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322 A. Jackson

facilities in the new nation (Ceylon, Malaysia, Nigeria); or it could come

in the form of agreements for the employment of British personnel to

train and lead indigenous military forces (Brunei, Mauritius, Oman).

Between 1960 and 1980, Britain engaged in counterinsurgency opera-

tions in Aden, Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya and Oman, and undertook a major

military commitment to defend newly independent Malaysia from Indone-

sia.

Expeditionary forces were sent to defend Kuwait from Iraq (thirty

years before the ﬁrst Gulf War), to prevent armed insurrection in Kenya,

Tanzania and Uganda, and to quell communal violence in Mauritius

(twice).

Rebels were deterred in Brunei, and a new government was

defended by Royal Marines in the New Hebrides in 1980. Rhodesia’s

illegal declaration of independence in 1965 saw the creation of the navy’s

Beira Patrol, intended to prevent goods bound for Rhodesia reaching

Mozambican ports, and when majority rule elections were ﬁnally held in

1980, they were supervised by a British governor and a Commonwealth

Monitoring Force backed by the British Army and the RAF.

In 1982, the

Falkland Islands and South Georgia were forcibly retaken following an

Argentinian invasion. British forces have been involved in numerous

humanitarian operations and have often been in a position to evacuate

civilians from dangerous regions, a naval task force standing off Iran, for

example, in 1978 and another off Aden in 1986. Peacekeeping and disas-

ter relief deployments have become a core activity of the British armed

forces, even in regions not of historic British interest (East Timor and

Mozambique). Recently, Britain has become heavily involved in helping

the government of Sierra Leone to resist internal insurrection, an inter-

vention that ﬁts neatly into the continuum of British military operations

since the 1950s. It is likely that Britain will continue to be called upon to

provide military assistance to former colonies and other allies around the

world.

In many ways, the non-retreat from East of Suez and the wider world

highlighted in this chapter should come as no surprise; just because the

empire was dwindling and Britain’s political, economic and strategic inter-

ests were becoming focused closer to home, it did not mean that a sever-

ance of global connections built up over half a millennium of British

endeavour in the wider world logically followed. Many British interests in

the wider world remained ‘live’ long after Britain’s demise as an imperial

power; Britain’s economy remained uniquely intertwined with the

economies of other countries around the world, and Britain remained a

hub of global ﬁnance and an addicted international trader. Over ten

million Britons continued to live in other countries, and Britain’s political

and diplomatic presence in the world remained extensive. It is easy to

forget the fact that Britain never ceased to be one of the world’s most

powerful states and busiest international actors, deploying strategic nuclear

weapons and retaining conventional armed forces capable of meeting

global commitments. As well as being an important economic and political

power (reﬂected in its status as a G8 member and Permanent Member of

the United Nations Security Council), Britain remained a global player in

other spheres, holding on, for example, to an intelligence reach second

only to that of America and Russia.

Britain retained sufficient political will to act upon the world stage

and remained a leading member of global organizations such as the

United Nations and the Commonwealth. A central role in these organi-

zations was an important factor in the desire of successive British govern-

ments to remain engaged globally. The British government, whilst

seldom placing the Commonwealth in the limelight, continued to reap

benefits on the global stage through membership of the organization,

particularly in driving its foreign policy agendas in the spheres of secur-

ity, development and governance.

Many states in the world continued

to view links with Britain as an important building block of foreign

policy and continued to value British friendship. Security links with

Commonwealth members remain strong and are not just of the military

variety. The practice of sending Scotland Yard personnel to investigate

particular crimes or contribute to the fight against transnational security

threats, for example, remains an important feature of the help that the

former colonial power can offer.

In addition to security and defence

links, many former British colonies have been granted privileged access

to the European market by virtue of successive Lomé Conventions,

which allow former colonial territories access to the single market.

