Control, Chaos and Revolution in the Global 19th Century (1770s-1920s): An “Ex-Centric” Perspective on the Unplanned Effects of Imperialism (Double Panel) Part 2

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D Multivocality in Global History

Control, Chaos and Revolution in the Global 19th Century (1770s-1920s): An “Ex-Centric” Perspective on the Unplanned Effects of Imperialism (Double Panel) Part 2

Event Details

Date

VI. Friday, 12th September, 11:00-13:00
Location
N2040
Theme
D Multivocality in Global History

Convenor

Deborah Besseghini (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville (Spain), MSCA GA n.101209078)

Chair

Deborah Besseghini (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville (Spain), MSCA GA n.101209078)

Commentator

Benjamin Martin (Uppsala University)

Panelists

Bernard Attard (University of Leicester)
Deborah Besseghini (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville (Spain), MSCA GA n.101209078)
Lorenzo Bonomelli (Sciences Po Paris (France) - Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples (Italy))
Rodrigo Escribano Roca (CSIC)
Elisa Giunchi (Università degli studi di Milano, Italy)
Maarten Manse (Linnaeus University)
Michael Talbot (University of Greenwich)

Papers

Bernard Attard

Collaboration without informal empire: colonial Australia and the capital market

Collaboration without informal empire: colonial Australia and the capital market

In the late nineteenth century, self-governing settler colonial societies interacted with two distinct sites of power in the international system, empires and markets. This paper analyses their relations with markets with particular reference to the Australian colonies which, like their peers in Canada and New Zealand and the sovereign countries of the southern cone of South America, were both major destinations of British direct investment and significant participants in the London capital market in their own right. This paper argues for a form of Robinsonian collaboration which was not associated with informal influence or power, but based on the weakness of British business actors and their need to create effective local partnerships with their equivalents in settler societies to secure and protect their interests, particularly in their relations with government. British businesses might draw on support from the capital market itself, but this was always circumscribed and contingent, while what they could actually achieve was limited by their relative weakness within the societies in which they operated. These broad propositions are explored with reference to the lobbying activities of British companies in the Australian pastoral industry, which attracted the main flow of British direct investment in Australia in the 1870s and 1880s, but are complicated also by the peculiar conditions of what historians have called the ‘British world’. The paper analyses the different levels at which British companies lobbied at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the conditions for their success, and the limits of what they could achieve.
Michael Talbot

Did the Ottoman Empire have an informal empire?

Did the Ottoman Empire have an informal empire?

It was long assumed that in the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was a subject of informal empire rather than a practitioner of it. In the early modern period, the Sublime State used a variety of power structures to control and defend its core lands, including the use of tributary states and frontier regencies. However, as new forms of imperial and colonial rule came to dominate in the second half of the nineteenth century, a time when the Ottoman Empire’s borders were contracting and foreign influence on populations and territories increasing, the Ottoman state turned to other means through which to project power, within and without its nominal borders. An aggressive reformist and modernising programme attempted to bring imperial control to core (and contested) provinces in Greater Syria and Anatolia. Outlying provinces such as Trablusgarb (Libya) and Yemen were subject to an Ottoman version of the mission civilisatrice. Mostafa Minawi has shown how the Ottomans were enthusiastic, if not always successful, participants in the "Scramble” for African colonies. Other scholars (e.g. (Kemal Karpat, Lâle Can, Michael O’Sullivan) have shown how external regions with substantial Muslim populations, including Russian Central Asia, Kasghar and the Qing’s western reaches, Aceh and other Southeast Asian sultanates, the Emirate of Afghanistan, as well as the thousands of pilgrims of all nationalities making their way to Mecca for the Hajj, sought and/or received imperial ties with the Ottoman Empire. Rather than providing a territory-specific case study, this paper will examine a vocabulary of empire found in published intellectual, literary, and pedagogic texts to understand how – if at all – Ottoman elites in the empire’s final half-century articulated forms of imperial control that were indirect or informal.
Elisa Giunchi

Weapons’ proliferation in Southern Afghanistan at the close of the 19th century: an unintended consequence of British imperial policies

Weapons’ proliferation in Southern Afghanistan at the close of the 19th century: an unintended consequence of British imperial policies

