Empire

by Jeremy Paxman

  Notes

  Introduction

  6 ‘We shape our’: Winston Churchill, speaking to the House of Commons, 28 October 1943), quoted in Churchill, Never Give In!, p. 358.

  6 Arthur Hocart spent: Hocart, Kingship.

  6 ‘My country is’: Quoted in Hyam, Understanding the British Empire, p. 22. The king in question was Moshoeshoe.

  9 ‘We are the finest’: ‘Confession of Faith, 1877’, Oxford, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, MSS Afr. t. 1.

  10 ‘What is he’: Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days, p. 80.

  11 ‘a typical public-school’: Henty, With Roberts to Pretoria, p. 6.

  12 ‘We even think’: Wood, The Modern Playmate, p. 75.

  13 ‘who was our’: Astley, Fifty Years of my Life in the World of Sport at Home and Abroad, vol. 1, p. 213.

  13 ‘I think we’: James, Warrior Race, p. 434.

  Chapter One

  16 ‘This town is’: Talty, Empire of Blue Water, pp. 139–40.

  16 ‘The Spaniards wondered’: Sir Thomas Modyford in Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies, 1574–1739, quoted in Cundall, Historic Jamaica, p. 51.

  16 ‘in the Spaniard’s’: The phrase comes from E. Hickeringill, Jamaica Viewed and is quoted in Nuala Zahedieh, ‘The Wickedest City in the World: Port Royal, Commercial Hub of the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean’, in Shepherd, ed., Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom, p. 7.

  17 ‘I know many’: Quoted in Whitfield, Sir Francis Drake, p. 149.

  19 ‘to do and perform’: Morgan’s commission and instructions, BL, Add. MS 11268, fols. 68–72, quoted in Dictionary of National Biography entry, Nuala Zahedieh.

  20 ‘the greatest mart’: Dictionary of National Biography entry, Nuala Zahedieh; quotation from Morgan’s relation, BL, Add. MS 11268, fol. 78.

  21 ‘the buccaneers’ daring’: F. Gonzalez Suarez, Historia General de Republica del Ecuador, quoted in Rodger, The Command of the Ocean, p. 92.

  22 ‘I don’t wonder’: Wright, ed., Lady Nugent’s Journal of her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805, p. 57.

  23 ‘the foundation of’: An African Merchant, A Treatise upon the Trade from Great Britain to Africa, humbly recommended to the Attention of Government, quoted in Hague, William Wilberforce, p. 119.

  24 ‘[a slave named]’: Diary of Thomas Thistlewood, Friday, 30 July 1756, Lincolnshire County Archives.

  25 ‘even the parsons’: J. Latimer, Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, quoted in Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, pp. 60–61.

  26 ‘I have not’: G. Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers, with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade, p. 594, quoted in Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 63.

  26 ‘the mainspring of’: Malachi Postlethwayt quoted in J. F. Ross, ‘The Phases of British Commercial Policy in the Eighteenth Century’, Economica (1925), p. 143: see in Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 51.

  26 popular drama: For example, George Colman the Younger’s Inkle and Yarico, which was set in the West Indies, was the second most popular play of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, after The School for Scandal: Troost, ‘The Rise of the Comic Opera’.

  27 ‘selling, bartering and’: Quoted in Hague, William Wilberforce, p. 118.

  28 ‘what is all this’: Quoted in Walvin, Black Ivory, p. 17.

  29 ‘We seem … to have’: Seeley, The Expansion of England, p. 12.

  30 ‘to possesse ye welth’: Quinn, ed., The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, vol. 1, p. 160.

  30 ‘such needie people’: Ibid.

  31 ‘remote heathen and’: Dictionary of National Biography entry, Rory Rapple.

  31 ‘We are as near’: R. Hakluyt, The principall navigations, voiages and discoveries of the English nation, quoted in Dictionary of National Biography entry, Rory Rapple.

  32 A Welsh member: See Bindoff, ‘The Stuarts and their Style’, p. 196.

  33 ‘England was never’: Letter quoted by Quinn, ‘Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) and the Beginnings of English Colonial Theory’, p. 552.

  34 ‘excessive expence; both’: Ibid.

  34 ‘I cannot see’: Ibid.

  34 ‘cursed, hated, and’: Sidney, A Viceroy’s Vindication?, p. 81.

  35 ‘planting of colonies’: Ellis, Life of William Penn, p. 35.

  35 Colonial settlement promised: Canny, ‘To Establish a Common Wealthe: Captain John Smith as New World Colonist’, p. 221.

  36 ‘all you expect’: Smith, Captain John Smith, p. 261.