Though Britain no longer dominated the Commonwealth in an imperial

fashion, it remained a key member of the organization and could count

on Commonwealth support in the international system if the wind was in

the right direction. A good example was provided by the Falklands con-

flict, where the support of the Commonwealth was important in giving

Britain the moral upper hand over Argentina, and during which Com-

monwealth allies made telling contributions in isolating Argentina at the

United Nations (as well, in the case of New Zealand, as volunteering mil-

itary support to free British forces for deployment to the South

Atlantic).

It is also important to acknowledge the expanding, extra-

European role of NATO in the post-Cold War years, another factor

leading Britain towards deployments in the wider world, be they frigates

in the Mediterranean or special forces and Harriers in Afghanistan.

Finally, the habit of interest and intervention in the wider world never

died, and the British public’s fascination with the world beyond Europe

remained as ardent as did the disinterest with which many Britons

viewed the affairs of states closer to home. A variety of government

departments remained intensely interested in the affairs of other coun-

tries. Though the offices of state that had once run the empire were

closed between 1947 and 1968, the merger of the FO and the Common-

wealth Relations Office created the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

of today. The Department of Trade and Industry, the Department for

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 323

324 A. Jackson

International Development, and the Treasury are other offices of state

heavily involved in foreign affairs. Britain remains a major international

donor, providing, for example, most of a country such as Uganda’s

foreign aid and holding the largest share of Nigeria’s debt. In the early

years of the twenty-first century, Britain’s two most important politicians,

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, invested considerable personal political

capital in commitments to Africa, through vehicles like the Commission

for Africa and the campaign for debt relief. Britain’s humanitarian and

‘civilizing’ aspirations, sympathies and vanities remain strong.

The visible commitment of British foreign and defence policy to the

wider world was thrown into sharp relief by the end of the Cold War and

by the arrival in power of a zestful Labour government seeking to present

a coherent vision of British interaction with the world. One of the more

illustrative sound bites to come out of the Labour government’s review of

foreign and security policy was the stated desire for Britain to be a ‘force

for good’ in the world, and this included a return to a traditional British

defence emphasis on expeditionary warfare, outlined in the Strategic

Defence Review of 1998. The review emphasized the global aspects of

Britain’s foreign and security policy, pinpointed Europe, North Africa,

the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf as regions of key importance to

Britain, and resolved to adopt a ‘go to the crisis’ attitude, thereby com-

mitting Britain’s armed forces to global deployments.

In outlining this

foreign and defence policy stance, the review recognized that Britain’s

trade and interests needed to be protected wherever they happened to be

in the world. The review underlined the fact that Britain was peculiarly

exposed to global economic ﬂuctuations or interruptions in trade and

the movement of ﬁnancial resources, as well as to global threats in areas

such as migration, the environment, terrorism and transnational crime.

The review also claimed that British cultural values merited propagation

and defence. In the words of Geoffrey Till, ‘the implications of this set of

conclusions were enormous. They illustrated the extent to which the

decision of 1968 [to withdraw from East of Suez] had been turned on

their head’.

It might be said in addition that the conclusions of the Stra-

tegic Defence Review were an acknowledgement of the fact that extra-

European regions had never ceased to matter to Britain and British

foreign and security policy, and that Britain’s commitments and deploy-

ments in extra-European regions had never stopped, notwithstanding the

apparent ﬁnality of the 1967 and 1968 announcements. The Strategic

Defence Review was not so much a break with the past as a recalibration of

Britain’s security policy, which had for generations sought to balance the

overriding need to secure European peace whilst also nurturing Britain’s

global interests. With the Cold War at an end, and Britain no longer

under threat of homeland invasion or destruction, ofﬁcial policy could

again emphasize the wider world, ‘policeman’, aspects of British foreign

and defence policy.

Empire still?

The quiet death of the phrase ‘imperial defence’ was matched by that of

the ‘British Empire’. After the 1960s, anything vaguely imperial tended to

be characterized as an ‘imperial legacy’, a ‘remnant’, a ‘limpet colony’ or

a ‘fag end’ of empire, hardly language likely to suggest continuity and

continued vigour in relationships between Britain and various parts of the

world. A review of the end of ‘empire’, in terms of language as well as

power and actions within the international system, is long overview, for at

least two reasons.

