The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall

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Those Who Built Them,

Those Who Endured Them,

and Why They Always Fall

Timothy H. Parsons

1

2010

3

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Copyright © 2010 by Timothy H. Parsons

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parsons, Timothy, 1962–The rule of empires : those who built them,

those who endured them,

and why they always fall / Timothy H. Parsons.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-19-530431-2

1. Colonies—History. 2. Colonization—History.

3. Imperialism—History. I. Title.

JV61.P33 2010

325'.3—dc22 2009044192

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper

For Annie, always

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Acknowledgments, ix

Introduction: The Subjects of Empire, 1

1

Roman Britain: The Myth of the Civilizing

Empire, 21

2

Muslim Spain: Blurring Subjecthood in Imperial

Al-Andalus, 65

3

Spanish Peru: Empire by Franchise, 111

4

Company India: Private Empire Building, 169

5

Napoleonic Italy: Empire Aborted, 231

6

British Kenya: The Short Life of the

New Imperialism, 289

7

France under the Nazis: Imperial Endpoint, 351

Conclusion: Imperial Epitaph, 423

Notes, 451

Index, 473

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As a social historian of twentieth-century Africa, I incurred considerable scholarly debts in writing on so many different empires that are

far outside my own area of specialization. Bruce Masters introduced

me to the study of Islamic societies more than two decades ago, and

Ahmet Karamustafa continued this education with his close reading

of the Umayyad Spain chapter. Matthew Restall read the initial proposal for this book as an anonymous reviewer for Oxford University

Press and then was immensely supportive in helping me fi nd my way

in Spain’s American empire. Mark Burkholder and Rick Walter each

reviewed that chapter closely and also made numerous suggestions

and corrections. Similarly, Tom Metcalf generously helped me navigate the complexities of the history of British rule in South Asia, and

Hillel Kieval did the same for the Nazi empire in Europe. I have drawn

inspiration from Dane Kennedy’s and Lori Watt’s views of empire,

and I am particularly grateful to my dear friend Derek Peterson for

his close and critical reading of the introduction. Richard Davis was

an equally important source of wise advice, and I particularly valued

Keith Bennett’s patience and encouragement during the writing process. Although they were not fully aware of it, my graduate students

John Aerni, Muey Saeteurn, and Meghan Ference made an important

intellectual contribution to the book’s central arguments through their

thoughtful and probing questions. Rethinking empire from the perspectives of subject peoples has been a diffi cult and complex process,

and so of course I alone am responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation that have crept into this exercise in academic trespassing.

ix

x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The logistics of researching and writing a project of this scope

have been equally daunting. The Inter-Library Loan and Circulation

units of Washington University’s Olin Library did a remarkable job

in locating and producing a diverse and unusually obscure array of

historical sources. Most importantly, I never could have organized

this material or written this book without the assistance and unfl agging support of my friends on the faculty and staff of our African

and

African-American Studies Program. My colleagues Mungai

Mutonya, Garrett Duncan, Rafi a Zafar, Priscilla Stone, Cameron

Monroe, and Amina Gautier were always encouraging, and in running the program offi ce Raye Maheney and Adele Tuchler spoiled

me by making sure that I had all the time and resources necessary

to fi nish the book. On this score, Molly Shaikewitz and four successive years of work-study students also deserve mention: Nancy

Kim, Josh Lubatkin, Karen Wang, Danielle Roth, Lily Huang, Brandon Williams, Molissa Thomas, and Michael Musgrave. Sheryl Peltz

and Brendan Akos were similarly helpful in giving me extra time for

research and writing.

A number of people played equally key roles in bringing this book

into print. My agent, Jeff Gerecke, was smart and deft in helping me

refi ne my abstract ideas about empire, and Peter Ginna shared my

conviction that conventional imperial histories are fl awed because

they ignore the central role of imperial subjects. But I never would

have been able to follow through on the grand promises that I made

to Oxford University Press and my editor, Tim Bent, without Ann

Parsons’s help in reading and rereading countless draft chapters. I am

also particularly grateful to Tim for his incisive guidance in shaping

the fi nal manuscript and for addressing my concerns thoughtfully

and patiently. Tim’s assistant, Dayne Poshusta, also merits a word of

thanks on this score.

