Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956

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242 A. Jackson

and RAF Sheikh Othman in Aden, and facilities on offshore islands such as

Masirah and Sharjah in Oman. In Aden, a responsibility of the Colonial

Ofﬁce since its transfer from Indian administration in 1937, hundreds of

local people supported the base, as labourers or as part of the Aden Protec-

torate Levies, formed in 1928, which was responsible for guarding the RAF

bases.

British colonies contributed to imperial defence by the very fact of

being British, because any colony owned by a rival or enemy power was a

potential point of strength from which to harry British shipping, threaten

British interests on land, or beam wireless messages to hostile vessels.

Many British colonies had been gained purely because of their strategic

signiﬁcance, and the role that they could perform if in the hands of

Britain’s enemies. Gibraltar was taken from the Spanish for this reason,

and Ceylon from the Dutch and Mauritius from the French during the

Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. At the Peace of Paris in 1814, when

the colonial bargaining chips were cast upon the table, Réunion was

restored to France, but neighbouring Mauritius retained by the British.

This was simply because Mauritius had port facilities that could harbour

warships and Réunion did not.

This policy of colonial assertion meant that ‘East of the Cape of Good

Hope after 1824 there was no foreign port from which an enemy

squadron could effectively challenge British command of the Indian

Ocean’.

This included control of seemingly unimportant territories,

though ones that could acquire strategic importance, such as the Cocos

Islands, Diego Garcia and the Chagos Archipelago, and the Maldives.

Other colonies, while not gained during the colonial exchange that was a

feature of imperial world wars from the eighteenth to the twentieth

century, were nonetheless taken because of the role they could perform in

imperial defence. Labuan was bagged by the Admiralty in 1846 because of

its convenient location on a key shipping route between Singapore and

China (closing the 1,500-mile gap in the chain of harbours circling the

world), and Penang and Aden claimed by the East India Company

because of their potential as transit camps, refuelling stations, and forward

bases in the ongoing war against piracy. In 1878, Cyprus was prised from

the Ottoman sultan as the British took steps to ensure a ﬁrm territorial

base in a region threatened by Russia’s successful march to within a

stone’s throw of Constantinople and the Dardanelles.

Numerous colonies took great pride in their importance as ‘fortress’

colonies, colonies that had an enduring importance as links in the imper-

ial defence chain. These included Bermuda, Gibraltar, Malta, Mauritius,

and Singapore. Some, such as Gibraltar and Malta, maintained the prac-

tice of appointing a military, as opposed to a civilian, governor. From

1905, the crest of Mauritius incorporated the phrase ‘Star and Key of the

Indian Ocean’, reﬂecting pride in the island’s pivotal strategic importance

in an earlier phase of global warfare.

The colonial empire and imperial defence 243

Malta was, by any index, one of the most important colonies in the

imperial defence matrix and serves as an example of a colonial career in

the service of Britain’s overseas interests. Britain was invited to take over

the island by the local notables in 1798 in order to end the French occu-

pation, and Nelson duly achieved this transfer of authority by besieging

Valetta in the following year. Malta duly became a Crown colony and

began its life as a British strategic asset. The island stronghold was useful

for intervening against regional rulers, such as Mehmet Ali of Egypt (or

Colonel Nasser), and for concentrating troops in order to send a warning

to other Great Powers interested in the Mediterranean, such as Russia.

First and foremost, Malta was the home of the Mediterranean Fleet. This

ﬂeet defended Britain’s extensive interests in the Mediterranean region

and was the steel behind Britain’s claim to be the premier power in the

inland sea.

In the 1920s, Malta’s importance as a nodal point in the imperial

defence system was enhanced when it became the main base for the ﬂeet

that would be sent east should Japan ever become a menace. Malta was ten

days sailing closer than British ports, and there was at the time no port east

of Suez that could accommodate modern battleships (until the completion

of the Singapore facilities in the 1930s).

