INDIAN SUMMER -INDIA FALLS?

INDIAN SUMMER: THE SECRET HISTORY…(New York: Picador, Henry Holt, 2007)

By Alex von Tunzelmann

Rev. “Indian Summer, Will India Fall?” by Hugh Murray

            Von Tunzelmann’s subtitle – “The Secret History of the End of an Empire,” may be accurate, but it diminishes the rational choices Indians faced at the time of crunch.  And what was India?  Beginning in 1886, British India was to include Burma, and in 1903, in Motihari, Burma (British India), Eric Blair was born.  Though his family brought him back to England as a young child, where he was educated, around age 19 he returned to Asia to serve in the Imperial Indian Police service in Burma.  He served for some five years.  One of his essays, “On Shooting an Elephant,” describes the moment when he questioned imperialism.  He did not want to shoot the animal, but having attracted a crowd of perhaps 2,000 natives, all anticipating the shooting, had he not used his rifle on the animal, the natives would have laughed at him.  He, and the service, would have lost face.  So the imperial policeman, reluctantly, killed the elephant.  A little later Blair changed his name to George Orwell, fought with a Trotskyist regiment against the Franco fascists in Spain, and learnt to distrust the Communists in that fight.  Had Orwell not left Iberia when he did, he might have become a victim of the KGB squads.

            When war broke out between Germany and Britain in September 1939, the Vice Roy of India, without consulting India’s prominent political figures, declared war on Germany.  Orwell, back in England, also quickly surmised that it was essential that the democratic, Western powers defeat Hitler’s led Axis (which had just concluded a non-aggression pact with Stalin’s USSR).  Suddenly, Communist Parties no longer envisioned fascism as the great threat, but now the great danger was imperialism.  Therefore, the Communists refused to aid the cause of the imperialist nations – Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc.  Orwell, however, concluded that not only should the UK fight against the Nazi menace, but Canada, South Africa, Australia, and all the Empire’s dominions and colonies should join the war against the threat to democracy posed by fascism.  Though Orwell was born in Indian Burma, v. Tunzelmann never mentions him in her book.

            Mahatma Gandhi is frequently, and rightly, mentioned in Indian Summer.  The author even reports Gandhi’s sage wisdom for the British as they entered the war: “He advised the British to give up the fight against Hitler and Mussolini.  ‘Let them take possession of your beautiful island…allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.’”(p. 110)  Gandhi also had advice for the Jews of Germany: they should engage in passive resistance to the Nazi oppressors and “if necessary, give up their own lives as a sacrifice.”  Gandhi also urged “the Jews to pray for Adolf Hitler”  And in May 1940 Gandhi added, “He [Hitler] is showing an ability that is amazing and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.”  Finally Gandhi concluded that “the Germans of the future ‘will honour Herr Hitler as a genius, a brave man, a matchless organizer and much more.’”(111)  It is thus not too surprising to learn that an American envoy to India concluded that Gandhi basically preferred the Japanese to the British.

            As popular as Gandhi was, he was not the only spokesman for the Indians.  Jawaharlal Nehru, a prominent figure in the Congress Party, was vehemently opposed to the Axis and fascism.  He believed they should be fought.  On 14 September 1940 the Congress Party, which had won overwhelmingly the Indian elections of 1937, now demanded total independence for India.  They would fight the Japanese, but only after granted independence.  The Vice Roy Linlithgow rejected this, countering with a possible dominion status for India in a vague future.  In response, on 10 November 1940 Congress leaders resigned their offices.  Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, and determined not to live in an Indian Hindustan, was delighted with those resignations;  Jinnah called it “Deliverance Day.”

            Meanwhile, the war was going disastrously in Europe.  In May 1940 the British replaced Prime Minister Chamberlain with Winston Churchill, a man who had opposed the appeasement policy and warned for years of the danger of a more powerful Germany.  Churchill was also a firm believer in the British Empire and of India’s place within it.  He also believed in divide and rule, and as he distrusted many of the pacifistically inclined Hindus, he drew closer to the Muslim leader Jinnah.  The Muslims were willing to fight to retain a British presence in India.

            But the choice for India was broader than the non-violent, anti-war, pacifist strain of Gandhi, broader than the Congress Party of Nehru’s demand for immediate independence; broader than the appeal of Orwell to fight to preserve Western democracy against fascist totalitarianism, and end colonialism following an Allied victory in the war.

            V. Tunzelmann does mention Subhas Chandra Bose on a few pages, but fails to grant him the recognition he deserves in the struggle for Indian independence.  In 1937 the Congress Party won an overwhelming majority in the Indian elections.  The Muslim League had received only 5% of the Muslim vote.  Nehru was then spending much time in Europe, and in 1938 the leadership of Congress went to the charismatic Mayor of Calcutta, S, C, Bose.  Gandhi disliked him, but accepted him until Bose publicly announced he would set a date for British withdrawal from India.  If they did not go, Bose declared violence would ensue.  Gandhi was appalled by this open rejection of his non-violent philosophy and tactics, and Bpse was forced to resign the Congress leadership in May 1939.  He remained Calcutta Mayor, but when war was declared, the British held him under house arrest.

            Sometimes, simple organization of material may lead to distortion, and I think that can be seen in Indian Summer.  V. Tunzelmann writes that in 1942 with the support of both Gandhi and Nehru, the Congress Party initiated a “Quit India” campaign.  “The slogan was not only catchy but accurate: the British administration was to be harried, disobeyed and besieged until it simply upped and left, war or no war…The Quit India resolution, passed by Congress on 8 August 1942 … sanctioned  ‘a mass struggle of nonviolence…’  This was a call for treason as far as the British were concerned.”(127)  The first arrests occurred the very next day, 9 August 1942, and India exploded in violent uprisings, “the most serious since that of 1857.”  Gandhi, Nehru and other Congress leaders were arrested for the duration.

            Several pages later, V. Tunzelmann writes: “The political vacuum created by Quit India, not only benefitted the Muslim League but had allowed the Indian National Army (INA), Bose’s militia to get a foothold.”(134)  Bose, ousted as head of the Congress in May 1939, had been under house arrest with the advent of war.  But with the aid of the Abwehr (the German CIA), Bose escaped to Kabul, Afghanistan, flew from there to Stalin’s Moscow (still friends with the German regime), and thence to Berlin.  In the German capital Bose met Hitler, Mussolini, and high Japanese officials.  He was allowed to broadcast on Radio Berlin’s short wave to India to promote the cause of Indian independence and the Axis.  Bose was also permitted to recruit among Indian prisoners of war in Europe, and gained 3,000 to form the Free Indian Legion within the Wehrmacht (the German army).  They began to call Bose “Netaji,” the Hindo equivalent of Duce or Fuehrer.  In the spring of 1943 he left Hamburg on a German U-boat, cruised round Africa to Madagascar where he changed to a Japanese submarine, and in summer 1943 emerged in Singapore.  He was soon recruiting from a much larger pool of Indian pow’s for his INA.  He declared a provisional government of India, declared war on Britain and the United States, and with Japanese help, planned to invade India.  His government was recognized by a few nations, including the Republic of Ireland.

            The way the authoress tells the story, the Congress’  Quit India campaign caused a vacuum of which both the Muslim League’s Jinnah and the Axis ally Bose take advantage.  But it can be interpreted differently – the escape of Bose, and then his broadcasts to India from the Reich’s shortwave radio put pressure on the Congress Party to do something.  Indeed, one reason George Orwell was broadcasting from London on BBC to India was to counter the pro-Axis broadcasts from Berlin by Bose.  Furthermore, the Japanese attack on and occupation of Burma in March 1942 meant the war was no longer just in Europe and Africa, - it was literally next door to India (indeed, what a decade earlier had been part of India!).

