‘If Christ were to return to this world today’, the Oxford-based historian Lionel Curtis asked in 1910, ‘where would He find the principles of His teaching best followed?’ He unhesitatingly gave his own answer: in the British empire. Few even of his contemporaries shared the same degree of enthusiasm for empire. Emily Hobhouse, the exposer of Britain's ‘methods of barbarism’ during the South African War, Agatha Harrison, the supporter and follower of Mahatma Gandhi, and Rita Hinden, secretary of the Fabian Colonial Bureau, certainly did not. Yet the fact that Curtis could pose such a question and give such an answer reminds us that, for part at least of its existence, many British people saw their empire not as something embarrassing, nor merely as the object of pride and loyalty, but as the outcome of an imperial mission, which in turn was a key element in contemporary constructions of British identity.
A sense of imperial mission characterized the outlook of many of the imperial proconsuls of Curtis's age—men like [...] Lord Curzon, the unbending viceroy of India. ‘To me the message is carved in granite, hewn of the rock of doom’, Curzon wrote, ‘that our work is righteous and that it shall endure’. Such sentiments would have seemed as absurd to earlier generations of British colonial governors as they do today. ‘Our object in conquering India’, Sir Charles Napier wrote in 1840, ‘the object of all our cruelties, was money … Every shilling of this has been picked out of blood, wiped and put into the murderer's pocket … We shall yet suffer for the crime as sure as there is a God in heaven.’ Yet Napier himself went on to conquer Sind, with great loss of blood; and as governor did much to wipe out suttee, thuggism, and infanticide (all in the name of righteousness).
When Britain first, at Heaven's command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."
The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia! ..."
Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful, from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that tears the skies,
Serves but to root thy native oak.
"Rule, Britannia! ..."
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame:
All their attempts to bend thee down,
Will but arouse thy generous flame;
But work their woe, and thy renown.
"Rule, Britannia! ..."
To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine:
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.
"Rule, Britannia! ..."
The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest Isle! With matchless beauty crown'd,
And manly hearts to guard the fair.
"Rule, Britannia! ..."
James Thomson, 1763
According to this poem, Britons will rather rule the waves (which, of course, is not related to the British sailors' skills) before they will be slaves.
That's a justified prospect.
But its immanent message is, not to rule out the possibility of dominating and enslaving non-Britons or, to be precise, non-English peoples, including e.g. the Scots.
So the above jingoistic hymn has a shady underbelly and differs clearly from that proud Friesian "Lever duad as Slav!" ("Rather die than being a slave!") and, as well, from that wonderful Negro spiritual:
O freedom after a while,
And before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free.
There'll be no more moaning, ...
No more crying,
No more weeping ...
No more bowing,
No more kneeling after a while ...
Now tell me something about nobleness and moral high grounds.
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