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

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another ‘British war’ break out far away. Laurier kept walking the tightrope.

Canadian anger over being ‘abandoned’ to the Americans gave him the

political muscle to assert this more national agenda, but strong imperial ties

kept him focused on functional integration. The strongest was the most

obvious, as Roger Sarty pointed out:

Under the imperial system, Canada lacked the powers, information

and mechanisms to make comprehensive foreign and defence policy.

In the absence of serious external threats there was no imperative to

acquire those means.

However much Laurier wanted Canada to grow into its own, this did not

mean severing ties with the UK. Canada remained part of a British-centred

world order; therefore, it remained interested in imperial defence and had

to be pragmatic.

Haldane and the Dominion leaders took functional integration an

important step further by agreeing to establish an Imperial General Staff

(IGS). The agreement spelt out the common ground they were ﬁnding

then:

To undertake the preparation of schemes of defence on a common

principle, and (without in the least interfering in questions of

command and administration) at the request of the respective govern-

ments, to advise as to the training, education and war organization of

the forces of the Crown in every part of the Empire.

This struck the very balance that now seemed workable. The idea was to

build a system from the ground up, creating an effective military instru-

ment that would still leave all governments free to decide how to combine

and control it. There were practical limits. The gap in capabilities was so

large that in practice the ﬂow of doctrine, procedures and inﬂuence went

almost entirely from the British to the Dominions. But the breakthrough

was real. The WO settled for trying to make Dominion forces as British as

possible in how they organized, thought, trained and fought. Canada set

the tone by establishing its own General Staff to work with the IGS when it

was formally constituted in 1909. Australia and New Zealand followed suit

and the Dominion General Staffs became autonomous bodies responsible

to their own governments, but working in all other respects within a loose

British military family. The Dominion governments hoped this would

allow them to build up more effective military forces with British help

without surrendering control to the British government.

One expression of the new approach came in late 1909 when Lord

Kitchener, then the most famous soldier in the Empire, accepted an invi-

tation to tour Australia and New Zealand. Kitchener was received like a

modern pop idol wherever he went. The press of the crowd at Dunedin

272 B.P. Farrell

was so great that Kitchener never reached the South African War veterans

he came to inspect. He supported such Australian measures as compulsory

part-time military training and a military college, which helped over time

to build up Australia’s ground forces. They needed the help because in

Australia, as well as the mother country, the inﬂuence of the Blue Water

school of grand strategy was very strong. Its champions argued that if

imperial defence rested ﬁrst on the navy, the Dominions should concen-

trate on reinforcing the navy as best they could. Even though the Aus-

tralian government brought Kitchener over to use his prestige to pursue

their own agenda, his visit culminated in an agreement to establish an

Australian navy.

The progress galvanized by Haldane’s army reforms was

real but could only inﬂuence, not build, any system of imperial defence.

Sea power remained central, as he conceded.

However much Dominion leaders might want to expand their own

status and autonomy, from the turn of the century they faced a stark limit-

ing factor: great power tensions. The anti-British feeling during the South

African War paled beside a truly seminal development: Germany’s

decision to build a great ocean-going navy. This challenge produced a

fundamental overhaul in British foreign policy. In the ﬁrst decade of the

new century, the British not only allied with Japan and withdrew from fric-

tion with the US, but they also resolved outstanding disputes with the

powers that for decades had stood as the main threats, France and Russia.

This untied British hands to allow them to respond to changes in what

always concerned them most, the balance of power in Europe. After 1904,

the British drifted steadily towards France and Russia in an anti-German

alignment. No formal commitments were ever made, but the connection

rested on something far stronger: British self-interest. Germany mounted

what appeared to be a challenge to both the continental balance of power

and British domination of the seas. The Admiralty responded by launch-

ing a new generation of capital ships with advanced technology and start-

ing to concentrate the navy closer to home. The ﬁrst decision set off a

naval arms race by reducing the RN’s margin of strength over the German

navy, as both started nearly from scratch to build a modern battle line; the

implications of the second for imperial defence were obvious.