Malta’s major defence assets

from a British point of view were the two main harbours at Valetta. After

expansion, they could accommodate the expanded Mediterranean Fleet

and its support vessels. The naval base featured extensive repair and

storage facilities and employed 14,000 Maltese workers. The colony was

also home to an army garrison, which in 1925 consisted of two battalions of

British troops, with artillery and engineers support, supplemented by the

locally raised King’s Own Malta Regiment and the Royal Malta Artillery,

which helped man the coastal defences. A seaplane base had been estab-

lished during the First World War at Kalafrana, and a landing ground

developed at Hal Far for the Fleet Air Arm. During the 1920s, Malta’s rela-

tionship with the RAF, which was to base over 600 aircraft on the island at

the height of the Second World War, was in its infancy. Malta’s ﬁnest hour

as an imperial defence asset came during the Second World War, when it

acted as a base for submarines and surface vessels attacking Axis trans-

Mediterranean shipping and for aircraft attacking Axis ports and ships or

ﬂying reconnaissance missions (including those which located the Italian

battleﬂeet anchored at Taranto) and as a staging post for aircraft travelling

to the Middle East and Far East.

Colonies were involved in the business of imperial defence because

they were marked by the martial traditions of empire that were a charac-

teristic of society in the Dominions and Britain itself. Though only a few

colonies had substantial white populations, all had a white community,

and the governor and his district ofﬁcers ensured that the great anniver-

saries of British military endeavour were celebrated and that the locals

knew about the military prowess that underpinned Britain’s dominion

244 A. Jackson

over palm and pine. Among the Europeans in the colonies – administra-

tors, settlers, traders, and the like – were a fair sprinkling of former mili-

tary men, many of whom maintained their preparedness should the

colours ever call for a ﬁnal ﬂourish to quell a ‘native uprising’ or ﬁght the

king’s enemies overseas.

White communities throughout the colonial

world, no matter how small, displayed the same imperial patriotism

common in the settler territories. Imperial wars also led to more colonial

settlement, as colonies and Dominions offered ex-servicemen generous

terms to start new lives in places such as Kenya and Southern Rhodesia.

The rhetoric of imperial defence and loyalty, of serving the monarch

when in need, and the display of Union Flags and bunting at appropriate

moments were features of life in Jamaica and the Seychelles as much as in

Canada or New Zealand. Southern Rhodesians, displaying Union Flags

from all major buildings in the capital Salisbury in 1914, worried about

how their war effort compared with that of the Dominions until two drafts

of the Rhodesia Regiment had joined regiments in Britain and cast the

colony’s ratio of soldiers to settler population in a very favourable light

(this was not just imperial loyalty; the Southern Rhodesians dream was to

be granted the self-government enjoyed by the Dominions, so they wanted

to show how well they measured up).

At the same time, the administra-

tors of neighbouring Bechuanaland thrilled at the prospect of forming

new defence units to guard the vast Protectorate’s borders from German

encroachment, to ensure that Germans did not escape German East

Africa to German South West Africa and to meet any ‘native uprisings’

stimulated by endemic rumours and fear of the consequences of a Euro-

pean war transported thousands of miles to the African veldt.

A great deal was done to ensure that colonies were engaged with mili-

tary forces during times of war, for example by the purchase of individual

Spitﬁres or of entire bomber squadrons during the Second World War,

fundraising for sailors, prisoner of war, or bomb victim charities, and the

sponsorship of namesake naval vessels. Uganda raised £83,000 to pay for

the Uganda Squadron of the RAF, and the cruiser HMS Uganda was gifted

inscribed silver bugles, a silk ensign, African drums, a coffee machine, and

a regular supply of Ugandan coffee. Mauritius gifted its namesake cruiser

a silver table centrepiece depicting the 1810 Battle of Grand Port fought

in Mauritian waters as well as a piano for the wardroom.

Colonial place names and street names often indicated a colony’s associ-

ation with the global military exertions of the British empire. Mauritius had

its Arsenal, Balaclava, Gunners Quoin, Sebastopol, Signal Mountain, and

Winston Churchill Bridge. As well as contributing men, material, and infra-

structure during colonial and global wars, colonies were often touched by

the proximity of war. On the Falkland Islands, war memorials bear testa-

ment to the islanders who lost their lives serving with British forces in

distant lands and to the sailors – over 1,000 of them German – who lost

their lives in the Battle of the Falklands in 1914.

The colonial empire and imperial defence 245

Colonies could become the centre of military operations during imper-

ial crises and perform the role of regional power centres.

Indian troops

were dispatched to Cyprus and Malta via the Suez Canal in 1878 in order

to send a potent message to the Russians, creeping closer to the Dard-

anelles (the ﬁrst time that Indian troops had been deployed in Europe).

Aden was used as a base for Indian Army intervention in Abyssinia in 1867

and again in 1940–1941 when British Somaliland was evacuated, and then

retaken, in the struggle against Italy. In the West Indies, numerous British

colonies were developed as military bases as the Americans developed

their Caribbean Sea Frontier to protect shipping and hunt U-boats.

