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

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proposed what he saw as the only realistic way to draw out more effective

commitments from the Australian colonies. Forces raised and ﬁnanced by

the colonies would augment British forces protecting them.

Tryon’s proposal reached a British government coping with strong

domestic reaction to recent events. Colonial rivalries escalated to a full-

scale furore in 1884 when Wickham Steed, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette,

published a series of alarming stories about British naval shortcomings

and French naval ambitions. Public outcry led to an ofﬁcial inquiry, doub-

ling of the naval construction budget and more pressure for a serious

overhaul of imperial defence. This plus the need to discuss the CDC circu-

lar letter, and pressure from the Imperial Federation League, prompted

the government to use Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 to invite

colonial governments to a conference to make ‘an attempt . . . to attain to

a better understanding as to the system of defence which may be estab-

lished throughout the Empire’. Perhaps to contain expectations – or sus-

picions – the invitation was casual: send ‘any leading public man who may

be at liberty to come to England’. Macdonald did not attend and the

Canadians discussed little more than control of their own militia.

But

Alfred Deakin of Victoria did attend and ripped into the British for not

taking enough notice of Australian concerns about the Paciﬁc. Lord Salis-

bury replied that the British and their self-governing colonies should use

their political compatibility to build closer links. To the Admiralty’s disap-

pointment, the conference rejected a Cape Colony suggestion that naval

defence could be paid for by a 2 per cent value-added tax. But it pursued

the idea of connecting colonial defence spending directly to British sea

power. The result was a landmark agreement. The Australian colonies

would contribute £126,000 per year for an auxiliary squadron of ﬁve war-

ships, while New Zealand paid £20,000 per year towards the cost of two

vessels under command of the Australian Station – but those ships could

not be moved away from the station without the consent of the colonial

governments. The agreement became a typical story in the history of

imperial defence. Most parties accepted it, but nobody saw it as ﬁnal. The

Admiralty took it as the best deal available; hoping the restriction on its

control of naval forces would never be exercised in any real crisis. Imper-

ial federationists in the UK and the colonies saw it as a step towards their

goal and the British government publicly defended it on those grounds.

Colonial critics claimed this would drag them into British wars that did

not concern them. But pragmatic nationalists such as Deakin saw it as an

acceptable stopgap until the Australian federation was realized. When the

smoke and fury died down, it was clear that a conference of imperial

politicians had discussed collective defence in some detail and agreed to

try to reconcile the tension between control and contribution.

One analysis called the agreement ‘a remarkably good bargain’ for the

southern colonies, something the Admiralty certainly felt at the time.

Naval priorities were shifting towards the Blue Water strategic vision,

262 B.P. Farrell

emphasizing the battle ﬂeet and decisive battle, rather than the balanced

ﬂeet and coastal concerns.

Real change came in 1889 when the British

Parliament passed the Naval Defence Act. This laid down a shipbuilding

programme aimed at ensuring the RN remained strong enough to defeat

its two largest rivals combined: the famous Two Power Standard. More

than one historian has seen this as the real beginning of systematic impe-

rial defence. The Admiralty argued strongly that supremacy at sea must

be the very foundation of imperial defence. The Two Power Standard was

a simple concept to grasp and it seized the public imagination, in both

the UK and the colonies. It provided a strategic benchmark against which

to measure concerns about constitutional progress, centralization and

differences in political, economic and strategic priorities. It also fed new

thinking about the Empire, at home and abroad. The orthodoxy of free

trade, plus organic political evolution for a liberal empire, was chal-

lenged by calls for more deliberate efforts to increase British power. Such

‘constructionist’ thinking often pressed defence issues as a priority. In a

world more hostile to British interests, the Empire now seemed central,

not peripheral. The Imperial Federation League spawned a defence wing

which, supported by the Navy League, waged a public campaign for inte-

grating the Empire through defence policy and forces, rather than trade

and ﬁnance.

