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- Author: Zoë Laidlaw x
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The fascination with imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating, and the 'Studies in Imperialism' series continues to lead the way in encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the field. This book makes a significant contribution to the study of historical networking. While the book covers the thirty years after Waterloo, it is particularly concerned with changes to colonial governance in the 1830s. In pursuing these themes, the book engages with broad questions about British imperialism in the early nineteenth century. It provides the opportunity to bring together new imperial and British historiography, to examine the somewhat neglected area of colonial governance, where 'governance' implies a concern with processes of government and administration. The first part of the book introduces, and then dissects, some of the networks of patronage and information which were critical to colonial governance. It examines changes in Colonial Office organisation and policies between 1815 and 1836. The second part deals with the development, implementation and effects of networks of personal communications in New South Wales and the Cape Colony up to 1845. The private correspondence of governors with their immediate subordinates within the colonies demonstrates the continual assessment and re-assessment of metropolitan politics, imperial policies, and the reception of colonial lobbyists. The final part of the book focuses on Britain, considering the impact of a changing information order on colonial governance, and examines how colonial and metropolitan concerns converged and cross-fertilised.
Following emancipation in 1833 there was an increasing divergence in British colonial policy and thinking about the empire between, on the one hand, the treatment of those freed from enslavement and the conditions of migrant non-European indentured labour and on the other aboriginal peoples. As white settler societies expanded, aboriginal peoples were increasingly dispossessed, murdered and systematically disadvantaged. In this chapter, Zoë Laidlaw examines the ramifications of this disjuncture in the work of both organisations like the Aborigines Protection Society and in men like Earl Grey, one of the key imperial politicians of the age. The disjuncture is also apparent in much work in imperial history. In order to overcome this it is argued that bringing together the threads of connections between different imperial sites we can better understand the nature of the imperial state and bring into the same framework indigenous dispossession and slavery and labour exploitation.
This chapter examines the change in the Colonial Office's approach to the task of colonial governance at the end of the 1830s. It demonstrates that the challenges of controlling an ever-expanding empire, when combined with personal politics, and metropolitan intellectual movements, forced the Colonial Office to reassess the means by which imperial influence was exerted. Demands for colonial information emerged during metropolitan debates about corruption in the immediate post-war period. The Board of Trade was the first government department to recognise that a more reliable way of collecting and collating information about Britain was needed. Given the Treasury's existing interest in a pan-imperial budget, it was perhaps surprising that the Colonial Office emerged as the model for the collection of colonial information. The Colonial Office's instructions to colonial governors regarding both appointments and information in the late 1830s and early 1840s demonstrate the metropolitan concern for uniformity and central control.
This chapter provides an overview the key themes discussed in the previous chapters of this book. The book considers how new visual and statistical conceptualisations of empire took hold in the Colonial Office really affected colonial governance. Through its examination of early nineteenth-century networks of personal connection, the book has suggested one way in which the British colonial experience, and the operation of imperial and colonial rule, could be assessed more profitably. The transition to greater colonial self-government changed the status of governors too. While many of the policies implemented in the late 1830s and early 1840s were ultimately unsuccessful, the way in which Britain's empire was imagined and construed was forever altered. The information revolution gave the imperial government a new language of statistics and expertise with which to meet both metropolitan criticism and colonial crises.
Edward Macarthur, like all the colonial lobbyists and officials, regarded metropolitan influence as critical for colonial concerns. This chapter considers lobbyists campaigning on the Cape Colony or New South Wales, demonstrating that lobbyists who dealt with quite different issues nevertheless shared an understanding of colonial power and how it might be manipulated. As the networks of colonial lobbyists overlapped one another, the chapter looks first at the activities of those lobbying on New South Wales, and then at those associated with the Cape Colony. It focuses on the lobbying of Exclusives and Emancipists before 1843 as seen through their competing networks. The chapter traces the Macarthurs' reflections on the nature and legitimacy of political lobbying over the next fifteen years. Aside from their different focuses and networks, John Philip and Thomas Fowell Buxton's tactics, perceptions of the use of information, and of metropolitan society analysed by their lobbying experiences.
This chapter examines the motivations, mechanisms and effects of private correspondence between colonial officials and the metropolitan government. Unofficial correspondence between colonial civil servants and members of the metropolitan Colonial Office was one of the most important strands in the web that constituted colonial governance. Colonial officials and their families extended and consolidated their networks of metropolitan contacts outside the Colonial Office. The Peninsular network was particularly important when it came to colonial officials' hopes of military advancement or reward for military services. Colonial officials' use of private and unofficial channels to communicate with Britain could be damaging in the colony itself. The Colonial officials no longer held their offices 'during good behaviour', but could be replaced 'as often as any sufficient motives of public policy', including a change of governor, made it expedient.
This chapter examines more closely governors' use of personal envoys during the 1830s, when pressure from colonial lobbyists and the Colonial Office's changing attitude to unofficial correspondence made attention to good communications particularly vital. Although many governors had such representatives, this discussion draws primarily on two: Richard Bourke, governor of New South Wales; and Benjamin D'Urban, governor of the Cape Colony. The experiences of Governors Bourke and D'Urban demonstrate the importance of personal communications and metropolitan representatives to colonial governance, especially in the era before self-government. They attempted to utilise their metropolitan connections to affect government policy; both used unofficial communications and personal agents, who not only carried despatches, but lobbied the Colonial Office and other bodies and individuals. The political climate of the later 1830s suited Bourke; while D'Urban's reliance on the Peninsular network exposed him as being on the wrong side of the political spectrum for the times.
Networks of personal connections were of critical importance to colonial governance in the early nineteenth century. The networks which had most influence in colonial governance transmitted information, position and power via well-developed links to high-profile individuals in Britain, and particularly London. Trans-colonial networks encouraged the transmission of ideas, and experience, through the empire. While there were important bonds between military veterans and personnel more broadly, the Peninsular network was particularly strong in the period 1815 to 1845. More than either the peninsular or the scientific networks, the broadly defined 'humanitarian' or 'philanthropic' network tended to operate outside metropolitan and colonial government. The bonds between members of the scientific network were relatively loose, except where they involved patronage. Imperial networks could not function without their colonial members, who provided information and local patronage; but their links to Britain were critical.
This chapter examines the response of the metropolitan government to the challenges posed by the British Empire, and specifically to New South Wales and the Cape Colony, between 1815 and 1836. It emphasises the Colonial Office's concern simultaneously to control the governors of crown colonies, to limit their power, while maintaining their authority. The Colonial Office's response to the contemporary enthusiasm for good government can be seen in a number of projects mooted or implemented in the 1820s and early 1830s. Even in the 1830s, when the great reforming events encouraged public and parliamentary scrutiny of colonial affairs at unprecedented level, their treatment by the Colonial Office was often fragmented and inconsistent. The crisis in the Colonial Office during late 1835 would largely destroy the delicate, but critical, networks of communication on which crown colony governance relied, without leaving an obvious alternative.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book highlights the perceived and actual importance of the metropole to colonial governance before 1845, and examines changes in the influence of metropolitan and colonial impulses and concerns. It draws on evidence from across the British Empire, three sites, Britain, the Cape Colony and New South Wales, are of particular importance. The book examines the operations of colonial rule in the settler colonies before self-government, an examination which entails the close consideration of both metropolitan and colonial spheres, and a focus on the imperial networks which connected them. It focuses on governors, considering the particularly awkward place they occupied as mediators between the metropolitan government and their colonial subjects. The book also examines the much larger pool of colonial officials who struggled to gain security and execute their duties far from home.