            It is commonly assumed today that national liberation movements are parties of the Left – and that is often the case.  However, other national liberation movements have aligned with the Right.  Bose and his Indian independence movement was clearly allied with the Axis.  And he was not the only such leader to broadcast from Radio Berlin.  Amin  al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, deemed by many as the founder of the Palestinian liberation movement, during WWII, met with Hitler and Himmler, inspected concentration camps, and broadcast to the Middle East from Radio Berlin.  Much of his message was simple – “Kill the Jews!”  After Hitler’s armies conquered most of the continent, suddenly Neuropa included a Slovakia, and a Croatia.  Many people from those lands may have taken pride in the new maps.  Early in the war, there was a coup in Iraq that favored the Axis.  It was short-lived, put down by the British, but it showed pro-Axis support in unexpected places.  When Germany’s Gen. Rommel prepared to attack Egypt from Libya, many in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood eagerly awaited to greet the Germans as liberators.  Decades before, in the Spanish-American War in the Philippines, many were elated when the Spanish were defeated, but they preferred independence to becoming an American colony.  The leader of the insurgent pro-independent guerrillas was Emilio Aguinaldo.  The Americans used an early version of water-boarding to defeat the native bands.  When the Japanese took the Philippines from Gen. McArthur soon after Pearl Harbor, Aguinaldo reappeared to lend his support for the Japanese, speaking and broadcasting on behalf of the new regime.  And during and shortly after WWII, one Puerto Rican independence movement favored the fascism of Spain over the dominion of the US.  Some of its activists attempted to assassinate Pres. Harry Truman, and others shot up the US Congress.  National liberation movements are NOT the monopoly of the Left.

            From 1886 until 1937 Burma was part of British India.  It was partitioned out in 1937, apparently without the mass murders and atrocities that accompanied partition in 1947 between Muslim India and Hindu India – Pakistan and India.  Why?  Why was one partition so peaceful; the other so bloody?  V. Tunzelmann does not mention that Burma was Indian or that it was partitioned.  Ignoring the question is not the same as answering the question.

            Many of us know about the German blitzkrieg of WWII.  Much of Poland fell to the Germans in weeks during the autumn of 1939.  In April 1940 Denmark was conquered in one day, and Norway also in the month of April.  In May 1940 the Netherlands and Belgium fell to the Germans.  In June 1940 France was invaded, and on 22 June the new head of state, Marshall Petain, signed the armistice with the Germans, ending the war.  Zoom, zoom, zoom, one nation after another fell to the Germans.  We are apt to forget that the Japanese accomplished something quite similar.  December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  But almost simultaneously, they attacked Hong Kong, and the American colony of the Philippines.  The war with China, conducted with gruesome brutality, had spread from Beijing in 1937 to the south and much of coastal China was occupied by the Japanese.  There had been an undeclared war near the border of Manchukuo and Siberia, but to both Japan and the Soviets, it was costly, indecisive, and both sides wanted to get on with other projects.  Only after Japan and the USSR signed a 5-year friendship pact, was Stalin willing to shift his troops from the East to partake in the partition of Poland that he had agreed to with the Nazis.  In 1940 Japan got the right to enter Indochina, as it was a French colony, and Marshall Petain sought good relations with the Axis.  But just after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese also attacked the Dutch colony of Indonesia, the British of Malaya, and the British of Burma.  To get to Burma, the Japanese invaded Siam, but in hours, The Thai leaders agreed to Japanese demands for transit through their country and other concessions.  Soon Siam would join the Axis and declare war on Britain and the US.  Siam would be paid for its help to the Axis in the war by gaining slivers of territory from Indochina, Malaya, and Burma.  In 1937 when the British separated Burma from India, a new Burmese Prime Minister took office, Ba Maw.  But as war clouds hovered, Maw spoke out against Burma’s entry into the conflict.  He lost his office and the British imprisoned him.  After the Japanese conquered Burma by March 1942, they decided to install a regular government.  It was headed by Ba Maw, the earlier Prime Minister.  The Japanese decided not to invade India at that time but rather consolidate and digest its massive conquests.

            There was one safe place for the British,” the Gibraltar of the East,” the unconquerable Singapore.  Its huge cannon were cemented facing the sea.  The Japanese did not play fair; they invaded Malaya by land in a pincer movement – some invading from Indochina, some transiting through Thailand.  Eventually these troups on the peninsula would attack Singapore from the rear.  The British surrendered “without firing a shot.”(124)  V. Tunzelmann is surprised, for she sees this as a replay of Laurence of Arabia Aqaba in WWI.  But surely a more contemporary analogy would have been appropriate - the French Maginot Line, where the huge guns were cemented in place facing Germany, but the Germans outflanked the Allies, coming round and then behind, and the huge guns proved useless.  France surrendered.  And Singapore surrendered in 1942.  V T states 60,000 Indian troops were taken prisoner (124); wiki says a total of 170,000 surrendered – the largest number surrendered in the history of the British military.  (Another Wikipedia version states the cannon were not cemented and could and did swivel round, but the ammunition on hand was meant to penetrate through heavily plated ships; they were not high explosive missiles.  So even when the guns were turned against the invading Japanese, the ammunition fired had little effect upon the advancing infantry.  But shots were fired and many battles fought in Malaya before the assault on Singapore   its capitulation was a shocking loss to Churchill.)

            In a few months, from December 1941 to March 1942, Japan demonstrated that the colonial powers could not defend their colonies.  In a few months Japan outblitzed the Germans, seizing more countries with larger land mass and with many more millions of people than had their European ally.  From December 1942 through March 1942 Japan conquered the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia, (they already had part of Indochina), Malaya, Singapore, (transit rights through Siam), and Burma.  Burma had been part of India.  Would the Axis also take the 400,000.000 people of India into the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?  (Both the population of China and of India at the time were 400 million, but both were guestimates.)

            From his base in Japanese occupied Rangoon and on one of the nearby islands, Bose prepared for the “liberation” of India from the British.  The Japanese hoped to invade India, cutting off growing links between India and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists.  Meanwhile, the British were building supplies and men for an invasion of Burma, centering their accumulating forces in the Indian regional capital of Imphal.  That is where the Japanese decided to attack with their own forces, which would be bolstered with Bose’s Indian National Army as well.  The battles erupted in March 1944 and continued until 3 July, when the monsoons began, and the Japanese-INA siege of Imphal collapsed.  It was the largest Japanese military failure till that date, and effectively ended fears of a successful invasion of India.  Some on google deem it one of Britain’s greatest battles.

            In the 1980s television series, “The Jewel in the Crown,” one aspect of the INA threat is stressed that goes unmentioned in Indian Summer – the men who had sworn fealty to the British crown and who had served as loyal soldiers and comrades, were now fighting against their British officers.  The psychological effects of this “betrayal” are exposed in the fictional account, but ignored by v. Tunzelmann.  Also in the fiction, what happens if Imphal falls?  What happens if India is invaded by Indians?  Will India remain with the British, or swing to Bose, the INA, and the Axis?  This possibility barely gets a ripple in Indian Summer.

            The horrors of partition are gruesomely depicted in the 1998 film by Deepa Mehta, “Earth 1947.”  Admittedly, v. Tz’s paragraphs describing a riot here, a riot there, and another bloody massacre there, lacks the emotional impact of a film.  But what happened in India during WWII to so exacerbate hatreds that when partition occurs, it culminates in an avalanche of atrocities.  The book fails to explain how this could and did happen.

            In the midst of these struggles, v. T. spends most of her book on the lives of the last ViceRoy of India, Lord Mountbatten, and his wife Edwina.  The author includes much biographical material on Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah and other prominent figures of the era.  And each of the characters featured does share one virtue in common – they all displayed amazing courage.

            Much of the book spotlights the Mountbattens.  He resented that his name had to be changed during WWI from Battenberg, but he remained a minor aristocrat and distant relative of the royals.  In the 1920s and 30s, he was a close friend of the Prince of Wales, who would rise to the throne as Edward VIII.  In the 1920s Louis Mountbatten married a young woman who had spent most of her early years far from luxury.  Her mother died when she was quite young, and she did not get on with her step mother, who arranged for her to attend boarding school, and then a “finishing” school where she had to scrub rooms, sew, and perform other chores so she could direct her maids at some later date.  She recalled those years as hellish, devoid of cosmetics and grace.  But coming of age, Edwina Ashley was to inherit a fortune, and was determined to have a good time.  Though v T does not use the term “flapper,” Edwina was set for fun, as was her naval man beau, Louis.  They married, and toured the world.  In Hollywood they even appeared in a Charlie Chaplin film.  They knew Noel Coward, and he wrote a play using them as the models for his characters.  The Mountbattens were a modern couple, and there were rumors that both had liaisons on the side.  They holidayed with the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Wallis Simpson.  But when Edward abdicated, Louis decided to retain friendships with his cousin, George the new king, and basically cutting off with Edward, the old.  In time, Louis would seek to promote a romance between one of his poor, Greek, aristocratic nephews and the young Princess Elizabeth.  Eventually they did marry.  During WWII, Louis was a naval officer, and muddled through.  After the war, he was named ViceRoy of India and his mission was to get the British out, quickly, and with as little trouble as possible.