This idea that the Empire must be taken in hand rather than left to

build itself never led to a federation, but did drive the debate about impe-

rial defence for the next generation. It stood in direct contrast to Macdon-

ald’s call to rely on underlying fundamental bonds to emerge in times of

real crisis. This was ultimately a debate about how best to preserve Britain

as a great power. Federationists believed only formal reunion on a higher

political plane would fend off centrifugal forces of change. Macdonald

spoke in 1890 for those who replied that the Empire must absorb, not

resist, such forces:

I am very desirable that the connection between the Mother Country

and the Colonies shall be drawn closer, and that the larger groups of

Colonies should assume by degrees a position less of dependence and

more of alliance. I think this can only be done however by treaty or

Convention and I am a total disbeliever in the practicability of Colo-

nial representation in the Imperial Parliament. There is no necessity

for such representation. The great subjects of common defence and

preferential trade can be arrived at by treaty arrangements.

Federationists could insist central direction was a strategic necessity; liberals

could say responsible government would be a mockery if colonial forces

were not controlled by colonial governments. The impasse was well

described by D.C. Gordon, who said imperial defence was still ‘defence con-

trolled by the imperial government, not defence based on the cooperation

Coalition of the usually willing 263

of the governments of the Empire’. Yet another commission of inquiry, the

Hartington Commission, stated in 1890 that better cooperation between the

Admiralty and the WO was a prerequisite for tackling the more complicated

challenge of ‘defence based on the cooperation of governments of the

Empire’.

The connection was discussed in an influential 1892 book, Imperial

Defence, by Charles Dilke and Spencer Wilkinson. They made two intrigu-

ing points: British defence policy must rest on organizing resources of

the whole Empire, and a General Staff was needed. While they saw the

Indian Army as the main contribution the Empire could make to British

power, Dilke tied the General Staff directly to the self-governing

colonies. The Empire badly needed a standing body to examine and

advise on its complex defence problems and bring the various military

forces together in an integrated strategy. But when in 1894 the Canadian

government organized its own colonial conference to discuss trade and

communications with the Pacific colonies, the agenda did not even

mention defence. Worse, the clash between colonial protectionism and

British free trade was now provoking colonial criticism of British-made

trade treaties with other powers.

This clash of agendas, which sub-

sumed the whole imperial defence question, became the great public

issue of the day when taken up by the most ambitious Empire construc-

tionist of all: Joseph Chamberlain.

In 1895, Chamberlain, the coming man in British politics, surprised

everyone by accepting the supposedly lesser post of colonial secretary in a

new government led by Lord Salisbury. From this base Chamberlain

launched the most ambitious challenge ever mounted to the liberal

empire and the principles on which it rested. Defence and Dominions

were central to his agenda: to strengthen the British Empire by reinforc-

ing the natural connections that bound it together in mutual self-interest.

The Queen’s diamond jubilee in 1897 gave Chamberlain a chance to

seize the initiative. This time the British invited government leaders of

the self-governing colonies to a formal colonial conference. There,

Chamberlain encountered the Canadian heir to Macdonald, Wilfrid

Laurier.

The conference took place amidst an orgy of imperial pageantry. The

ﬂeet review and military parades displayed a global empire replete with

power and conﬁdence. But Chamberlain and his colleagues looked

beyond the public face at some hard facts. The British were now beset by

colonial rivalries with Germany as well as France and Russia. Industrial

and economic competition from the Americans and the Germans was

intense. Diplomatic isolation was starting to look more dangerous than

splendid. Chamberlain talked about ‘natural Anglo-Saxon kinship’ with

the Americans and the Germans. But for every step forward, there was a

problem. For example, British attempts to make the Canadian militia a

more effective force provoked rows over political control. Chamberlain

264 B.P. Farrell

understood a central fact that more emotional imperialists misread. The

forces of the self-governing colonies were part of an imperial military

system only if colonial governments chose to provide them.

Chamberlain prepared his ground by sending colonial governors in

1896 a CDC memorandum on principles of imperial defence. Its crucial

argument was that strategic necessity must override ‘political’ concerns, a

direct assault on the 1887 naval compromise with the southern colonies:

The maintenance of sea supremacy has been assumed as the basis of

the system of Imperial defence against attack from over the sea. This is

the determining factor in shaping the whole defensive policy of the

Empire, and is fully recognized by the Admiralty, who have accepted

the responsibility of protecting all British territory abroad against

organized invasion from the sea. To fulﬁl this great charge, they claim

the absolute power of disposing of their forces in the manner they con-

sider most certain to secure success, and object to limit the action of

any part of them to the immediate neighbourhood of places which they

consider may be more effectively protected by operations at a distance

Chamberlain placed before the conference a collection of ideas explored

by the CDC: the 1887 restrictions on the Australian Squadron should be

ended; governments should concentrate on how the colonies could help

maintain the RN; colonies should allow their forces to serve overseas;

