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François
POIRIER, professeur de civilisation britannique
CAPES
et agrégation 2005 et 2006
News
from Nowhere (1890) de William Morris
Morris
and Empire
William Morris approaches the issue of imperialist expansion
on two occasions in News from Nowhere.
1. Occupying a void, emptying
the overflow
Ch 10
"I am rather surprised,"
said I, "by all this, for it seems to me that after all the country must
be tolerably populous."
"Certainly," said he; "the
population is pretty much the same as it was at the end of the nineteenth
century; we have spread it, that is all.
Of course, also, we have helped to populate other countries-- where
we were wanted and were called for."
This first quotation seems to be incredibly naive and
self-deluded. But it is the inevitable position from the point of view
of a country that feels overpopulated, considers that some part of the
world are quasi-deserts in need of a labour force, and that living in the
wide open space of the new world is necessarily better than living in the
overcrowded, cramped conditions of British slums and factories. This is
the view behind the philanthropic drive towards the organisation of emigration,
especially for 'pauper children' and orphans. You can view a series of
related documents from 1869 to 1929 on this website (click
here). At a more abstract level, it is the stance taken by John
Ruskin in his famous Lectures on Art first published in 1870, in
which he associated artistic development to the quality of society, and
exclaimed that the only salvation for England was to found colonies "as
fast and as far as she is able" (click here
for the whole relevant extract, pp. 33-40 in John RUSKIN, Lectures on
Art (1870), London: George Allen, 1894, viii+276 p.). A major reissue
of the book, with a new preface, was printed in 1887-88, which means it
is extremely likely that Morris re-read the book shortly before he began
writing News from Nowhere.
2. Exposing the callousness of
imperialism
Ch 15
The appetite of the World-Market
grew with what it fed on: the countries within the ring of 'civilisation'
(that is, organised misery) were glutted with the abortions of the market,
and force and fraud were used unsparingly to 'open
up' countries OUTSIDE that pale. This process of 'opening
up' is a strange one to those who have read the professions of the men
of that period and do not understand their practice; and perhaps shows
us at its worst the great vice of the nineteenth century, the use of hypocrisy
and cant to evade the responsibility of vicarious
ferocity. When the civilised World- Market coveted
a country not yet in its clutches, some transparent
pretext was found--the suppression of a slavery different from and
not so cruel as that of commerce; the pushing of a religion no longer believed
in by its promoters; the 'rescue' of some desperado or homicidal madman
whose misdeeds had got him into trouble amongst the natives of the 'barbarous'
country--any stick, in short, which would beat the dog at all. Then
some bold, unprincipled, ignorant adventurer
was found (no difficult task in the days of competition), and he was bribed
to 'create a market' by breaking up whatever
traditional society there might be in the doomed country, and by destroying
whatever leisure or pleasure he found there. He
forced wares on the natives which they did not want, and took their
natural products in 'exchange,' as this form of robbery
was called, and thereby he 'created new wants,'
to supply which (that is, to be allowed to live by their new masters) the
hapless, helpless people had to sell themselves into the
slavery of hopeless toil so that they might have something wherewith
to purchase the nullities of 'civilisation.' Ah," said the old man,
pointing the Museum, "I have read books and papers in there, telling strange
stories indeed of civilisation (or organised misery) with 'non-civilisation';
from the time when the British Government deliberately sent blankets infected
with small-pox as choice gifts to inconvenient tribes of Red-skins, to
the time when Africa was infested by a man named Stanley,
who--"
"Excuse me," said I, "but
as you know, time presses; and I want to keep our question on the straightest
line possible; and I want at once to ask this about these wares made for
the World-Market--
The time when Africa was 'infested' by Stanley was Morris's
own time, as Stanley's last expedition was in progress as Morris was setting
to write his romance. The first expedition, in the early 1870s, had let
to his 'relieving' Dr Livingstone, and was funded by the New York Herald
-- this led to the publication of How I Found Livingstone (1872).
He then, as war correspondent for the New York Herald, covered the
British expedition in West Africa (Coomassie and Magadala: the Story
of Two British Campaigns in Africa, 1873). His second exploratory expedition,
in the mid-1870s, funded by both the New York Herald and the Daily
Telegraph of London, led to the publication of Through the Dark
Continent (1878). He then helped Leopold, King of Belgium, to organise
the Congo 'Free' State, which was duly recognised by the Berlin conference
of 1884-85, which Stanley attended. His last expedition was organised in
support of Emin Pasha, the governor of the southern province of Egypt,
and led to his writing In Darkest Africa (1890), published at the
same time as News from Nowhere, and leading to the publication in
the same year of the famous Salvation Army Book, In Darkest England.
Although popular as an adventurer, his brutality aroused considerable antipathy
in intellectual and socialist circles.
Here is an excerpt
of a popular magazine of the period (Cassell's Family Magazine,
June 1889), giving news of quasi nowhere in Africa, where Stanley is battling
against odds, nature and people. Especially people who, when resisting
his advance, are said to be 'incorrigibly vindictive'.
In general, a good example of the forcing "of wares on
the natives" and the creation of "new wants" leading to "the slavery of
hopeless toil" was opium, forced upon the Chinese government by the British,
supported by the French, in two wars (1839-1842 and 1860s). This was part
of an ongoing debate, as evidenced, inter alia, by a pamphlet published
in 1881, purporting to be the work of a Chinese historian written in the
year 2881 (The Decline and Fall of the British Empire. Being the History
of England between the years 1840-1981. Written for the use of Junior Classes
in Schools. By Lang-Tung, professor of history at the Imperial University
of Pekin, and tutor to their Imperial Highnesses the Princes Sing and Hang.
Translated into the English Language by Yea, Pekin, 2881 A.D., London:
F.V. White & Co., 1881, 32 p.).
3. The view of present-day historians
-
MORRIS, James (Jan) (2), Pax Britannica (1969), Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1979, 544 p.
After noting that the War Office published a book called
Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, Jan Morris goes on p.
418: "The British armies fought their little wars with a calculated
ferocity inconceivable to most patriots at home. During the Afghan frontier
campaigns of 1897 no holds were barred: all prisoners were killed (on both
sides), many villages were burnt to the ground, nobody who resisted the
Raj could expect mercy. 'There is no doubt that we are a very cruel people',
Churchill wrote home from the frontier." And p. 484, this passing reference:
"Kitchener was dealing with the Mahdi — or, as Sir Walter Besant put
it in an article that summer, 'inspiring with a wholesome dread of the
British name the death-despising hordes of the Sudan'." [That is in
1898. Walter Besant 1836-1901 was the brother-in-law of Annie Besant, who
masterminded the match-girls strike in 1888 and became President of the
Indian National Congress in 1917.]
-
MORRIS, James (Jan) (1), Heaven's Command (1975),
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979, 554 p.
See in particular pages 50, 72, 114, for summaries of the
main argument.
Also:
-
COLLEY, Linda, Captives. Britain, Empire and the World
1600-1850, London: Jonathan Cape, 2002, xx+438 p.
-
FERGUSON, Niall, Empire. How Britain Made the Modern World
(2003), London: Penguin Books, 2004, xxviii+422 p.
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