Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956
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Airways official, surely you can work them in as assistant Consuls or
assistant political residents, missionaries, doctors working out some
special thesis, archaeologists, or concession hunters of some kind even
if the APOC or some other British firm cannot provide it.
The head of that system controlled some agents through a local British
businessman.
61
SIS’s fallback ‘Z’ network of the 1930s also worked through
commercial links. SIS used British firms or fishermen to collect intelli-
gence throughout the Cold War.
After 1918, fearing subversion by many internal and external enemies,
Britain relied more than ever before on security services, which shaped
British and imperial politics. MI5, focused on military security, and Special
Branch, addressing political threats, were joined in 1929 under the Home
Office, but every possession maintained its own service. That in India,
perhaps the best in the empire, was well integrated with imperial intelli-
gence. Otherwise, throughout Asia, intelligence and security were badly
coordinated. Officials recognised the need, as one Indian Secretary wrote,
for ‘a system of inter-connected Intelligence organisations effectively cov-
ering the whole area from Shanghai to the Middle East’, but instead,
created a series of overcommitted and underpowered, agencies which
failed dismally in 1940–1.
62
Britain, wounded but formidable, was the bulwark of the status quo. Its
interests remained imperial, which suited its power and intelligence.
Despite a weakened hand, it played that game well until 1939. Alas, it also
had to learn a new one, where it had to play to its weaknesses and could
not use its strengths. In Europe, compared with the norm of 1815–1914,
less power backed the status quo, more challenged it, and constant British
management and support was needed to prevent meltdown. These con-
ditions would have tested Britain at the peak of its power. They also
denied it as one of its strongest cards since 1715, the ability simply to
ignore great changes in Europe. Any such change must threaten its vital
interests and many minor ones. Its power and intelligence were not well
matched to this task. The status quo, stable until 1930 but then increas-
ingly fragile, broke because of the revisionist’s tactical daring and strategic
recklessness, the timidity and divisions of status quo powers, and errors in
every capital. Unlike the case before 1914, British intelligence was
intended to address the issues which caused this collapse. It had mixed
success.
63
In the 1920s, Britain was strong and its intelligence good, the
best on earth. It could see the cards in its rival’s hands, after having picked
the game. Code-breaking was its best source, backed by the SIS, which
treated agents as a delivery system for stolen documents. It defined agents
by that matter, with ‘A.1’ meaning the source had proven reliable and had
access to high-level documents, some of which his controller had seen in
the original. From 1933, however, power shifted, threats emerged, and
Britain was thrown on the defensive while trying to reshape the status quo.
192 J.R. Ferris
It did so badly. A reactive power needs better intelligence than a strong
and active one – so to understand what is happening, what to do and how
it must be right on more things. It must know the active power’s inten-
tions, the latter merely its own mind. This situation breeds uncertainty
and worst case planning, doubly so when statesmen are second raters.
Between 1933 and 1939, Britain needed great intelligence. What it
received merely was good, at the top of the league table, but unsure on
the intentions of the revisionist leaders, and most weak in Central Europe,
the key battlefield of 1937–9. Ultimately, however, power, policy and
leadership, not intelligence, caused British strategy to fail.
So too for its success in the Second World War. The role of British intelli-
gence in that victory has been oversold.
64
Granted, it led the world in key
modes of collection and analysis, which revolutionised intelligence. Ultra
and Fortitude are justly renowned. Yet, during 1939–41, when Britain was
most in peril, its intelligence was no better or more useful than its enemies.
When that achieved maturity and superiority around 1942, the tide of
material strength also turned heavily in favour of the Allies. Intelligence
neither staved off disaster nor turned the tide, though afterwards it did cut
the length and cost of victory. Britain was better in intelligence than any
other power ever had been. Yet, that aided it against Hitler no more than
Napoleon or Kaiser Wilhelm – which, of course, means it mattered. So too,
intelligence remained an area of relative British advantage in the Cold War.
Britain remained the senior member in the Anglo-American intelligence
alliance until 1952, on par until 1959, and helped the US achieve excel-
lence. Until the end of empire, Britain’s main intelligence concerns
remained imperial. It retained a world focus when Britain lost world power.
Intelligence multiplied British power but could not prevent its subtraction.