With the loss of the strategic Singapore base in February 1942 and the

establishment of Japanese control over Burma and the Bay of Bengal,

Ceylon enjoyed a remarkable recrudescence as a strategic base.

Over

20,000 troops were rushed to defend the island, as well as precious Hurri-

canes, and it gradually became the forward base for imperial troops ﬁght-

ing the Japanese in Burma. It was the headquarters for most Special

Operations Executive (SOE) operations in Japanese-occupied Burma,

Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China, and home to the

Eastern Fleet, the Royal Navy’s main strength east of Suez. From 1943,

Ceylon was home to the most senior Allied soldier in the theatre, Admiral

Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia.

The RAF patrolled the Indian Ocean shipping lanes from Ceylon and ﬂew

bombing missions against Japanese ground and maritime forces. The port

of Colombo also became a signiﬁcant centre for the repair and reﬁt of

naval and merchant vessels following the loss of Hong Kong and Singa-

pore. One Colombo-based company repaired an astonishing 167 major

warships, 332 minor warships, and 1,932 merchant vessels during the

course of the war, as well as producing over 39,000 articles of furniture

(mostly for use by the huge staff that followed in Mountbatten’s wake)

and dummy Hurricanes, Bofors guns, and wireless transmitters for the

beneﬁt of Japanese aerial reconnaissance.

Another important role for Ceylon during the war came when it

replaced Hong Kong and Singapore as Britain’s most important easterly

intelligence-gathering outpost. The colonies had contributed much to the

development of Britain’s intelligence reach in the interwar years. During

the Second World War, with Hong Kong and Singapore lost to the enemy,

facilities in Ceylon and Kenya became important, as did a secret facility in

Mauritius, which intercepted Vichy and Japanese diplomatic and military

radio trafﬁc, while also utilising its position as the hub of a regional cable

network to inspect Vichy cable trafﬁc.

The colonial role in imperial defence was articulated and formalised in

the interwar period. In the 1920s, the Committee of Imperial Defence

considered the requirements for defending Britain’s overseas territories,

particularly those containing valuable facilities such as ports. In consulta-

tion with military experts, colonial governments were to assess the likelihood

246 A. Jackson

of an attack, the likely scale of attack, and the means of providing defence

and maintaining communications throughout the territory. Every colonial

government was thus obliged to think about its role in a war and to plan

for it, as every colony had to produce a Defence Scheme, which was submit-

ted to the Overseas Defence Committee in London, a subcommittee of the

Cabinet’s Committee of Imperial Defence. In addition to the preparation

of the Defence Scheme, it became standard Colonial Ofﬁce practice to

circulate memoranda on general civil and military defence matters to the

governors.

In July 1938, for example, a memorandum dealing with the role of the

colonial empire in imperial defence was circulated. The need to maintain

a local armed force in every colony was emphasised. Other memoranda

dealt with subjects such as food supply in wartime, the control of ship-

ping and wireless transmissions, civil defence measures in Malaya,

defence policy in the Somaliland Protectorate, denial to the enemy of the

oilﬁelds of Sarawak and Brunei, and internal security in Tanganyika

(where a sizeable German community existed). The Defence Scheme

prepared by each colonial government was divided into sections. The ﬁrst

chapter described the area to be defended, the reasons for doing so, the

likely scale and form of attack the colony might expect, and the system of

command. It also provided a statement of the defence forces available.

The second chapter dealt with detailed defence planning, and sub-

sequent chapters with matters such as passive air defence and internal

disturbances. In preparing for a future war, colonies threatened by

enemy attack and possible occupation made plans for a scorched earth

policy to deny the enemy valuable resources (destroying sugar industry

equipment in Mauritius, for example, and torching oil wells in Sarawak).

SOE were active in territories such as Malaya, Mauritius, and Shanghai

preparing ‘stay behind’ teams to harry an occupier and attempt to main-

tain communications with British forces elsewhere in the region.