First, such a study plays proﬁtably into current debates

about American ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’, and the compare-and-con-

trast study of British hegemony in the past and American hegemony

today, as well as the study of the ‘handover of the baton’ period of twenti-

eth-century history when America replaced Britain as the main external

player in one part of the world after another.

Second, there is a serious

case to be made that, given the relatively straightforward deﬁnitions of

‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’ that were once common, the British Empire

and British imperialism never ceased. What ceased was the use of those

terms. This was entirely understandable, though the sudden death of

‘empire’ and ‘imperial defence’ blinded people to continuations in

Britain’s power and defence posture, and an overseas presence that did

not die in the 1960s but continues to the present day.

Two British historians have strayed on to this turf recently, without

moving to occupy it. Correlli Barnett suggested that Britain acts in an

imperial manner today, tracing a line of imperial interventions, based on

misplaced humanitarianism rather than hard-nosed national security

appraisals, from Dr Arnold in the nineteenth century to Tony Blair in the

twenty-ﬁrst.

There is then Jeremy Black, who has written about the

British Empire in the present tense and about the continuing fact of

British imperial power in the early twenty-ﬁrst century.

This provides an

interesting opening for academics to reinvigorate the debate about the

meaning of ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’, and, more proﬁtably, to open a

debate that should have taken place years ago, namely, when did empire

end for Britain? Is there a threshold in terms of the size and population

of overseas colonies that must be met in order to qualify for ‘empire’

status, and, if so, when did Britain fall below it? Still possessing colonies

from the Paciﬁc to the Caribbean and dispensing power around the world

in a variety of ways, from aircraft carriers and investment banking to the

BBC and GCHQ, some might ask if British imperialism ever ended. Of

course, it all comes down to deﬁnition, and when considered alongside

recent debate about whether or not America is an imperial power, it

might be safer to align with the historian who once said that ‘imperialism

is no word for scholars’.

Whilst avoiding the semantic aerobics, the use and then non-use of the

term ‘British empire’, and the commonly assumed demise of that empire

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 325

326 A. Jackson

in the 1960s, has distorted our view of Britain’s history in the late twenti-

eth century. It has done this by making Britain appear too suddenly as a

‘post imperial’ state, thereby emphasizing a shift from empire to post-

empire that never fully took place, a sort of ‘now you see it, now you

don’t’ view of the empire and world power that hardly meets the facts.

Indeed, it would have been a great surprise if elements of ‘imperialism’ –

perhaps shading towards the more equitable state-state relationship often

described as ‘inﬂuence’ – had just disappeared once most of the colonies

had gained their independence, given that deﬁnitions of empire com-

monly encompass ‘informal empire’ elements that seldom discontinued

the moment the Union Flag was lowered and a new national anthem

unleashed upon the world. Furthermore, ‘empire’ was always bound up

with notions of military, political and economic power that were to a large

extent free standing. Jeremy Black acknowledges the importance of this

when he writes that ‘an assessment of the nature of the British Empire at

the start of the new millennium requires a focus not on territorial control

but on the maritime potency that was so important a strand in Western

imperial history’.

Whilst Britain’s power in the spheres that underpinned

empire – political, diplomatic, military, economic, cultural – might have

contracted in the post-war decades, it never disappeared, and a great deal

remains to this day.

If the term ‘British Empire’ was employed to

describe a system whereby Britain had political control over distant territo-

ries, and projected power in the international system on a number of

levels, then the phenomenon never ended, even if the use of the label did.

