The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System 1830–1970 (review)

This formidable and magisterial study of the final 150 years of the British Empire is an extremely useful text, providing a calm and evenhanded approach to what is potentially a volatile and certainly a complex subject. Its title, which interestingly casts the story under the comparatively modest term “project,” as contrasted with the sweeping “world-system” in the subtitle, signifies that Darwin includes the “informal” empire in his study, most importantly during the nineteenth century in Latin America (as well in the United States, too often forgotten) and, in different ways, the twentieth-century Middle East.

This is an eminently reasonable book; the story could have been told with a little more color, given the geographical ubiquity of the British (well illustrated by the book’s maps) and their extensive influence on world history. As many parts of the former empire would probably like to forget, the present world owes much to the British, for both good and ill. What was the project? What was the system? As Darwin states, his approach derives from the seminal fifteen-page article by Robinson and Gallagher, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” written fifty-seven years ago.¹ A consequent emphasis on geopolitical issues enables Darwin to tie together the unruly mass of the “project” as Britain enriched, expanded, and glorified itself and to explain the highly complicated and varied system that made Britain’s policies possible.

London was the closest approximation to a world center—more particularly Westminster, Whitehall, and the City. The British system was full of both rigidities and flexibilities; its players were politicians, civil servants, and a complex network of financial, manufacturing, and shipping interests. It operated on vast tracts of land occupied in varying degrees by immigrants and indigenous populations. Thankfully, Darwin does not pay too much attention to the vexed present debate about the effect that the system had on those who lived in Britain itself (that is, beyond the players themselves). Ireland, characteristically, plays an anomalous role in his account.

With extraordinary dexterity, Darwin enriches our understanding of how the British shaped the modern world. Although the parts of the system were extremely different from one another, they interlocked nonetheless, particularly in terms of strategy. Yet, the regions could sometimes hold the mother country hostage because of its strategic and financial needs, especially in the cases of Egypt, the Union of South Africa, and India. In strategic terms, the Suez Canal and the Cape might not have mattered so much had India not been so important to protect. Britain clothed its intent to control India in democratic rhetoric; Darwin presents the tragic climax of India’s chaotic independence in 1947 too blandly. His discussions of the Britishness of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are splendid.

The project and system have now virtually ended, having left a legacy throughout the world. Darwin has, with the use of primary and secondary material, provided a complicated yet clear story and a sophisticated analysis of the forces that drove the British Empire.