The preparation of the Defence Scheme was a useful exercise, as it made

every colonial administration aware of what might happen, and what actions

it might take, to protect its people in the event of war and to contribute to

the wider imperial war effort. Measures might include preparing air raid

shelters, blackout regulations, protecting strategic sites such as railway

bridges, and striving for food self-sufﬁciency. Nevertheless, ultimately, the

defence of each colony depended upon the time-honoured central plank of

British global power, the Royal Navy. Thinking had changed little since the

creation of the Colonial Defence Committee in 1885. Because of Britain’s

control of the sea, colonies need only prepare small local defences in case

of bombardment from a raider or an assault by a small detachment of

enemy troops. Though the individual colonies of the British Empire were

thus not unprepared for war, paper plans and a state of readiness would

ultimately be of little avail if the Royal Navy was unable to come to the

rescue of a colonial outpost besieged by enemy forces.

The colonial empire and imperial defence 247

After the Second World War, the colonial empire became more import-

ant in British plans for imperial defence and Cold War security. The war

had proved the huge value of the colonial empire as a source of human and

material resources, and in the penurious years that were to come, their

produce, particularly their dollar-earning exports, became invaluable. India

had gone; now, the jewel in the imperial crown was to be found in the

rubber and tin-rich colonial territories of South-East Asia and its supporting

gems in tropical Africa. Here, it was hoped that the new era of Colonial

Development and Welfare funding would enable similarly impressive contri-

butions to the imperial coffers. It was also expected that the colonies would

become more of a feature in the provision of imperial defence. The Domin-

ions were behaving much more like independent states, and India had

become an independent state, and showed little inclination to play the role

the British had in mind (that of a loyal Commonwealth ally).

The colonial empire was called upon to ﬁll the void left by the loss of

India as a base and a source of troops. With the British Army having to

perform traditional imperial duties without the help of the Indian Army,

the colonies were called upon to replace British troops in key static roles.

Thus, a 3,600-strong High Commission Territories Corps recruited from

Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland was formed in 1946, each

soldier contracting to spend two-and-a-half years serving in the Middle

East. Similarly, after the Second World War, the Indian Ocean colonies

remained open for recruitment for military service in the Middle East,

and thousands of Mauritians, Rodriguans, and Seychellois remained in

the region until the withdrawal from Egypt, forming the backbone of the

British Army’s pioneer support.

Britain’s withdrawal from Palestine in 1948 and its increasingly unten-

able position in Egypt (and failure to get a mandate over Libya) raised

Kenya’s strategic importance. Millions of pounds were spent on military

facilities in the colony, particularly at Mackinnon Road, before these plans

were aborted. Nevertheless, the shift from Middle East bases to colonial

bases east of Suez reached a milestone in the early 1960 when Aden

became home to Middle East Command. Colonial bases became the step-

ping stones for the RAF’s island strategy for power projection in the Indian

Ocean, with Masirah, Socotra, the Seychelles, the Maldives, and the Cocos

Islands all featured in the RAF’s staging system connecting Britain and the

Mediterranean to South-East Asia and Australia.

The colonial empire was of growing value in the imperial defence set

up. With the Dominions and India maturing as autonomous states, the

colonies remained uncomplicated by the din of local politics and there-

fore more tractable when it came to defence arrangements. When, for

example, the Dominions refused to follow London’s lead over Chanak or

lobbied for the termination of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, or India

baulked at footing its traditional external defence bill, at least the colonies

could be counted upon to play the game and do Britain’s bidding.

248 A. Jackson

Nevertheless, even some of the key strategic colonies in the imperial

defence system were afﬂicted by political difﬁculties that compromised

their value. This was a growing problem as the twentieth century, with its

theme of nationalism, developed. Malta grew in importance as a naval

base for the Mediterranean Fleet and warships detailed to reinforce the

Far East just when Maltese nationalism and the inﬂuence of fascist Italy

were becoming a problem in the 1930s; Cyprus and Kenya, both viewed as

strategic bastions with imperial and Cold War utility as Britain’s position

in the Middle East weakened in the 1950s, became less attractive when

nationalism and counterinsurgency marred their internal affairs; and in

the 1960s, the value of Aden, one of only two remaining imperial strong-

holds east of Suez, was undermined by Arab nationalism. Despite these

difﬁculties, the colonies remained central to British strategic defence

thinking until the end of empire and after and deserve consideration as

more than mere appendages to the Dominions and India when imperial

defence is studied.

Notes

1 For example, see the traditional Dominions and India focus in Peter Bur-

roughs, ‘Defence and Imperial Disunity’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford

History of the British Empire: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1999),

320–45, and Anthony Clayton, ‘ “Deceptive Might”: Imperial Defence and

Security, 1900–1968’, in Judith Brown and William Roger Louis (eds), The

Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume IV: The Twentieth Century (Oxford,

1999), 280–305.

