The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire

by H. W. Crocker, III

  Alexander Hamilton (in The Federalist), Thomas Jefferson, and many of the founders later referred to the United States they had created as a great “empire.” Benjamin Franklin foresaw, in 1767, that “America, an immense territory, favored by nature with all the advantages of climate, soil, great navigable rivers and lakes, must become a great country, populous and mighty; and will, in a less time than is generally conceived, be able to shake off shackles that may be imposed on her and perhaps place them on the imposers.”18

  But of course there were no shackles on the Americans. They were the freest people in the world under the protection of the most liberal power of its time. The colonies had been treated with the most lenient supervision, often described as “benign neglect,” and the colonials enjoyed a higher standard of living (they were taller, healthier, and better fed than their English counterparts) and minuscule taxation compared to the average Englishman. The Americans had a long tradition of self-government given them by the British; and the British had, in the past, rarely interfered with colonial assemblies.

  When Britain did intervene it was to fight Frenchmen or Indians or to temper populist passions and act as a force of disinterested moderation. There were only two fetters on the Americans. One was the Proclamation Act of 1763, which to the dismay of the colonists designated all lands west of the Appalachian Mountains as Indian Territory. The Indians were under the protection of the Crown, and redcoats were stationed on the frontier to keep the peace. Trade, which had been a source of friction between the Indians and the colonists, was to be regulated by the British. Britain wanted to mollify the Indians; instead she enraged the colonials, who saw their manifest destiny blocked by Indian-loving redcoats.

  The second fetter was the long-standing Navigation Acts, which confined American trade within Britain’s mercantile system. But this was no new innovation, it was hardly burdensome, and the British authorities had largely ignored the Americans’ rampant smuggling: what piracy was to the Caribbean, smuggling was to the Thirteen Colonies.

  An Imperial Family Quarrel

  It is wrong to think of the American War of Independence as a popular struggle on either side of the Atlantic. In Britain, many were the voices in and out of Parliament (even in the army and the navy) who had no enthusiasm for a cousins’ war and who sympathized with the colonists for standing up for the traditional rights of Englishmen, even if these were being taken to a somewhat libertarian extreme. In America, John Adams estimated that at the war’s outset, one-third of the population were Patriots, one-third were Loyalists, and one-third were uncommitted, which leads to the rather sobering conclusion that in 1776 perhaps two-thirds of Americans thought the war for independence was either unnecessary or wrong. At the war’s end (1783), the statistics are equally sobering. As the historian J. M. Roberts has pointed out, “A much larger proportion of Americans felt too intimidated or disgusted with their Revolution to live in the United States after independence than the proportion of Frenchmen who could not live in France after the Terror.”19

  Kipling on the American War of Ingratitude—er, Independence

  “Our American colonies, having no French to fear any longer, wanted to be free from our control altogether. They utterly refused to pay a penny of the two hundred million pounds the war had cost us; and they equally refused to maintain a garrison of British soldiers.... When our Parliament proposed in 1764 to make them pay a small fraction of the cost of the late war, they called it ‘oppression,’ and prepared to rebel.”

  Rudyard Kipling and C. R. L. Fletcher, Kipling’s Pocket History of England (Greenwich House, 1983), p. 240

  During the War of 1812, the second cousins’ war, the United States, in good imperial fashion, even hoped to conquer Canada (where many loyalists had fled). Thomas Jefferson—who was never much good at things naval and military—predicted that “The acquisition of Canada this year as far as the neighborhood of Quebec will be a mere matter of marching.”20 As it turned out, Jefferson’s “empire of liberty” had a northern border.

  The Politics of Prudence

  What was important for the British Empire, in the aftermath of the War for American Independence, was that British imperialists learnt the wisdom of the great parliamentarian Edmund Burke that “Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”21 The British might have been right in principle in the American War for Independence—as Dr. Samuel Johnson put it, “taxation is no tyranny” 22—but wrong in terms of prudence. Better to sacrifice the principle than to lose the colonies.

  Britain put the wisdom of magnanimity to good use in Canada: granting French Canadian Catholics freedom of religion in the Quebec Act of 1774 (to the outrage of Calvinist pastors in New England); devolving most governing authority to the Canadians themselves with the 1840 Act of Union; and creating the Northwest Mounted Police (later the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), the Mounties, whose charming scarlet tunics, Smokey the Bear hats, and operatic talents made them less threatening than the lobster-back troopers who so affrighted the Americans.

  King George III Had It Right

  “The rebellious war now levied is become more general, and is manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire. I need not dwell upon the fatal effects of the success of such a plan. The object is too important, the spirit of the British nation is too high, the resources with which God hath blessed her too numerous to give up so many colonies which she has planted with great industry, nursed with great tenderness, encouraged with many commercial advantages, and protected at much expense of blood and treasure.”

  King George III’s Address to Parliament, 27 October 1775

  Retaining Canada for the Empire was no mere consolation prize. The Canadians fought side by side with the British in both World Wars, more than 625,000-strong in the Great War and more than 1.1 million-strong in the Second World War. At the end of World War II Canada had the world’s fourth largest air force and third largest navy—and we can only wish it had such military predominance today.