Between 1715 and 1945, intelligence was driven by threat, particularly of
an internal–external challenge to the regime. The eighteenth-century
system, resting on a few specialised collectors, with assessment person-
alised, was a normal European one applied to unique circumstances. It was
simple, strong, centralised in Europe and regionalised elsewhere. In the
nineteenth century, Britain, the only world power, had a unique approach
to these issues. It collected and processed information with more centrali-
sation and power than before, and intelligence with less. Britain focused
on the world, rather than Europe, with assessment but not collection
handled by specialists. Its system between 1900 and 1956 was strong and
singular, with many large and specialised collection and assessment bodies,
focused on the world, with Europe its most important region. Except in the
Victorian era, intelligence was centrally directed and coordinated, code-
breaking was the greatest source, internal security the primary concern,
and political warfare a leading tool of policy. Throughout, Britain made
mistakes yet usually did well at intelligence, more often than any other
state did. This relative British advantage was central to its strategy under
the old world order.
Tradition and system 193
Notes
1 Paul S. Fritz, ‘The Anti-Jacobite Intelligence System of the English Ministers,
1715–1745’, The Historical Journal, 16 (1973): 265–89; Kenneth Ellis, The Post
Office in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1958), ch. 6.
2 L.G. Wickham Legg, British Diplomatic Instructions, 1689–1789, Volume VI, France,
1727–1744, Camden Third Series, Vol. XLIII (London, 1930), 224; cf. Oscar
Browning (ed.), Despatches from Paris, 1784–1790, Volume 1 (1784–1790),
Camden Third Series, Vol. XVI (London, 1909), 99.
3 Frank Spencer (ed.), The Fourth Earl of Sandwich, Diplomatic Correspondence,
1763–1765 (Manchester, 1961), 105–7; Report of the Manuscripts of J.B. Fortescue,
Esq., Preserved at Dropmore, Volume IV (London), 208; D.B. Horn, The British
Diplomatic Service, 1689–1789 (Oxford, 1961), 259–83; Alfred Cobban, Ambas-
sadors and Secret Agents, the Diplomacy of the First Earl of Malmesbury at the Hague
(London, 1954).
4 For a useful account, cf. J.D. Alsop, ‘British Intelligence for the North Atlantic
Theatre in the War of Spanish Succession’, Mariner’s Mirror, 77 (1991): 113–18.
5 Report of the Manuscripts of J.B. Fortescue, Esq., Preserved at Dropmore, Volume III
(London, 1899), 369.
6 Elizabeth Sparrow, Secret Service: British Agents in France, 1792–1815 (London,
1999); Huw Davies, ‘British Intelligence in the Peninsular War’, PhD Disserta-
tion, The University of Exeter, 2005.
7 Minute by ‘LH’, 13.3.21, FO 360/2.
8 Davies, ‘British Intelligence’, passim; Mark Urban, The Man Who Broke
Napoleon’s Codes (London, 2002).
9 Michael Duffy, ‘British Naval Intelligence and Bonaparte’s Egyptian Expedi-
tion of 1789’, Mariner’s Mirror, 84 (1998): 279–91; Andrew Lambert, Nelson, Bri-
tannia’s God of War (London, 2004), 33.
10 Planta to Granville, 21.12.24, 25.3.1825, PRO 30/29/14/3, Backhouse to
Granville, 18.6.33, PRO 30/29/14/7, Granville to Palmerston, 9.11.1835, PRO
30/29/14/7; PRO 30/29/6/8, passim.
11 Clive Emsley, ‘The Home Office and Its Sources of Information and Investiga-
tion’, The English Historical Review, 94 (1979): 532–61, and ‘Repression, “Terror”
and the Rule of Law in England During the Decade of the French Revolution’,
The English Historical Review, 100 (1985): 801–25; Bernard Porter, Plots and Para-
noia, a History of Political Espionage in Britain, 1790–1988 (London, 1989), 24–88.
12 Home Office to General Post Office, 7.4.17, passim, HO 79/3; cf. HO 32/20,
HO 151/7.
13 Ellis, The Post Office in the Eighteenth Century, Appendix 4; Emiliana P. Noether,
‘ “Morally Wrong” or “Politically Right”? Espionage in Her Majesty’s Post
Office, 1844–45’, The Canadian Journal of History, 22 (1987): 41–54; John Ferris,
‘Before Room 40: The British Empire and Signals Intelligence, 1989–1914’,
The Journal of Strategic Studies, 12 (1989).
