Democracy with Imperialism: the British Empire

In 1500, when the Turkish Ottoman Empire and China were the world's greatest powers, before Spain had established its empire in the Americas and while the Portuguese were still pirating their way around Africa to Asia, the English were a backward and unimportant people. They had a king, Henry VII, who had come to power through violence. There were no pretensions to having a democratic government run for the sake of the people; holding Parliaments was an ancient but seldom-honored tradition.

What was the evilest empire in the history of the world? The Mongols? The Romans, the Ottomans, the Nazis? For my money it was the British Empire. Which did not exist in any meaningul sense in 1500.

We are not supposed to think that way in these United States of America. The British are supposed to be a good force of history, the main source of the American ruling class and culture, nice people who brought civilization to half the world.

Sure, that is how it must have gone. Hi, would you like to trade almost all of your land for some lessons in how to drink high tea? Welcome to English civilization.

The Brits were a brutal lot. For centuries they just fought each other or, after the Norman conquest, tried to conquer another lot of civilized brutes, the French. United, they conquered Wales, then Ireland. They fought with the Scots for centuries, too, before the two clans were united by royal marriage.

Even before the unity known as Great Britain (or United Kingdom) was formed, the English began mixing trade with piracy. Their royally sponsored pirates became national heroes and provided much of the capital for both colonialism and modern capitalism. The British Navy and Army, working with missionaries, businessmen, and diplomats, became a rather efficient imperial machine. They never did the grand invasion routine beloved by conquerors from Darius the Great to Napoleon. They used political and economic leverage quite effectively to eat the Indian subcontinent bite by bite. They would graciously accept a colony or two from bankrupt Eurotrash kings they had loaned some money or troops to for local wars, or who had lost to the tyrants backed by Britain.

It was a centuries-long process, but over time the people of the British empire murdered millions in war and in cold blood, stole half the world's real estate, and destroyed most of the native economies of their colonies. You might also ask the Irish about how civilized British rule has been.

Which brings us to the issue of democracy. During the development of the British Empire the "middle class" (here I use older, more accurate sense of the term, those above the working class but below the aristocracy) struggled for power with the kings (really Emperors) and their aristocratic inbred idiot relatives. Guess who won? Over the centuries Parliament became stronger, and the House of Commons came to prevail over the House of Lords. Eventually even ordinary, lower-class British men got the vote. Socialist parties and then, more successfully, the Labor Party came to play an important role in politics. By the 20th century, we are supposed to believe, democracy was triumphant in merry old England.

Look at World War I. We are taught in American schools that the U.S. was a democracy and fought with France, Italy, and Britain, collectively the Democracies, against Germany, Austria, and Turkey (still then the vast Ottoman Empire), the Monarchies. That is a load of swill.

Almost no one in the British Empire could vote to elect politicians to set its policies. Only those living in the British Isles could vote. Africans could not vote, nor could Indians or Burmese or the Chinese in Hong Kong. Even the Canadians and Australians could not vote for members of the British Parliament (as white neo-Brits they did have their own Parliaments).

Is that democracy? A billion or so people, and less than 100 million have a say in governance.

I think not. I somehow doubt the citizens of the Indian subcontinent would have voted to have themselves shot when they demanded independence or self-rule.

In Iran (then Persia) they still speak of the nefarious British. They have better memories than Americans, or perhaps less reason to forget what actually happened over the past five centuries.

Class room exercise questions:

Are there any parallels between the British Empire and some other benevolent empire closer to home?

If a minority like the Irish within a political empire vote for their independence, but are voted down by the English majority, is that democracy? Is majority rule the sole test of democratic governance?

Coffin Ships, Deregulation, and Al Gore

Samuel Plimsoll was born in Bristol, England, on February 10, 1824. He became a businessman, but of the sort who cared about his fellow humans. In his business, the coal trade, there was a dark secret. Ship owners found they could maximize their profits on their oldest vessels by stopping maintenance, overloading them with goods, using fewer sailors than was safe, and over-insuring them. A ship that made its voyage was profitable. A ship that sank was profitable too, because of the insurance payment. Never mind the dead sailors. Such ships were known as coffin or death ships. Plimsoll pleaded with the British Parliament to outlaw these practices. Parliament did nothing. Plimsoll ran for and was seated in Parliament in 1868. It took him until 1876 to get his Merchant Shipping Act passed. He is known to history as "the sailor's friend."

Regulation good, de-regulation bad? Democrats good, Republicans bad? Not so fast.

Regulations can be bad, often depending on your point of view. The devil is in the details, and the details, all too often in modern times, are written by corporate lawyers. Laws and regulations about business practices are yet more grist for the gruel of law.

Regulations can make people safer, but they can also kill beneficial industries by failing to take into account that a degree of danger is inherent when any human wakes up in the morning, and to some extent even when they sleep at night. Many regulations, however, are not about safety, but about some other government set goal. Regulating fishing, for instance, is (supposed to be) about preserving enough breeding fish each year so that fishing will be just as good next year, or ten years from now. Thus they should benefit business and workers alike.

Laws and regulations, like cholesterol, tend to accumulate and choke the life out of things at times, even if they are well-intentioned. As a public school board member in California I saw this effect. Over the decades whenever something went wrong at a public school the state legislature, or the office of education, or even the Federal government, wrote a law (usually added to the Education Code) in response. Often, to ensure compliance, some paperwork was added: an annual certification that the school complied with the regulation. Over the decades, to ensure compliance, which is necessary to get funding, the ratio of administrative support staff to teachers grew.

I have no problem with the idea of periodically purging unnecessary regulations. The problem is, who picks? Too often, business lobbyists choose to leave in regulations that help them fend off ruinous competition, while getting rid of regulations that protect workers, consumers, and the environment.

Which brings us to Al Gore, former Vice-president of the United States of America, now known as a flaming liberal because of his anti-global warming posturing. For no particular reason I started reading Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's Al Gore: A User's Manual, printed back in 2000. The section I am in is how Gore led the deregulators when he was vice-president. He pushed the Clinton administration for REGO, his reinventing government program. It would please any Tea Party activist or corporate Republican. It was sold to the public as a waste-eliminator, but in fact opened the doors of government to business predators, while gutting departments that did useful public service [pages 172-187]. Gore topped this with his attack on the federal welfare system [pages 188-209]. Gore's ability to completely alienate any Democratic Party politician or voter who still believed in the New Deal or Great Society was the reason he lost his campaign to become President in 2000.

But people have short memories. Particularly, apparently, do voters. And journalists. So raise a glass to Samuel Plimsoll, one of the rare good politicians.

Remember, too, the glory that was Imperialist America, but don't expect the paychecks to be as good during our post-imperial decline and fall.