Reflecting on the British World

Introduction

Jatinder Mann and Bart Zielinski

Abstract:

This book is an acknowledgement and celebration of Professor Carl Bridge’s key contributions to the British World approach to history. His pioneering work was first produced in several co-authored essays which appeared in 2003. Much of this grew out of a series of conferences held worldwide starting in London, United Kingdom, in 1999 and culminating in Bristol in 2007. Scores of articles and book chapters have been produced—too numerous to mention here. At its nucleus is Professor Bridge, who has encouraged a newer and younger generation of scholars—some in this volume—to continue investigating the British World as a theoretical construct in the fields of British imperial and settler colonial history, with a particular focus on Australia.

This book is an acknowledgement and celebration of Professor Carl Bridge’s key contributions to the British World approach to history. His pioneering work was first produced in several co-authored essays which appeared in 2003.¹ Much of this grew out of a series of conferences held worldwide starting in London, United Kingdom (UK), in 1999 and culminating in Bristol in 2007. Scores of articles and book chapters have been produced—too numerous to mention here. At its nucleus is Professor Bridge, who has encouraged a newer and younger generation of scholars—some in this volume—to continue investigating the British World as a theoretical construct in the fields of British imperial and colonial settler history, with a particular focus on Australia.

The origins of scholarship on the history of the British World can be traced to a series of articles by Canadian historian Douglas Cole in the early 1970s, “Canada’s ‘Nationalistic’ Imperialists,” “‘The Crimson Thread of Kinship’” and “The Problem of ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Imperialism’ in British Settlement Colonies.”² In Aotearoa New Zealand, J. G. A. Pocock asked us to reconsider the history of “neo-Britains” within an imperial framework.³ This was soon followed by Australian historian Neville Meaney’s The Search for Security in the Pacific, 1901–14.⁴ Canadian historian Phillip Buckner raised the subject in 1992 with his article “Whatever Happened to the British Empire?”⁵ Meaney subsequently published a seminal article on the subject entitled “Britishness and Australian Identity.”⁶ Meaney’s work on the subject influenced some of his Ph.D. students, colloquially known as the “Meaney School”. We can see this influence in Stuart Ward’s Australia and the British Embrace and James Curran’s The Power of Speech.⁷⁸

A distinct field of British World studies was fully launched through a series of conferences (1998–2007), with the first of the resulting edited volumes, titled The British World, co-edited by Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich.⁹ This tapped into aspects of globalisation as the methodological basis of studying the British World, particularly its emphasis on networks and a shift away from “top-down” history. The British “World” was formed around the cultural identity of “Britishness”, setting it apart from some of the existing “Worlds” in global history, like the “Atlantic World”, which was grounded by a geographical entity. From here, the field developed rapidly. Phillip Buckner and Carl Bridge published an article on “Reinventing the British World.”¹⁰ Buckner and R. Douglas Francis co- edited a ground-breaking collection entitled Rediscovering the British World¹¹ in 2006, and another collection on Canada and the British World¹² that same year. Jose E. Igartua built on Buckner’s work with his The Other Quiet Revolution.¹³ Curran and Ward co-authored The Unknown Nation,¹⁴ expanding upon individual monographs. Jatinder Mann, inspired by Buckner and Francis’ work as well as also being a member of the “Meaney School” (as Meaney’s last Ph.D. student), published The Search for a New National Identity.¹⁵ In Aotearoa New Zealand, Cole, Meaney, and Buckner’s work inspired James Belich’s Paradise Reforged, repositioning Aotearoa New Zealand’s history in its imperial context.¹⁶ Felicity Barnes, a Ph.D. student of Belich’s, in turn went on to publish a book based on her doctoral thesis, New Zealand’s London, drawing connections between the colony and its metropolis.¹⁷ In short, after the publication of Buckner and Francis’ Rediscovering the British World, a new generation of scholars has explored novel dimensions of the history of the British World.¹⁸¹⁹

Considering Carl Bridge’s work on the First World War,²⁰ this edited collection unsurprisingly features several chapters that focus on this (Harper, Macleod, Fedorowich, Farrimond, and Zielinski). The other chapters cover a diverse range of subjects, including collaboration and the British World (Attard), commerce, sentiment, and the British World (Potter), Australian politics and the British World (Bongiorno), the demise of Britishness and the rise of multiculturalism in Australia (Mann), and Patrick White and Adelaide (Pender).

