ANTIQUES

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2001

There [in India] laws exist not, and he who rules, must rule the people by his will. If his will be evil, the people will be far more miserable than it is possible for any people to be...but if his will be good as well as strong, happy are the people...for a benevolent despotism is the best of all governments.

Herbert B. Edwardes, A Year on the Punjab Frontier, 1848-49, 1851

At the end of 1600, on the eve of the new year, Queen Elizabeth I signed the charter of the East India Company. The 125 London merchants who subscribed [pound]72,000 had ostensibly formed a joint-stock company "for the honour of this our realm." In fact the profitable spice trade, monopolized by the Dutch, was the reason for the establishment of the company.

The company was authorized by successive British governments to make wars, administer justice, issue currency, and exercise virtual sovereignty over India through its governors in Calcutta and court of directors in London. Within two centuries of its founding, the East India Company had the most powerful army in India and governed, directly or indirectly, Bengal, most of the upper Ganges basin, and extensive sections of eastern and southern India. The subcontinent became a base from which Britain came to dominate Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. The British-Indian army protected British interests and enforced its will from the Red Sea to the Malay Peninsula.

With the conquest and settlement of new territory in widely scattered parts of the world, British trade spread everywhere. Canadian wheat and timber, Australian wool, Indian cotton, jute, and tea, and West Indian sugar were produced chiefly for the British market. A large proportion of the imports from the colonies were reexported to the Continent. The British became the main middlemen between tropical producers and European consumers.

In 1853 Henry, Earl Grey, a politician involved deeply in colonial matters, stated that "the authority of the British Crown is at this moment the most powerful instrument under Providence, of maintaining peace and order in many extensive regions of the earth, and thereby assists in diffusing amongst millions of the human race, the blessings of Christianity and civilisation." This attitude was so pervasive that for many Britons the possession of an empire was an inseparable part of their sense of Britishness. In the latter half of the nineteenth century a generation of teachers, clergymen, poets, journalists, and writers of boys' fiction concentrated on popularizing the cult of empire. Even the nursery was not closed to imperialism. An ABC for Baby Patriots, published in 1899, included the self-congratulatory jingle:

C is for Colonies

Rightly we boast,

That of all the great nations

Great Britain has the most.

Wendell Garrett