Notes

1 Command 3999, The Strategic Defence Review (London, 1998). When Napoleon,

Wilhelm, Hitler or Stalin threatened, Britain’s eyes became ﬁxed on national

defence and the balance of power in Europe. In between these periods of

national threat, Britain’s gaze returned to its default setting – the desire to play

a military role in the wider world, shaping the international system to its

advantage. Both strategic ﬁxations were mutually pursued, however; even when

eyes were ﬁxed on Europe, peripheral vision, or the occasional sideways

glance, maintained Britain’s military and strategic interest in the extra-Euro-

pean world.

2 Ritchie Ovendale (ed.), British Defence Policy Since 1945 (Manchester, 1994), 8.

3 Rod Thornton makes this point with regard to the Army in ‘The British Army

and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy’, Small Wars and Insurgencies,

15 (2004): 81–106. For the Royal Navy, the idea comes from Admiral Sir Sandy

Woodward. He wrote that the 1974 Defence Review conﬁrmed the Royal Navy’s

concentration on anti-submarine warfare in the north-east Atlantic, the navy’s

part in the NATO-focused defence policy that was a hallmark of the decade. He

added that the mindset away from expeditionary warfare probably began in 1966

when it was decided not to replace the carrier HMS Ark Royal (eventually paid off

in 1978). ‘But we hung onto it somehow, though we dressed it up as North East

Atlantic ASW [anti-submarine warfare] with a bit of defence of the Northern

Flank’. See Admiral Sir John (Sandy) Woodward, ‘Introduction’, in Stephen

Badsey, Rob Havers, and Mark Grove (eds), The Falklands Conﬂict Twenty Years on:

Lessons for the Future (London, 2005), 1.

4 In a resounding statement of the fact that the end of empire did not signal

Britain’s willingness to retreat as a world power, it was Wilson who said in the

year that Labour came to ofﬁce (1964) that ‘Britain’s borders are on the

Himalayas’.

5 One might also include the strategically placed Rockall in the North Atlantic,

annexed, in the face of a Danish claim, in 1955.

6 See Robert Aldrich and John Connell, The Last Colonies (Cambridge, 1009),

and John Connell, ‘Eternal Empire: Britain’s Caribbean Colonies in the Global

Arena’, in Aarón Gamaliel Ramos and Angel Israel Rivera (eds), Islands at the

Crossroads: Politics in the Non-Independent Caribbean (Kingston, 2001), 115–135.

7 Michael Walker, ‘Transforming UK Armed Forces’, RUSI Journal, 150, 1 (2005):

46–48.

8 COS, ‘Future Defence Policy. The Overall Strategic Plan, May 1947’, repro-

duced as appendix 7 in Julian Lewis, Changing Direction: British Military Planning

for Post-War Strategic Defence, 1942–1947 (London, 1988).

9 An important point in explaining this stance is that although Britain had been

eclipsed as a power able to unilaterally guarantee security in imperial regions,

the one power that could offer such guarantees – America – was not bound by

the same burden of responsibility to do so as Britain was. Therefore, circum-

stances were conceivable in which America might be reluctant to go to the aid

of a British colony or one of its Commonwealth allies – hence the need for

Britain to retain an independent stance to the greatest extent possible, and

hence the surprising longevity of intra-Commonwealth defence arrangements

(particularly those centred on the security of the South-East Asian region).

10 The dilemma – NATO defence in the face of a Russian nuclear threat versus

defence commitments, imperial and Cold War, in the wider world – was com-

pounded not only by the state of the economy, but also by the steeply rising

unit cost of military platforms and the new post-war requirement for Britain to

remain strong in conventional military terms whilst also affording the entrance

fee to the nuclear club.

11 Brian Lapping, End of Empire (London, 1985), 277.

12 See John Darwin, Britain and Decolonization: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-

War World (Basingstoke, 1988), 229–231, for a summary of the reasons why

Suez was not such an imperial breaking point.

13 Until the early 1970s, Britain had a few units stationed in Thailand as part of its

commitment to South-East Asian defence through SEATO.