            He and Edwina met Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, and other political and princely leaders.  India still contained many princely states, where sometimes the prince was Hindu, and the majority of his people Muslim; sometimes the reverse.  Gandhi did not want to divide India on religious lines.  Jinnah did, fearing the Muslims, 25% of the population, would be swamped in Hindustan.  The 1937 elections had gone all to the Congress Party.  But by the end of the war, Jinnah’s Muslim League had gained 75% of the Muslim vote.  Churchill, voted out of office in 1945, encouraged Jinnah to push for partition.  Labour Prime Minister Atlee just wanted Britain out.  V. T. includes photographs to emphasize her point that the Vice Reine, Edwina was having an affair with Nehru.  In time, Jinnah suspected that the Mountbattens were stacking the deck in favor of Nehru’s party, and against the Muslims.  Edwina was doing more, too.  She visited hospitals, making lists of needed supplies, and then using her influence, got those supplies to the medical institutions.  She seemed to relish the social-work side of her mission – though she did not have to do any of it.

            The second time of crunch was the time of partition and independence.  Suddenly, in various parts of India, people who had resided together in relative peace for generations were now set on killing each other.  In one area Hindu mobs set upon a Muslim minority; in another area the reverse.  Many had to flee their homes, their towns, their provinces.  About a million people were killed.  Edwina would go to camps where Muslims had gathered in fear, and she would speak to Hindus preparing to attack the camp, trying to dissuade them, and displaying great courage.  She did this more than once, risking her life to prevent a slaughter.  Nehru would do the same, even brawling with some of the most vociferous rioters.  When Gandhi, so disturbed by Hindu attacks on Muslims in Calcutta, stayed at the home of a Muslim, and began a fast to stop the anti-Muslim activities in Calcutta, a mob of Hindus came to the home where Gandhi was staying and shouted, “Die, Gandhi!.”  Nehru was so upset, he went to the angry crowd and tried to shame them for disrespecting Gandhi.  But, in Calcutta, in great part due to Gandhi’s spiritual efforts, the anti-Muslim riots did stop.

            With murders all around and law and order crumbling, Jinnah was set to ride in a motorcade in Karachi on Pakistan’s Independence Day in August 1947.  Louis Mountbatten, Vice Roy until that day, was scheduled to accompany Jinnah in the open car.  There had been many threats of assassination against Jinnah, and this would be the perfect opportunity.  Mountbatten was afraid, but he had his duty.  He and Jinnah rode together; they both survived.  Jinnah then gave a speech in which he hoped the new Pakistan would be the home not only of Muslims, but Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, and all religious people.  Jinnah had himself married a Parsi, and spent that Christmas with a Christian family.  Jinnah was not an extremist Muslim, but he had roused the Muslim communities of India, and some of them would be far less tolerant.  Jinnah was old and ill; he died in September 1948, a year after his Pakistan was born.

            Gandhi, the Hindu semi-religious leader, aroused anger among Hindus who believed that he was too sympathetic and forgiving to the Muslims.    In January1948 Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu.

            After the Mountbatten’s had fulfilled their duty in India, Edwina usually returned for an annual visit, which invariably included visits to Nehru.  Louis was aware of the affair, as were their daughters, but there was no publicity about it.  V T observed: “The security of three nations rested on this love affair being kept secret.”(336)  Perhaps.  In February 1960 Edwina died. Nehru passed in May of 1964.  V T alleges that Louis toyed with the idea of leading a coup against the British government. But it was another group seeking to destroy the established order in Northern Ireland that would change Louis’s fate.   In 1979 the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army set off a bomb killing Louis Mountbatten.

            Louis Mountbatten, as the last ViceRoy of India, was clearly important in establishing how he would fulfill his mission of evacuating the subcontinent and public relations, image, and impression are part of that job.  But is it necessary for the author to inform us how many and which medals he wore on his uniform for this function and that?  Do we have to have a description of Edwina’s gowns for this ball and that reception?  She was one of the richest women in the world, and could afford the best.  But one wishes that the book contained a little less on glamour and more on why there was a disaster.

            In the era of feminism and multiculturalism, I must ask a question – Is the “secret history” von Tunzelmann mentions in her subtitle a reference to the affair between Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru?  I doubt if that love story changed the course of the history of the Indian subcontinent.  There are affairs that did change history – Cleopatra with Caesar and then with Mark Anthony; Henry VIII and his many wives.  But I do not think that the the Nehru-Edwina affair changed history in a significant way.  Their story may be  interesting, gossipy, fun, and appeal to traditional female readers, but was it that important?  Far more important were the growing hatreds between communities exploding during and after the war.  When perhaps thousands of women had their breasts cut off, and tens of thousands raped, and boys slaughtered, and men killed as in war, I think those incidents more important than an elite love affair.

            Finally, I wrote that Indians faced a rational choice at the time of crunch during WWII.  We know that in some cases people vote with their feet, but it is noteworthy to count how the Indians voted with their arms.  While a mere 40,000 fought for the Axis supplied Indian National Army of Subhas Bose, 2,500,000 fought on behalf of the British Empire.  Of course, some of those changed sides after becoming pows, but the numbers are still very much in favor of the British.  But to put things in a larger perspective, many more millions did not fight at all.  If there were 400 million Indians, 40 thousand is a very small number, and even 2.5 million is still a very small number.  By contrast, how many partook in the harassment of the Quit India campaign?  Nevertheless, in India today many celebrate both Gandhi and Bose as leaders of Indian independence.  I think Bose deserves to share that acclaim.

INVENTING, TENDING, SENDING, AND DEFENDING FREEDOM

INVENTING FREEDOM: HOW THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES MADE THE MODERN WORLD (New York: Harper Collins, 2013) by DANIEL HANNAN

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            Hannan has written a provocative analysis of the origins of freedom in the modern world – wide ranging over time and territory.  My task here is to challenge some of his assumptions and assertions.  Hannan clearly believes English common law is one of the reasons freedom developed and expanded in the “Anglosphere,” with its basis in precedent, past cases, and empirical adjustments, as opposed to the Roman or Napoleonic coded laws which are deductive and based upon theoretical concepts.  Moreover, the codes originate at the top of power and can be easily changed by the rulers; whereas common law is the search for justice through accretions of decisions, and once discovered through particular instances and cases, then all, including the king, must abide.

            Supporters of the supremacy of the common law could emphasize what occurred in 1655 when Cromwell permitted Jews to return to reside in England (they had been expelled from the kingdom in 1290).  So Hannan (on p. 181) follows historian Paul Johnson to conclude:  “… England was, before the United States, the best place to live and practice as a Jew.  The reason …, elsewhere, Jews had been placed in a separate legal category in the days when ecclesiastical courts claimed no jurisdiction over non-Christians.  The separate status made Jews vulnerable down the centuries to all manner of discrimination and persecution.  In England, by contrast, Jews were subject only to the relatively mild restrictions placed on all non-Anglicans..”(Hannan, p. 181)

            Then, there is something almost deceptive in Hannan’s use of “common law.”  On p. 255 he rhapsodizes about the Acts of Union – how the Welsh, English, and Scots were proud in their Britishness, and proud of the British Empire.  “Britishness,…, is a political and constitutional construct based primarily on shared political values and institutions.”  Later, on the same page, Hannan continues:  “The British saw themselves as being set apart by unique institutions: a sovereign parliament, the common law, secure property rights, an independent judiciary, armed forces that were subordinate to the civil authorities, Protestantism, and above all, personal freedom.”(255)

            Yet, not until p. 328 (of a 377 page book) does Hannon let slip an important fact.  “[Foreigners] were astonished-… by the miracle of the common law.  In their countries, laws were drafted by the government and then applied to particular cases.  But in the Anglosphere (except Scotland), laws emerged case by case…”  Only in this parenthesis does Hannan, who extols the union of England and Scotland, concede that the miraculous common law was not authoritative in Scotland.  That kingdom retained a Roman-type Codified law.

