The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

42

One can
say that in some respects the Empire was not British at all. Barely
12% of its people were European, let
alone British. Its most commonly practiced
religions were Hinduism and Islam, not Christianity, British
administration had
hardly penetrated the hinterlands of some of the more recently acquired colonies
in
Africa or the Pacific. “Yet the British were in the process of stamping a clear,
although sometimes
light, mark on this vast conglomeration of territories and
people.”16 The British provided the administrative personnel and much of the
investment, just
as they dominated the Empire’s trade. The component parts of
the Empire were linked together by the
English language, English legal and
constitutional procedures, English educational standards and the British
monarch.
The full weight of Britain’s diplomatic resources could be put at the Empire’s
service.
The Royal Navy, which had helped to create and had grown with the
Empire, patrolled the high seas. Apart from
diversity in the human and
geographical characteristics in the Empire, there were diversities in the way
of
running the Empire as there had been in its acquisition. It could be said that the
Empire fell into
three categories.

First of
all, there was the colonial Empire, the colonies. These were the
West Indies, and leftovers from the
disintegrated North American Empire, which
by the start of the twentieth century were characterised by an
extensive history of
impoverishment and unemployment. The once prosperous sugar islands now
offered
problems rather than profits. Starting in the Mediterranean, Egypt, the
Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Somaliland
on the one flank and Aden and the Persian
Gulf protectorates on the other, together with strategically
important points such
as Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus, marked out the vital route to India. Ceylon
with
its naval base at Trincomalee was an essential staging post on the run to the Far
East and
Australia. On the route to South Africa was the colonial African empire,
the most complicated category of
British possession.

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