14 The audit of empire was not as adventurous as is sometimes suggested,

however. It did not recommend an imperial vanishing act, and concluded that

many of Britain’s colonial responsibilities would remain for the foreseeable

future.

15 Barring its involvement with the rebel regime of Ian Smith in Rhodesia.

16 John Darwin makes this point with a ﬂourish: ‘Colonial rule must die that inﬂu-

ence might live; empire must be sacriﬁced to world power’. J. Darwin, Britain and

Decolonization, 334.

17 One of the reasons for the closure was the fact that, in the light of Suez, the

government of Ceylon had decided not to renew the ten-year treaty, signed on

independence in 1948, that allowed the Royal Navy the use of the island’s naval

facilities.

18 Neville Brown, Arms Without Empire (London, 1968), 66. The book was ﬁrst

published in the previous year, before the withdrawal from Aden. See also

Philip Darby, British Defence Policy East of Suez, 1947–1968 (London, 1973).

19 See Brown, Arms Without Empire.

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 327

328 A. Jackson

20 An excellent recent treatment of this subject is provided by Saki Dockrill,

Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez: The Choice Between Europe and the World? (Bas-

ingstoke, 2002).

21 In the light of biting economic crises at home, including the devaluation of

sterling in 1967, in 1968 the announcement was updated: British forces would

be out by 1971.

22 See Andrea Benvenuti, ‘The British Military Withdrawal from Southeast Asia

and Its Impact on Australia’s Cold War Strategic Interests’, Cold War History, 5

(2005): 189–210.

23 Brown, Arms Without Empire, 27.

24 Australia and New Zealand lobbied for Britain’s continued commitment to the

region, seeing South-East Asia as a frontline of their own defence.

25 David Stevens, ‘The British Naval Role East of Suez: An Australian Perspective’,

in Greg Kennedy (ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 1900–2000 (London,

2005), pp. 120–141.

26 Navy News, October 2005. York then took up the role of Commander Task

Force 150 in the Indian Ocean to participate in Exercise Deep Sabre, involving

thirteen other navies. On a nine month Far-East deployment last year, HMS

Exeter exercised with the navies of Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Russia and

Thailand.

27 See Damon Bristow, ‘The Five Power Defence Arrangements: Southeast Asia’s

Unknown Regional Security Organization’, Contemporary Southeast Asia: A

Journal of International Strategic Affairs, 27 (2005): 1–20, and Khoo How San,

‘The Five Power Defence Arrangements: If it Ain’t Broke . . .’, SAFTI: Journal of

the Singapore Armed Forces, 26 (2000).

28 Russell Marshall, ‘Security in the Paciﬁc Rim: A New Zealand Perspective’, RUSI

Journal, 149, 4 (2004), pp. 46–48. For the establishment of bases in region, see

Donald Berlin, ‘The “Great Base Race” in the Indian Ocean Littoral: Conﬂict

Prevention or Stimulation?’, Contemporary South Asia, 13 (2004): 239–255.

29 See Warren Chin, ‘Operations in a War Zone: The Royal Navy in the Persian

Gulf in the 1980s’, in Ian Speller (ed.), The Royal Navy and Maritime Power in the

Twentieth Century (London, 2005), 181–196.

30 Geoffrey Till, ‘The Return to Globalism: The Royal Navy East of Suez,

1975–2003’, in G. Kennedy (ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 257.

31 Peter Doling, From Port T to RAF Gan: An Illustrated History of the British Military

Bases at Addu Atoll in the Maldive Islands, 1941–1976 (Bognor Regis, 2004). For

the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean during the Second World War, see Ashley

Jackson, War and Empire in Mauritius and the Indian Ocean (Basingstoke, 2001),

and A. Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (London, 2005).

32 See Jan Morris, Sultan of Oman (London, 1957). Morris travelled with the

Sultan of Muscat and Oman during the conﬂict. Also see John Newsinger,

British Counterinsurgency from Palestine to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke, 2002).