            And if not deception, surely clarification is lacking elsewhere.  When revealing the origin of the phrase from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Hannan notes “But the words were not Lincoln’s.  Most of his hearers would have recognized the source, as our generation does not.  They came from the prologue to what was probably the earliest translation of the Holy Scripture in the English language: ‘This Bible is for the government of the people, for the people and by the people.’  The author was the theologian John Wycliffe…the words had first appeared in 1384.”(Hannan, pp. 32-33)  However, googling, one source attributed the phrase to Wycliffe’s assistant, John Purvey for the prologue to the editions of 1388 and/or 1395, after the death of Wycliffe.  But it does not end there.  In 2009 Eugene Volokh on his web site concluded that the claim for Wycliffe and company was apocryphal and that those phrases do not exist in the prologues to Wycliffe’s Bible.  Another website, for Hoyle’s New Cyclopedia of 1922 thought the phrase may have come from the Hereford Bible or a pamphlet from that era.  My question, if Hannan’s claim that Americans of the 19^th century would have recognized Lincoln’s source as Wycliffe, why did they not comment upon it?  Surely, much has been written about Lincoln and that speech.  Hannan, who graduated with a double first in history from Oxford should have provided a proper reference, especially as Volokh, several years prior to Hannan’s book being published, had already disputed the claim.

            On the larger point, I agree with Hannan that Protestantism, especially where the congregations chose the ministers of the church, was more democratic in process and practice, than Roman Catholicism, where priests were assigned by higher church authorities.  Whether Wycliffe is or is not the source of Lincoln’s phrase in the Gettysburg Address, there was a democratic, populist impulse in the Protestant Revolution.

            Hannan rightly points out that one neglected aspect of the American Revolution was its anti-Catholicism.  There was a feeling my many that the Quebec Act of 1774 enraged the American colonists because they believed that that act, and the Proclamation Line of 1763, which denied colonists access to lands west of the Allegheny Mountains.  These British measures thus deprived the colonists of their fruits of victory.  Together, the British and colonials had defeated their enemies in North America during the French and Indian War.  Yet, suddenly King George was robbing the colonists of their victory by granting so much to the French of Quebec and the Indians of the West.  Indeed, Hannan rightly reminds readers that one section of the Declaration of Independence contained a specific complaint about the Quebec Act, though the legislation was not mentioned by name.  In the Declaration, the act was listed as one of the grievances that led the colonists to declare their independence.

            Hannan quotes both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson where they display their anti-Catholic beliefs.  But Hannan is silent on another important point.  In 1803 when the Jefferson Administration bought the huge Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, America pledged not to interfere with the religion of the inhabitants.  Because under the French and Spanish, only the Roman Catholic Church was permitted, most settlers were Roman.  Of course, henceforth, under the Americans, there would be religious freedom.  But when Louisiana entered the union as a state in 1812, the boundary had been drawn so that only a small portion of the Louisiana Territory would enter as that state – and this is where most of the Catholics were.  Catholics would not be persecuted, but their influence would be restricted because their state would be only the boot of the massive territory.  Louisiana became the first state with a majority Roman Catholic population.  And midway in the 19^th century, Louisiana would become the first state to send to the US Senate a professing Jew.  Indeed, Sen. Judah Benjamin would later enter the Cabinet holding several posts during the Administration of Pres. Jefferson Davis of the CSA.   And like other southern states after the Civil War, several Blacks held high office in Louisiana during Reconstruction.  Louisiana is the only state in the US to have laws based on Spanish and the Napoleonic Codes rather than English common law.

            Of course, with its Spanish and Napoleonic Codes, Catholic Louisiana retained slavery until it was abolished at the end of the American Civil War.  But slavery also existed in all the southern states, most of which were not merely Protestant, but so fervently Protestant that they are still referred to as “the Bible belt.”  They all had English common law, but it did not free, or even help the slaves on those states.  In the North and South there were some who sought to reduce or end slavery through colonization – sending slaves to Africa or elsewhere.  These efforts led to the foundation of Liberia and its capital, Monrovia, named after a slave-holding American president.  The Abolitionists helped form the Republican Party, but their support was almost exclusively in the North.  In 1860 the Republican candidate won the national Presidency with only 40% of the vote, and not a single vote counted for Lincoln in the South.  Bottom line, and again I must agree with Hannan, though some Protestants defended slavery in Biblical terms, even fighting a war with massive casualties to retain the institution, other Protestants, also using the Bible, demanded the abolition of slavery.  They too fought, and died, to end slavery.  They won the Civil War.

            Hannan writes that the “custom” of primogeniture – giving all the inheritance to the eldest male heir, provided stability of inheritance and property and a stimulus for early capitalism.  His contrasts of the English countryside with those of the European continent makes a powerful visual argument.  Yet, Hannan relates that second sons in America, like Thomas Jefferson, were adamant in their opposition to the custom and determined to prevent primogeniture from monopolizing rural America.  Small farms were his ideal and he had laws enacted to prevent primogeniture.  By contrast, in the Napoleonic Code, all children, including females, become heirs, and they cannot be totally disinherited.

            Hannan contends that the American Revolution was a continuance of the British struggles that had culminated in the Glorious Revolution, which deposed James II in favor of William and Mary.  Hannan argues that the British learnt from their failure in dealing with America.  Thereafter, the objective of the British Empire was to treat its colonies so as to prepare them for eventual self-government and independence.  The British imperial mission was to provide colonies with British customs, the English language, common law, sanctity of property, etc.  He is aware that British imperialism now has a bad rep, but it was the empire that stopped the international slave trade and later abolished slavery in its dominions.  And unlike French, Belgian, or German colonies, under the British native peoples often achieved independence without much bloodshed (though he acknowledges Kenya as an exception).

            As proof of the success of the British Empire, Hannan cites statistics on India during WWII:  “Whereas the Japanese-backed Indian National Army numbered forty thousand, nearly 2.5 million Indians fought for the Anglosphere in Europe, Asia, and Africa: the largest volunteer army in history.”(297)  This is surely a powerful statistic supporting Hannan’s thesis; however, it does not tell the entire story.  Subhas Chandra Bose, elected mayor of Calcutta, was President of the Indian National Congress, but in disputes with Gandhi in 1938-39, Bose lost his Congress Party post.   With the outbreak of war, the British placed him under house arrest.  Bose escaped with the aid of the German Abwehr, which got him to Afghanistan, then flew him to Moscow (Stalin and Hitler were allies at that time), and finally to Berlin.  Bose broadcast on German shortwave nightly as Free India Radio.  He recruited from Indian POWs who had for Britain against the Rommel campaign in Africa so that so that 3,000 Indians formed the Free India Legion in the Wehrmacht.   Bose even met Hitler.  In March 1943 Bose traveled by German U-boat to waters off Madagascar, where the German sub met one from Japan.  Bose transferred to the Asian vessel.  In May 1943 he landed in Japanese occupied Indonesia; Bose proclaimed the Provisional Government of the Republic of India, declared war on Britain and the United States, and began recruiting his Indian National Army from among Indian POWs of Japan.  Remember, these were men who had sworn to fight for the British King – now they would break their oath and fight for the Axis and a free India.  Finally, his troops were ready, but in Burma in 1944, they suffered defeat.  Still, there was great shock and fear among the Raj in India.  How could their soldiers defect, and then fight against them?  “The Jewel in the Crown” provides a fictional glimpse of the angst caused by Bose and the fear of an Axis Indian army invading India.  Hannan hoists the numbers 2.5 million to 40,000.  I think it was a much closer call.  And while almost all Indians regard Gandhi as a father of independent India, many see two fathers – the other being Chandra Bose.  Bottom line, India remained British during WWII.  On that Hannan is correct.  But I think it was a much closer call than the stats indicate.

            And when crunch time came in WWII, even Canada was not as solid as Hannan’s book implies.  There was no draft in French Canada.  Why were the French in Canada less enthusiastic about defending Britain during time of threat?  Perhaps, events in France had something to do with Canada’s reaction.