Starting in the last decade of the 19th century, Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan acquired an extensive quantity of modern rifles and ammunition, which were used to attack border posts along the Durand line and resist British encroachments. Coupled with tactical advantages, the new weaponry proved very effective, thus limiting British capacity to exert control over border areas and raising the costs of defence in north-western India, an area which was considered of crucial importance by British strategists. The acquisition of large quantities of rifles by Pashtunmilitias also contributed to British feelings of insecurity at a time of heightened great power rivalry and took place in the backdrop of increasing nationalist claims in India, inroads by other European countries into the Persian Gulf, and persistent fears of Russian ambitions. The weapons were obtained through different channels. While an increasing number of mostly British manufactured weapons was smuggled through the Persian Gulf, large quantities of rifles and ammunition originated from the Afghan government arsenal and had been provided by London directly or manufactured locally with subsidies provided by Britain with the aim of gaining the emir’s allegiance. What was a major component of British diplomacy in its informal empire - the provision of subsidies and weapons to local rulers - thus turned in the first decade of the 20th century into a pressing security problem which would occupy British military and civilian officers up to the First World War.
Rodrigo Escribano Roca

The bombardments of Valparaíso and Callao (1866) as undesired results of the Spanish imperial meridian

The bombardments of Valparaíso and Callao (1866) as undesired results of the Spanish imperial meridian

The bombardments of Valparaíso and Callao by the Spanish Royal Navy in 1866 have gone down in history as quixotic events, reflecting the improvised nature of the foreign policy implemented by the ex-metropolis in the Spanish-American republics. This paper seeks to add complexity to this perspective by proposing the hypothesis that both episodes, and the war that provoked them, were not the result of ministerial improvisation, but rather of a series of failures in the elaboration of Spain's grand strategy of geopolitical regeneration in the region. Madrid's initial objective was to use gunboat diplomacy to sign an unequal treaty with Peru. The capture of the Chincha Islands in April 1864 responded to this scheme. But what was supposed to be an effective and inexpensive intervention that reinforced the ideological agenda of pan-Hispanism turned into a post-imperial conflict that had enormous costs for Spain's image in the region and for the colonies of Spanish emigrants settled there. Among the errors that led to this development was the inability to predict the behaviour of certain actors, such as Chilean radicalism, Peruvian insurgent forces, the press and the Royal Navy officers themselves. This case study can help us to elucidate the unplanned effects of European interventionism in the Americas, while inviting us to reconsider the history of the region as a laboratory of competing post-imperial projects.
Lorenzo Bonomelli

Unplanned effects of unplanned imperialism? France’s military interventions in Latin America, 1830s-1840s

Unplanned effects of unplanned imperialism? France’s military interventions in Latin America, 1830s-1840s

In 1830, the French constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe d’Orleans recognised the independence of the former Spanish colonies in Latin America. Still, the relations with these countries proved troublesome. In a few years, France resorted to force and deployed its navy in New Granada (1834), Mexico (1838-1839), and the Rio de la Plata (1838-1852). These interventions began as retaliations for incidents such as violence against French nationals, partly due to the chaotic political and social situation in the new republics. The lobbying action of French merchants, residents, diplomats, and officers on the ground was instrumental in convincing their government to intervene. The elites of the Orleanist regime shared the ambition of restoring France’s global influence, and these military operations fitted into their vision as potential means to obtain political and commercial benefits. Yet, ministers in Paris lacked a clear global strategy, which led to often confused and contradictory policies. Therefore, such relatively unplanned imperial actions brought unplanned effects, jeopardising French trade, diplomacy, and endangering expatriates in the region. Furthermore, Latin Americans’ reactions were twofold. On the one side, anti-interventionist and Pan-American discourses emerged in the press and political circles. On the other, some Latin Americans started seeing and exploiting foreign interventions as instruments to foster their own political projects. Ultimately, Orleanist interventionism yielded virtually no tangible results for France. On a longer period, however, these episodes were part of the formation of imperial practices and ideologies that would culminate in the global ventures and projects of Napoleon III some decades later.
Deborah Besseghini

Side effects of financing a global war: Britain and Spanish America in the Age of Napoleon (1797-1821)