Finally, I never would have been able to write this book without

the unfl agging encouragement of my friends and family. Showing

infi nite and largely undeserved patience, they never gave into the

temptation of asking, “Aren’t you done yet?”

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The Subjects of Empire

Looking back to his youth, when Britain ruled Kenya and he served

in its East African army, seventy-four-year-old Daniel Wambua

Nguta’s hatred for his former colonial rulers remains undiminished.

“A European is no good. He rolls you like a ball at his will. And you

have to live by his commands.”1 Nguta’s characterization of British

rule is strikingly different from the idealized and romantic notions

of empire.

The conquerors of Kenya would have dismissed men like Nguta as

barbarous tribesmen. The British peer Baron Cranworth claimed that

he and his fellow Kenyan settlers brought progress and modernity to

the “primitive” peoples of the East African highlands.

We give peace where war was. We give justice where injustice ruled.

We give law and order where the only law was the law of strength. We

give Christianity, or a chance of it, where Paganism ruled. Whether

the native looks on it in that light is another matter. I am afraid that

possibly he doesn’t as yet truly appreciate his benefi ts.2

Cranworth made his case in 1912, but the current archbishop of

Canterbury, Rowan Williams, echoed his sentiments almost a century

later when he criticized the United States’ occupation of Iraq by lauding Britain’s rule of India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and

then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising

it. Rightly or wrongly that’s what the British Empire did in India.”3

Today, few westerners doubt this argument. Confi dent in the superiority of their technology and culture, they believe that the empires

1

2 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

of the last century performed the necessary service of dragging backward counties into the modern world.

The twentieth-century western empires were probably the most

humane imperial enterprises in history. In contrast to brutal and

nakedly exploitive ancient and medieval empires, French and British

administrators tried to make good on promises to improve the lives

of their subjects. But such imperial humanitarianism rested on the

premise that nonwestern peoples were in need of salvation. To Cranworth, Africans were only marginally human. “They lie, they steal,

they poison; they conspire, they are intensely lazy, and they are callously cruel. Still, there they are, and such as they are we must make

the best of them.”4

It is hardly surprising that the rulers and the ruled had differing

perspectives on empire. The myth of the liberal empire survives to

this day because the voices of men like Nguta were either silenced

or never recorded at all. Instead, popular history romanticizes Caesars, emirs, conquistadors, viceroys, nabobs, explorers, soldiers, and

missionaries. Westerners like to think that they are the heirs of an

omnipotent and enlightened imperial Rome.

Imperial nostalgia diminished as the last formal global European

empires broke up after the Second World War, and the Soviet Union

and Red China, imperial powers in their own right, won allies in the

developing world by championing their cause. The Latin American,

African, and Asian nations that dominated the United Nations General Assembly by the 1960s further redefi ned imperial rule as foreign

domination, economic exploitation, and ultimately a violation of fundamental human rights. European liberals consequently repudiated

their own imperial history or conveniently forgot that their nations

had ever even ruled empires. Similarly, most Americans ignore

the fate of Amerindians by viewing themselves as a uniquely antiimperial people. Recalling the Revolutionary War as a struggle against

British despotism, they viewed the United States as an egalitarian

republic protecting the world from communist imperial expansion.

The terrorist attacks of 2001 gave imperial methods, if not actual

empire building, a new lease on life. Puncturing the illusion of domestic security, they gave credence to those who called for a more aggressive stance in defending America’s national interests. The best way

to protect the United States from further attacks was to use military

Introduction 3

force, or hard power, to change regimes and restructure conquered

societies. This imperial assumption was in no way masked by President George W. Bush’s assertion in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq

that “America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish. We wish

for others only what we wish for ourselves—safety from violence,

the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life.”5

Fears that collapsed states would become havens for terrorists and

that rogue nations might give them nuclear, chemical, or biological

weapons led political commentators and analysts of all ideological