Britain: Land Beyond Hope and Glory?

A cursory look at a map of the world at any time between the years 1765 and 1965 would confirm the impression that the British Empire was central to the British experience and identity. At its height the Empire and Commonwealth encompassed a quarter of the human race and nearly a fifth of the world’s land surface. Kipling’s celebrated description of ‘dominion over palm and pine’ was entirely apt, and for good measure could have included dominion over tundra, veld, desert, tropical rainforest, much of the high seas, equatorial jungle, prairie and polar ice.

Now that Hong Kong has been handed back to China, and all that remains of the greatest of Empires, apart from the icy wastelands of Antarctica, are a few unprofitable specks of red on the map, what did it all amount to? This is a particularly tricky question to address as the century draws to a close. For three-and-a-half decades the Empire has trickled away, while the Commonwealth has been reduced to, at best, a fitfully relevant international organisation, and, at worst, to a barely understood geographical expression. At the same time, Europe – as expressed by the European Union – has acquired great potency and portent, whether as a concrete reality or as a concept capable of arousing both passionate support and the most bitter hostility. Recently within Britain, public attention has concentrated almost exclusively upon the great European questions of the day rather than Empire-Commonwealth issues. For the British, few of the relative certainties of the late 1950s remain intact, from the prospect of regular economic growth and full employment, to the long-term prospects of the House of Windsor. Even the future of the United Kingdom is unclear as a result of the vote of the Scottish and Welsh people in favour of devolution.