her
financial
houses
the
chief
source
of
capital
for
the
expensive
enterprise.
In
1850
British
shipping
was
by
far
die
largest
in
the
world.
The
second
largest
mercantile marine
was
that
of
the
United
States,
which
then
totalled
1,500,000
tons
against
the
British
3,250,000.
The
next
quarter
of
a
century
saw
the
British
pre-eminence
leap
away
up.
Brit-
ish
tonnage
was
doubled
while the
American stood
still
and
then
de-
clined,
the
French
rose
to the
American
level
and
then
fell off
too,
and
the
German
climbed
to a weak
second
place.
Iron
and
steam
were
supplanting
wood
and
sail.
This
substitution
operated
like
a
double
godsend
to British
shipping,
but
we
cannot
call
it a
godsend
because it
was
the
conscious
work
of
British
enterprise.
It
removed an
old
handi-
cap
and
gave
a
new
advantage.
Britain
was
the
only
shipbuilding
country
that
had
used
up
her
forests
and
was
therefore
obliged
to
bear
the extra
cost of
bringing
timber
from
foreign
lands.
On
the
other
hand,
she
alone
was
industrially
prepared
to
turn
out
iron
and
then
steel
steamships
that
could
take
business
away
from
wooden
sailing
ships.
At
the
beginning
of the
last
quarter
of
the
century,
about
half
the
world's
shipping
was
British
owned
and a
larger
proportion
was
British
built,
for
she
had
added
ships
to
the
list
of
her
principal
exports.
Britain
was
mining
much
more
coal
than
all
the
rest
of
the
world,
and
coal
was
the
very
foundation
upon
which
industrial
society
was
built.
Her
production
in
1851
was
doubled in
1871,
when
it
was
almost
twice
as
much
as
that
of
Belgium,
France,
and
Germany
com-
bined.
Germany
had
greater
resources,
and
the
United
States
much
greater
still;
but
their
comparable
exploitation
was
only
beginning.
Coal
was
already
a
valuable
British
export;
what
went
out
of
the
coun-
Britain
on
Top of
the
World
and
Turning
to
Democracy
343
try,
however,
was
only
a
crumb
compared
with
what
fed the fires
of
British
industry.
British
commerce
was
supreme,
which
was
only
to
be
expected
when
the
country
that
was
the
workshop
of the
world
was
also the
country
that did most
of
the
carrying
trade
of
the
world.
Yet
another of the
many
powerful
factors
that
stimulated
one
another
and
worked to-
gether
for the
peculiar
benefit of
Britain in
that
age
was her
creation of
capital.
From
the
great
profits
of her
industry,
shipping,
and
trade,
she was
piling
up
new
capital
at
a
prodigious
rate.
Much of
it she
applied
to
expand
these
enterprises.
Much
of
it
she sent
abroad for
investment in
other
lands
all over
the
world,
quickening
their
develop-
ment and
enriching
herself
by
enriching
them.
Few
people
in
the
United States
now
realize
how
greatly
their
country,
to
say
nothing
of
others,
was
then
dependent
upon
the
the
life-giving
stream of
capital
flowing
from
Britain.
Bills
on
London,
and
they
alone,
were univer-
sally acceptable;
sterling
was
the
only
international
currency;
and the
hub of
the
British
Empire
was
the
financial
center
of
the
world.
While Britain
faced
no
competition
from
abroad,
she
had
plenty
of
it at home.
With
unlimited
markets
to
conquer,
there
was
no
tempta-
tion to
adopt
the
restrictive
business
practices
of
a later
age,
when
national
jealousies
raised
high
barriers
around
national
markets.
There
was,
rather,
every
incentive
to
translate into
lower
prices
each
successive
improvement
of
production
and
distribution.
This
meant that the
country
as
a
whole,
not
just
the
business
leaders,
shared
the
benefits.
Real
wages
rose
by
20
per
cent
during
the
fifties and
sixties.