British and colonial naval and military forces should be similar in regula-

tions, equipment, training, organization and doctrine; exchanges of mili-

tary units should be arranged to bolster functional integration. These

proposals were based on the idea of imperial defence as an indivisible stra-

tegic problem. They provoked three broad colonial responses. Most Aus-

tralian delegates denounced the call to terminate the 1887 agreement.

They insisted its purpose was to bolster their local defence, not contribute

to general imperial defence. The Cape Colony took the opposite tack,

offering to pay for a cruiser the RN could use as it saw ﬁt. Laurier rejected

all calls to support the RN and showed little interest beyond general

support for measures of functional integration. Chamberlain failed to per-

suade the conference to agree that iron laws of sea power required the

Empire to ﬁnd political ways to make strategic centralization work. Most

colonial leaders were thinking the reverse: the Empire must ﬁnd ways to

defend itself that reconciled its desire to cooperate with its diversity of

interests and agendas.

Chamberlain’s failure to persuade the colonies to adopt centraliza-

tion as an overriding priority indicated the future course of imperial

defence. Henceforth, it evolved on two lines. Functional integration did

over time produce armies, navies, and ultimately air forces, that wore

similar uniforms, followed similar regulations, used generally standard

weapons and equipment, were organized and trained along similar lines,

Coalition of the usually willing 265

and intermingled from individuals up to major formations. But the all-

important decisions on when, where, how and especially why to employ

such forces settled on Macdonald’s lowest common denominator. The

philosophy of the liberal empire held that the strongest ties were natural

ones that sustained themselves, by the free will of all concerned. To

ardent imperialists and military planners, however, those ties were dan-

gerously loose, and the whole question of just how to work together

remained in dispute. Only a serious crisis could force all parties to sort

out in practice just what was possible in imperial defence. Chamberlain’s

drive for imperial power triggered one.

The discovery of great mineral wealth in southern Africa provoked a

struggle for ascendancy between the British and an established European

population: the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers. The push to estab-

lish British power ‘from the Cape to Cairo’ ran through Boer territory and

in autumn 1899 the Boers decided to ﬁght. Although shocked and humili-

ated by early defeats, the British did not require colonial forces to prevail.

Sea power isolated the Boers from outside help. But their early victories

and stubborn defensive campaign forced the British to reconsider grand

strategy. They could not rely on sea power alone in any future European

war, which forced them to take a long hard look at the army as a military

instrument. Boer resistance sparked other great powers to criticize the

British and even discuss intervention. British diplomacy was harder

pressed to pre-empt any such challenge than the government found com-

fortable. They pursued two ways to ease the pressure. Both directly

affected the self-governing colonies. One was to reduce the number and

temperature of disputes with other powers, which reinforced an ongoing

policy of removing any possible cause of confrontation with the US. It also

reinforced efforts to reduce threats to British interests in Asia, which cul-

minated in 1902 in a formal defensive alliance with Japan. The other

method was to orchestrate a great rally of the Empire and its military

might, to demonstrate the power of ‘greater Britain’. Colonial forces were

not needed to defeat the Boers, but their presence in a distant war could

drive home a point the British now found it necessary to make: any great

power that challenged the UK must fear it would face the combined mili-

tary and economic might of the British Empire.

This was far removed from seeing colonies as an unnecessary burden.

Now the most urgent argument was about what self-governing colonies

should do to help the British defend their overseas interests.

The root

issue, however, remained just what Macdonald foresaw twenty years

before: did this war threaten British power itself – not the physical survival

of the UK, but rather its power to defend a global order oriented around

its economic might and interests? Calculated realism had to share the

debate with identity politics and sheer emotion. In the end, the war con-

ﬁrmed what should long have been obvious: as long as the Empire

propped up a British world order, the self-governing colonies would be

266 B.P. Farrell

concerned about its defence. But they would all respond according to

their own interests as they saw them.