2 It was India, not Britain, that developed and garrisoned many of the empire’s

growing interests in the Persian Gulf, Middle East, and East Africa, for

example, providing ‘British’ representatives and troops for Zanzibar, the Gulf

states, and Persia, sending 10,000 troops to conquer Mauritius and Rodrigues

from the French, and mounting the 1867 expedition against the Abyssinian

emperor. Indian Army ofﬁcers were also to the fore in the exploration of

Africa. See Robert Blyth, The Empire of the Raj: India, Eastern Africa, and the

Middle East, 1858–1947 (Basingstoke, 2003).

3 N. H. Gibb, Origins of Imperial Defence (1955).

4 From Napoleon to Cetshwayo and the Shah of Iran, the Prime Minister of

Yugoslavia, and King Freddie Mutesa of Buganda, Britain had an impressive

tradition of using remote colonies as prisons for political opponents. A study is

long overdue.

5 This was one of the reasons why the outgoing governor of Kenya, Sir Philip

Mitchell, was loathe to acknowledge the severity of the Mau Mau rebellion and

declare a state of emergency, admitting that things had got out of hand was

anathema in the colonial service.

6 Philip Haythornthwaite, The Colonial Wars Sourcebook (London, 2000), 18.

7 Burroughs, ‘Defence and Imperial Disunity’, 321.

8 There are many books on the history of regiments such as the KAR and

RWAFF. For a list, see the bibliography in Ashley Jackson, The British Empire

and the Second World War (London, 2005). More unusual because of its ‘through

life’ treatment of a colonial region’s military formations and its attention to

detail beyond the campaigns is Timothy Parsons, The African Rank-and-File:

The colonial empire and imperial defence 249

Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the King’s African Riﬂes,

1902–1964 (Oxford, 1999).

9 See Barry Morton, ‘Linchwe I and the Kgatla Campaign in the South African

War, 1899–1902’, Journal of African History, 26(1985): 169–91.

10 See Brian Dyde, The Empty Sleeve: The Story of The West India Regiments of the

British Army (St John’s, Antigua, 1997), and Richard Smith, Jamaican Volunteers

in the First World War: Race, Masculinity, and the Development of National Conscious-

ness (Manchester, 2004).

11 Good coverage of some of these imperial formations is to be found in James

Lunt, Imperial Sunset: Frontier Soldiering in the Twentieth Century (London, 1981).

12 David Killingray and David Omissi (eds), Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces

of the Colonial Powers, c.1700–1964 (Manchester, 1999).

13 The major work on the colonial empire and the First World War remains

Charles Lucas (ed.), The Empire at War, ﬁve volumes (London, 1924). The colo-

nial empire was not to be privileged after the Second World War with a similar

ofﬁcial history, the prepared volume remaining in the archives; The National

Archives, Kew. DO 4138. Sir John Shuckburgh, ‘Civil History of the Colonial

Empire at War’ (1949).

14 See Ashley Jackson, War and Empire in Mauritius and the Indian Ocean

(Basingstoke, 2001).

15 In the Western Desert, the Eighth Army was supported by about 100,000 colo-

nial troops serving in the Royal Pioneer Corps.

16 See, for example, Michael Summerskill, China on the Western Front: Britain’s

Chinese Work Force in the First World War (London, 1982); Robin Kilson, ‘Calling

up the Empire: The British Military Use of Non-White Labour in France,

1916–1920’, PhD Thesis (Harvard University, 1990); Geoffrey Hodges, The

Carrier Corps: Military Labour in the East African Campaign, 1914–1918 (New York,

1966); and Brian Willan, ‘The South African Native Labour Contingent,

1916–1918’, Journal of African History, 19(1978): 34–49.

17 Fred Rowe, ‘Royal Navy Shore Bases U.K. and Overseas Stations’, www.

gwpda.org/naval/rnshore.htm, found on 13 July 2005.

18 See Gregory Haines, Gunboats on the Great River (London, 1976). Information

in this section has been taken from ‘HMS Falcon: Royal Navy Gunboats in

China and the Far East’, www.hmsfalcon.com/, found on 3 June 2005.

19 See Hamish Ion, ‘The Idea of Naval Imperialism: The China Squadron and the

Boxer Uprising’, in Greg Kennedy (ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez,

1900–2000 (London, 2005), 35–61. The Legation Guard was composed of

Royal Marines.