33 ‘BBC Marisah Relay’, found at http://radiodx.com/spdxr/bbc_masirah.htm

on 13/1/05.

34 Another powerful tool of the BBC is BBC Monitoring, a source of media

information, which together with its American partner, Foreign Broadcast

Information Service, tracks over 3,000 sources in the international media and

selects important information on behalf of the British and American govern-

ments. Up to 2,500 reports are published per day on political, economic and

security issues, and other topics such as human rights, organized crime or the

environment. Advertisement, RUSI Journal, 150, 4 (2005), back cover.

35 For an overview of the island’s history and its links with Britain, particularly its

defence links, see Colin Richardson, Masirah: Tales from a Desert Island (Durham,

2005).

36 Until the 1970s, Bahrain had been an important base for British forces sta-

tioned in the Gulf.

37 Alan Clark, Diaries (London, 1993), 371–373.

38 The National Archives, Kew. FO 371/184523. Draft memo by foreign secretary

and defence secretary for circulation at Defence and Overseas Policy Commit-

tee, ‘Defence Facilities in the Indian Ocean’, 2/4/65.

39 ‘Dirty Work in the Indian Ocean’, found at www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

may98/indocean.html on 26/5/04.

40 The construction of an American naval communications station began in March

1971 and was commissioned in March 1973. The ﬁrst C-130 transport aircraft

landed in July of that year. A weather service detachment was present from

1971, and a naval support facility was commissioned in 1977. From 1980, the

base was capable of holding all of the equipments necessary to equip and supply

a Marine Corps brigade (16,500 men). This was part of the American logistical

practice of stationing ‘prepositioned’ supply ships and facilities at bases around

the world (another was in Oman). From 1982, a permanent detachment was

established on the island to ﬂy supplies to aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean.

B-52’s were ﬁrst deployed to Diego Garcia in 1987. Over the course of seventy-

six days during operation in Afghanistan in 2001, four B-1 and ﬁve B-52 sorties

were ﬂown each day. No. 77 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force was deployed

to Diego Garcia as a contribution to Coalition operations. Diego Garcia also

supports elements of America’s space programme and is used by B-2 stealth

bombers.

41 G. Till, ‘The Return to Globalism: The Royal Navy East of Suez’, in Kennedy

(ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 249.

42 P.J. Melson (ed.), White Ensign–Red Dragon: The History of the Royal Navy in Hong

Kong 1841–1997 (Hong Kong, 1997).

43 Security Sector Reform is an increasingly important aspect of the work of British

forces as Britain and its allies seek to build stable, internally controlled institu-

tions in places such as Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, Kosovo and Sierra

Leone. In Iraq, for example, the Royal Navy is a mentor to the embryonic Iraqi

Navy based at Umm Qasr. RFA Diligence is currently acting as a forward base for

the Iraqi patrol boats.

44 Some of this material has been taken from the British Army website. Training

in all types of terrain and climate environments enables British military forces

to operate almost anywhere in the world. It is a key feature in the global

posture of the British armed forces.

45 See Peter Henshaw, ‘Strategy and the Transfer of Simon’s Town, 1948–1957’,

in Peter Henshaw and Ronald Hyam (eds), The Lion and the Springbok: Britain

and South Africa Since the Boer War (Cambridge, 2003), 230–253.

46 See Geoffrey Sloan, ‘The Geopolitics of the Falklands Conﬂict’, in S. Badsey, R.

Havers, and M. Grove (eds), The Falklands Conﬂict Twenty Years on, 25.

47 Ibid. An interesting postscript to the demise of the South Atlantic Squadron

and the West Indies Squadron was that their removal ended the layered system

of defence that protected the Falkland Islands.

48 Reported in Navy News, August 2005.

49 Navy News, October 2005.

50 See Peter Hore, ‘The “Logistics Miracle” of Ascension Island’, in S. Badsey, R.

Havers, and M. Grove (eds), The Falklands Conﬂict Twenty Years on, 213–225

51 Navy News, April 2005.

52 Navy News, October 2005.

53 Britain retained military facilities in Libya until 1970.

54 Ofﬁcial British Army website, ‘Deployments’, www.army.mod.uk/around

theworld.cyp/index.htm, found on 14/6/04, site last reviewed 15/10/03.

