There is nothing new or unusual about postulating the fact that, relative to modern American norms, British society during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras was stratified according to wealth and class. In the British system, upward mobility was far more of an unlikely occurrence than in the rather liberal social system that we enjoy in modern America. This resulted in a type of social calcification that produced a hereditary class of social, political, and financial elites that perpetuated their status as rulers of the Empire by amassing social capital over generations and by limiting access to the corridors of power to ensure that only like minded individuals could join the ranks of the elites. Of course, the phenomenon of social elites disenfranchising the less powerful members of society is not in any way unique to this culture or time period, but what makes the British Empire noteworthy in this regard is the siege mentality adopted by the British elites when it came to the matter of social inequality. There was a pervasive fear on the part of the British upper class that the system of social stratification would somehow break down and social power would be diffused among the lower classes of society. This, the architects of the Empire believed, would result in the loss of Britain’s hard won military and economic preeminence on the world stage.
It is in this context, then, that one can best understand the role that racism played in the deep rooted social anxieties of the British upper class. The concept of inherent British racial superiority closely paralleled the concept of the inherent social superiority of the British elites in that they were both thought to be self-evident due to the existing circumstances[1]. In the view of the British upper class, the British were racially superior because they had subjugated all of the non-white races that they had come into conflict with and the British elites were socially superior because they had managed to keep the lower classes in Britain from clambering up the rungs of the social ladder and destroying the system in the process. Given this parallel, then, it is not surprising to find that British elites of the time asserting that “race and class cannot be separated”[2], which carries the implication that superiority and inferiority are matters of “heredity” (what we would today call genetics), and that this concept applies both within races as well as between them. While it is true that many leading British thinkers of the time certainly made these types of statements, and it is certainly easy to accept that these men felt it to be the case that racial and class concerns were inextricably intertwined, I believe that an examination of the nature of the fears as articulated by the British elites, as well as some of the social solutions that were proposed, reveal that class tensions in Britain during this period were often expressed not in terms of class but, rather, in terms of race. Simply put, I believe the evidence shows that in many instances where the British elites were expressing fears about race, they were, in actuality expressing fears about the class tensions that were slowly changing the nature of British society.
In 1926 Frederick Lugard, a fellow of the British Institute of Philosophical studies, gave an address to his peers in which he stated that the necessity for the “white race” to retain political and military power both at home and abroad because it alone is the keeper of “…civilization and an advanced system of government, which fears it should be submerged were the subject races, which are predominant in numbers, to gain absolute political equality”[3]. While this statement was ostensibly referring racial political equality at the far flung reaches of the Empire, the reader is left to wonder why this would require vigilance at home and how political equality among the races in South Africa could “submerge” civilization. This statement can be seen as illustrative of the impact that the colonial experience had on the British identity. One of the salient characteristics of the British Empire was that, in the colonies and dominions, the ruling minority was segregated in almost all aspects of life from the subjugated peoples. This separation could, at times produce a siege mentality, which one British lady in Cape Town described as “being surrounded by savages”[4]. As the Empire expanded and grew to become the largest the world had ever seen it was, perhaps, inevitable that the colonial experience would help to shape the mindsets of those individuals who oversaw the operation and maintenance of the Empire-the British elites.
The British Empire, like all successful empires, was maintained by force or the threat of force. Although there was a veneer of diplomacy at times, this could be considered something of “a pleasant fiction” to help along the process for the subjugated peoples. This power dynamic was not lost on the British, and it served to reinforce notions of British superiority. It also may have reinforced a domestic adversarial mindset that, arguably, may have existed since feudal times. To state this another way, power[5] was the foundation of the aristocracy’s position, and any real sharing of that power, whether with natives abroad or the lower classes at home, would serve to undermine the position of the British elites.
In addition to a worldview predicated upon the possession of power, the British elites also held a very firm notion of their obligation as bearers of civilization. In 1915, G.L. Beer described his reluctance “…to ignore the serious nature of the obligation incurred through having assumed responsibility for the welfare of the hundreds of millions of politically uneducated under the British flag”[6]. Such a statement seems jarring to our modern sensibilities because the fact that “assuming responsibility for the welfare” of those “hundreds of millions” was a reference to the practice of brutal subjugation and economic exploitation that kept the economy of the Empire solvent. Little wonder, then, that underneath this paternalism were deep insecurities about those “hundreds of millions of politically uneducated” subjects of the Empire. It is worth noting that some of those “politically uneducated” were white, British residents of the home country.