The old debate about forces on the spot now became public and pas-

sionate. One rising star in Australia, Capt. W.R. Cresswell, argued in 1905

that Dominion naval forces could be seen as ‘night watchmen’, standing

guard at the warehouse, backed up by the RN as the police. But by 1908,

Cresswell warned that concentrating the ﬂeet in British waters left the

Empire in Asia exposed to other powers. His complaints did not persuade

an Admiralty determined never again to tie forces down in local waters.

Yet the hard-pressed Admiralty now realized it could not satisfy the

Dominions by insisting that strategic priorities must override all other

concerns. At the 1907 conference the British proposed to expand the

East Indies, China and Australia Stations, provided the Dominions made

Coalition of the usually willing 273

a substantial contribution and the squadrons remained under Admiralty

control. Australians became concerned about British press complaints

that the ‘White Australia’ policy should not be allowed to provoke any

clash with Japan. Deakin ostentatiously invited the American ‘Great

White Fleet’ to visit Australia on its show-the-ﬂag world tour, which it did

to great local acclaim, and some British irritation, in autumn 1908.

Growing pressure to strengthen Australia’s own defences merged with

concern about sea power in general that year, when a full-scale political

crisis erupted in the UK over reports that the Germans were racing ahead

in naval construction.

The pressure forced the British government to

increase naval spending at the expense of social programmes and pro-

voked what became the most important meeting yet regarding imperial

defence: the Imperial Conference in 1909.

Alarm in the UK over naval rivalry with Germany drove home to

Dominion leaders the uncomfortable fact that they remained dependent

on British power, but had scant access to information. The Australian

government called for consultation and Laurier said Canada should ‘carry

out whatever plan should be devised through such consultation’. Both

Dominions presented British agreement to meet as evidence their status

as defence partners was being duly noted. They were not wrong. The

result was an attitude change D.C. Gordon called a ‘minor miracle’; other

scholars did not go that far, but all agreed British proposals at the 1909

conference were a sudden shift. A.S. Thompson suggested this was the

moment when the navy gave up the argument the Dominions must hand

over what they had to a common pool and joined Haldane in pragmati-

cally trying to build a defence system reconciled with Dominion political

and strategic imperatives. All scholars agree the 1909 meeting was a

remarkable event that made one thing clear to all concerned: they must

ﬁnd a new way to work together in imperial defence.

The most interesting British proposal was a bid to revive the old idea of

Dominion contributions to the RN, on a more systematic basis. If each

partner contributed money, ships or men based on its share of the

Empire’s maritime trade, the Dominions plus India would provide 25 per

cent of the RN. This proposal went nowhere because the Dominions were

not prepared to write cheques for the RN ‘unless it was clear the ﬂeet was

capable of meeting their defensive needs’. And they were alarmed in 1909

by the massive concentration of British naval power in home waters. The

CID therefore suggested a ‘middle course’. While the ﬂeet must concen-

trate in home waters, the Admiralty must not neglect the Empire overseas.

That meant securing Dominion help and addressing Dominion concerns.

Prime Minister Herbert Asquith struck a CID subcommittee to review the

problem, charging it to review: 1) how Dominion forces could best con-

tribute to imperial defence; 2) how to reconcile unity of command with

local responsibility for local forces; 3) how to make interchanges of ships

and men effective without disrupting lines of responsibility; 4) each

274 B.P. Farrell

Dominion’s naval defence; and 5) the legal status of Dominion forces,

especially outside their own waters.

Laurier felt any promise to hand men or money over to the RN was a

more direct threat to Canada than even the troubling European situ-

ation. He stood ﬁrm on the principle that Canada must decide for itself

not only what to do, but also how to do it. All this did was keep his

government on the hot seat. Empire-minded Canadians feared his insis-

tence on autonomy would undermine military effectiveness. But ‘nation-

alists’ remained afraid that ofﬁcers, ofﬁcials and opinion leaders would

not resist British appeals. Laurier’s compromise, to establish a small

Canadian navy, angered nearly everyone. Canadian imperialists derided it

as a ‘tinpot navy’, while nationalists saw it dragging them towards entan-

glement. The growing crisis in Europe made the naval controversy a

factor in Laurier’s defeat in the election of 1911. It was not unrelated to

the more burning issue of reciprocity and trade with the Americans in a

Canada now alarmed by tension across the ocean and more mindful of

Macdonald’s old ‘lowest common denominator’.