14 Christopher Andrew, Secret Service, 137, passim.
15 Herbert Maxwell, The Life and Letters of George William Frederick Fourth Earl of
Clarendon, K.G., G.C.B., Volume II (London, 1913), 282.
16 Elizabeth Malcolm, ‘Investigating the “Machinery of Murder”: Irish Detectives
and Agrarian Outrages, 1847–70’, New Hibernia Review, 6 (2002): 73–91; Stefan
Petrow, ‘The Rise of the Detective in London, 1869–1914’, Criminal Justice
History, 14 (1993): 91–108; Porter, Plots and Paranoia, 81–120, passim.
17 For examples, cf. Lord Cromer’s correspondence for the 1880s in FO 633/5.
18 Layard to Tenterden, 24.10.77, FO 363/2.
19 Thornton to Tenterden, 23.12.79, FO 363/4; Lyons to Tenterden, 25.10.81, FO
363/2; Harcourt to Tenterden, nd, circa 10.81, FO 363/1.
194 J.R. Ferris
20 Hardinge to Bertie, 20.10.01, 28.11.01; Hardinge to Spring Rice, 28.3.06;
Hardinge MSS, Vol. 3, Cambridge University Library.
21 Lascelles to Tenterden, 18.5.80, FO 363/1.
22 Clarendon to Palmerston, 28.2.56, 7.3.56, The Oriental Question, 1840–1900,
Files from the Royal Archives, Windsor, UPA, Reel 20.
23 Loftus to Russell, 22.2.63, No 92, Most Confidential, ibid.
24 John Ferris, ‘Lord Salisbury, Secret Intelligence and British Policy Towards
Russia and Central Asia, 1874–1878’, in John Ferris, Intelligence and Strategy,
Selected Essays (London, 2005), 8–44.
25 White to Salisbury, 10.10.85, 16.7.87, FO 364/1; Military Attaché to Minister,
Constantinople, 10.4.08, FO 195/2290; Samson to Lowther, 11.2.10, passim,
FO 195/2335; HD 3/77, passim.
26 Arthur Wellesley Wellington, Despatches, Correspondence and Memoranda of Field
Marshal Arthur Duke of Wellingtom, K.G., Second Series, Vol. V (London, 1873),
248; Horne to Tenterden, 18.11.76, FO 363/5.
27 Brussels Embassy to Antwerp Legation, 29.4.55, 20.11.55, 22.11.55, 7.3.85, FO
616/13.
28 Currie to Law, 12.5.90, passim, FO 95/775.
29 Lamb to Clanwilliam, 24.3.1821, FO 360/2; Robert Franklin, ‘Charles Stuart
and the Secret Service’, The Rothschild Archive Review of the Year April
2000–March 2001 (London, 2001).
30 Unsigned memo, in Simmonds handwriting, Inspector General of Fortifica-
tions, circa 7.77, FO 358/2.
31 Secret Committee to Governors of Bengal, Madras and Bombay, 2.3.1830, De
Gyfford papers, F. 213/31, India Office Records Library (IORL), British
Library; John Martineau, The Life and Correspondence of the Right Hon. Sir Bartle
Frere, Vol. 1 (London, 1895), 135–6.
32 John Ferris, ‘Penny Dreadful Literature: Britain, India and the Collection of
Strategic Intelligence on Russia, 1825–1947’, The Fourth International Conference
on Intelligence and Military Operations, The US Army War College, May 1989.
33 Sanderson to Pauncefoot, 23.12.99, passim, FO 281/34.
34 Pinkerton to Sherwood, 9.12.14, 12.12.14, Box 8, Pinkerton National Detective
Agency papers, Library of Congress, Washington; cf. ‘Agency History, Forgery-
Bank of England Notes’, Box 70, ibid.
35 Stephen Harris, British Military Intelligence in the Crimean War (London, 1999).
36 Lt. Col. F.S. Roberts, QMG, 22.3.73, ‘Proposal for an Intelligence Branch to be
Attached to Quartermaster Genl.’s Dept.’; Captain Collen, 17.6.76, ‘Memoran-
dum on the Formation of an Intelligence Branch, Quartermaster General’s
Department, India’, L/MIL 7/7793.
37 Departmental Minute, 1.11.82, ‘Report on Collecting and Recording Naval
Information’, ADM 1/6772.
38 Ewan MacGregor, 1.87, ‘Instructions for the Director of Naval Intelligence’,
ADM 1/6868A.