The period from the late Victorian age to the outbreak of World War Two was a time of social flux in Britain. There were progressive movements that emerged in British society which called for women’s suffrage and greater gender parity in public life, as well as a trend toward regulated capitalism and increased unionization. The Industrial Revolution had resulted in a high degree of rural to urban migration and the second generation of urban dwellers was beginning to demand a higher degree of social equity than what their parents had experienced upon arrival in the cities. Introduced into this mix was an increase in the number of migrants who arrived from the colonies and dependencies of the Empire who, because of their increased numbers, found it easier than it ever before to resist assimilation and retain the customs, dress, religion, and language of their homelands[7]. These, then, were the social and cultural forces that challenged the power and paternalism of the British elites in the heart of the Empire.
For a British upper class, long accustomed to viewing power as a zero sum proposition, and who had very firm ideas about the lack of fitness on the part of their inferiors to wield such power responsibly (which is to say in the interests of the elites), these new social developments represented a threat to the existing imperial order that must be challenged at every turn. Interestingly, one of the primary methods of challenging these forces of social change would be the aristocracy’s attempts to sway public opinion by appealing to patriotism and tradition[8]. In 1897 P.E. Matheson, writing in The International Journal of Ethics, imagines the British common man wondering “What are our plain duties as citizens at home in England?” to which Matheson thoughtfully provides the answer, which is to “realize the unity of the state, transcending all class differences, all sectional and sectarian jealousies; realize the personal responsibility of each citizen”[9]. It is doubtful that the cynical duplicity of the appeal by a member of the British aristocracy to “transcend all class differences” would have been lost on any member of the British working class who actually read this piece in 1897. On their own such appeals would have had little effect in tempering social change among the disaffected lower classes. However, when such appeals were made in the framework of the increasing racial tensions of the time, the visceral jingoism of even the working class Englishmen could be aroused. Here, then, is where the student of history can find the intersection of the social concerns of race and class as internalized and articulated by British elites.
Dan Stone, in his article Race in British Eugenics, asserts that the main preoccupation with the British eugenics movement of the time was “A desire to protect the British Empire, to resist the political aspirations of feminism and organized labour, and racist beliefs in the superiority of the British race”[10]. Stone also notes that there was, among the elites, a belief that such obviously deficient political ideas held strong attractions to the lower classes[11] because of their “feeble mindedness” which came about as a result of careless breeding[12]. One of the major preoccupations of the British aristocracy of the time was the promotion and promulgation of what were thought of as “traditional” British values, which primarily consisted of indoctrination into the merits of the British class system. Young women of good birth were quickly brought into the social fold and taught the differences between the classes and between the races. Indeed, as part of Lord Alfred Milner’s philosophy of “Race Patriotism” white women held the role of “Empire Mothers” and were seen as both repositories of sound genetic material and proper British values, both of which were to be passed along to the next generation of British elites[13]. However, even though such grandiose (and self-serving) ideas reflect the internalizations among the upper class, the way that concerns over social change were articulated to the masses had a decidedly more prurient tone.
Prior to World War One, the presence of black and other foreigners on British soil was strongly linked to the problems of crime, vice, and disease. The East in the West, an unnervingly candid racist “guidebook” of the time, purports to reveal to Londoners the “haunts of heathenism in the very heart of the great Christian city”[14]. The fact that this book was intended for mass consumption is no doubt the reason that it dwells almost exclusively on disease, sexual predation, slavery, strange religious customs, drug addiction, thievery, idleness, and the general lack of law and order to be found in the ethnic enclaves of greater London. The warning of this work, written by a well bred missionary, was clear- these people were not English[15], and they present a threat to the English way of life. For example is the cautionary tale of “Lascar Sally” an Englishwoman who had “sunk in low as the social scale” as to live in the Chinese slums of London and acquire “the language and habits of the Lascars”, she was forced to quit her “original trade” (prostitution among the Chinese) due to Opium addiction and eventually died due to the physical toll of an attempted withdrawal from the drug[16]. The moral here is clearly that English people will be degraded by allowing foreign influences to take root in their society[17].
After World War One, British social concerns were joined by economic concerns as the aftermath of the Great War began to take a toll on the British economy. Bush notes that during this time race riots broke out in several large cities in Britain over economic tensions and that “the government linked these ‘race riots’ to the widespread unrest in the U.S., Jamaica, and Africa, as well as to unstable post-war economic conditions, and pressed for further control of ‘subversive’ Bolshevism and Garveyism in Britain and the colonies” [18]. In response the British government instituted a new round of legislation aimed at limiting the flow of immigration into the British mainland. Thus the role of the British establishment as protector of the interests of Englishmen everywhere was once again reinforced.