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 329

55 Navy News, August 2005 and October 2005.

56 See AP3003, A Brief History of the RAF (London, 2004).

57 Navy News, October 2005. It was reported on BBC Radio 4 on 31 October 2005

that Cumberland had seized narcotics worth over £200 million off Nicaragua

whilst on this deployment in the West Indies region.

58 I have taken this idea from the work of Geoffrey Till.

59 Hydrology remains as much a part of the work of the Royal Navy as it was in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when British ships provided the informa-

tion for maps and charts that went on to be used worldwide. In 2004–2005, for

example, HMS Echo travelled 77,000 nautical miles during an eighteen-month

deployment in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf,

conducting detailed surveys of underwater hazards in key channels and around

oil platforms in the latter region.

60 These campaigns have received a great deal of attention in ‘decolonization

wars’ books, which are numerous. For example, Robin Neillands, A Fighting

Retreat: The British Empire, 1947–1997 (London, 1997); Lawrence James, Imperial

Rearguard: Wars of Empire, 1919–1985 (London, 1988); Thomas Mockaitis, British

Counterinsurgency, 1919–1960 (London, 1990). Some of these campaigns have

recently received welcome new attention. See for example, Ian Speller, ‘The

Royal Navy, Expeditionary Operations, and the End of Empire, 1956–1975’, in

G. Kennedy (ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 178–198; Christopher Tuck,

‘The Royal Navy and Confrontation, 1963–1966’, in G. Kennedy (ed.), British

Naval Strategy East of Suez, 199–220, and ‘Borneo 1963–66: Counterinsurgency

Operations and War Termination’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 15 (2004):

89–111; Matthew Jones, Conﬂict and Confrontation in South East Asia, 1961–1965:

Britain, the US, Indonesia, and the Creation of Malaysia (Cambridge, 2002); Ian

Speller, ‘Naval Diplomacy: Operation Vantage, 1961’ (Kuwait), in I. Speller

(ed.), The Royal Navy and Maritime Power, 164–180; Timothy Parsons, The 1964

Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa (Westport, CT, 2003) (Kenya,

Tanzania, Uganda); and Ashley Jackson, ‘The Deployment of British Forces to

Mauritius, 1965 and 1968’ (unpublished paper).

61 The little-known intervention in Tanzania provides a good illustration and

sounds very ‘modern’. In January 1964, elements of the Tanzanian Army

mutinied at Dar-es-Salaam and Tabora, imprisoning their ofﬁcers. Government

buildings, the presidential palace and the radio station were surrounded. Presid-

ent Julius Nyerere ﬂed the capital, after appealing to the British government for

help. The aircraft carrier HMS Centaur carrying 45 Commando accompanied by

the destroyer HMS Cambrian was dispatched from Aden and was able to poise in

the Zanzibar Channel until called for. When it was, Marines were deployed

ashore, supported by helicopters and covered by Sea Vixens. There was a gunﬁre

demonstration from the destroyer. Within forty minutes, the Marines had

secured Dar-es-Salaam and its airport, and caused the rebels to surrender.

62 On operation Agila the RAF was tasked with ﬂying the 1,300-strong Common-

wealth Monitoring Force into Rhodesia-Zimbabwe and sustaining it whilst in

theatre.

63 For an overview of the causes, course and consequences of British intervention

in Sierra Leone, see Stuart Grifﬁn, Joint Operations: A Brief History (London,

2005); Commodore Steve Jermy, ‘Maritime Air Power’, RUSI Defence Systems 7, 2

(2004): 84–86; and Andrew Dorman, As Yet Untitled (London, 2005).

