Dr Damian P. O'connor

Imperial Defence and the Commitment to Empire 1860-1886 Dr Damian P. O'connor

Knitting together the empire was a class of men, a body of opinion, a ?defence community? of military, naval and colonial officials drawn together by a common belief that the empire was in such a poor state of defence as to present a standing temptation to an enemy. They also limited confidence in the ability of a post-1867 democracy to conduct an effective defence, foreign or imperial policy. The roots of these beliefs lay in their common experience in the empire, in war and in the several defence investigations and war scares that occurred between the Crimean War and the Balkan Crisis of 1878. These men demanded and got a much greater input into policy making in this period than has been hitherto recognized. Indeed, at crucial times in this period, the defence community, whose most visible members were Bartle Frere and Lord Lytton, conducted policy in defiance of the wishes of their legitimate masters. What follows, therefore, is an investigation into the idea that the expansion of empire in the period 1874-1886 was powered more by fears for its security than by a desire for gain or a mission to do good. As Gallagher and Robinson argued, there was a fixation in the official mind over the security of the routes to India and it was crisis in Egypt that dragged Britain into African empire as a result. This book argues that only this can explain the paradox that the Liberal government of 1880-86, elected on an anti-imperial platform, expanded the empire more than the Conservative government 1874-80, which stood on a pro-imperial platform.