When protracted war prompted the British to use extreme methods,

such as the notorious ‘concentration camps’, public opinion in the UK

divided bitterly. The colonies were all affected by this and by the increas-

ingly dangerous tone of world politics. New Zealand was not, contrary to

conventional opinion, unanimously ‘loyal’ in its ﬁrst overseas war. But criti-

cism was diverse and ineffective. The ﬁrst contingent sailed in October

1899, and some 6,000 New Zealanders served in all, ﬁghting for ‘One Flag,

One Queen, One Tongue and One Country – Britain’. Prime Minister

Richard Seddon orchestrated a broad consensus: New Zealand’s interest

was to help preserve a strong Britain committed to imperial engagement.

The Kiwis opted to stand aside from the resolution of the long federation

debate in Australia, choosing to make their own way within the Empire in

direct partnership with the British.

Australian criticisms of the war were

not much stronger. Some 16,000 Australians eventually served and many

more could have, such was the support for ‘the British cause’. But they

returned to a new country. Federation negotiations produced a Common-

wealth of Australia, uniting the continent in a new Dominion on the ﬁrst

day of the twentieth century. This second Dominion demonstrated during

the war that while the British could rely on it for military support, it was

even more willing now to criticize British direction of imperial defence. Mil-

itary engagement produced in Australia and other colonies a growing sense

of identity and pride. This was not always positive. Ideal images of country-

bred ‘born soldiers’, tall, ﬁt, at home in the saddle and in the ﬁeld were

contrasted with stereotypes of English regulars stunted by unhealthy living

in urban slums. Many British ofﬁcers responded by denigrating the discip-

line of colonial soldiers and competence of their ofﬁcers – and they were

not always wrong, nor always condescending. The colonial contribution

was on the whole beneﬁcial to all parties, but produced its own frictions

and legends. Chamberlain supported the Australian federation. But he did

so because he concluded it could be a step towards larger integration, not

just because it would be counterproductive to oppose it.

Chamberlain decided to use the imperial solidarity fostered by the war to

try again to strengthen the bonds. A ‘soft’ peace settlement in 1902 laid the

ground for smoother absorption of southern Africa into the Empire and trig-

gered another colonial conference. There, Chamberlain ran into govern-

ments both buoyed and bruised by the experience of going to war to defend

the Empire – which made them even more ready to assert their own views on

how that should be done. Canada’s war experience prompted Laurier to

take the lead this time. Strategic arguments would never persuade the

colonies to place their forces permanently at British disposal. The Empire

must defend itself by agreement as and when necessary, not by integration

and central control. Some 8,300 Canadians served in southern Africa, but

their story spoke volumes about the limits to Canada’s commitment. As war

Coalition of the usually willing 267

approached Chamberlain concluded Laurier would try to evade any formal

Canadian contribution, while Laurier concluded Chamberlain would try to

oblige him to make one. They were both right. Private exchanges indicated

the British would refuse to accept Canadian volunteers for British forces and

the Canadian government would try to head off any public appeal for Cana-

dian forces. Meanwhile Major-General Edward Hutton, the British general

ofﬁcer commanding the Canadian militia, thought there should and would

be a Canadian contribution and prepared to organize a contingent. When

war broke out, Canadian public opinion erupted in emotional debate. The

demand for Canada to line up with the mother country proved stronger, so

Laurier and his colleagues decided they must offer a contingent. But they

wrongly assumed the whole mess was caused by Hutton conspiring to force

Canada to support a British war, instead of advising the Canadian government

as their military counsel. This was not fair. The relationship between the GOC

(General Ofﬁcer Commanding) and the two governments had never really

been sorted out, and the support for intervention was very real. Macdonald

was vindicated: the ties did exist, whether Hutton made speeches or not.

Laurier’s real complaint was that the whole situation put him in a very

difﬁcult position, stuck between those who emphasized the British con-

nection and those who were wary of it. Laurier limited Canadian partici-

pation as closely as he could, which of course pleased no one. The war

strengthened the voices of those who wanted Canada to stay closer to its

own direct concerns, and their case was helped by the ongoing British

effort to resolve all disputes with the Americans. In practice, this often

meant giving way on Canadian issues in order to please the Americans.