Going into more detail of the individual chapters included in this edited collection, according to Bernard Attard in his chapter in a seminal essay, Bridge and Fedorowich conceived the British World in terms of the intricate and overlapping networks created by migration and settlement. This transnational co-ethnic community achieved its greatest strength in the generations immediately before the First World War and, contrary to Ronald Robinson’s influential argument about collaboration, was “emphatically about we” rather than “us and them”. This chapter outlines a model of collaboration for the British World through a re-reading of Robinson himself as well as his co-authored work with John Gallagher, before showing how Robinsonian collaboration may have functioned in practice in a case study of political lobbying by pastoralists and financiers in Queensland from the 1880s to the early twentieth century. The chapter thus affirms the strengths and limits of Bridge and Fedorowich’s original thesis as already identified by other scholars.

Simon Potter’s chapter maintains that Winston Churchill began his parliamentary career as a Unionist MP in 1900, on the eve of one of the most significant departures in twentieth-century British political history. In May 1903 the Unionist Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain launched the tariff reform campaign, an initiative that was to reveal deep divisions within the Unionist party, effectively paralysing it until the outbreak of the First World War. Chamberlain sought to harness the resources of what were perceived to be the economic and demographic powerhouses of the Edwardian empire, the colonies of white settlement or “Dominions”, by creating what would have been a tariff-protected British World. Churchill left the Unionist party in 1904 and crossed the floor to join the Liberals. In 1905 he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. In this capacity he helped make the case for Liberal opposition to tariff protectionism, arguing that the link with the British World was one of sentiment, not commerce. This brought him into contact with the New South Wales Senator Edward Pulsford, an advocate of free trade. It also led Churchill into direct and open conflict with the Australian Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin, a vocal supporter of imperial preference. This chapter explores the transnational alliances and political antagonisms that resulted, linking together British and Australian politics and culminating in public disagreement at the 1907 Colonial Conference. It presents a case study in the entangled history of imperial politics in the Edwardian British World.

Glyn Harper argues in his chapter that Aotearoa New Zealand’s military contribution to the First World War is generally accepted as being a massive effort for such a small country. Too often missing from the Aotearoa New Zealand record of service are the more than twelve thousand New Zealanders who fought in the First World War while serving in the military forces of other nations. This chapter focuses on the experience of New Zealanders who served in various units of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in 1914. For a small country, the number is substantial, and it set the pattern for what followed after 1914. The chapter reveals that New Zealanders were actively involved in the First World War from its earliest days. They performed in a variety of roles, and many served with or alongside the Old Contemptibles of 1914. The chapter analyses the experience of those New Zealanders who served in the BEF in 1914, how this happened, and their motives for doing so. It is argued that the fact, that men and women could serve almost anywhere and with military forces other than those of their homeland clearly demonstrates how interconnected the British Empire and its Dominions were in the early twentieth century. In addition, it also reveals what a truly global struggle the First World War was. The chapter concludes with the point that, paradoxically, an emerging Aotearoa New Zealand national identity was considerably strengthened by the experiences of those who served in the BEF.

Jenny Macleod in her chapter asserts that a key concern in Carl Bridge’s work has been to explore the relationship between the Dominions and the British Empire, frequently drawing comparisons through the lens of wartime. Through a series of articles, conferences and an edited book exploring the British World, Professor Bridge championed a fresh look at the British diaspora, their culture and identity. The concept of the British World emphasises the transnational flows of people, money, and ideas. Inspired by these themes, this chapter uses the issue of conscription during the First World War to explore the bonds of service inspired by a sense of shared Britishness—and its limits. The implementation of conscription highlighted considerable ethnic tensions within the British Empire. National debates about conscription were marked by comparisons with the contributions being made elsewhere. Famously, Australia rejected conscription through two fractious referenda. Among those who opposed it most vigorously were Irish Australians, whilst proponents of conscription smeared them as disloyal Sinn Fein supporters in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. In Canada, French-Canadians were the most vociferous critics of conscription, but the issue reveals interesting dynamics between the state and the country’s Indigenous peoples, just as it did in Aotearoa New Zealand, ostensibly the most loyal and rapid adopter of conscription. Questions of military service amidst total war thus vividly reveal important patterns of belonging and of disaffection within the British World.