  37 ‘for the transplanting’: William Clarke, The Clarke Papers, quoted in Latimer, Buccaneers of the Caribbean, p. 101.

  37 ‘The seat of Empire’: Edmund Waller, ‘A Panegyric to my Lord Protector’, quoted in Armitage, ‘The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Languages of Empire’, p. 532.

  37 the title of emperor: ‘Oliverus Maximus, Insularum Britannicarum Imperator Augustus’, according to the rumour. The diary of Ralph Josselin 1616–1684 and Calendar of Clarendon State Papers, vol. II: 1649–1654, both quoted in Armitage, ‘The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Languages of Empire’, p. 532

  Chapter Two

  40 ‘for to the northward’: W. Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World, quoted in Marshall, ‘Empire and Opportunity in Britain, 1763–75: The Prothero Lecture 6 July 1994’, p. 112.

  42 ‘If Russia declares’: Quoted in Kaplan, Russian Overseas Commerce with Great Britain during the Reign of Catherine II, p. 130.

  42 ‘as he would’: Nathaniel William Wraxall, Historical Memoires of my own Time, quoted in Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles, p. 55.

  42 ‘There is not a ray’: William Cobbett, Parliamentary History of England, vol. XXII, quoted in Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat, p. 663.

  42 ‘Everything human … has’: Newcastle Chronicle, 19 August 1786, quoted in Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat, p. 665.

  43 ‘Tho’ we have not’: John Andrews, An Essay on Republican Principles, and on the Inconveniences of a Commonwealth in a Large Country and Nation, quoted in Gould, The Persistence of Empire, p. 209.

  44 ‘together with all’: Quoted in Keneally, Australians, p. 31.

  44 ‘in the name’: Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery, vol. I: The Voyage of the Endeavour, 1768–1771, pp. 387–8.

  47 ‘To check the petulance’: Quoted in Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook, p. 150.

  47 ‘obligd to Plow’: Quoted in Fara, Sex, Botany and Empire, p. 104.

  48 ‘redound greatly to’: Secret Instructions to Captain Cook, 30 June 1768, printed in Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook, p. 148.

  48 ‘the countrey … resembled’: Joseph Banks, Endeavour Journal 2 (Sydney, 1962), quoted in Fara, Sex, Botany and Empire, p. 90.

  50 ‘the door of the seas’: Quoted in Fry, The Scottish Empire, p. 27.

  52 ‘for all the East’: Quoted in MacKenzie, ‘Essay and Reflection: On Scotland and the Empire’, p. 715.

  52 ‘cornchest … where we’: Quoted in ibid., p. 721.

  52 ‘as long as he’: Quoted in ibid., p. 718.

  53 ‘We want more Scots’: Quoted in ibid., p. 725.

  Chapter Three

  54 ‘is stronger, fighting’: Quoted in Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat, p. 515.

  58 ‘What is England’: Quoted in James, Raj, pp. 47–8.

  59 ‘greater resemblance to’: Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793 and 1794, p. 102.

  61 ‘and even were’: Hanes and Sanello, The Opium Wars, p. 19.

  61 ‘tyranny of a’: Quoted in Barrow, Some Account of Public Life and a Selection from the Unpublished Writings of the Earl of Macartney, vol. II, p. 441.

  61 ate the fleas: Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793 and 1794, p. 123.

  61 ‘there is n
ot’: Barrow, Travels in China, p. 333.

  61 ‘the lordly grocers’: [Anonymous], ‘Observations on the Trade with China, London 1822’, p. 458.

  62 ‘not a necessity’: Hanes and Sanello, The Opium Wars, p. 20.

  63 ‘the safest and most’: Both quoted in Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, p. 28.

  64 ‘a war more unjust’: Hanes and Sanello, The Opium Wars, p. 79.

  65 ‘Multitudes of our’: Ibid., p. 153.

  65 ‘which could never’: The Times, 3 December 1842.

  66 ‘We have as much’: Quoted in Kiernan, British Diplomacy in China, p. 251.

  66 ‘not an amiable’: Hochschild, Bury the Chains, p. 85.

  67 ‘to the next insurrection’: Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol. IV, p. 54.

  67 ‘it was time’: Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament, vol. 1, p. 210.

  67 ‘There was no town’: Quoted in Hochschild, Bury the Chains, p. 193.

  67 ‘either fanatics or’: Quoted in Fryer, Staying Power, p. 101.

  67 ‘the blood-sweetened beverage’: ‘Poems Concerning the Slave Trade’, Sonnet III, Southey, The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, vol. I, p. 66.