The price the British had to pay was the political rise of those such as

Henri Bourassa in Montreal, who argued that Canada need not abandon

the Empire but must always put its own concerns ﬁrst. To Laurier foreign

policy was a mineﬁeld – and with the Americans reconciled, foreign

policy meant imperial defence.

At the 1902 colonial conference, Laurier presented this altered expres-

sion of Canadian nationalism. Chamberlain’s appeal for integration was

sober and serious. His eloquence did not conceal the need to re-examine

how the Empire dealt with a fast-changing world:

We do require your assistance in the administration of the vast Empire

which is yours as well as ours. The weary Titan staggers under the too

vast orb of its fate. We have borne the burden for many years. We

think it is time that our children should assist us to support it.

But the British wanted to discuss not how the partners could administer

their common enterprise together, but rather how the colonies could best

support its defence. If imperial defence could indeed be deﬁned as a

common enterprise based on principles and priorities agreed by all, then

the bottom line vindicated the British. No more than 30,000, plus perhaps

268 B.P. Farrell

50,000 locally recruited, of the 450,000 troops committed to war in south-

ern Africa came from the colonies. British taxpayers paid more than

twenty-nine shillings per capita per year on defence; Canadians paid two

shillings, Australians three. But it was unacceptable for the British to want

contributions and not want to share direction. Laurier rejected all argu-

ments about the need for more integrated strategy and the inequity of

contribution, and his agenda was more subtle than the mere desire to

assert status. He said Canada would contribute to imperial defence by

doing more to defend itself, because he wanted to keep all parties in play

in the constant debate. His stance failed to impress London for the same

reason it worked at home: the British knew Canada would use it to justify

avoiding future overseas engagement. Each party had a valid argument.

The British knew Laurier’s promise was strategically hollow because they

were withdrawing from North America anyway. Laurier was right to argue

that a Canada paralysed by domestic discord would be no help to the

British in any overseas conﬂict. But neither would give an inch. Laurier

did not stand alone. Australian delegates suggested their priority should

be ‘to build a stronger Britain in the south’. That expressed growing

national aspirations, as well as resentment of the Admiralty rejection of

the 1887 pledge for regional defence. The integration the colonies really

wanted to discuss was integration by trade. But this would compel the

British to abandon free trade, which would disrupt their entire political

and economic system while the colonies stood fast. The British wanted

help, but not at such a high price. The conference ended as it began:

everything rested still on Macdonald’s lowest common denominator.

Failure in 1902 pushed Chamberlain down the road to political disas-

ter. The very next year he launched his great campaign for tariff reform,

still hoping to build an integrated Empire, but the UK would not abandon

free trade. The campaign ended in 1906 in a landslide election victory for

the Liberal party, which preserved the foundations of the liberal empire

for another generation. However much some in the overseas realms might

bemoan free trade, the British-centred economic system remained funda-

mental to their interests and their identity. But they continued to engage

it from their own agendas. New Zealand joined the Dominions in 1907,

looking to rival rather than join Australia in building ‘a stronger Britain in

the south’. Statesmanship produced negotiations that in 1910 brought

the older British colonies together with the recently conquered Boer

states in a new Union of South Africa, to form the fourth Dominion. This

constitutional development reshaped the liberal empire. Britain’s partners

in discussion were now all consolidated states, built to entrench a British-

centred entity in their own region.

The British recognized this trend by designating the 1907 conference

between governments an imperial rather than colonial conference. And

they now began to make real changes in the military system.

The eventual

outcome – more than half a century after the emergence of self-governing

Coalition of the usually willing 269

colonies – was something approaching an organized system for collecting,

analysing and disseminating information, allocating resources and pursu-

ing a comprehensive grand strategy. This progress rested on three founda-

tions: clear external threats, functional integration and the messy interplay

between mixed sentiments in both London and the Dominions.

The ﬁrst important step was a typically liberal empire compromise: the

Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), established in 1902, conﬁrmed in

1904 as a permanent body. The only permanent member was the prime

minister, who was expected to invite whomever he felt should attend. For

the ﬁrst time, a Cabinet-level body held a watching brief on all defence-

related questions. Its effectiveness was reinforced by the Esher Report of

1904, which triggered a sweeping overhaul of the WO and British Army –

directed from 1906 by the great reforming Secretary of State for War

and Liberal imperialist Richard Burdon Haldane. Ad hoc personal admin-

istration gave way to an Army Board, General Staff and administration by

committee. British governments were soon discussing reports and recom-

mendations on all manner of defence issues in a more organized fashion

than ever before.

