The Impact of Empire on Interwar British Society, In a Bite-Sized Chunk
Today, I come to you bearing something different — a history essay that isn’t necessarily war-related. Instead I want to share with you a piece I wrote a long time ago, back in my first year of studying for my degree (believe it or not, there was a time before COVID-19). In this piece, I ask and elaborate upon the simple question of what impact the Great British ethos of Empire had on the society of the nation itself, particularly focusing on the period between the First and Second World Wars.
But in order to do that, it is as necessary as it is germane to define what ‘Empire’ actually is to begin with. At first glance, it merely derives from the British Empire that was established in the seventeenth century and lasted for many hundreds of years and into the Cold War. To define Empire with such a simplistic outlook, however, is highly naïve.
Historians such as John Mackenzie point out that there is so much more to Empire than meets the eye. In his essay The Popular Culture of Empire in Britain, he argues that imperialism was well entrenched in society and formed a vital aspect of it — “many more British people had a knowledge of the Empire because of personal, professional, religious and cultural experiences”. For many Britons, the Empire was a source of great national pride: it was a monument to their nation’s success and domination over what we would now call the Third World. Faith in the Empire was reinforced through a number of different media — one example that Mackenzie uses is the British Empire Exhibition (held in 1924–25 at Wembley), an event he describes as “partly a celebration of imperial achievement, partly a gigantic advertisement for the Empire, and partly an exercise in reassurance”.
Such ‘reassurance’ was necessary for the people of Britain, who six years earlier had come out of the First World War — Britain had been almost crippled by the protracted four-year conflict with the Central Powers. In addition, two years earlier in 1922, the Irish Free State had been formed as a result of a tremendous insurrection by republican elements, causing one of Britain’s oldest colonies to break away in a serious blow to national pride. At the same time, however, the Empire had absorbed most of Germany’s former colonies and a formidable chunk of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war — this mark of the Imperial zenith was eagerly seized upon at the Exhibition.
The Imperial ethos was promoted not just by the Exhibition, the largest of its kind ever held (with 27 million visitors), but by the media as well. One of the main propagandists of Empire that Mackenzie describes was the nascent British Broadcasting Corporation, which — in his words — “viewed the Empire as a significant source of broadcasting material and a topic of central concern to national life”. As radio and television really began to take flight and see more widespread use in the ordinary sphere, many ordinary people were exposed on an exponential basis to the ideology of Empire.
The promotion of imperialism was facilitated by not just the BBC, but a number of renowned authors as well, among them Agatha Christie, Robert Seeley and Rudyard Kipling, with pieces like the novel The Man Who Would Be King and the essay The Expansion of England (written, respectively, by Kipling and Seeley) being used to bring the Empire ideology to the wider population.
In spite of this seemingly overwhelming presence of imperialist propaganda, some historians — particularly Bernard Porter — argue that the impact of the Empire on British society was not as colossal as is suggested. Porter claims that the Empire’s impact was, at best, negligible: it “made no great material demands on most people, at least none that they were aware of, and did not need their support or even interest. All that was required was a minimum of apathy”.
Porter goes on to state that the primary raison d’etre of the British Empire was “for mainly material reasons”, to supply the mother country with resources such as consumer goods. It is true that consumerism was a huge factor in the upkeep of the Empire, but in my opinion this does not make the Empire a total irrelevancy. If anything, consumerism would have helped to promote Empire, as goods brought in from all around the globe would have served as a staunch reminder to the British people of the Empire’s presence.
It is here, therefore, that the question of the impact of the ideology of Empire had upon British society is to be answered. I am generally of the opinion that its impact was considerable, and yet I also accept that it was not as massive as it could have been for a number of reasons. The Empire’s continued existence did not, for the most part, necessitate its acceptance by its inhabitants, but such acceptance boosted the Empire’s integrity to a formidable degree.
Thank you all for reading, and I will see you again soon.
~ Harry