Australia and New Zealand meanwhile moved in the other direction.

They accepted an Admiralty proposal in 1909 to establish distinct ‘ﬂeet

units’ in their waters, to which they would contribute ships, as part of a Far

Eastern Fleet. The units would remain under Admiralty control, but in

normal times operate on station. This plan promised to replace capital

ships called home to face the German threat, promote Dominion identity

and reassure public opinion – but not tie Admiralty hands in wartime. It

was indeed the foundations of a workable imperial defence system, but

the exception proved the rule: Canada opted out. On top of everything

else, it needed to cover two coasts and shied away from the political furore

that would erupt if the government favoured one over the other.

Nevertheless, by late 1911 many interested parties felt the Empire was at

last responding coherently to real threats. The armed forces were making

progress on functional integration. The Dominions and mother country

accepted loose but reasonable consultation. The hope that a less unequal

partnership would in the end produce greater unity and power spread

from imperialists in the Dominions back to the mother country, prompting

the Imperial Federation (Defence) League to change its name to the Impe-

rial Cooperation League. Even the Canadian situation seemed promising

when the Conservatives took power under Robert Borden, who criticized

Laurier for not pressing for a greater voice in imperial defence.

Three years later, the British and their Dominions marched united into

the most dangerous war the Empire had ever faced. Nevertheless, some

historians argue that the partners did not in fact build a sound system of

imperial defence before this greatest test. One broad school of thought

blames the Dominions, another the British. The most convincing interpre-

tation, however, argues that imperial defence had become as systematic as

could reasonably be expected when the test came.

Coalition of the usually willing 275

Some recent scholarship points to the Dominions as it addresses the

question posed at the start of this study: did the British receive enough in

return to justify the burden they carried to defend the Empire? Two

studies bluntly argue ‘no’. Cain and Hopkins, in their magisterial reassess-

ment of British imperialism, argue that from 1860 to 1912 the UK spent

£1.14 per capita annually on defence, some 37 per cent of public spend-

ing, while the self-governing colonies spent merely 12 per cent, or under 4

per cent. This allowed the latter to spend on their own development, espe-

cially by tapping into the ﬁnancial resources of the City of London. Loans

and bond issues rested on the protection provided by British power, in

effect an invisible subsidy. Davis and Huttenback go further, arguing that

over this half century the UK had ‘the highest per capita defence spend-

ing in the world’ because it was forced to subsidize the defence of the

Empire. Their ﬁgures suggest the following comparative defence expendi-

tures, population-weighted as percentages of the government budget:

276 B.P. Farrell

UK ‘Dominions’

1860–64 36.4 1.2

1880–84 30.9 3.6

1900–04 54.5 4.7

1910–12 37.8 5.6

They argue that New Zealand was the only Dominion whose defence spend-

ing was ‘vaguely commensurate with its constitutional status’. Trade within

the Empire was ‘signiﬁcant but not crucial’ for the UK, but vital for the

Dominions – 83 per cent of New Zealand’s exports went to the UK in

1910–12, for example. From the Mills Committee on, no British govern-

ment found a way to adjust the burdens of imperial defence more equi-

tably. Those burdens amounted, in ﬁnancial terms, to the UK subsidizing

the development of its Empire – and no one beneﬁtted more than the

Dominions who ‘paid for little and received a great deal’.

Davis and Huttenback note the British were consistently able to

compel India and dependent colonies to spend much higher percentages

on defence than the Dominions. Even scholars less focused on the

bottom line argue the British retained control of the foreign policy of

ambitious Dominions because they ‘guaranteed and largely paid for their

defence’.