            Jews had been expelled from parts of, but not all of France around the same time they were exiled from England in the late 1200s.  In those parts where Jews remained in France, they were subject to separate laws, but they could still live in various sections of France, and these areas grew as France annexed new lands as Alsace and Lorraine.  With the French Revolution, more changes occurred than the mere measure by the king’s foot.  The metric system replaced the older weights and measures to provide a “reasonable” system.  In addition, the promotion of reason led to the onslaught against “superstition,” i.e. clericalism and Christianity.  Even the Christian calendar was abolished and replaced with Year I of the French Revolution and a (metric) 10-day week.  The Cathedral of Notre Dame was converted into the Temple of the Goddess of Reason.  And in accord with these changes, in 1791 Louis Peletier “presented a new criminal code to the Constituent Assembly.  He explained that it outlawed only ‘true crimes,’ and not phony offenses created by superstition, feudalism, the tax system, and [royal] despotism.’  He did not list the crimes ‘created by superstition,’ but these certainly included, blasphemy, heresy, sacrilege, witchcraft and homosexuality.  All these former offenses were swiftly decriminalized.  In 1810 a new criminal code was issued under Napoleon.  As with the Penal Code of 1791 it did not contain provision against religious crimes.”(Wikipedia. Napoleonic Code)

            Where Napoleon’s troops conquered, and his Code often imposed, there was also a liberating result.  Jews who had been proscribed to reside only in ghettos, could leave; gays might not be prosecuted.  There were major critics of these changes, from the outside, Metternich to the Russian Czar, and on the inside, not all reforms were implemented in all French satellites, as Poland was also unhappy with some.  So, many could view Napoleon as a great liberator when he conquered.  However, if the initial Jacobin radicalism of equality and the Rights of Man may have helped stir events in Haiti, Napoleon sent troops to the island not to aid in liberation, but to quell the slave rebellion and reinstitute slavery.  Thus, the contrast.  While many hailed his liberating victories in the Rhineland and the Papal states of Italy, in Haiti the freed slaves cheered the defeat of Napoleon’s quest for empire in the New World.

            Hannan emphasizes the common law, the rule of law, primogeniture, and Protestantism as elements in the growth of capitalism and the subsequent prosperity of the modern world.  Yet, the European continent had no English common law, yet it certainly had capitalism.  And though Max Weber and other sociologists associate Protestantism with capitalism on the continent, as in the Netherlands and the Huguenots of France, still what group was most associated with the bourgeoisie and capitalism on the continent?  Though the Rothschild banks may have preceded the Napoleonic Code, most of his sons, and their banks were located on the continent.  They did not enjoy the miraculous features of common law.  And surely, Rothschild did not believe in primogeniture.  He sent his sons from Frankfurt to Vienna, Naples, Paris, and London to found similar banks.  Nevertheless, most would consider the Rothschilds to be successful.

            (Despite the liberating influence of Napoleon on Jews in Europe, curiously, Rothschild’s bank did much to supply funds for Wellington and the British in its wars against the French Emperor.  I am unsure if that was only the London branch.  Might the others have supported Napoleon?)  Napoleon eventually lost, and many Jews in Italy had to return to the ghettos.  Nevertheless, but the 1850s the Rothschilds were possibly the richest family on earth.  Jews, without the “aid” of the English common law, were becoming the capitalists, par excellence of Europe, sponsoring railroads and later oil development throughout the globe.  And it was not simply the Rothschilds.  Google various countries to discover the statistics of Jewish overrepresentation in the professions, in industry, in commerce, in wealth, in France, Germany, AustroHungary, etc. and this overrepresentation increased after WWI.  There was growing jealousy.  And with the growth of socialism in various forms, there were demands to kerb the 1%, kerb the elite, kerb the capitalists, kerb the Jews.  Communism seized power in Russia, but in Italy, Portugal, Hungary, ever more European nations were turning to anti-communism, and fascism.  The most important of these would be when the National Socialists of Adolf Hitler ascended to power in Germany.

            Some early attempts by the Nazis to restrict Jews were to reduce their activities to their % of the general population in professions, business, etc. and thus allow gentiles to achieve their “rightful” percentage of the pie of wealth – (similar to affirmative action in modern America).  When restrictions failed to contain Jewish success, other measures, culminating with their elimination, were often deemed necessary and accomplished legally.

War began in September 1939 and by summer 1940, following the Sitzkrieg on the western from, German armies swept through.  While the British planned to enter Norway, the Germans beat them to the punch, quickly going through Denmark, and then taking Norway.  Then Netherlands and Belgium.  And almost as quickly, France crumbled.  The French Republic was replaced by a hero of the First World War, a man who now gave himself to the nation as Chief of State, Marshal Philippe Petain.  The Marshal acknowledged the defeat of France but hoped to save its empire by cooperating with the German victors.  Collaboration was the word.  The new British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, fearing France’s fleet would fall to Hitler, (and when combined with Axis sea power, be able to challenge the British Navy), Churchill chose to act quickly and decisively.  His ships cornered the French fleet on 3 July 1940 in the Algerian port of Mers-el-Kebir, and the British demanded surrender within an hour.  In effect, it was a surprise attack.  The British destroyed most of the French ships and killed 1.300 French seamen.  Britain, ally of France in April 1940, turned on the French in July to kill 1,300 seamen at Mers-el-Kebir.  To put thing in perspective: in December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they killed 2,400 American servicemen.  Americans were incensed and demanded war with the antagonist, Japan.  In 1940 many in France wanted to declare war against Britain, the ally who had killed so many Frenchmen.  But Petain believed France too weak to fight Britain after losing to Germany.  So, no war with Britain, but collaborate with Germany.  Petain scrapped the French Revolution, trashed the old trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and established a new trinity for the new era – work, family, country.  The Napoleonic Code crumbled too.  Jews were rounded up, homosexuals declared criminals, Masonic lodges closed and confiscated, etc.  France was to find its new place in Neuropa, Neurope, as the continent would be led from Berlin.

            In the 1920s and 30s one European nation after another rejected democracy for fascism.  Communism dominated the many nations that composed the Soviet Union.  By 1941 there was little left of the Napoleonic Code, even in France.  Does Hannan think that the common law could have prevented the collapse and catastrophe in Europe?  Had Hitler’s forces captured London, does he think the common law would have spared England the atrocities of fascism?

            I do not have time to discuss some of Hannan’s other thought-provoking points.  Royal power was restricted in England because England is an island, without need of a standing army.  For the king to get one, he had to ask for the money and goods from the people’s representatives.  But clearly just being an island need not result in a restricted monarchy.  Japan’s emperor was so elevated, he was deemed a god.  Hannan makes a case that the British Empire was neither racial nor ethnic.  It was open to all willing to accept the culture and values.  But there were anti-Chinese laws in Hong Kong.  I suspect there were racial laws in many parts of the empire.  And in the Anglosphere in the US slavery existed.  The same Protestants who promoted rebellion against King George had their sons lead a rebellion against Lincoln and the North, and surely defense of slavery was one major issue.  Hannan is courageous enough to quote former MP Enoch Powell, who is reviled by the politically correct.  And unlike the Napoleonic Code, the English common law retained the crime of blasphemy.  In 1988 when author Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, Muslim fanatics in the UK marched demanding he be charged with blasphemy.  But the common law only protected Christianity, so Muslims protested and burned copies of the book.  It was soon banned in many countries, including India, which maintained the residue of common law.  In 1989 a fatwa was pronounced against Rushdie by the spiritual leader of Iran, who asked zealous Muslims to take his blood.

            Though I quibble with some of his points, Hannan has written a provocative book that forces readers to ponder many issues.  Clearly, the Anglosphere has brought freedom and prosperity to millions.  But are the sources of those freedoms primogeniture?  The common law?  What are the sources?  The book is a good read.

Should Churchill Have Saved the British Empire?

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire

By H. W. Crocker III (Regnery, 2011)

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            How does one describe world history of the past few centuries in large print in 350 pages?  Selectively.  Clearly, Crocker cannot include every crucial encounter, every major battle, war, treaty, or policy.  Does he include all the important points?