  67 ‘as guilty of’: The Star, Monday, 26 December 1791, quoted in Murphy, Cox’s Fragmenta, p. 36.

  68 ‘The people of’: Romilly, The Speeches of Sir Samuel Romilly in the House of Commons, vol. I, p. 9.

  68 ‘how much more’: Ibid., pp. 30–31.

  Chapter Four

  70 ‘a British subject’: Hansard, 3rd series, vol. 112, col. 44, 25 June 1850.

  71 ‘There is so much’: Rosamund Lawrence, quoted in MacMillan, Women of the Raj, pp. 18–19.

  72 ‘Let this be’: Letter from Sir Thomas Roe to the East India Company, 24 November 1616, in Foster, ed., The Embassy of Sir Thomas, quoted in Judd, The Lion and the Tiger, p. 15.

  72 ‘the unparalleled jewel’: Letter to Sir Stephen Evance, John Dolben and Robert Pitt, printed in Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of J.B. Fortescue, preserved at Dropmore, vol. I, p. 32.

  75 Nothing in history: Macaulay, ‘Lord Clive’, in Critical and Historical Essays, vol. III, p. 100.

  75 ‘twenty-three ghastly figures’: Ibid.

  75 ‘the lounging place’: Calcutta Old and New, quoted in Mukherjee, ‘Myth of Empire – The story about the Black Hole of Calcutta refuses to die’.

  76 ‘proclaimed to the heavens’: Rabindranath Tagore, ‘On the monument to the victims of the Black Hole massacre’, quoted in Macfarlane, The Black Hole, or the Makings of a Legend, p. 207.

  77 ‘both in their garb’: Quoted in Harvey, Clive, p. 92.

  77 ‘five hundred [enemy]’: Quoted in ibid., p. 219.

  77 ‘disguised in a’: Jasanoff, Edge of Empire, p. 30.

  78 ‘In the field’: Macaulay, Macaulay’s Essays on Clive and Hastings, p. 77.

  79 ‘the living were’: Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal, vol. I, p. 26.

  79 ‘We have had’: Quoted in Harvey, Clive, p. 357.

  79 ‘an opulent city’: Speech made to a select committee of the House of Commons, March 1773, quoted in Macaulay, ‘Lord Clive’, reprinted in Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, p. 368.

  80 ‘Lord Clive is himself’: Paine, The Political and Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Paine, vol. II, p. 38.

  81 ‘I have saved’: Quoted in Gardner, The East India Company, p. 123.

  81 ‘Were we to be’: Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. V, pp. 402–3.

  82 ‘there were gathered’: Thomas Babington Macaulay, ‘Warren Hastings’, reprinted in Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, p. 455.

  82 ‘brought before you’: Edmund Burke, quoted in Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, p. 89.

  83 ‘The wives of’: Quoted in ibid., pp. 110–11.

  83 ‘the most culpable’: Bryan, The World’s Famous Orations, vol. VI, p. 50, n. 1.

  83 ‘the condemnation we’: ‘At the Trial of William Hastings’, 1788, printed in Sheridan, The Dramatic Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, p. 119.

  84 ‘our fellow subjects’: Quoted in Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, p. 302.

  85 ‘a detestable expedient’: Hansard, 1st series, vol. 26, col. 856, 22 June 1813.

  85 ‘Our religion is’: Ibid., cols. 864–5.

  85 ‘infused into oriental’: Quoted in Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck, p. 19.

  86 ‘It is your custom’: Lieven, Pakistan, p. 359.

  89 ‘I was a good’: Quoted in Wagner, The Great Fear of 1857, p. 120.

  90 ‘Surely we are’: Letter to Sir Henry Lawrence, 24 June 1857, printed in Edwardes and Merivale, Life of Sir Henry Lawrence, p. 596.

  90 ‘Here a round’: Quoted in Rees, A Personal Narrative of the Siege at Lucknow, p. 357.

  90 ‘The old – battered’: Amy Horne, quoted in Ward, Our Bones are Scattered, p. 315.

  92 ‘the Epic of’: Chaudhuri, English Historical Writings on the Indian Mutiny, p. 104.

  92 ‘Not Rome, not’: Russell, My Diary in India, vol. I, p. 257.

  92 ‘would surprise visitors’: Kincaid, British Social Life in India, p. 116.

  93 ‘It is impossible’: Harris, A Lady’s Diary of the Siege of Lucknow, Written for the Perusal of Friends at Home, various extracts, pp. 1–86.

  95 ‘The scene was’: Hibbert, The Great Mutiny, p. 341.