The implication is clear: to build a really effective system of

imperial defence, the British should have insisted every measure of inﬂu-

ence and control they ceded to the Dominions be matched by a greater

contribution from them. Because they did not, the system became an

interplay between British willingness to support a common cause and

Dominion tendencies to exploit this for their own direct interests. Earlier

scholarship resisted this tendency to evaluate imperial defence in terms

of ﬁnancial cost and beneﬁt, for a good reason. While the British-centred

world order that bound the self-governing Empire together certainly

rested on ﬁnance and trade, it was never something that could be

reduced to those considerations alone. They were always entangled with a

sense of identity, a way of life and traditions of politics, culture and

society that all parties wished to preserve and promote. This accounted

for much of the ambivalence with which Canadians viewed their mighty

republican neighbour as well as for Australian pursuit of a ‘White

Australia’. The fact of complications within that broader sense of a

shared way of life – such as Afrikaner, French Canadian and Irish atti-

tudes towards all things British, and frequent resentment over perceived

British condescension – only reinforced the main point. Defence was

never just about the bottom line. Examining status and spending against

that broader canvas prompted some scholars to argue quite differently:

the British very nearly jeopardized a workable system of imperial defence

by reneging on sensible arrangements after 1911.

Gordon made the strongest charge: the British simply reneged on the

1909 ‘ﬂeet unit’ agreement, and this was a serious development. The 1909

consensus envisaged an Admiralty accepting global responsibility, but pro-

viding for distinct ‘sister navies’ rather than one big navy, coming together

under central direction only in wartime. But after another spike in Euro-

pean tension in the summer of 1911, the new ﬁrst lord, Winston

Churchill, listened to Admiralty voices that preferred direct contribution

to the RN. From 1912, Churchill concentrated nearly all the navy’s capital

ships, thereby scuttling the 1909 scheme. This occurred just after the

Royal Canadian and Royal Australian Navies came into being. There is

evidence to justify Gordon’s argument. Senator E.D. Miller, Australian

defence minister, publicly denounced the Admiralty for unilaterally scrap-

ping a deﬁnite scheme of imperial cooperation. His complaint was echoed

even by the more ‘loyal’ New Zealand government, which publicly sug-

gested the British government ‘has failed to carry out her obligation’.

Lambert agrees with Gordon that Churchill provoked a backlash and

increased the strain on the RN at a very awkward time. The implication is,

of course, that the British were not willing to act on Prime Minister

Asquith’s declaration that shared defence must mean some shared direc-

tion, and that this blocked evolution towards any ‘commonwealth

defence’.

This last suggestion points towards the most convincing interpretation.

Given prevailing circumstances, imperial defence was as systematic as

could reasonably be expected by 1914. Canada and Australia gained

greater control over their own forces, but by pursuing functional integra-

tion they bolstered the imperial stamp on the professional identity of those

forces. The truth is that every government had no choice but to manage

the tension between imperial interdependence and their own agendas.

The British found it difﬁcult to share the direction of defence policies

with governments that lacked experience, resources and, in their view, the

Coalition of the usually willing 277

necessary breadth of strategic vision. As prime minister of Canada Robert

Borden revived the idea of making a direct contribution to the RN

because he drew the opposite conclusion from Laurier: under prevailing

conditions, the greater danger to Canada was the rising military threat to

British power, not being entangled with that power. But in return, Borden

pressed hard for a greater voice in the making of British policy. The Cana-

dian contribution did not materialize, but neither did greater Canadian

access to the grand strategy.

The main reason was the approach of great

power war.

The British not only pulled capital ships out of the Paciﬁc, but they also

pulled them out of the Mediterranean. Asquith’s government entered

into highly conﬁdential de facto strategic commitments to stand with

France against any German attack, in discussions that began as early as

1905. Many British Cabinet ministers, let alone Dominion governments,

did not learn the full extent of these commitments until 1911. The funda-

mental realignment of British foreign policy was responding to what

appeared to be a German threat to the European balance of power. That

acted as a powerful undertow that pulled all other arrangements and dis-

cussions about imperial defence along with it. Concentrating capital ships

provoked much greater public willingness to support ‘sister navies’, but

these navies and the governments that established them were tied to what-

ever move the UK made. None of them could have been organized, led or

equipped without British assistance. Canada’s decision to organize a

‘tinpot navy’ could be tolerated because there was no direct threat to

Canada anyway, and some kind of Canadian capability was better than

none at all. On 4 October 1913, the battle cruiser Australia led one British

and two Australian cruisers, plus three Australian destroyers, into Sydney

harbour to hoist the ﬂag of the Australian Fleet. Their entry ‘provoked a

nationalistic fervour among Australians never before seen’. But even

nationalist Australians saw this, correctly, as securing British dominance of

the sea lanes between them and the rest of the Empire.