A key question was, of course, how to relate these new

mechanisms to imperial defence.

It is right to emphasize, as most scholars have, that the CID was not an

‘imperial committee of defence’, which would have required the Domin-

ions to maintain a permanent representative in London. Given the sub-

jects it would have discussed, and the pressures it would have faced, this

would quickly have produced confusion about where power rested: with

the prime minister at home or his agent in London? The long time

required to travel from Ottawa to London was not the real obstacle; the

telegraph worked very well. The real obstacle was the prestige the Empire

still commanded in the Dominions. Laurier was not the only Dominion

prime minister who feared he would have to compete with a representat-

ive in London to be seen by press and public as the most authoritative

Canadian voice on any defence issue. National leaders such as Deakin

and Laurier believed such friction would undo the patient progress

towards developing a real sense of identity in their own country. With

identity, they believed, would come a sense of responsibility and the will

to address their own challenges. In any case, the British realized that

permanent Dominion representation on such a committee would

produce demands for a real voice, which might lead to pressure for prior-

ities they did not share. So they met in the middle, in a committee of the

British government. This committee invited Dominion representatives

when the British thought it desirable or necessary – and they attended

when their own prime minister agreed they should do so. The CID

rapidly established itself because it worked for everybody. It provided a

badly needed forum that did not automatically commit or compromise

any government. But even its success reﬂected the friction within the

imperial defence. The Canadian government kept it at arm’s length

270 B.P. Farrell

because Laurier and his colleagues realized that as a body chaired by the

British prime minister it would command much prestige across the

Empire. That meant the British government could use it as an instrument

to pursue their own agenda.

The closer the British kept to functional integration and looser consul-

tation, the more they succeeded in bringing the Dominions into a viable

system of imperial defence. Richard Preston presented a powerful inter-

pretation of this time of real change: the 1902 conference rejected the

idea of centralizing defence policy under British control in peacetime, so

the 1907 conference turned towards the alternative of cooperation

between partners. But as Preston noted, the road ahead remained difﬁ-

cult. Building a system required the British government, navy, army and

Dominion governments to agree. Haldane argued the governments

should start with what they agreed on, a ‘common conception’ of grand

strategy. According to the paper he presented to the conference, the WO

would rely on ‘the imperial loyalty of the people of the various Domin-

ions’ and work towards practical cooperation rather than central control

of one policy. Haldane presented three broad strategic maxims as the

basis for cooperation: naval supremacy was the key; each region of the

Empire should do as much as it could to defend itself; in a real emer-

gency, the Empire must pool its resources for mutual support. None of

these points was new and all were subject to interpretation. But this time,

they made an impact. Their strong rejection of central control over

Dominion forces made leaders like Laurier and his minister of militia,

Frederick Borden, more willing to consider ways to make those forces

more efﬁcient. Haldane helped by emphasizing voluntary cooperation

and functional integration as opposed to central control. The conference

agreed that functional integration seemed like a prudent way to make the

Empire’s military forces more effective as a team, should it be necessary to

bring them together.

Notwithstanding this success, the familiar arguments were far from

resolved. Canadian willingness to embrace functional integration was the

result of the testy culmination of the British role in the defence of Canada.

When the army garrisons of Esquimalt and Halifax left in 1905, the Admi-

ralty bluntly said that since Canada showed little inclination to defend itself,

it was no longer inclined to make its defence a priority at the time of war.

The British faced growing problems in Europe and had already decided to

cede strategic dominance in the Americas to the US. The army vainly

objected because dropping all contingency plans to defend Canada

reduced its prospective role in imperial defence in general and, therefore,

its inﬂuence. Laurier promised to take full responsibility for defending the

naval bases. He went so far as to state Canada should pay the full cost of its

own peacetime defence. The Toronto Globe and Mail agreed with many

British ofﬁcials that the Canadian promise would be used as an excuse to

make it impossible for Canada to send another overseas contingent, should

Coalition of the usually willing 271