Thread by @Hamiltonianist

#NowReading The Third British Empire by Alfred Zimmern

"…the larger League needed to maintain law and order throughout the world and to provide a secure basis for the economic interdependence which grew up, under the tutelage of British sea power, in the nineteenth century.”

The British Empire of to-day is not the British Empire of 1914. It is something new—how new neither the outside world nor even its own citizens have adequately realized. —Zimmern

The first Empire, taking its rise in the early settlements on this Atlantic coast, a colonial empire of the older type common to Spain, Portugal, France… That Empire was abruptly extinguished or, at least, summarily curtailed by your predecessors in 1776 or thereabouts. —Zimmern

Side by side with its geographical variety consider its racial variety. [The British Empire] includes white men, brown men, yellow men, & black men. Consider its religious variety. It includes Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Parsis, and a large # of primitive pagans

British liberty and British constitutional rights were not the exclusive patrimony and privilege of the inhabitants of Britain and their descendants at home and overseas, but that they rightfully belonged to all those under the British flag who were equal to the responsibilities

What had previously been jus sanguinis, a right of Englishmen as Englishmen, came to be acknowledged as jus soli, a system inherent in the territories under British sovereignty and direction.

Feelings indeed continue to unite; but interests continue stubbornly to divide. If material interest were the decisive factor in the relationship, it would have long since dissolved.

the old skin: the Crown, the Crown’s representatives in the Dominions, the judicial bond, and certain specific limitations of Dominion independence or sovereignty

There is no analogy, and no prospect of assimilation, between the British system and that of the many countries which have retained, in one form or another, powerful traditions of autocratic rule.

The Crown as a bond of empire is, in the famous phrase of Bismarck, simply ‘a lath painted to look like iron.’ It has no binding force at all, but is merely a façade.

‘Loyalty’ [to the King or other members of the Royal Fam] in the old-fashioned feudal and cavalier sense of the term… has long since become extinct as a factor in English political life and survives only in certain circles, often non-British, as a mere shadow of its former self.

We are living in an age, not of revolution but of integration, an age which is steadily applying ideas and rules of organization not merely in the economic sphere, but also in the political.

Zimmern

The British Empire is making an experiment, the results of which are of vital concern to the whole world.

We maintained in the oceans of the world a supremacy so complete and so unchallenged that it became almost part of the order of nature, both in our own eyes and in those of the rest of the world.

We adopted Free Trade because it was good business, preached it to others, not without success, extended our markets to every part of the world, and received in return from our customers the raw materials that we needed for our industrial development.

Zimmern

The League has taken over and improved the older system of benevolent despotism. Thus the League of Nations provides the outline at least of a system fitted to replace that which passed away for Britain in 1914.

The League of Nations is the deus ex machina of the British Commonwealth.

…ultimate victory of the forces of integration…

An international authority charged with the maintenance of the Rule of Law in the world can only inspire respect if the states of which it is composed are themselves Realms of Law.

The British Empire… a multinational association of peoples in five continents.

The League of Nations represents a great political ideal… It is still on its trial… The British Empire, on the other hand, imperfect as a constitutional mechanism, has that which the League still lacks—the authority and momentum of a great past…

“British” is not an adjective of race. It is not an adjective of nationality. It is not an adjective of territory. It is indeed at home in five continents and, most of all perhaps, on the oceans that unite them.

The idea of kinship with Britons overseas still looms large, and language is constantly being used by our public men suggesting that this is the real basis of our connexion with the Dominions. Such a view is, of course, as dangerous to our Commonwealth as similar theories in 🇺🇸

The social tradition and inheritance of English life, its old universities and cathedrals, the Monarchy, the House of Commons… constituted a kind of moral support for dwellers in a new society… The United States by the clean break of 1776 became a land of déracinés.

However desirable it may be to raise the standard of life of the poorer parts of the Empire, especially among the non-white races, there is not the slightest possibility of constituting an imperial minimum above and distinct from the international minimum…

The British empire anticipated the League of Nations by developing an international police force, the British Navy. During the greater part of the nineteenth century the British Navy was engaged, often single-handed, upon international work

The duty of facing the race problem is one that is especially incumbent on British citizens. For the British Empire, on a majority vote, is not a white empire but a colored empire.