  The Empire Strikes Back

  Canada became an independent dominion in 1931, and achieved complete independence, while remaining a constitutional monarchy within the British Commonwealth, in 1982. But the British Empire still retains a few outposts in the Americas: Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falklands and South Georgia, and perhaps to the Argentines’ surprise, Britain roused herself to defend her territories, even if they lay at the other side of the world. On 19 April 1982, Newsweek’s cover story featured a picture of the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and the headline “The Empire Strikes Back.”

  The Argentines had jealously eyed the Falklands before. In 1833, they had actually snuck a garrison on the islands that the Royal Navy had to forcibly remove. In 1977, the British thought it prudent to park a nuclear submarine nearby. The islanders themselves were staunchly, resolutely British.

  The Argentines gambled that the British lion was toothless, its incisors worn away by the sugary dispensations of the battening welfare state. It turned out they were wrong.

  Argentine forces made their assault on the islands on 2 April 1982. The few Royal Marines were disarmed. The question now was: what was Britain going to do about it?

  By all appearances, the Royal Navy was in no state to mount a campaign to retake islands 8,000 miles away. But within three days, a convoy had set sail. It took a month for the British fleet to cross to the South Atlantic, but it arrived on the scene with a bang. The Royal Marines, part of the South Georgia Force, struck first, retaking the island on 25 April: “Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign [of the Royal Navy] flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God Save the Queen.”23 The arrival of the main fleet was punctuated by the sinking of the Argentine cruiser the General Belgrano on 2 May. />
  The Falklands War was no bloodless affair, the Royal Navy lost two destroyers, two frigates, and a cargo ship to Argentine air assaults. Britain’s air support was limited to 34 carrier-based Harrier jump jets that had to neutralize 220 Argentine jet fighters. By the time the British forces had brought about the Argentines’ surrender on the Falklands on 14 June (the British recaptured the South Sandwich Islands without incident on 20 June), 250 British soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines had been killed, along with three Falklands civilians. To some that might seem a high price to pay for the retention of distant islands inhabited by 3,000 fishermen and shepherds. But if their freedom was dearly bought, they know as well as anyone that British liberty is beyond price.

  Chapter 4

  SIR FRANCIS DRAKE (1540–1596)

  “I have brought you to the treasure house of the world.”

  —Sir Francis Drake to his men1

  In Buckland Abbey, the manor house of Sir Francis Drake, there lies a snare drum. According to Henry Newbolt—whose poem “Drake’s Drum” (1895) was memorized by generations of British schoolboys—it was left with these instructions:Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,

  Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low;

  If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven,

  An’ drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago.

  The drum has allegedly sounded at various dramatic moments: during the Falklands War, the Battle of Britain, even during the launch of the Mayflower to the New World, making Drake a sort of patron saint of England—except that as a Protestant he disdained patron saints.

  * * *

  Did you know?

  Drake was the first Englishman to see the Pacific

  King Philip II of Spain put a price of 20,000 ducats (about $10 million) on Drake’s head

  Drake’s drum allegedly sounds whenever England is in danger

  * * *

  Francis Drake: Preacher’s Kid Turned Pirate

  Drake’s father, Edmund Drake, was a farmer and lay Protestant preacher. According to pious legend Edmund was chased into exile after a Catholic uprising in Devon. In fact, it appears he skipped town because he was a thief, though he was later pardoned so he could continue his holy work.

  Francis, meanwhile, grew up in Plymouth, raised by his kinsman William Hawkins, and apprenticed to the sea. His guardian made his fortune on trading expeditions to Africa and Brazil, later becoming a king’s pirate against the French. Drake imbibed from the Hawkins family its spirit of enterprise and the idea that piracy could be profitable and patriotic.

  If he lacked formal education, Drake knew his trade, was a dedicated student of practical manuals like The Art of Navigation, and was a leader. As was common in his time, he ran a puritanical ship. Sailors were roughhewn men, but they were forbidden swearing, gambling, and shirking communal prayers. His favorite aid for communal prayer was John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which kept his men at a fiery pitch of self-righteousness against the papist French and Spanish.

  Drake accompanied William Hawkins’s son John on several slave-trading voyages. On one of them, finding the slave pickings sparse, they joined two tribal chieftains in an attack on the barricaded village of an enemy tribe. The combined assault—the Africans attacking by land, the English deployed as a riverine force—was successful. Hawkins, however, was disappointed that the Africans retained most of the captured enemy for themselves—some as slaves, others to be roasted alive for a cannibal feast. The slaves given to the English were the lucky ones.

  These slaves were not bound for English colonies, which did not yet exist, but for the colonies of hated Spain, which put Hawkins and Drake in a rather ironical position, though the irony seemed to have escaped them. They burned with patriotic, religious hatred against the Spanish and yet were insistent on trading with them—and trading with them at the point of a gun, because the Spanish colonials were required to trade only with Spanish (or Spanish-licensed) ships. But the English sea dog method was to set off a few cannon and threats until the Spaniards agreed to trade; customs duties were of course ignored; and the English matched trading with raiding. It was an economic-moral system we might call “Whatever I Do Is Right.” The English did not lack self-esteem.

