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  • Joseph Chamberlain: A Most Radical Imperialist by Travis L. Crosby
  • William C. Lubenow (bio)
Joseph Chamberlain: A Most Radical Imperialist, by Travis L. Crosby ; pp. xii + 271. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011, £62.50, $105.00.

Joseph Chamberlain destroyed three perfectly good political parties: the first in 1886 when he bolted the Liberal Party over Irish Home Rule; the second when he forced free traders out of the Liberal Unionist Party; the third when he forced tariff reform on the Conservatives. Bodies lay in the ruins—W. E. Gladstone; Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington; Arthur Balfour. In the end he was his own worst enemy. Reginald Brett (Lord Esher) pointed out that Chamberlain might be clever but he never learned the restraint one learns at public school or university. His own body lay among the ruins.

At the same time, Chamberlain was a hugely creative politician. In Birmingham he exercised local power to achieve such goals as providing municipal gas and, at the same time, organized an effective electoral base from which he could stride into the parliamentary world. In parliament he framed radical opinion, and in his organization of the National Liberal Federation he created a powerful instrument for promoting both his career and his political objectives. On the public platform Chamberlain made a striking presence. He stirred his listeners as none other. Slashing and dashing in parliamentary debate, he had an instinctive understanding of political processes which contributed to a relentless campaigning style. Travis L. Crosby describes Chamberlain’s approach as “military,” one marked by a “muscular and commanding tone” (101). At the Colonial Office Chamberlain’s “defiant determination, unrelenting vigour, and purposive behaviour” allowed him to carve out an independent policy (130). Crosby, at the end, celebrates Chamberlain’s “contribution to a broadening of opportunities for all the citizens of a fully modern democratic state” (191). However, he concludes somewhat sadly, “he may best be remembered as the father of a more famous son, Neville, who pledged and lost ‘peace in our time’” (189).

Crosby takes into account the massive historical literature which has grown up around Chamberlain: J. L. Garvin’s The Life of Joseph Chamberlain (1932), Denis Judd’s Radical Joe: A Life of Joseph Chamberlain (1977), Richard Jay’s Joseph Chamberlain: A Political Study (1981), and Peter T. Marsh’s excellent Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics (1994). Crosby’s is a synthetic study which draws upon, amplifies, and supplements this previous scholarship. But his book is more than this. By making effective and extensive use of the Chamberlain family papers in the Birmingham University Library, Crosby reconstructs the relations among family members, the cohort of Unitarian entrepreneurs of Birmingham, and the British political elite Chamberlain struggled so hard (and failed) to enter. Consequently we get a rounded view of a fascinating and important but, alas, an unhappy and unlovable man.

Charisma has its defects. Chamberlain, even as a junior minister of state, was brash and intimidating. John Morley detected a kind of dogmatic authoritarianism in both his manner and matter. Beatrice Potter, who was attracted to him initially, found [End Page 501] him domineering and controlling. She recognized his need for power and control over others; a wife, she thought, could only gain his affection if she devoted her soul as well as her body to him. As Chamberlain wrote to his future third wife: “you no longer belong to yourself, you belong wholly to your tyrant” (qtd. in Crosby 98). Domestic and political control were as one. Potter’s sister, Katherine, was damning. She feared that Chamberlain, if he gained power, would organize a “petty tyranny” in which there would be “no real freedom in political life” (qtd. in Crosby 88). Plotting and conspiring were to him a way of life. In the midst of the Home Rule crisis he met with Hartington promising to serve under him if Gladstone should resign. Within days he met with Balfour and proposed an alliance with the Tories against the Whigs. His was not a subtle mind. He could not tolerate the kind of nuance which Gladstone perfected. Chamberlain, for example, was furious when the prime minister cast a distinction between...

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