Is the British Empire to be run on the basis of white supremacy? … That indeed is a familiar and a very convenient theory, and one, be it added, which makes a particular appeal to white men of inferior calibre…

How would you like a coloured man to marry your sister?

Economic disarmament, international economic cooperation.

The best way in which to survey the conflicts of interest in the modern world due to the distribution of its natural resources is simply to take an atlas of economic geography and to ponder over its pages.

There was first an attempt to secure control over raw materials—the policy of ‘the place in the sun’. This involved the idea that every industrial country should have its own back garden, its own colonial area

Sea power for countries that do not possess it signifies nothing less than a standing veto, in the hands of a foreign power, over their economic activities. A blockade or an embargo in the modern world is something like a medieval interdict. It involves a complete excommunication

From 1850 to 1914 we practiced an international economic policy based on the break-down of all barriers impeding free intercourse between traders of different nations… A harmony based not on associated political action, but simply on the self-interest of the traders themselves

Imperial self-sufficiency is not only impracticable: it is also very reactionary. It involved the staking out of a vast economic empire, or, to use Wilson’s phrase—a selfish economic league—compared with which the Berlin-Baghdad scheme of the Germans would be a plaything

The program on Berlin-Baghdad lines has already resulted in the reversal of our tradition British policy in 3 directions

1. Reintroduced preferential rates on products from Dominions and dependent Empire
2. Reintroduced preferential duties in colonies
3. Direct govmnt investment

The line of advance, then, is not through concentration on Free Trade or the mere removal of economic barriers. What is needed is concerted action to work out a program of economic disarmament in the many fields which economic militarism has invaded.

Is it not conceivable that, in the light of such discussions, the German people, for all their lack of judgement in political matters, would have been less ready to lend an ear to those who centered their thoughts on…the attainment of a first-class status?

the financial weapon

The strengthening of the permanent economic organization of the League by widening the basis of its membership and increasing its authority and independence. What is needed is a permanent body continuously reviewing the field and applying an international criterion to problems

Britain is specially called to take a leading role… We should be the first also in this post-war era to see the possibilities of international economic cooperation, which involves nothing less than a change of outlook in the whole management of the public affairs of the world.

Issues connected with the economic process now cover the greater part of the field of politics. These issues naturally often described as ‘economic’ because their subject matter (such as unemployment or tariffs) is economic. But the action taken in regard to them is political.

The driving force in the post-war world has been political and not, as the Socialist contends, economic. The measures taken to deal with the economic crisis in which the world has been plunged since 1929 have been political… ‘Economic nationalism’ is a political phenomenon.

Power politics is the root cause of the ramifications of which can be traced in the various forms of ‘economic nationalism’ or non-cooperative policy… If power politics could be eliminated, there could be an Ottawa Conference on a world scale—a World Economic Conference

The history of the last few years, in Europe and in the Far East, has shown us that the spirit of power politics still has a strong hold on certain peoples… Economics for them is a means of increasing state power… The policy of world economic cooperation is temporarily blocked

The problem of nationality… On the surface this would hardly seem to be a cause of war; but when you have discovered its ramifications you will realize it is probably a more insidious and deep-seated cause of discord and antagonism than political philosophy or commercial policy

According to that doctrine every nation is or should be an independent state, and every state should comprise a single nation

The nation-state doctrine dates in fact from the French Revolution

The moment you say the Bulgarian state belongs to the Bulgarians you immediately reduce the non-Bulgarians who happen to live in that area to a position of inferiority. They cease to be citizens and become resident aliens. Such a situation is incompatible with equal justice

There is no such thing in the modern world as a homogenous national state. Trade, travel, migration, intercourse of all kinds, are of the very texture of modern life, so that however much you may try to keep your state national, it will always have resident aliens and migrants

The survival of this unsound theory of the nation-state… has made it much harder for the cultural minorities to feel themselves full members of the states of which they are citizens, bound by as strong a tie of obligation as their fellow citizens who speak the language

The British Commonwealth has recognized that the whole art of government consists in bringing different kinds of people, different nations, different religions, different cultures, under a single law, under what we call the Pax Britannica, under an international system

Tolerance is not enough. There is something further required—understanding and an effort to reach an equal relationship.

We English, in fact, have depoliticized nationality. If all the nations could do that, the greatest cause of war in the world would disappear