Side effects of financing a global war: Britain and Spanish America in the Age of Napoleon (1797-1821)

This paper explores a case where global powers, driven by strategic necessity rather than a desire for direct control, engage in actions that unintentionally lead to the destabilization and transformation of regions, and of long-established economic practices. During the Napoleonic Wars, British external interference in the Hispanic world was aimed at procuring coin and bullion in Spanish America to finance its “Foreign Aid” to Spain and Europe. To cut off France from resources and positions and hinder its control over Spain and its empire, the British indirectly interfered in the establishment of political systems compatible with their interests. I consider the interplay between state and private interest by focusing on the initiatives of trans-imperial brokers of Irish descent who managed flows of silver and gold while the belligerents and especially the British Treasury speculated on their values in different global regions. The paper links these financial initiatives to the best possible business in a revolutionary context, the arms trade. For the first time it shows how chaos in Spanish America ended up providing economic means to liberate Spain from French occupation through British aid, and then to finance the struggle of other European nations against Napoleon, with the fragmentation of the old imperial system as an unwanted effect. The operation favoured the birth of new identities and the (unwanted) breakup of “mercantilism” (of British mercantilism as well), paving the way to modern globalization. Spanish Americans were not subjects of a new informal empire, but demiurges of the modern world
Maarten Manse

Contracts of Empire: The Written and unwritten terms of colonial rule in southeast Asia

Contracts of Empire: The Written and unwritten terms of colonial rule in southeast Asia

The Dutch and British colonial empires in Southeast Asia relied heavily on treaties with indigenous rulers, with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) being especially prolific in their use. These treaties aimed to provide colonial rule with a veneer of legitimacy and formal authority. Following the political upheavals of the early nineteenth century—the French occupation of the Netherlands and British interregna in parts of Indonesia—the newly established Dutch colonial government, after the VOC’s dissolution in 1799, used these treaties as the legal foundation to assert sovereignty over territories and princely states in Indonesia. This paper challenges the notion that colonial governance was dictated solely by formal treaties. Beneath the legal framework, it argues, the everyday operations of empire hinged on constant negotiations between indigenous rulers and colonial authorities, with the treaties serving as a key platform for reinterpretation and contestation. While the Dutch sought to standardize contracts to impose uniform frames of subjection and control, indigenous rulers pushed back, exploiting colonial administrative inefficiencies, anxieties and limitations. This paper will show how colonial officials often delegated significant authority to contracted local rulers, inadvertently allowing them to reinterpret the terms of the treaties and assert their own political agency. Thereby, these rulers, often portrayed as mere collaborators, could contribute to shaping the legal foundations of colonial empire.

Abstract

This panel aims at exploring contradictions and weaknesses in conventional frameworks of 19th century Western imperialism, and in particular the notion of a division between “formal” and “informal” empire. Robinson and Gallagher, the leading theorists of informal imperialism, argued that the great powers sought to control only the bare minimum of what was necessary to ensure dominance. Such limited control often triggered unplanned effects, which then forced the imperial powers into more profound forms of engagement nonetheless. Thus, the absence of a “grand design” warranted many unintended effects, including the emergence of formal imperial structures. Simultaneously, their increased commitment could also cost the imperial powers, by losing influence over valuable tools of control such as mercantilist monopolies or political alliances. The 19th-century world often appeared partitioned through the Eurocentric lens of Western powers, encapsulated by simplistic slogans like the “Great Game” or the “Scramble for Africa.” However, this portrayal oversimplifies the realities on the ground, which were far more complex, polyvocal, and ambiguous in terms of actual control practices and power dynamics. In this panel, we focus on these practices and dynamics, investigating the limits of “empire” and the seeds of post-colonial structures, as important features of the political constructions that contributed to nineteenth-century globalization beyond the nominal framework of Western imperialism. The panel discusses how “dismotivation” among imperial architects to govern and unexpected choices, and responses, by various subjects – indigenous people, local rulers, rivalling imperial agents – frequently caused instability, often with revolutionary consequences for the imperial order. We analyze these processes from an ex-centric perspective, transcending notions of “center” versus “periphery”, and unveiling the striking multivocality of the Age of Empires.