  Raider of the Spanish Main

  As a captain, Drake dabbled briefly in slavery, but his real interest was robbing Spaniards; and in this role Drake convinced himself that self-defense by the Spanish was not only perfidious but robbed him of spoils that were rightfully his. After a little practice in the West Indies, working with Huguenot pirates, he targeted the port city of Nombre de Dios in Panama. It was here that Spain exported the silver and gold that fed the treasury of the Escorial and kept its armies paid.

  The port had few citizens and was poorly defended, but Drake’s attack was inept: the treasure ships had already sailed away. His assault earned him a musket ball in the leg; and his only booty was a wine ship—enjoyable spoils certainly, but not gold or silver. Its capture was unlikely to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.

  Drake, however, was not done. He formed an alliance with the Cimarrones, black slaves who had escaped their Spanish masters and lived as highwaymen. The Cimarrones had no use for loot (so they buried it); they simply wanted to harass the Spaniards. Drake was canny enough to see the potential for a nice bit of double billing. With the help of the Cimarrones he might unearth some buried treasure and lay an ambush on a Spanish gold train. First he had to wait through the rainy season. During that time one of his brothers died attacking a Spanish ship and another died of what was likely yellow fever.

  The Protestant-Pirate Work Ethic

  “Eager of action, and acquainted with men’s nature, he never suffered idleness to infect his followers with cowardice, but kept them from sinking under any disappointment by diverting their attention to some new enterprise.”

  from Dr. Samuel Johnson’s The Life of Sir Francis Drake, in Arthur Murray, ed., The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (Alexander V. Blake, 1838), vol. II, p. 325

  After a botched attempt at raiding a gold-laden mule train, Drake found another ally: a Huguenot pirate named Guillaume Le Testu. Together, they seized more bars of gold and silver than they could possibly carry—and in good pirate fashion, they left some as buried treasure to dig up later. They never got it. The Spaniards launched a ferocious pursuit, recovered the buried treasure (its site betrayed by a captured Huguenot pirate), and executed Le Testu. But lucky Drake and his men escaped, and decided that after a year of suffering and fighting, it was time to head for England and a hero’s welcome, for England surely did love her pirates.

  For all Drake’s cleverness, determination, and courage—which were duly celebrated—he rather spoiled the effect by laying claim to his late brother John’s estate, despite the fact that John had left behind a young widow (whose later suit against Drake was upheld). Drake was a self-made man—and he took every advantage he could to advance that self-making.

  The Terror of All the Seas

  During his adventures and sufferings in Panama, Drake had seen the Pacific Ocean (the first Englishman to do so). He was determined to see it again. After helping the Earl of Essex in a campaign in Ireland, with the usual attendant slaughter, Drake accepted the queen’s commission to sail down the east coast of South America, through the Straits of Magellan, and up the west coast of South America—ostensibly on a mission of trade, but trade in Elizabethan parlance, when it involved the New World, meant robbing Spanish ships and ports. The mission was to be led by three equal partners, Drake, John Wynter, and Thomas Doughty, though Drake was given command, and the partnership would soon unravel.

  Drake’s expedition set sail on 15 November 1577—and again, after storms drove it back to Plymouth, on 13 December. His flagship was the the Pelican, and even his own men were kept largely ignorant of the flotilla’s destination. Drake did not want his piratical plans exposed, though they became apparent soon enough when the English pirate
s captured Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of Africa, taking from them what they wanted (including a Portuguese pilot) and then setting them free.

  By the summer, the voyage became contentious, with Doughty accusing Drake’s brother Thomas of theft and implying that Drake himself was Doughty’s rightful inferior, given Doughty’s superior birth and influence in Queen Elizabeth’s court. In a squalid little trial, Drake found Doughty guilty of mutiny and treason, and then inveigled the crew to sentence him to death. Doughty asked that he be left onshore; but no, said Drake, he could not be left to the mercies of the Spanish. He could be kept prisoner aboard another ship, but then that ship would have to return to England and miss out on the spoils of the voyage. This too, proved unpopular; and so Doughty was ordered executed. He took it in good gentlemanly fashion, dining with Drake and sharing communion with him beforehand—all of which adds to the rather sickly pallor of the episode, which ended with Doughty’s head lopped off and Drake holding it up and invoking the lesson: “This is the end of traitors.”2

  Whenever misfortune struck, in storm or strife, the crew blamed Doughty’s ill-omened execution. Drake had the chaplain, who gave voice to the crew’s sense of guilt, clapped in chains, thrust below deck, and slapped with an armband that read, “Francis Fletcher, the falsest knave that liveth.”3 Drake also declared him excommunicated. While many Protestants held that every man was his own priest, Drake apparently believed that every captain was his own pope.