Then
and
there,
in
the
only
great
industrial
society
that
yet
existed,
it
was
no
longer
true
that
the
poor
were
becoming poorer
while the
rich
were
growing
richer,
though
Karl Marx
was
busy
in
the
British
Museum
trying
to
prove
that
it
must
be true
in
all
modern
industrial
society.
It
was a
time
of
full
employment,
except
when
the
American
Civil War
caused a
cotton famine
that
threw
Lancashire
operatives
out
of
work.
It
was
also
a
time
of
increased
emigration.
During
these
two
decades,
when the
population
of the
United
Kingdom
rose from
some
27,000,000
to
more than
30,000,000,
more
than half
the
natural in-
crease,
or
approximately
4,000,000,
sought
greater
prosperity
for them-
selves in lands
beyond
the
sea,
thereby
increasing
the
opportunity
for
their
fellows
who
remained
at
home.
By
her
conversion to free
trade,
Britain had
done
much
to
build the
world
economy
that she then
dominated. It was
a
free,
self-regulating
economy;
and it became
more so as other
countries,
seeking
to
share her
344
CHAPTER
TWENTY:
prosperity,
cut down
governmental
restraints
upon
their
trade.
Prussia
followed a
substantially
free trade
policy,
and
so
did
quite
a
number
of
other
European
states.
Piedmont
did
it to
gird
up
her
loins for
the
heavy
task
of
uniting
Italy.
Even
France,
which
had
always
been
stoutly protectionist,
moved
in the same
direction
by
concluding
a
commercial
treaty
with
Britain in
1860. The
man whom
the
govern-
ment
in
London sent to
negotiate
this
agreement,
and
after
whom
it
is
popularly
called,
was
appropriately
Richard Cobden.
He
personified
the
school of economic
thought
then
supreme
in Britain and
embrac-
ing
almost
every
European
economist
of
any
standing
that
insisted
on
the maximum
economic
freedom
as
the
only way
to achieve for
all
in
every
land the
greatest
and
healthiest
prosperity
and to effect
such
an
economic
integration
of
the world
that
self-interest
would make
war
impossible.
Until the
seventies,
when the
world
turned
in its
tracks
and
began
to
rush down the
slope
of economic
nationalism,
it
seemed
to
be
following
Britain's lead
up
the
easy
road to
salvation.
The
gospel
of
free
trade,
free
enterprise,
was the
British
contribution
to
the
list
of
modern
ideologies;
and Britons
were
then confident
that
it
would
triumph.
In
political
institutions,
to a
much
greater degree
than in
fiscal
policy,
Britain
seemed to
be
guiding
the
world
in
the third
quarter
of
the
century.
Two
classical
treatises then
appeared,
John
Stuart
Mill's
Representative
Government in
1860
and Walter
Bagehot's
English
Constitution
in
1867,
which
taught
the
British
that
they
were
wiser
than
they
knew,
that
they
had
evolved
a
political system
as
nearly
per-
fect
as
any political system
could
be;
and the extent
to which their
parliamentary
system
was
being
imitated
abroad
was almost
startling.
Not
only
were the
colonies
copying
it
as fast
as
they
could,
but,
what
was
much more
striking,
European
countries were
doing
the same
thing.
At the
beginning
of
this
period,
genuine
popular
government
scarcely
existed on the
European
continent
outside three of the
smaller
states
Belgium,
the
Netherlands,
and Switzerland.
By
the
end
of
the
period, parliamentary government
in
some form
was
established
in
every
European
country,
great
and
small,
with the
exception
of Russia
and
Turkey.
The
change
swept
over the
continent
almost like
an
epi-
demic,
as
one
country
after another
remodeled its
political
institutions
after
the
British
pattern.
The
nearest
parallel
to
this
European
borrow-
ing
from Britain
was the
Latin
American
copying
from the
United
States,
and
the
contemporary
breakdown
of the
American
model in the