39 The best account of British military intelligence during the later nineteenth
century is William Carpenter Beaver 11, ‘The Development of the Intelligence
Division and Its Role in Aspects of Imperial Decision Making, 1854–1901’, PhD
dissertation, Oxford University, 1976, and Thomas G. Fergusson, British Military
Intelligence, 1870–1914, The Development of a Modern Intelligence Organisation
(London, 1984).
40 Minute by Simpson, 14.11.88, ADM 1/6999; Foreign Intelligence Committee,
Secretary’s Procedure and Memorandum Book, 1885, Greene Papers, National
Maritime Museum, Greenwich; minute by Custance, 4.1.89, ADM 1/6992.
41 Ibid; Memorandum by Cyprian Bridge, DNI, ‘Summary of the Annual Report
of the Naval Intelligence Department for 1888’, nd, ADM 231/15; Hardinge to
Tradition and system 195
Sanderson, 26.6.02, Hardinge MSS, Vol. 26; Robert Mullins, ‘New Ways of
Thinking: The Intelligence Function and Strategic Calculations in the Admi-
ralty, 1882–1889’, Intelligence and National Security, 15 (2000): 77–97; and
Matthew Allen, ‘Rear Admiral Reginald Custance: Director of Naval Intelli-
gence, 1899–1902’, Mariner’s Mirror, 78 (1992): 61–75.
42 Chapman to Elles, 25.11.92, WO 106/1.
43 Chapman to Elles, 4.1.93, WO 106/1.
44 Ferris, ‘Penny Dreadful Literature’, passim.
45 J.A. Cole, Prince of Spies, Henry Le Caron (London, 1984).
46 Surveillance material on Dalip Singh is contained in R/1/1/62, 65–7, 77, 79,
82, 90, 93.
47 Durand to Jago, 27.7.88, R/1/1/98.
48 FO 95/775, passim; cf. ADM 121/73.
49 Ferris, ‘Penny Dreadful Literature’, passim.
50 Morley to Minto, 21.5.08, Morley Papers, Vol. 3, D. 573.
51 Ewart to Churchill, 27.4.10, HO 317/44; undated memoir by William Melville,
KV 1/8; Ferris, ‘Before Room 40’, passim.
52 Andrew, Secret Service, passim; Ferris, ‘Before Room 40’, passim; Richard
Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, British Intelligence and the Defence of
the Indian Empire, 1904–1924 (London, 1995); John Chapman, ‘British Intelli-
gence, 1900–1914’, War and History, 1.02: 60–81.
53 Untitled memo by Rodd, Stockholm, 28.10.05, HD 3/128.
54 ‘Secret Reports by Commander Sir A. Trevor Dawson, R.N., to Admiralty
1906–1914, as a Result of Visits Made to Continent at Request of First Lord of
the Admiralty and as Collected Through Special Agencies’, MISC 73/1098,
Imperial War Museum; Inglesfield to Baddeley, 10.10.09, ADM 116/940 B.
55 Memorandum by MID, ‘SS in the Event of a European War’, circa 5.03, HD
3/124 Part 1.
56 Rodd to Sanderson, 28.10.03, 3/05, Memorandum by Law, ‘Proposals for Intel-
ligence Organisation’; HD 3/125 Part 1; ‘Separate Memo’ and untitled memo
by Johnston, 17.10.05, HD 3/128; Minute by Drogheda, 14.10.12, 42972, FO
371/ 1557.
57 Undated minute by Hardinge, but May 1909 by internal evidence, passim, FO
371/673; cf. 42972, passim, FO 371/1537; Morley to Minto, 31.12.1908, Morley
papers, Vol. 3, D.573/3; Nicolson to Cartwright, 24.6.13, FO 800/367.
58 John Ferris, ‘ “Now that the Milk Is Spilt”: Appeasement and the Archive on
Intelligence’, in B.J.C. McKercher (ed.), Appeasement Reappraised (Cambridge,
2005), and ‘The Road to Bletchley Park: The British Experience with Signals
Intelligence, 1890–1945’, Intelligence and National Security, 16 (2002): 53–84.
59 Ibid.
60 Minutes by AI, 21.12.26, 10.1.27, AIR 2/1196 S. 25865; Appendix to Finance
Department, 14.1.31, R/1/4/1028.