During the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, the preeminent social position of the British upper class was being eroded by new social norms, increasing demands for political participation from heretofore quiet sectors of society, and the strains of maintaining a diverse and far-flung empire. Although, for most of the British elites, the concerns about race and class may have been thoroughly intertwined, it is possible for the student of history to disentangle the perception of threat from the reality of the threat posed to the social position of the aristocracy. Economic liberalization in the colonies, social liberalization at home, feminism and woman’s suffrage, alternate political philosophies, and an erosion of the importance of the class system all served to undermine the position of the British elites. Each of these factors had two things in common- first, all of these changes would mostly serve to benefit those members of British society on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale and, secondly, none of these factors could be said to be truly caused by racial dynamics. Yet, this did not stop the British elites from drawing connections between miscegenation, dilution of English blood, feeble mindedness, foreign influence and the vast social changes that were taking place in the heart of the empire. The very real threats to the position of the British aristocracy during this period were ultimately articulated using the straw man of racial danger.
Bibliography
Avebury, Sir J. Lubbock . "Inter Racial Problems." Fortnightly Review no. 90 (1911): 581-589
Beer, George Louis. "Lord Milner and British Imperialism." Political Science Quarterly 2, no. 30 (1915): 301-308. JSTOR. [Database online.] The Academy of Political Science.
Bush, Barbara. Imperialism, Race, and Resistance. Florence, KY: Routledge, 1999. Accesses via Ebrary.
Bush, Julia. "Edwardian Ladies and the 'Race' Dimensions of British Imperialism." Woman's Studies International Forum 3, no. 21 (1998): 277-289. Elsevier. [Database online.]
Davis, N. Darnell. Mr. Froude's Negrophobia. The Argosy Press: Demarara,1888.
Lugard, Frederick. "The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality." Journal of Philosophical Studies 2, no. 1 (1926): 211-233. JSTOR. [Database online.] Cambridge University Press.
Matheson, P. E.. "Citizenship." The International Journal of Ethics 1, no. 8 (1897): 22-40. JSTOR. [Database online.] Chicago Journals.
Merriam-Labor, A.B.C.. Britons through Negro Spectacles or a Negro on Britain with a Description of London. Imperial and Foreign Company: London, 1909.
Salter, J.. The East in the West, or Work among the Asiatics and Africans in London . S.W. Partridge and Co.: London,1896.
Spillar, G., Ed.. Papers on Inter Racial Problems Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress. P.S. King and Son: London, 1911.
Stone, Dan. "Race in British Eugenics." European History Quarterly 3, no. 31 (2001): 397-425. Sage Publications. [Database online.]
[1] Bush, Julia. "Edwardian Ladies and the 'Race' Dimensions of British Imperialism." Woman's Studies International Forum 3, no. 21 (1998): 282 “It is the British race which built the Empire, and it is the undivided British race which can alone uphold it”-Milner. This line of reasoning may be wryly expressed as the fact that the British Empire exists is proof enough that is should exist.
[2] Stone, Dan. "Race in British Eugenics." European History Quarterly 3, no. 31 (2001): 398
[3] Lugard, Frederick. "The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality." Journal of Philosophical Studies 2, no. 1 (1926): 212. This was specifically mentioned in relation to South Africa which was, interestingly, not experiencing any significant racial unrest at the time.
[4] Bush, Julia 283.
[5] Depending on the setting, this may have been economic, political, or military power. In the minds of the elites, selling a Maxim gun to Africans or admitting the lower classes to elite educational institutions both amounted to the same thing-a dilution of the advantage conferred by power.
[6] Beer, George Louis. "Lord Milner and British Imperialism." Political Science Quarterly 2, no. 30 (1915):308
[7] Bush, Barbara. Imperialism, Race, and Resistance. Florence, KY: Routledge, 1999, 210. Bush argues that endemic racism was a major contributing factor in the formation of the ethnic enclaves that helped to provide an alternative to assimilation into a society which was hostile to the newcomers at every social level.
[8] This may be due to the relatively advanced nature of the British civil code, which made the curtailing of certain civil liberties impractical.
[9] Matheson, P. E.. "Citizenship." The International Journal of Ethics 1, no. 8 (1897): 37.
[10] Stone, Dan 404. Feminism and trade unions were the two most frequently mentioned social dangers and were repeatedly linked with left leaning political ideologies such as Bolshevism. The additional link between Bolshevism and anti-Semitism should not be overlooked.
[11] ibid. 405. Here, charmingly described by a medical officer as “degenerates” who are “polluting the stream of national health by throwing into it human rubbish”.
[12] ibid. 414
[13] Bush, Julia 282.
[14] Salter, J.. The East in the West, or Work among the Asiatics and Africans in London . S.W. Partridge and Co.: London,1896. 18
[15] I use the term “English” here because this book deals exclusively with London, although it mentions that similar things are occurring throughout the British main.
[16] Salter, 34-35
[17] One wonders how this compared in the minds of Londoners with Hogarth’s quintessentially English portrayal of Gin Lane.
[18] Bush, Barbara 206
