Wars of Empire (review)

This is a timely republication of a book that generalises without over-simplifying and explores the military dimensions of imperialism. The author argues that among these dimensions, and indeed playing a key part in driving them, was the imperial conviction that wars of empire were also wars to bring civilization to less happy lands. Porch maintains a finely judged balance between revealing the latent hypocrisy in this belief, and yet discussing it on its own terms. He describes the frequently brutal methods used by the imperial powers in conquering indigenous peoples; yet he does not fall into a diatribe against them, showing instead that these rough methods reflected the frustrating nature of their military tasks: geography, disease, stubborn, and sometimes (temporarily) successful resistance aroused frustration and the desire to end a campaign by whatever means deemed necessary to do so. And there were always critics of these means, such as the "Pro-Boers" of 1899–1902 in Britain. Moreover, Porch emphasises that conquest could be facilitated by methods of reconciliation as much as methods of barbarism.

Porch adopts an ambitiously comparative approach, sweeping in British, French, German, Russian, American, and Japanese examples. Sometimes this results in packed writing, and the reader needs to pause and recap on certain passages. But Porch is so well informed on all his examples that his argument is never compromised by the scope of his narrative. The maps are models of clarity. The illustrations enliven the text, and some of them are instructive, for example the chilling photograph of the British "concentration camps" in the Boer War (pp. 170–71). There is one small slip: in 1878 the British Army did not have "repeater" rifles, but single-load, though highly effective, Martini-Henrys.

Porch's conclusion is, rightly, carefully worded. He considers T. E. Lawrence's contention that in the twentieth century, resistance to imperial armies would invariably prevail. He notes that such resistance was by no means always successful, and that its outcome depended on very specific circumstances. But for every insurgency that failed—and there were many—it was those that suceeded that discouraged the western imperial states. Perhaps this was because of the western assumption that, if you possess superior moral and political values, then you will prevail. The shock of failure, as in Vietnam, is therefore all the greater. There is surely no need to labour the relevance of this book to contemporary international relations. As the author rightly observes, we have been here before.