            Around 1600 some thought England overpopulated with some 4.4 million souls.  It was not yet the United Kingdom, and yet from these small islands were launched ships that conquered a quarter of the globe.  How does one explain this?

            In an early chapter on the dispute between England and its 13 American colonies, Crocker quotes John Adams in a reference that might be summarized as “demography is destiny”:  “…our people,…,will in another century become more numerous than England itself.  Should this be the case,…,it will be easy to obtain mastery of the sea; and then the united forces of all Europe will not subdue us.”(p. 32)  Thomas Paine in COMMON SENSE said something similar: “…there is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”  More recently, Pat Buchanan has written that Europe and traditional America are doomed because Third World immigrants are overwhelming them in their own homelands.

            However, is demography destiny?  The British Empire may provide sufficient examples that it is not.  True, England did lose its 13 colonies by 1783.  Yet, even then, England was approximately 5 millions, while the American colonies were less than 3.

            If demography is destiny, how can one explain the British Empire?  One good feature of Crocker’s work is that he provides statistics (imprecise as they may be) of British and British-led armies against various native opponents.  So often, the British were  outnumbered – frequently overwhelmingly outnumbered, and yet the British defeated their more numerous foes.  Crocker describes the courage of the British leaders, some of the wounds inflicted upon them, and yet how they were able to establish an empire.

            The mechanical, fatalistic approach – the continent rules the island and not the reverse - is disproven by Britain.  Around 1850 the entire British presence in India was 100,000; yet they ruled over approximately 250,000,000.  The British islands dominated the subcontinent of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and more: Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Oman.  In addition, by 1900 nearly half of the continent of Africa was also under British rule.  The island ruled simultaneously all these places plus important trading areas in China, the continent of Australia, and a large section of North America (Canada), and smaller islands scattered across the globe.  A famous phrase was grounded in reality – “The sun never sets upon the British Empire.”  How does one explain this?  Clearly, demography is not necessarily destiny.

            We are aware of how Cortes, with a few hundred Spaniards and horses defeated the millions of Montezuma in Mexico.  How Pizarro and his few conquered the Incas with their masses of men.  The British accomplished similar feats, - from the raids by Francis Drake and English pirates on Spanish islands and homeland ports, to the defeat of its massive Armada.  The British also won land battles against enormous odds.

            At the Battle of Plassey, with some 3,000 men, only a third British, Robert Clive defeated the Indian sepoys with 50,000.(133)  Charles Napier, outnumbered 10 to 1, defeated 22,000 Ballucks at Meanee in India in 1843, and the following year, some 26,000 at the Battle of Hyderabad.(122)

            Yet, there were some occasions where the British were badly defeated, and Crocker includes these setbacks.  In the 1840s some 16,000 British and Indians were slaughtered after Afghanistan had promised safe passage through the Khyber Pass.  The British won revenge shortly after by returning to the country, occupying Kabul, and destroying the villages responsible for the attacks.(136 )

            In South Africa some 20,000 Zulus slaughtered 1,300 British defenders at the Battle of Isandlwhana, with almost every corpse desecrated.  A little later, at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, 120 Brits and colonials held off 4,000 Zulus.  However, following that 4,000 British soldiers defeated 15,000 Zulus and burnt their capital at Ulundi.(198-99)

            Overall, one may generalize, the British defeated numerous enemy forces on nearly all continents even though they were usually outnumbered, and sometimes overwhelmingly so. There were a few areas where the British had trouble.  One was in South Africa against the Boers, the Dutch settlers who sought to retain their independence against the encroaching English.  Unable to defeat the Boers, who resorted to guerrilla warfare, the British rounded up the Boers’ families, herding them into concentration camps with barbed wire fences.  Using Mao’s analogy before Mao uttered it, the Boer guerrillas – the fish who swam in the water of the people, were cut off and isolated from their sources of supplies and support.  The British policy of concentration camps succeeded and the Boers were subdued.

            One important battle omitted by Crocker was that between British crack troops and American irregulars.  The British coalition had just defeated mighty Napoleon in his come-back attempt at Waterloo in 1813.  The newly established United States, which had purchased Louisiana from Napoleon in 1803, thereby lost its friend in Europe at Waterloo.  Suddenly, America had to confront alone the might of the victorious British Empire.  Veteran troops of the European conflicts were sent to seize New Orleans in 1814-1815 (during the War of 1812).  The Americans were ill prepared, but under the leadership of Andrew Jackson, a motley group of defenders – Americans, pirates, Cajuns, Blacks – were organized behind a canal- embankment.  The British, under Gen. Pakenham, disembarked south of New Orleans, and marched upstream where they encountered the American front line.  In what some contend was a prelude to trench warfare of WWI, the Americans behind the embankment fired from relative safety at the oncoming enemy.  In the end, Americans casualties numbered 71; the British 2,000, including Gen. Pakenham himself.  The British withdrew.  Of course, in WWI, the British suffered grievous losses against the forces of the Central Powers.  (One error in Crocker’s book: he writes of the Axis powers of WWI.(94)  Italy was part of the Axis in WWII, but in WWI it was NOT among the Central Powers.  Indeed, in the Great War Italy became an ally of Britain and France.)

            In simplest terms, the British invariably defeated Third World peoples in battle, often though vastly outnumbered, often conquering them.  A small number of British sailors and soldiers might defeat massive armies of Third Worlders.  Demography was not destiny.  The British did, however, experience a much tougher time in battles against Americans, Boers, Germans, and other Europeans.

            Victor Davis Hanson in CARNAGE AND CULTURE has written about the superiority of the Western soldier first evidenced in the wars of ancient Greeks against the Persian Empire.  That superiority generally continued until the mid-20^th century, and Britain was the primary exhibit of this generalization.  Britain did conquer a quarter of the world – with France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Netherlands, Spain, and America, gobbling up much of the rest.  Britain would face its greatest challenges when warring against other white peoples.

            What did the British Empire do to or for its conquered peoples?  Overall, the British created infrastructure, roads, ports, railroads, telegraph lines; it helped develop products like rubber, tobacco, cotton, tea, gold, and provided world-wide markets for these products.  It was the British Empire that embarked upon a crusade against slavery, and in so doing, battled ever more and ever deeper into Africa to end the practice.  Strange, but the Empire grew in its quest to abolish slavery.  In time, the British brought Western law, Western values, fair play, sport, and even the English language as a unifying element.  The British Empire ruled before the madness of multiculturalism infected its leaders; so the British could seek to end slavery no matter what the local practice was.  The British could seek to end the burning of widows, no matter what the religion of the people maintained.  Cannibalism, the murderous Thuggee, and other practices were abolished and could be abolished before multiculturalism declared all cultures equal.

            What else did the British Empire do?  It brought modern medicine.  It brought written language to some areas (no written language had been invented in sub-Saharan Africa; nor had the wheel).  Even confronting older cultures, the British added something important.  What was Hong Kong before the British acquired it?  Nothing.  What was Singapore before the Brits?  Nothing.  Indeed, what was America?  And the British developed Australia, Canada, and other lands.

            On several pages Crocker states how the British admired the warlike peoples against whom they fought.(288)  There is some irony here.  He also notes that in 1831 some 42% of the British Army was composed of Irishmen – Protestants often officers, Catholics in the infantry.  The Irish outnumbered the English in the British Army.  Yet, most Brits did not admire the Irish.  And the enmity was mutual.

            Crocker’s short book presents biographical sketches of the courageous men who made the British Empire – Drake, Henry Morgan, Cornwallis, Raleigh, the Duke of Wellington, Clive, Gordon, Kitchener, Lawrence of Arabia, Churchill, Ian Smith and others.  His range is several centuries and many continents.  The writing is clear.  Crocker’s Chapter 2 is an utter waste and fantasy (an alternative history) and nearly turned this reader away from the otherwise worthy volume.

            Yet there is an important “fantasy” question that Crocker does not, yet should have raised.  1)  Could Churchill have saved the British Empire?  2) Should he have saved it?  Most are aware of how Britain and the US stirred National Liberation Movements in WWI in order to help defeat the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans.  At the peace treaties new nations were carved from old empires: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania.  Yet one often neglects – and Crocker is typical here –the German contribution to National Liberation Movements.  Thus, in 1916 from a German Uboat Sir Roger Casement emerged to help lead a revolt of the Irish against the Brits.  No need to recount the failures of the revolt and its related Easter Uprising in Dublin.  But it is from this failed attempt that finally sprang a more independent Irish Free State under De Valera, one of the rebels of 1916.

