Gentlemanly Imperialism and the British Empire after 1945

  • Gerold Krozewski
Chapter

Abstract

Most of the attention on British Imperialism1 has justifiably focused on its treatment of the nineteenth century. Given the breadth and scope of the study, the authors had to condense the period of the postwar empire onto a few pages.2 As for the period after 1945 as a whole, the original two-volume edition has found some wider resonance among writers onto British political and current affairs,3 and has been acknowledged in a survey essay of the City of London.4 From among those isolated critical essays of the volumes extending into the post-1945 period, one has dealt with a region neglected in the study, namely Malaya,5 while another has approached the argument from the perspective of Britain’s economic performance.6 Both have therefore not engaged with the argument in its overall political dimension of linking society, politics and policy in the context of Britain’s overseas and imperial relations.

Keywords

Late Nineteenth Century Imperial Relation Financial Relationship British State Global History 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (London, Longman, 2nd edition 2001).Google Scholar
  2. The original edition appeared in two volumes: P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1888–1914 [vol. 1] and British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914–1990 [vol. 2] (London, Longman, 1993). References below are to the second (one-volume) edition, which has been augmented with a new foreword and afterword but not been revised.Google Scholar
  3. 3.
    Will Hutton, The State We’re In (London, Jonathan Cape, 1995).Google Scholar
  4. 4.
    Paul Thompson, ‘The Pyrrhic Victory of Gentlemanly Capitalism: the Financial Elite of the City of London, 1945–90’, Journal of Contemporary History, 32 (3), 1997, pp. 284–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. 5.
    Nicholas White, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and Empire in the Twentieth Century: the Forgotten Case of Malaya’, in Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: the New Debate on Empire, edited by Raymond E. Dumett (London, Longman, 1999), 175–95.Google Scholar
  6. 7.
    ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’ has importantly also been invoked in studies of the City of London. For extensive recent references on the post-1945 period from this angle, see Paul Thompson, ‘The Pyrrhic Victory of Gentlemanly Capitalism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 32 (3), 1997, 283–304, and 32 (4), 1997, 427–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. 8.
    Gerold Krozewski, ‘Rethinking British Imperialism’, Journal of European Economic History, 23, 3 (1994), 619–30.Google Scholar
  8. 9.
    Gerold Krozewski, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–1958 (Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave, 2001 (now Palgrave Macmillan)).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. 12.
    See the essay by Ronald Robinson and Jack Gallagher, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, VI (1953), 1–15, which has attracted a considerable following among an increasingly self-contained group of imperial historians.Google Scholar
  10. 16.
    See, for example, John Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation: the Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1988 (now Palgrave Macmillan)), pp. 211–14, 222–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. 22.
    See, for example, Joseph Schumpeter, ‘The Sociology of Imperialism’, in Joseph A. Schumpeter: the Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, edited by Richard Swedberg (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991);Google Scholar
  12. Max Weber, Economy and Society (New York, Bedminster Press, 1968);Google Scholar
  13. C. Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci and the State (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1978).Google Scholar
  14. 23.
    See, for example, B. Badie and P. Birnbaum, The Sociology of the State (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
  15. 25.
    For an incisive argument about the Chamberlain period, see E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism. The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London, Routledge, 1995), esp. chs 2 and 7.Google Scholar
  16. 27.
    See, for example, Peter Weiler, Ernest Bevin (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993), ch. 1.Google Scholar
  17. 28.
    See the well-known debates regarding Skocpol’s arguments, notably P.R. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, CUP, 1985);Google Scholar
  18. and for an assessment of the theoretical debates, Bob Jessop, State Theory. Putting Capitalist States in Their Place (Oxford, Polity Press, 1990), ch. 10.Google Scholar
  19. 31.
    See, for example, B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick, ‘An Institutional Perspective of British Decline’, in The Decline of the British Economy, edited by B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick (Oxford, OUP, 1986), 1–17.Google Scholar
  20. 32.
    For a recent comparative study, see R.L. Tignor, Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire: State and Business in Decolonizing Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, 1945–1963 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
  21. 33.
    See B. Badie and P. Birnbaum, The Sociology of the State, part 3, ch. 2; Zara Steiner, ‘Decision-making in American and British Foreign Policy: an Open and Shut Case’, Review of International Studies, 13 (1987), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. 36.
    Compare Susan Strange, States and Markets: an Introduction to International Political Economy (London, Pinter, 1988), ch. 2 and part III (esp. ch. 5, pp. 88–105),Google Scholar
  23. with A.G. Hopkins, ‘Informal Empire in Argentina: an Alternative View’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 26, 4 (1994), 469–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Compare also the discussion of the definition of imperialism in D.C.M. Platt, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 21 (1968), 296–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. 38.
    For this argument, see B.J. Cohen, The Geography of Money (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
  26. 39.
    The term has been invoked in research on the sterling Commonwealth: G. Zappalà, ‘The Decline of Economic Complementarity: Australia and the Sterling Area’, Australian Economic History Review, 34, 1 (1994), 5–21.Google Scholar
  27. 42.
    The key study of the escudo system is João Estêvão, Moeda e sistema monetário colonial [Money and the Colonial Monetary System] (Lisbon, Escher, 1991).Google Scholar

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© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2002

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  • Gerold Krozewski

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