By Steve Bell
This book was named “Book of the Year” by the Spectator, named “Best Summer Books of 2024: History” by the Financial Times, and received enthusiastic reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Affairs, etc. It has received such plaudits because it accords, in many ways, with the historic prejudices of British imperialism.
This is neither to deny Emerson’s academic weight, nor her ability as a historian. But recording “what happened?” involves a choice of material, and interpretation. The defence of empire is not explicit, but underlays the narrative, emerging here and there as ugly outcrops.
The history is essentially a diplomatic history of international relations. There is no social history. It details the activity of monarchs, diplomats, national politicians, and senior military personnel. This is ‘high politics’, without substantial economic conditions, let alone contradictory class forces.
Britain’s tradition of Russophobia
Early on Emerson notes the absence of knowledge in Britain about Russia. “The cumulative result of all this incomprehension was that at the end of the seventeenth century England’s moral, political and cultural contempt for Russia was unabated.” (p.24)
This continues, reviewing Peter the Great’s achievements, “Still, his country was seen as backward and his people lacking the moral and intellectual abilities of western Europe.” (p.25) And, on the brilliance of Catherine II, “…she never threw off the British view of her as an adulteress, usurper and woman guilty of regicide.” (p.37)
Russophobia was deeply ingrained in Britain and was constantly reinforced by political and diplomatic circles. When Catherine II refused to help Britain suppress the United States war of liberation, George III said, “She has not had the civility to answer in her own hand and has thrown out some expressions that may be civil to a Russian but certainly not to more civilised ones.” (p.41) The more civilised ones dominated the slave trade and accepted the leadership of an insane monarch.
The arrogance was not confined to royalty. “British diplomats appointed to Russia in the eighteenth century reacted very differently to their host country from the Russians in Britain. However much they were impressed by Russia’s dramatic westernization and greatly increased status as a power, an underlying disdain and attitude of inherent superiority and over-weening pride was never far away.” (p.60-61)
This broadly is the stance of official public opinion in Britain at the start of the nineteenth century. However, Emerson demonstrates that in making her judgement’s she too is touched by the national condescension. After learning how George III welcomed the assassination of Czar Paul in 1801, we are told: “The important difference between Britain and Russia was that in one case the periodic insanity of the monarch made no difference to the pursuit of national policy in a constitutional democracy; in the other absolutism meant that a deranged autocrat had to be murdered.” (p.91) In 1801, Parliament had an electorate of less than 1% of the adult population, hardly qualifying as a “constitutional democracy”.
Russophobia continued to be promoted as British domestic discourse during the nineteenth century. In response to the suppression of Poland: “Expansionist and savage came to be the widely held views of Russia in the British parliament, the press and informed opinion. There was now a new political alienation of Russia in addition to the geographic rivalry that already existed between the two powers. All Russian actions, even the most innocent, now came to be regarded with suspicion and a howl of moral outrage greeted any move which could be in any way interpreted as demonstrating ambitious and ruthless intent. Poland had contributed the essential element of the noble victim of tyranny to rapidly crystallizing British nineteenth-century Russophobia.” (p.152) The historian of the 21st Century ought to at least point out that those people denouncing Russia had an unmatched record of expansionism, savage acts, and the ruthless execution of imperial ambitions.
Denouncing the spectre
Emerson reveals a distaste for revolutions and revolutionaries. “To the last, Pitt strove to avoid war. But he had underestimated the fanaticism of the Jacobins, who seized the reins from the Girondins. They were flushed with victory abroad and elated by the carnage of foes at home.” (p.83) This is history as beloved by The Spectator. Was there nothing fanatical about the British colonial wars and expeditions? Were none of those litanies of looting and slaughter a cause of elation in Britain? The “inhumanity” of the revolutionaries more than excuses our national ‘excesses.’
Lest there be any doubt, the colonialists themselves provide the evidence of base interest.– “Pitt like his father, believed that Britain’s true interest lay outside Europe and that the war provided the opportunity to plunder colonies from France and to cripple French commerce.” (p.83)
Of course, the hostility towards the Jacobins is not because they were violent (as though monarchists are not!). It is much deeper. “The Jacobins of 1793 belonged to the most revolutionary class of the eighteenth century, the town and country poor. It was against this class, which had in fact (and not just in words) done away with its monarchs, its landowners and its moderate bourgeoisie by the most revolutionary measures, including the guillotine – against this truly revolutionary class of the eighteenth century – that the monarchs of Europe combined to wage war. The Jacobins proclaimed enemies of the people those ’promoting the schemes of the allied tyrants directed against the Republic’.” (1)
If, like Emerson, you refuse to address the class struggle in history then the struggle of the rising people within the nation can be written off as “fanaticism” or “terrorism” despite this movement freeing society of archaic social forces and institutions.