            It was also in WWI that some of the Germans inspired a new excursion of guerilla warfare in Africa.  Most of the German colonies, deprived of supplies from the Vaterland by the dominant British naval forces, had to capitulate.  However, in German East Africa, the colonials relied on ingenuity and the natives, first to survive Allied blockade and invasions, and then forging their guerrilla forces, by war’s end, the German-Africans were preparing to invade British colonies to the South.  Africans were also aware of the how well they did with little support from Europe.

            In WWI the British also stirred the Arabs to revolt against the Ottomans, but unlike in Europe, few new nations immediately resulted.  At the peace tables Lebanon and Syria were given to France, while the British won Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Trans Jordan.  Saudi Arabia became independent.  To muddle the situation, the British had also promised a homeland for the Jewish people in the Trans-Jordan area.

            The newly created Soviet government in Russia had publicized secret documents by the Allied coalition concerning their desire to carve up the lands of the Central Powers.  The Soviets’ early response was to attack imperialism and permit nations to secede from the Russian Empire.  So Armenia, Georgia, and other nations came to exist, for a short time.  But soon thereafter, most of these lands were re-incorporated into the Soviet Union.  Soviet leaders sought to portray their new land not as an empire, not as Russian, but a union, multicultural, composed of many peoples, customs, and languages, and all prospering under “socialism.”  Even Jews were given a homeland in the new USSR, in Birobizhan in eastern Siberia.  There was the Communist answer to Zionism.

            The common notion that the Left and the National Liberation Movements are intertwined with, if not identical to, the Left was reinforced after WWII.  Mao’s China, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam were not merely Left, they were Communist.  The Algerian FLN fought against France, and seemed Left, as did the Egyptian military that overthrew King Farouk, then seized Suez, and negotiated the large Aswan Dam project with the Soviets.  In newly independent nations of Africa, many leaders proclaimed their policy African Socialism, some even spurning American aid for that of the Soviets.  Castro “liberated” Cuba from being an American satellite, and Che fought to spread socialist revolutions throughout the hemisphere.  National Liberation and the Left were essentially the same; or were they?

            When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, one of his aims was to “liberate” Germans at home and abroad.  For example, with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, and the peace leaving only a tiny slice to constitute the new Austrian republic, many Austrians, whose language and culture were Germanic, sought to unite with their larger, German neighbor.  While the victorious Allies spoke of self determination of nations, they implemented the policy only when it suited the national interests of the Allies.  The Allies had just defeated Germany, taken its colonies, taken away German majority areas to give them to Poland, and the Allies were not about to let Austria enlarge Germany, no matter what the Austrians and Germans desired.  Germany was so weak following its defeat in 1918 that France occupied the demilitarized Ruhr in 1923, and the German government responded by supporting a strike, and printing evermore Reichsmarks for the strikers.  The inflation of the German currency in 1923 is a textbook case on worthless paper money.  There were economic and political consequences of this inflation.  To prevent another such catastrophe, Hitler ordered German troops to occupy the German “demilitarized” Rheinland.  Later, the Saar voted overwhelmingly to return to Germany under Hitler’s leadership.  Although Hitler intervened before a plebiscite could be held, there were many Austrians who approved the unification of Austria with powerful and prosperous Germany, including the Cardinal, who the day after the Anschluss, stepped from his car and raised his arm in a fascist salute.  Germany’s growing pride and prosperity encouraged others.  After political negotiations, German troops were permitted to incorporate the 3.5 million Germans who had been assigned to live in Czechoslovakia.  The Sudentenland Germans were added to Germany without a shot being fired.  All of this was in accord with liberal ideals of self-determination of people.  Hitler was not an imperialist, trying to subjugate other people into his German Reich, he just wanted all the Germans.  He was a leader of National Liberation.  Then, Hitler violated the Wilsonian doctrines when German armies marched into the rump state of Czechoslovakia.  He took over Prague and the 7 million Czechs in their lands, but even then he was a “liberationist” for he allowed 4 million Slovaks to secede and become independent under Monsignor Tiso, while smaller crumbs were awarded to Hungary and Poland.

            The free city of Danzig had voted for a Nazi Party, and the population, overwhelmingly German, sought to enter the Reich.  Moreover, East Prussia was separated from the Reich, although its population was mainly German, because the Allies of 1918 wanted to allow Poland access to the sea.  Poland was unwilling to compromise on these areas.  The Poles did not care if most of the people in these areas preferred Germany.  They no longer cared about self-determination or Woodrow Wilson.  They wanted to keep what they had.  And Britain and France encouraged the Poles to stand firm and avoid compromise.  Poland did not yield to German threats in 1939.  Then Hitler made a secret deal with Stalin’s Soviet Union.  In September 1939 Germany launched the blitzkrieg against Poland.  As German armies swept so quickly across the borders, Stalin had to move fast to get his share of the Polish pie.  By October 1939, Poland was no more.

            Britain and France had kept their promise to Poland and declared war against Hitler’s Germany.  But nothing happened in the West.  While in the east Poland was crushed in a month, in the west Sitzkrieg was  the word to describe the non-war.  After all, did it make any sense for Britain to go to war to save Poland now that Poland had disappeared?  Surely, England would come to its senses, avoid war, and recognize the changes in eastern Europe.

            But Chamberlain had other ideas.  His government now planned to strangle Germany economically, depriving it of essential war materiel by occupying Norway.  The Norse government apparently agreed to British occupation.  But before the Brits could come, the Germans struck, marching into Denmark, and then with the aid of a Norwegian politician, Vidkun Quisling, the gates were opened to German occupation.  The Norwegian fiasco toppled the Chamberlain government, and he was replaced by the more hawkish Churchill.

            Next German armies stormed through the Netherlands, Belgium, and into France, - even capturing the unobtainable jewel of WWI, Paris.  In weeks the mighty French Army was defeated and the government sued for peace.  Meanwhile, many British troops were stranded on the continent being squeezed into an ever smaller pocket near Dunkirk.  They were trapped; Hitler could have destroyed them.  Instead, he stopped his armies and bombers.  He allowed the British to evacuate in an armada of small ships.  This was a major gesture of peace.  Hitler admired the British; he desired peace; he did not seek to destroy the British Empire.  If England would simply give him a free hand in Europe, he would not disturb their empire.  This would be a reasonable method to restore peace to the world.  Unfortunately, Churchill dismissed such peaceful proposals; the war went on.

            Its hope for peace spurned by the British, Germany then began to pursue an alternative strategy.  If Hitler could not count upon a unity of interests between the world-wide British Empire and a German dominated Neurope, then Germany would have to attack both the British Isles and its Empire.  The latter would be accomplished by support for National  Liberation Movements, even if this meant the destruction of the British Empire.

            In 1933 when Hitler was first appointed Chancellor, there was a strange conjuncture of interests between the Nazis and Zionists – both sought the removal of Jews from Germany.  While in January 1933 few Jews in Germany were Zionists, there numbers grew as Nazis imposed ever more restrictions upon those who remained in the Vaterland.  An agreement was signed between the German government and Zionists whereby German Jews who left for Palestine might get credits for some of their possessions in Reichsmarks so they might import German goods to the Middle East.  While Jewish organizations of the Left were boycotting German products, Zionists in Palestine were importing them.  The agreement succeeded in getting 50,000 Jews out of Germany with products worth some $100 million Reichsmarks.

            In Palestine, however, there was rising resentment against the new immigrants, and the anti-Jewish feeling rose and riots against them raged.  The leader of this anti-Jewish faction was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and the British authorities sought to keep the peace between the Arabs and Jews.

In the Depression of the 1930s, many were dissatisfied with a world one fourth British.  As Hitler seemed to revive German pride and prosperity, his nation won admiration, even from unexpected areas.  Thus in 1935 Persia changed its name to Iran to alert all that it was not a Semitic nation, but an Aryan one.