61 Dent to Carmichael, 4,11.27, AIR 23/433; Gerald Wheeler papers, typescript
mss., Fifty Years in Asia, 152–3, Middle East Centre Archives, St. Antony’s
College, Oxford.
62 Zetland to Linlithgow, 27.6.39, Linlithgow MSS F 125/7, IORL.
63 For longer assessments, cf. John Ferris, ‘Image and Accident: Intelligence and
the Origins of the Second World War’, in Intelligence and Strategy, Selected Essays,
passim, and ‘Now that the Milk Is Spilt’, passim.
64 For discussions, cf. John Ferris, ‘The British Enigma: Britain, Signals Security
and Cipher Machines, 1906–1953’, in Intelligence and Strategy, Selected Essays,
138–80, passim, and ‘Ralph Bennett and the State of Intelligence History: A
Review Article’, Intelligence and National Security (1991).
196 J.R. Ferris
10 The empire that prays together
stays together
Imperial defence and religion,
1857–1956
A. Hamish Ion
Religion provided much of the colour, pageant and spectacle of the
British Empire as well as its sounds and smells, through its church,
mosque and temple bells and gongs, chants, dances, festivals, incense,
music, pilgrimages, processions and rites of passage. Many in the Empire
in the century after 1857 might have been indifferent to religion.
However, few among its multi-million inhabitants from the Queen-
Empress and Defender of the Faith at its apex to the frosty little Eskimo in
the higher Arctic or the heated wizened Pundit in the lower Bengal could
avoid contact with it. Yet, religion was always a subordinate issue in imper-
ial defence. Nonetheless, the undertone of religion echoed right to the
economic, military, political and cultural chambers of imperial defence’s
heart. Usually, it lay subcutaneously dormant beneath the surface of colo-
nial society until bitten into, as happened in the Indian Mutiny that burst
out in 1857. Moreover, religion was often been used as a convenient
scapegoat for imperial difficulties, by providing a simplistic shorthand
explanation to obfuscate very complex issues at the core of the confronta-
tions between the ruler and the ruled, for religion was usually intertwined
with other potentially explosive imperial issues of which race, culture and
language are three of the more obvious.
Indeed, there were few questions and problems in imperial affairs,
including matters of imperial defence, in which religious issues do not play
some part, albeit at times only a small one. Religion has resonated in Irish
affairs within and without the Pale from the Reformation onwards, its neigh
whinnied within a mutinous Curragh nearly 400 years afterwards, and still
its castrato echo reverberates against the forlorn rows of pews and confes-
sionals in which a divided people are harangued from the pulpit to differ-
ent unions before their Sunday dinners. The obvious strategic and
geographical importance of Ireland to the defence of Britain has led many
British enemies to exploit the religious animosity between Roman Catholics
and Protestants in the emerald isle as one of the ways to bring about
Britain’s discomfort, if not downfall. However, religion did not prevent
Irishmen, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, from forming a large pro-
portion of soldiers in the British Army during the nineteenth century. In
itself, this indicated that the desire for employment, pay and food could
take precedence over religious-inspired hostility. It was Britain’s luck that
military service helped to blunt a religious problem with dangerous political
ramifications that existed in the wider Irish civil society. Nevertheless, reli-
gious motivations have contributed to the wellspring of action that has led
to political protest and independence movements not only in Ireland but
also in southern Africa and many other parts within the British Empire and
to countless wars against the British on the imperial frontiers. Among the
attempts, for instance, to explain the origins of the Indian Mutiny was the
widespread accusation that it was a direct result of Christian missionaries
being allowed into India.
1
On a lesser scale, British disdain of fetishism or
ju-ju, based on the worship of the spirits of ancestors, can be seen as one of
the contributing factor to the Benin War of 1897.
2
This paper sets out to
illuminate the problem of how religion impinged on imperial defence and
how it was used to help to maintain the integrity of the Empire. This is an
enormous topic, and space constraints mean that this essay will concentrate
only on three aspects of religion and imperial defence: as a manifestation of
soft power, as a necessary element of hard power and as a tool of political
power. Moreover, so rich are the examples that can be used to illustrate
these themes that this short paper will largely eschew the questions of reli-
gion and imperial defence in the settler colonies and White Dominions in
favour of evidence drawn from Africa and South Asia.
