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.Ironically, despite the inspiration that American anti-colonial national-ism and constitutionalism gave, and continues to give, to subsequentnationalisms, its essential impulse is profoundly different to its enduringrhetorical effect.This, no doubt, is one reason why the USA is typicallyconfounded by other people s nationalism.Such a chastened conception of power and politics is plainly not thecase with constitutionalism in much of the twentieth century and in Indiain particular.This constitutionalism must and does constitute power andincrease and celebrate its ambit.It is only through politics that the nationcan be imagined, let alone administered.In the Indian case, once parti-tion wrecked the geographical grounds of nationhood, politics becameeven more central to stitching the nation and giving expression to theexistential needs of the unitary whole. 02 Chapter 1684.qxd 19/3/09 10:42 Page 50 03 Chapter_PT II 1684.qxd 19/3/09 10:43 Page 533 Neither Masters nor Slaves : SmallStates and Empire in the LongEighteenth CenturyRICHARD WHATMOREIEVERYONE KNOWS THAT A VIEW OF the British Empire as a moral phenom-enon a force for education, civilisation, and progress became com-monplace in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 British rulewas often described as benevolent, supportive of self-government, andrespectful of the customs and laws of the dependent states of the empire.2Britain s purportedly liberal approach to empire was variously ascribed tothe moral and moderate element in its national character exemplified byWilberforce s attack on the slave trade, to the fact that Britain had itselfalways been a composite state with a successful history of dealing withprovinces, to the emphasis on commerce rather than conquest as the pur-pose of the empire.3 The distinctiveness of Britain s imperial role was, in1Thomas Erskine May, The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George theThird, 1760 1860: With a New Supplementary Chapter, 1861 1871, 4th edn, 3 vols (London,1873), vol.3, p.384: Beyond these narrow isles, England has won, indeed, a vast and gloriousempire.In the history of the world, no other state has known how to govern territories soextended and so remote, and races of men so diverse, giving to her own kindred colonies thewidest liberty.To the Englishman may it not be said. having won freedom for thyself, andused it wisely, thou hast given it to thy children, who have peopled the earth; and thou hastexercised dominion with justice and humanity . For a later, similar, example, see Ramsay Muir,The Character of the British Empire (London, 1917).2For illustrations, see Arthur Mills, Colonial Constitutions: An Outline Constitutional Historyand Existing Government of the British Dependencies (London, 1856) and Leone Levi,International Commercial Law: Being the Principles of Mercantile Law of the Following and otherCountries, viz.: England, Scotland, Ireland, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London, 1863), vol.1, pp.3 5.3John Macgregor, Sketches of the Progress of Civilization and Public Liberty: With a View of thePolitical Condition of Europe and America in 1848 (London, 1848), pp.61 3, and HomershamProceedings of the British Academy 155, 53 81.© The British Academy 2009. 03 Chapter_PT II 1684.qxd 19/3/09 10:43 Page 5454 Richard Whatmorethe nineteenth century, deemed by many to parallel its role in Europeanpolitics, in maintaining a balance of power supportive of trade butopposed to the rise of land-based empires in Europe, historically associ-ated with Spanish and French aspirations, and latterly with Russianambition.4 In the twentieth century, Britain became involved in worldwars initially on the grounds of defending the independence of Europe ssmall states.British policy was never inflexible, and was often contested,but a commitment developed to the independence of the small states ofEurope which emerged intact from the Napoleonic Wars, such asPortugal, or which subsequently sought to become independent, with thefirst example being Greece in the 1820s.5 The rationale for Britain scommitment was partly commercial, to develop trade in peaceful times,but was also linked to the desire to maintain Britain s reputation asa defender of liberty abroad, because of its self-perception as thearchetypal free state.Britain had always been seen to be related, with respect to general cul-ture and manners, to the small republics of Europe.6 Partly this was dueto England s own republican past, but it had more to do with a percep-tion among the small states that Britain s constitution, although mixedand monarchical, was far closer to those of the small republics than it wasto Europe s absolute monarchies.7 By the 1790s, British protection wasseen for many to be the surest means of maintaining Europe s smallCox, The British Commonwealth, or, A Commentary on the Institutions and Principles of BritishGovernment (London, 1854), pp.516 67.4John Finlay, Miscellanies: The Foreign Relations of the British Empire (Dublin, 1835), pp.1 22.5For a summary view of attitudes during the French Revolutionary Wars, see William Pitt sspeech of 3 June 1803 in The Speeches of.William Pitt, in the House Of Commons, 2nd edn,3 vols (London, 1808), vol.3, pp.273 87.For the defence of small states as key to a liberalempire , see George Canning, On Granting Aid to Portugal , House of Commons, December1826 in W.J.Bryan (ed.), The World s Famous Orations: Great Britain II, 10 vols (New York,1906), vol.4.See also Arnold-Hermann-Ludwig Heeren, A Manual of the History of the PoliticalSystem of Europe and Its Colonies, From Its Formation at the Close of the Fifteenth Century toIts Re-establishment upon the Fall of Napoleon (London, 1846), pp.503 5, and Frederick Strong,Greece as a Kingdom, or, A Statistical Description of that Country from the Arrival of King Otto,in 1833 (London, 1842), pp.52 70.6Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi, On Constitutional Monarchy , PoliticalEconomy and the Philosophy of Government (London, 1847), pp.417 47, and William Cargill, AnExamination of the Origin, Progress, and Tendency of the Commercial and Political Confederationagainst England and France (Newcastle, 1840), pp.30 40
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