In Ireland, the blue shirts of fascism never achieved power, but they had connections to the opposition, Fine Gael Party.  Even in England Sir Oswald Mosely’s New Party had segued into the British Union of Fascists.

In India, as rumbles of war rose, how would India react?  For the likes of George Orwell, who had served as a policeman in Burma, this was not a question, - he and India should fight for the British Empire.  But Gandhi had other ideas.  He hoped to achieve independence through use of non-violence.  Gandhi even urged this method upon the British.  Crocker mocks Gandhi’s advice: “Gandhi advised that the British should foil the Nazis by surrendering unconditionally to them and thus defeat them through moral example….Winston Churchill (…) had other, more robust ideas.”(149)  Orwell wrote in opposition to Gandhi’s pacifism, but that pacifism may not have been so peaceful within India.  The Indian National Congress “sponsored an anti-British ‘Quit India’ campaign that called on Indians to act as saboteurs, blowing up trains, cutting telegraph wires, and rioting.”(149)  Yet, Crocker generally dismisses as a “bust” the alternative led by the Mayor of Calcutta, Subhas Chandra Bose.  Although mayor, because of his antagonism to British rule, the authorities held him under house arrest.  With the aid of the German Abwehr, Bose escaped, fled to Afghanistan, and then because of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, flew to Moscow and thence to Berlin.  In Berlin, Bose broadcast on German shortwave against the British in India.  He also met with Indian POWs in Europe and recruited them to join the German SS.  Later in the war, he sailed in a German UBoat to Madagascar, where he transferred to a Japanese UBoat.  The war in Asia had spread in December 1941, and now Bose recruited Indian POWs taken by the Japanese to form the Indian National Army.  Bose also proclaimed a Provisional Republic of India government, and declared war on Britain and the United States.  His government was recognized by several nations including Ireland.  By the time the INA reached 40,000 at its height, Japan was in retreat.  There was a major battle in Burma between the INA and Indians loyal to Britian.  The British won, and Crocker concludes the Bose effort was no real threat.

Yet, others drew different conclusions. Paul Scott, the author of THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN (The Raj Quartette), portrays British officers as confused, shocked, and hurt that their own captured soldiers could turn against them and join the INA.   Worse, they feared that they must defeat the INA while still on foreign soil in Burma, for if it reached India proper, all of India might quickly fall into the arms of Bose.  The INA was defeated in Burma, and India remained British.  Bose died in a plane crash at war’s end.  Nevertheless, there is a statue of him in Calcutta, and many Indians revere the two men whom they believe led them to independence, Gandhi and Bose.

Nazi policies toward Zionism changed as the 1930s wore on.  The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem put pressure on the British to halt Jewish immigration.  Once war broke out between Britain and Germany in 1939, it was then impossible to ship Jews to Palestine.  And with the conquest of Poland, Germany suddenly had millions of more Jews under its sway.  What would be the solution?  When the war began to turn against the Germans, some proposed an exchange of trucks for Jews.  One fierce opponent of any such deal was the Grand Mufti.  Not only did he broadcast to the Middle East on German radio, telling his nationals to kill the Jews, not only did he meet on occasion with the German Fuehrer, but the Mufti even went to some of the concentration camps to show support for and admiration for the Nazi policy toward Jews.

And what was happening in the Middle East?  Britain ruled Palestine, but France held nearby Lebanon and Syria.  In 1940 France was led by Le Marshall in Vichy, a collaborator with Hitler’s Reich.  Egypt was British, but the war came to North Africa when Mussolini’s forces in neighboring Libya invaded Egypt.  They did poorly, but were supplanted by Germans under Rommel.  Suddenly, the invasion of Egypt was ominously real.  Jews in Egypt began planning evacuation to South Africa.  The Muslim Brotherhood, and organization formed in the 1920s, admired the Nazis, and were planning to join with Rommel the moment he broke through the British defenses.  If the Germans could take Egypt, the Suez Canal would be neutralized, and Palestine (and its Jews) surrounded, and perhaps under Nazi supervision, or worse, that of a restored Grand Mufti.  (Look at some of the novels by Lawrence Durrell in the Alexndria Quartet for more on this period).

Even in 2012 Palestinian leaders could be seen raising their arms in the Hitler salute as they continue their national liberation war against Israel and the Jews.  The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt remained in the background during the “Arab Spring,” but it, with its even more fanatical Muslim allies won 2/3s of the Egyptian vote.  Its policies are clearly anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, with several more anti-s.  To a lesser extent, this ideology is true of all the Arab Spring movements.  To what extent are these National Liberation Movements a gift of the Third Reich?

The Hitler regime was anti-Jewish, but in its foreign policy, it was not anti-Semitic.  The Grand Mufti was a Semite.  So were members of the Muslim Brotherhood.  In 1940 a pro-Axis revolt occurred in Iraq, led by relatives of Saddam Hussein (he would come to prominence only later).  The British crushed this rebellion in Iraq rather quickly, but it was another indication of how volatile the Middle East was.  Both Britain and Stalin were unsure about Iran, so both occupied different sectors of that nation in WWII.

The Germans dismembered Yugoslavia, but a “liberated” Croatia was formed.  Also a Bosnia.  Germans recruited to the SS Muslims from the area who wore fezes atop the standard SS fare.  In each of these areas one can see how National Liberation Movements can stem from Nazism as well as from the Left.  (For more on the Germans as being anti-Jewish, not anti-Semitic, and in league with many National Liberation Movements, see some of the writings of Prof. Steven Farron of South Africa.)

The American Empire also felt the sting.  In the American Philippines, the aged antagonist of American invasion, Aguanaldo, endorsed the new government established by the Japanese.  And the Puerto Rican independence movement, harking back to it Spanish origins, preferred a Franco-type island to that imposed by its Anglo conqueror.  This movement became more prominent shortly after WWII when some of its members shot up the US Congress and sought to assassinate President Truman.

And here I speculate – but watching an old film with Brad Pitt playing an Austrian who goes to Tibet in the late 1930s, I wondered, was this based upon an individual’s desire to explore, or an effort to link a liberated Tibet with the New Germany?

Bottom line – by 1945 Germany, Italy, and its allies were crushed.  However, most of the National Liberation Movements it sponsored, encouraged, supported, and allied with continued to simmer, some to grow, and some to rise to leadership of their respective nations.  And by 1950, much of the British Empire was gone.  Even more by 1960.  And by 1970 – what British Empire?

Would this have occurred had Churchill made a deal with Hitler in 1940?  Hitler would have had Neurope and a free hand to tackle Stalin without fear of British attack on his rear, and the British might retain their empire.

Today, the British Empire is a memory.  Would many of its former colonies be better had they remained British?  Would Burma?  Ghana?  Bangladesh?  Sudan?  Go down that long list of lands.  Are they better off now?  It is not always an easy answer.  The British Empire that ruled a quarter of the globe performed many good acts to improve the health, the education, the roads, the ports, the railroads of the natives.  It challenged the superstitions of the natives and sometimes forced them to abandon their native customs, like slavery, burning widows, cannibalism, etc.  It often brought law and reduced corruption.  I suspect that many would fondly recall the rule of Britannia, and evoke a sense of loss that it withered away.

But it did not wither.  WWII, and especially the German policy of rousing National Liberation Movements meant that people all over the world fought against the British Empire.  The question I ask is, had Churchill, or Halifax, or even Chamberlain, agreed to peace in 1940, then German support of National Liberation Movements would not have occurred.  And the Empire would have been stronger.  Perhaps, it would still rule one fourth of the globe.  There might be some good in that.  And instead of making a deal with the devil to defeat Hitler, the British Prime Minister would have made a deal with the other devil to defeat Stalin.

Yet, there is something that we dislike about this proposal.  If Hitler had defeated Stalin, Germany would have ended far stronger than before.  Jews would no longer live in Europe.  Britain, Empire and all, would be a junior partner in a National Socialist world, which might even extend to Tibet.

Churchill sought to save the British Empire when he refused all peace feelers with Hitler.  He risked the empire to keep Britain free.  It was a gamble.  Britain won the war, but lost her empire.  The Nazis lost, but some of their National Liberation Movements succeeded and some continue to this day.

As the British Empire recedes into history, we can wonder at the island that ruled so many parts of so many continents – and ruled them well.