Christianity (the religion of the majority of the British) can be viewed
conceptually as soft power. It was part of an arsenal of governmental,
parliamentary, legal, cultural and sporting institutions, which projected the
civilizing mission of the imperial power by utilizing moral suasion rather
than military force or the economic power of trade to convince colonial
peoples of the benefits and desirability of British overlordship. This mani-
fested itself in the schools, hospitals, leprosia and social welfare institutions
that were supported by British religious groups overseas. As well as serving
a role in the Empire overseas, Christianity was also an influence in the edu-
cation of many of those who, after matriculating from Church-founded
public schools or universities in Britain or their counterparts in the
Empire, went on to serve as soldiers and colonial administrators in Africa,
Asia, Australasia, the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere.
As well as soft power, religion can be seen as being an essential part of
hard power, particularly in terms of recruiting into the military and the
maintenance of morale within fighting units. Christian chaplains served
with British and Dominion forces overseas, and many units like the
Cameroonians, the famous Lowland regiment, had strong religious affilia-
tions dating from their original raising. During the First World War, espe-
cially, Christian Churches both at home and in the Empire played a
significant role in convincing young Christians to join the colours.
However, Christian soldiers were only one part of the military forces of the
British Empire. The Empire enclosed within its boundaries and confronted
198 A.H. Ion
in its expansion a plethora of different religions. Ronald Hyam has pointed
out that much of the periphery of Empire was occupied by Islam and
engagement with Islam was a common preoccupation not only for the
British in Africa and India but also for many other European empires
including the Russians in Central Asia, the Dutch in the East Indies and
the Americans in the Philippines.
3
Yet, much of the hard power of British military strength depended on
the British ability to recruit Muslims and other religionists into its local
levies who were responsible for the normal internal defence of colonies
and protectorates controlled by the civil authorities. While the Royal
Navy (RN), Army and Royal Air Force (RAF) retained the ultimate
responsibility for the defence of British territories overseas, the role of
the British regular forces after 1895, except under unusual circum-
stances, was largely confined to being employed to defend maritime
fortresses and coaling stations. Very often, these local forces were paid for
out of locally raised taxes at no cost to the taxpayer in metropolitan
Britain.
4
It has been argued that from the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, India
and the Indian Army became indispensable to Britain.
5
The reason is
clear from a remark that Lord Salisbury is reputed to have said in 1882
about India that it was ‘an English barrack in the Oriental seas from
which we may draw any number of troops without paying for them’.
6
While India might be regarded as the jewel in the imperial crown, its role
was much more than decorative for it provided Britain with substantial
military resources. The Indian taxpayer paid for not only the Indian
Army which sent troops to promote and defend the British Empire from
the Middle East to China, from Africa to the Pacific but also the support
of British Army units stationed in India. Even so, the defence of India
added greatly to Britain’s military burden, at least in terms of European
military manpower deployed there. Yet, without India, the final fabric of
the British Empire would not have otherwise been fashioned or main-
tained. While Indian troops played an important role in the small wars
that were fought in Africa and Asia, it was during both the First and
Second World Wars in many theatres of war that the Indian Army and
India’s resources were decisive for Britain’s success. The success of the
British in managing the religious issue in the Empire with its often ethnic
and linguistic linkages to their advantage can be seen in the rainbow
spectrum of religions and races that made up Slim’s troops in the 14th
Army fighting the Japanese in Burma during the Second World War.
As well as being an element in hard military power, religion was one tool
to be found in the Pandora’s Box labelled ‘divide and rule’ which the impe-
rial founders and guardians often opened and took out to employ. Winston
Churchill is reputed to have said the ‘Hindu–Muslim feud [was] the
bulwark of British rule in India’.
7
As was the case in India, the issue of reli-
gion was often intertwined with ethnicity and race. J. R. Seeley, the nine-
teenth century historian, for instance, described the Papineau Rebellion in
The empire that prays together stays together 199
Lower Canada in 1838 as ‘the convulsion of despair of a sinking
nationality’.
8
The racial concerns of French Canadian nationalism are seen
to be primary in a rebellion in which a religious subtext of Roman Catholic
against Protestant can also be detected. The influence of the Roman
Catholic Church on society and politics in French Canada during the nine-
teenth and first half of the twentieth century was clearly significant. The
Roman Catholic clergy used the pulpit to support the cause of the federal-
ists in Lower Canada at the time of Canadian Confederation in 1867 and to
oppose the federal government over conscription in 1917 and 1944. It took
a Quiet Revolution in Quebec society and politics beginning in the 1950s to
weaken the Roman Catholic Church’s influence in that province.