20 See Martin Brice, The Royal Navy and the Sino-Japanese Incident, 1937–1941

(London, 1973).

21 To some people, any failure to secure a colony for the British Crown was a

betrayal of imperial interests, allowing Madagascar to go to the French-threat-

ened command of the Indian Ocean, and the Australians and South Africans

never got over the fact that London allowed Germany to secure colonies in their

own backyards, the reason why they were so quick off the mark to claim these

territories when war came in 1914.

22 Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, 1815–1914: A Study of Empire and

Expansion (Basingstoke, 1993), 16.

23 See Douglas Austin, Malta and British Strategic Policy, 1925–1943 (London,

2004).

24 It has been argued elsewhere that non-European ex-servicemen tended to form

a conservative, pro-British element within colonial society.

25 The best empire-wide account is Kent Fedorowich, Unﬁt for Heroes: Reconstruc-

tion and Soldier Settlement in the Empire Between the Wars (Manchester, 1995).

250 A. Jackson

26 Timothy Stapleton, ‘Views of the First World War in Southern Rhodesia (Zim-

babwe) 1914–1918’, War and Society, 20 (2002): 23–45.

27 See Ashley Jackson, ‘Bechuanaland, the Caprivi Strip, and the First World

War’, War and Society, 19(2001): 109–42. For the Second World War period, see

Ashley Jackson, Botswana 1939–1945: An African Country at War (Oxford, 1999).

28 The idea of regional power centres is developed in Ashley Jackson, ‘The British

Empire in the Indian Ocean’, in Sanjay Chaturvedi and Dennis Rumley (eds),

Geopolitical and Regional Orientations in the Indian Ocean (Delhi, 2002), 34–55;

and Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War.

29 See Fitzroy André Baptiste, War, Co-operation, and Conﬂict: The European Posses-

sions in the Caribbean, 1939–1945 (London, 1989). Philip Goodhart, Fifty Ships

that Saved the World: The Foundation of the Anglo-American Alliance (London,

1965), examines the destroyers-for-bases agreement that allowed the Ameri-

cans to develop these British colonial bases.

30 John Darwin likened its role to that of Egypt. Private communication.

31 See Ashley Jackson, ‘Reﬁtting the Fleet in Ceylon: The War Record of Walker

Sons and Company’, Journal of Indian Ocean Studies, 10 (2002): 467–76.

32 See Michael Smith, The Emperor’s Codes: Bletchley Park and the Breaking of

Japan’s Secret Ciphers (London, 2000).

13 Coalition of the usually willing

The dominions and imperial

defence, 1856–1919

Brian P. Farrell

The British Empire was always a military power, but it was not always a mil-

itary coalition. The colonies that became self-governing Dominions,

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, formed a distinct

community within the Empire by the early twentieth century.

Imperial

defence was the most emotional of the many ties linking them to the

Empire. The literature devoted to the subject has produced four clear

themes. First, evolution of the Dominions produced the ‘liberal empire’

which for many British subjects deﬁned their imperial experience.

Second, conditions particular to each Dominion inﬂuenced its individual

role. Third, defence relations were always driven by foreign policy. Fourth,

those relations resembled spokes in a wheel running from the mother

country to each Dominion, seldom moving laterally from one Dominion

to another. Scholars long dwelt on constitutional evolution, arguing it

determined the Dominions’ role in imperial defence.

The focus is

broader now, but one old argument recently resurfaced: did the British

gain enough support from the Dominions to justify the burden they bore

to protect them?

In that distinct community defence represented the

lowest common denominator, survival. As long as the mother country and

its Dominions remained tied to a global order deﬁned by British power,

they made up their own minds about how to defend what they shared.

This ‘coalition of the usually willing’ made the Dominions’ partners

unique in the history of any Empire.

The concept of imperial defence as a partnership predated the estab-

lishment of Canada as the ﬁrst Dominion in 1867. It came from the

British themselves, who tried to make all colonies shoulder as much of

the burden of defending themselves as possible. By the 1850s, three

deeply entangled developments established a framework within which

that concept evolved over the next half century. The UK embraced free

trade, responsible government emerged in some settler colonies and

threat perceptions sharply increased, as the British fought a major war in

Europe, a minor war in east Asia and suppressed an uprising in India.

When the British repealed the Corn Laws and embraced free trade, this