Lesson 5: The Burdens of Empire
In this leason you will read how island Britain was stretched too thin, how its empire was too unwieldy and eventually came to demand independence, a process begun at home, in troubled Ireland, the first and the last colony of Britain's empire.
An Empire Stretched Thin
Britain's rise to a world power meant that she found interests everywhere. Not only was she now head of the self-governing colonies, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand; but also the vast Empire of India; and a veritable host of dependent territories all over the world's oceans. Most of these had been acquired somehow to protect the merchants and traders of England, or areas in which their missionaries and explorers had established their outposts.
Perhaps overly influenced by such men of zeal, Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister in l874 with the idea of expanding the Empire and taking up the "White Man's Burden" (as Rudyard Kipling described it. Disraeli intended to create trade and bring profit, but also to spread British ideas of democracy and law, as well as the Christian (and Protestant) religion.
The Suez Canal, built by the French, opened in l869. It offered a 5,000 miles shortcut from Britain to India and the east, and to Australia and New Zealand. Disraeli persuaded his government to buy the Khedive of Egypt's majority shares with a loan from the Rothschild banking house.
Under Arabi Pasha, a revolt ensued against foreign domination, and the canal was endangered. An expedition was sent out from Britain under Sir Garnet Wolseley who smashed the forces of Arabi at Tel-el-Kebir, and Egypt became a British protectorate. It remained so for the next seventy-four years. Britain's control of Egypt then got it involved in the war against the Mahdi, preaching a holy war in the Sudan (a dependency of Egypt), and the defeat of General Gordon at Khartoum. At the Battle of Omderman, Kitchener retook Khartoum for Britain.
When the expansion of Russian power in the Near and Middle East in the l820's alarmed the East India Company, Britain also became involved in Afghanistan, that graveyard of so many foreign troops. An attempt by the British government to control the mountainous land in l839 by placing a pretender on the Afghan throne proved a complete disaster: a British army was destroyed, the puppet ruler assassinated, and the British envoys murdered.
To control the northwest approaches to India, another British invasion against the legitimate ruler (considered too friendly to Russia) took place in l880 under Gladstone's government.
The murder of the British Resident in Kabul brought another British force to remedy the situation under General Roberts. It managed to extricate itself after dealing with rival claimants to the throne. The Northwest Frontier between the Punjab and Afghanistan was finally drawn up in l90l under the British viceroy in India, Lord Curzon.