  95 ‘Let us propose’: Ibid., p. 293.

  96 ‘every tree and’: Quoted in Morris, Heaven’s Command, p. 244.

  96 ‘I wish I were’: Charles Dickens to Angela Burdett-Coutts, letter reprinted in Dickens, The Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. VIII, p. 459.

  96 ‘Our endeavour to’: Quoted in Dictionary of National Biography entry.

  97 ‘by the time’: Quoted in Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, p. 2.

  Chapter Five

  99 ‘no coyness, no’: Quoted in Hibbert, Africa Explored, p. 36.

  99 considered him a ‘brute’: Quoted in Reid, Traveller Extraordinary, p. 296.

  99 ‘not a distinct’: Quoted in Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol. III, p. 209.

  101 ‘As the prime’: Part of a minute on Burton, written by Lord Salisbury to his Foreign Office officials in the Consular Department, quoted in Godsall, The Tangled Web, p. xxv.

  102 ‘like a prize-fighter’: The comment was made by Frank Harris. See Harris, Contemporary Portraits, p. 180.

  102 ‘look of unspeakable’: Quoted in Moorehead, The White Nile, p. 20.

  102 ‘he was not’: Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. I, pp. xiv–xv.

  105 ‘We had scarcely’: Ibid., vol. II, p. 204.

  105 ‘After a few’: Ibid., p. 209.

  105 ‘used to snub’: Quoted in Moorehead, The White Nile, p. 38.

  106 ‘they ought to’: Quoted in ibid., p. 57.

  106 ‘It was a sight’: Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile, pp. 466–7.

  107 ‘Speke appeared the’: ‘Explorations in Africa’, New York Times, 2 July 1866.

  107 ‘By God, he’s’: Quoted in Moorehead, The White Nile, p. 75.

  108 ‘the only complete’: Quoted in MacKenzie, Popular Imperialism and the Military, p. 16.

  108 ‘I am not’: Quoted in Riffenburgh, The Myth of the Explorer, p. 39.

  110 ‘For God’s sake’: Robert Falcon Scott journal, Thursday 29 March, 1912, quoted in Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition, p. 432.

  111 ‘In his mind’s eye’: The Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park – A Handbook for Visitors, quoted in Jones, ‘The Sight of Creatures Strange to our Clime: London Zoo and the Consumption of the Exotic’, p. 7.

  112 ‘The long lines’: Illustrated London News, 8 June 1850, quoted in Jones, ‘The Sight of Creatures Strange to our Clime: London Zoo and the Consumption of the Exotic’, p. 14.

  Chapter Six

  114 ‘introductions by a’: Smith, Through Unknown African Continents, pp. 363–4.


  114 ‘It is religion’: Smith, ‘Christian Missions, Especially in the British Empire’, p. 542.

  114 12,000 British missionaries: Missionary societies spent £2 million per year: see Dr Robert Carr, ‘The Evangelical Empire: Christianity’s Contribution to Victorian Colonial Expansion’, www.britishempire.co.uk.

  114 ‘Confound all these’: Quoted in Pakenham, Out in the Noonday Sun, p. 102.

  114 ‘They spread the’: Oliver, Sir Harry Johnston and the Scramble for Africa, p. 182.

  114 ‘First the missionary’: Quoted in Pakenham, Out in the Noonday Sun, p. 94.

  116 ‘by victories of’: Ogilvie, Our Empire’s Debt to Missions, p. 5.

  116 ‘when excited, a’: George Seaver, David Livingstone: His Life and Letters, quoted in Dictionary of National Biography entry.

  117 ‘Dr L is out’: Ibid.

  117 ‘I am terribly’: ‘David Livingstone’s last letters deciphered’, Guardian, 20 July 2010.

  118 ‘his death has’: British Quarterly Review 61 (1875) p. 397.

  118 ‘the flag which’: E. Grose Hodge, Record, 6 May 1910, quoted in D. W. Bebbington, ‘Atonement, Sin and Empire, 1880–1914’, in Porter, ed., The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, p. 19.

  118 ‘the clergy are’: Montgomery, Foreign Missions, pp. 1–2.

  119 ‘pathetic … to see’: Griff Jones, Britain and Nyasaland, quoted in Pakenham, Out in the Noonday Sun, p. 104.

  119 ‘I am better’: John Hine MSS, 7–9 October 1910, quoted in Pakenham, Out in the Noonday Sun, pp. 109–10.

  120 ‘I can think’: Quoted in Perham, Lugard, p. 104.

  120 ‘To give peace’: Churchill, The River War, vol. I, pp. 18–19.