64 A 1948 secret treaty signed with Canada and Australia divided the world for

eavesdropping and signals interception purposes. Peter Hennessy, ‘The British

Secret State Old and New’, RUSI Journal, 150, 3 (2005), 16–23. This relation-

ship is an important facet of the Anglo-American relationship; without access

to American intelligence material, Britain’s reach would wither.

330 A. Jackson

65 See ‘Blair’s Britain and the Commonwealth’, The Round Table: A Journal of Com-

monwealth Affairs, 380 (2005): 381–392, and Peter Marshall, ‘Twenty-ﬁrst

Century Britain and the Commonwealth’, The Round Table: A Journal of Com-

monwealth Affairs, 376 (2004): 571–582.

66 For example, in 1995, Scotland Yard were called in to investigate the alleged

‘medicine’ murder of a child in Mochudi, Botswana, a crime that had engen-

dered such public outrage that riots occurred in the capital. At present, a Scot-

land Yard ofﬁcer occupies a high position in the Jamaican constabulary to help

in the ﬁght against drug smuggling, a regional, and British, problem.

67 For example, eighteen former British and French colonies in Africa, the Paciﬁc

and the Caribbean (ACP) currently export a ﬁxed amount of sugar to Europe

at the same price that Europe pays its own sugar growers. Though there are

pressures to remove these barriers to free trade (mainly in favour of Latin

American producers), if successful there will inevitably be calls for European

compensation/adjustment money to be paid to the ACP producers that lose

out, as they attempt to restructure their economies away from sugar depen-

dence. See The Economist, 24/9/05.

68 See Edmund Yorke, ‘ “The Empire Strikes Back?” The Commonwealth

Response to the Falklands Conﬂict’, in S. Badsey, R. Havers, and M. Grove

(eds), The Falklands Conﬂict Twenty Years on, 170–192. It is interesting to note

that there are currently about 1,500 Commonwealth nationals serving in the

British forces and that entry into the British armed forces is restricted to British

and Commonwealth citizens.

69 Previous defence reviews had looked ﬁrmly to the world beyond Europe as

well. In the 1980s, the COS developed plans for operations outside of the

NATO area; the 1987 Defence White Paper emphasized the importance of ‘out

of area’ operations to support British interests throughout the world; and the

1993 Statement of Defence Estimates eliminated the distinction between ‘in’

and ‘out of area’ operations. See R. Ovendale, British Defence Policy.

70 Geoffrey Till, ‘The Return to Globalism: The Royal Navy East of Suez’, in G.

Kennedy (ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 262.

71 There are those who argue that this view of the world and Britain’s role in it is

diametrically opposed to Britain’s national interests. See Paul Robinson, ‘Why

Britain Needs a New Defence Policy’, RUSI Journal, 150 (2005): 33. The debate

was common during the Victorian period.

72 Numerous works address the deﬁnition/semantics of empire and imperialism.

See, for example, Colin Newbury’s chapter on the semantics of imperialism and

inﬂuence in Michael Twaddle (ed.), Imperialism, the State, and the Third World

(London, 1992); Richard Koebner and Helmut Schmidt, Imperialism: The Story

and Signiﬁcance of a Political Word, 1840–1960 (Cambridge, 1964); Ronald Robin-

son and John Gallagher, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History

Review, 6 (1953): 1–15; and Raymond Dummett, Gentlemanly Capitalism and

British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire (London, 1999). Some have even

questioned whether or not there was a British Empire. See Ged Martin, ‘Was

There a British Empire?’ Historical Journal, 15 (1972): 562–569. What all of this

literature shows is the great elasticity of the words ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’ in

the past.

73 In this sphere, Niall Ferguson’s very public ruminations have surely created a

market for proﬁtable debate. See his Empire: How Britain Made the Modern

World (London, 2004), and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

(London, 2004). The American titles of these two books reveal the publishers’

perception of American sensibilities; Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British

World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, and Colossus: The Price of America’s

Empire.

Imperial defence in the post-imperial era 331