Although the religious factor might play a subordinate role, it still was
present in colonial and imperial affairs in those communities in which
there was neither a common nationality nor religion but only common
interest to help bind them together. Ever since the Durham Report of
1839 on Canada, the British have placed great faith in federal institutions
(perhaps because they themselves do not have any direct experience of
them). Federal institutions were seen in Canada as a means to create a
sense of community that otherwise would not exist. With varying degrees
of success or outright failure, the federal solution was attempted by the
British in the Caribbean, in Central Africa and in Southeast Asia as well as
Canada. In India, a federal solution was also contemplated as the Govern-
ment of India Act of 1935 shows. It was the Second World War and the
National Congress Party’s reaction to it that provoked Muslim League
to advocate partition. Federation in the Indian case floundered on the
issue of religion.
The question of religion in imperial defence was not simply just a
matter of ‘An’ then comes up the Regiment an’ pokes the ‘eathen out’.
9
While, on occasion, there was little alternative but to teach the heathen a
military lesson, mostly there was a realization that the religions within the
British Empire had to be placated, manipulated, managed and controlled
so that they would not serve to provide one of the sparks that set off a cata-
clysmic explosion such as that occurred in India with the Mutiny. Further-
more, Christianity was seen by many as having a civilizing influence on the
peoples of the Empire. We turn now to investigate religion as an aspect of
soft power.
I
In the context of British imperialism, religion is normally considered in
terms of Christian missions and empire.
10
Even with this approach, the
immediate difficulty for the historian is that the impact of Christianity and
the response of indigenous peoples and their traditional religions and cul-
tures to it varied widely with virtually all regions in the Empire having dif-
ferent experiences and reactions to it. Christianity was seen as the religion
200 A.H. Ion
of the British imperialists and British missionaries often regarded as the
religious agents of colonialism and Christianity. Indeed, during the 1870s,
even the first Anglican African bishop in West Africa, Samuel Adjai
Crowther, clearly acted and was treated as an unofficial consul for the
British on the lower Niger. The Empire provided the atmosphere in which
the quasi-establishment of the Christian religion could be contemplated.
In 1895, Lord Rosebery underlined the importance of the missionary
movement within his definition of liberal imperialism by suggesting that
the development of the missionary enterprise was the fourth of the five
elements implied by the term.
11
Given the wide acceptance of the mission-
ary endeavour as a legitimate part of the imperial effort, it should be no
surprise that in many colonies in Africa and the West Indies, it was not
unusual for the local Anglican bishop, in the days when a diocese paral-
leled the extent of the colonial territory, to be accorded a position of pres-
tige in the religious sphere comparable to that of the Governor in the
political realm.
12
Moreover, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, many Anglican missionaries came from a similar social and edu-
cational background to the colonial administrators and often had family
connections not only to officers in the armed forces but also to politicians
at home. It was not always the Church of England that served as the quasi-
established church; in Nyasaland (present day Malawi), for instance, this
role was held by the Church of Scotland. Missionaries were not, however,
a homogeneous group, and it is as difficult to generalize about their atti-
tudes towards colonialism as it is about the responses of those who they
aimed to convert to Christianity.
Certainly, Christian missions cannot be overlooked in terms of imperial
defence, for in littoral Africa, in insular Melanesia and, especially, in
riverain China, protection of missionaries became an irksome, if also
unwanted, task for the RN and Army. This was seen as part of imperial
duties that were conceived of in terms of local defence requirements such
as the problems posed by Chinese piracy, African slavery, Polynesian
blackbirding and diplomatic visiting. At times, the exuberance of young
naval officers in demanding satisfactory reciprocation for outrages com-
mitted against missionaries might embarrass the government in Westmin-
ster. This was true with the attack by the gunboat, HMS Algerine, on the
Anping forts guarding Tainan in 1868 in response to Chinese harassment
of English Presbyterian missionaries and merchants. Nevertheless, when
the British government itself faced a crisis, it was not loath in appealing to
the patriotism of missionaries to offer their special cultural or linguistic
knowledge to assist the government as was the case with missionaries in
China, Japan and Korea who joined the officer ranks of the Chinese
Labour Corps during the First World War. Furthermore, many missionary
children, of whom Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, the son of a
sometime missionary bishop of Tasmania and long-time secretary of
Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), is the
The empire that prays together stays together 201