Nicholas Mansergh’s focus on constitutional development prompted

him to conclude that progress towards a system of imperial defence

before 1914 was ‘remarkable’, especially because it stemmed mainly from

arguments made by the Dominions. But the British also deserve some

credit. Haldane in particular grasped in time the crucial point: in any real

crisis the Dominions could be counted on, but it would do more harm

than good to try to force them to make commitments in advance. This

pragmatism, which was smoother for the army than the navy, but notice-

able for both, made possible something that turned out to be essential. If

the Dominions did rally to support another ‘British war’, their forces

could step right into a larger British military organization with very little

professional adjustment.

An audit of imperial defence on the eve of the Great War is revealing.

There was no imperial government sitting in one parliament making

278 B.P. Farrell

policy binding on all. Grand strategy was deﬁned by the British. The CID

provided reports to the British government, which started to circulate

more of them to Dominion governments; but neither they nor it were

bound by its recommendations. The Crown united the Empire’s armed

forces in law and name, but not in practical command. And the only

system for allocating resources was the assumption that in a major war

Dominion forces would place themselves at the disposal of the Admiralty

and the WO. The concrete side of the system was functional integration

of navies and armies that were indeed coming close to being branches of

the same military tree. Although this was clear progress from the 1850s, it

was still not, however, the real strength of the system. The most important

bonds were indeed the natural bonds. Sentiment was stronger than con-

tract. Rather than pursue Disraeli’s ‘military code’ or Chamberlain’s

‘Greater Britain,’ the imperial partners settled, by trial and error, on Mac-

donald’s ‘lowest common denominator’. That meant living with Domin-

ion tariff policies that hurt British free trade, and nursing infant ‘sister’

forces that, man for man, might have been more cost-effective in British

units. But it also meant the real prospect of help from Dominion govern-

ments who probably were better placed to deliver as much military power

as their countries could generate to face any real crisis. Porter made the

crucial point: the British-deﬁned world order made the British Empire

the principal defender of the prevailing global commercial, ﬁnancial and

territorial alignments. Any threat to these alignments threatened British

power. That would endanger the only world the Dominions could move

through towards the future. The British and Dominions both decided to

accept, however unevenly, the logic of their own concepts of liberal

empire. That made a true imperial defence possible. The typically British

‘non-system’ of imperial defence in place by 1914 could work effectively

only in the most dangerous of crises, because only then would the Domin-

ions be sure to rally. But the fact they would do just that gave the Empire

a defence system that in the supreme test of the Great War more than

earned any ﬁnancial subsidy the British paid to build it in the ﬁrst place.

Mansergh presented the most familiar interpretation of imperial

defence in the Great War: the Dominions’ war efforts made it clear they

were ‘states that were in the process of becoming nations’. Most scholars

agree the war produced confusing signals about the Empire’s future for

those who fought it; some emphasized greater cohesion, others saw diver-

gence. Judd and Slinn argued the British hoped to build on what they saw

as a wartime spirit of cooperation and practice of centralization, ‘but the

real portents were those of disintegration, not of unity’. While many

British leaders did harbour such hopes, the dialogue remained a confus-

ing one that crossed national lines. The importance of constitutional

change remains inﬂuential in scholarship; John Darwin recently argued

that the war shaped what by 1931 became a ‘Third Empire’ of real part-

ners, the ultimate triumph of the ‘liberal empire’ concept. But the

Coalition of the usually willing 279

Dominions did not go to war to ﬁght for the right to become fully

independent states – so constitutional change must be set in broader

context. Porter argued that the most vital interest of UK in 1914 was to

defend the world economic order it built the previous century; colonies,

including Dominions, were part of that order, but not its very essence.

Formal ties of empire could change, if by doing so they helped preserve

the global economic order on which the British civilization rested. This

argument built a bridge between realist interpretations emphasizing

deeper national interests in British policy and ‘liberal empire’ arguments

insisting that constitutional evolution was a success, not failure. Darwin

put it nicely:

In the twentieth century British world power came to depend more

and more upon partnership with the White Dominions.... In the era

of the two world wars their economic resources, manpower reserves

and political ﬁdelity turned them into vital Imperial assets.

Imperial defence succeeded in both world wars because the partnership

remained strong but ﬂexible enough to meet the most dangerous chal-

lenge: to defend a world order the British and Dominions found they

could live with, one open to change and compromise – even if that meant

changing and compromising.

The British Empire lurched into the Great War in typical confusion,

but the reason sheds important light on imperial defence. Ireland, the

most reluctant realm of the UK, stood poised on the brink of civil war and

the British Army faced incipient mutiny. Suddenly, Germany launched an

all-out offensive to destroy the balance of power in Europe and make itself

the continental hegemon. This eclipsed all other concerns. British world

power made Britain’s territorial empire possible, much more than the

other way around – and the prerequisite to that power was a satisfactory

balance of power in Europe. The British government declared war on 4

August 1914 to defend the British-deﬁned world order, not to rescue

‘plucky little Belgium’. Prevailing constitutional law meant that the king’s

declaration of war, an act of foreign policy, automatically put the entire

Empire in a state of war. But the war dragged on so long, and became so

violent, that it tested prevailing arrangements for imperial defence

beyond their deﬁned limits. The challenge was fundamental: what was the

purpose of the war and, therefore, how must the Empire ﬁght it?

The very ambiguity built into the ‘liberal empire’ shaped everyone’s

response. While the king committed the Dominions to war, only their gov-

ernments could decide how to carry out that commitment. Macdonald’s

lowest common denominator made it possible for the Dominions to march

in 1914, to do what he always promised: to defend British power itself. But

the war soon escalated to a level that forced the Empire to tackle something

it did not plan for: total war. Four themes shaped the Great War for the

280 B.P. Farrell

Dominions: their military and economic contributions and the price they

paid for both; divisions in public opinion about the war; the central direc-

tion of the war; the question of status. These are best examined as they

occurred, entangled with each other. The course of the war was the driving

force in all areas, in three broad phases. From 1914 to 1916, the Empire

mobilized to meet an ever expanding war and struggled to cope with the

strain. In 1917, sheer pressure forced what looked like a breakthrough on

the fundamental questions of direction and status. And in 1918, the coali-

tion of the usually willing drove to total victory – but then faced the issue of

where to go next.

Identity is a currently fashionable buzzword in academic history, but

applying it to the Dominions and the Great War is not just trendy. More

than half the volunteers who formed the ﬁrst contingents of the Aus-

tralian and Canadian expeditionary forces in 1914 were British-born

recent immigrants, for whom ‘mother country’ was literal. When the bel-

ligerents found themselves ﬁghting a grim battle of attrition that few

anticipated, identity went to war as well. Germans were urged to defend

European kultur from Slavic barbarism; the Allies were to put Prussian

militarism and ‘the beastly Hun’ back in their cage. The Dominions

played a major role here by merely existing. Imperialists presented the

‘liberal empire’ as expressing the values the Allies stood for: an evolving

community connected by shared ideals, customs and beliefs, rather than

by power and coercion. Constructionists such as Lionel Curtis, a leading

member of the Round Table lobby group devoted to imperial federation,

tried to seize the moment by concentrating on the Dominions. War

would bring them and the UK closer together, forcing them to build a

more organized association in order to prevail. The war did bring them

closer together, but most scholars argued it brought out even more

strongly the particular situations of each Dominion. Robert Holland saw

this in the connection between contribution and status: Canada used it to

press very hard for a larger voice in directing the war, but South Africa

used it to stay more aloof from all general commitments. Constant

tension between unity and diversity did indeed characterize imperial

defence at war.

The Canadian experience was not untypical. Borden broke off his

summer holiday as the crisis mounted, privately noting: ‘Almost imposs-

ible for us to keep out if France is involved’ – and by ‘us’ he certainly

meant the British Empire, not just Canada. On 1 August he sent two

telegrams that summarized the prevailing condition of imperial defence.

One asked for ‘any suggestions and advice which Imperial naval and mili-

tary authorities may deem it expedient to offer’ and hinted ‘a consider-

able force would be available for service abroad . . .’. The other, offered

for publication, assured the British that if war broke out, ‘the Canadian

people will be united in a common resolve to put forth every effort and to

make every sacriﬁce necessary to ensure the integrity and maintain the

Coalition of the usually willing 281