Emerson maintains this prejudice when looking at the new revolutionary movements after the 1861 abolition of serfdom. So, with reference to the late opposition to the Czar in the 1870’s, we read: “Land and Liberty was dissolved and replaced with two new organisations, the Black Partition, which favoured peaceful methods, and the more important faction, the People’s Will, Narodnaya Volya, for whom Jacobin-like terrorism was necessary before social revolution,” (p.297)
This is the same Emerson who, as we learnt above, defended the assassination of Czar Paul as a necessary maintenance of the wider autocratic government. However, the assassination in 1881 of Czar Alexander II was by “terrorists” and therefore indefensible. Yet Narodnaya Volya wanted to introduce political and democratic freedoms for the people. Which shows where a judgement leads if it follows from a two-hundred years prejudice against “Jacobinism.”
One of the most astonishing expressions of hostility to revolutionaries is the reference to the Decemberist rising on December 14, 1825. This is Emerson’s interpretation: “Led by a group of young officers who expressed naïve monarchism – the belief in the vital necessity of having a ‘true’ ruler on the throne – some 3,000 rebel troops took to the streets of St Petersburg. The governor general of the city was shot dead. Nicholas marshalled 9,000 loyal soldiers and the Decemberist uprising was put down. Five ringleaders were executed and many more rebels exiled for life in Siberia. Thus began a new era in imperial Russia, that of active political protest.” (p.140)
This interpretation has no resemblance to the reverence accorded to the Decemberists by generations of opponents of Czarism in Russia. Nor does it accord with the loving regard offered to these martyrs by writers from Pushkin to Tolstoy. The best refutation of the supposed “naïve monarchism” lies in the words of the Decemberists themselves.
One of the executed leaders of the Secret Society, Mikhail Bestulev-Riumen, writes: “Now has come of the liberation of the nations from the slavery that oppresses them, and it is possible that the Russians, who distinguished themselves with such brilliant exploits in a truly patriotic war, that the Russians, who rescued Europe from the Napoleonic yoke, will not throw off their own yoke, will not distinguish themselves by noble zeal when it comes to the salvation of the Fatherland, the happy transformation of which depends our love of freedom? Look at the people and see how they are oppressed… In these circumstances it was not difficult for our Society to spread and become powerful and menacing. Almost everyone with education either belongs to it or approves its aim. Many of those whom the government considers to be the most loyal support of the autocracy – that source of all evils – have been zealously assisting us.” (2)
The victory of the counter-revolution over the Decemberists had a profoundly negative impact on Russian society. “With the suppression of the Decemberists, the most educated and advanced representatives of the “society” of that time passed from the scene. This could not but considerably lower its moral and intellectual level. “Young as I was,” Herzen says, “I remember how markedly high society declined and became more sordid and servile with the ascension of Nicholas to the throne. The independence of the aristocracy and the dashing spirit of the Guards characteristic of Alexander’s time – all that disappeared in 1826.” (3)
Having done a disservice to the Decemberists, Emerson follows with an entirely gratuitous contemporary caricature. “Henceforth as emperor, Nicholas sought to separate Russia’s spiritual and intellectual life from that of western Europe with his mantra Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality. In ‘The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past’, Shaun Walker wrote of Russia in 2017 that President Putin believed that “the new Russia should be a continuation of the Tsarist empire, with its triple ideology of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality.” In terms of relevance and accuracy Emerson might just have easily quoted from any of the myriad daily sources of British Russophobia – but that would lack academic sheen.
Manufacturing opinion
This is manufacturing opinion, not recording history. It is consistent across the book. With reference to the Ottoman/Russian war in 1878, we are told: “The British fleet was at Constantinople and the entire population of the country was gripped with patriotic fervour directed against Russia. The term ‘jingo’ of course dates from this time.” (p.287)
This is the kind of colourless observation that flows from drawing on the official discourse. The “entire population” was not behind the official “patriotic fervour”, perhaps the majority, and perhaps a large majority. But the justification colonialism directs for its domestic population is a mute unanimity. Colonialism’s patriotism is an absolute identity between the overseas endeavour and the interests of the home population.
Such privilege is accorded by Emerson to other empires. After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, at his funeral we are told: “Despite the people’s former hostility towards the dead emperor on the snowy March day of the procession they turned out in large numbers.” (p.303) An act of forgiveness by the population in the imagination of the writer. Why not say the majority of the population hated a repressive autocrat, but a substantial number paid their respect at the funeral?
Absolutism as an institution is the guilty conscience of the bourgeoisie – it sheltered beneath it and grew. Best not to dissociate absolutism too far from “the people” – in it is the historic alibi for the bourgeoisie’s seizure of power on behalf of “the people.”
Colonialism is of course the most complete expression of acting on behalf of a population through a complete substitution of power. “Following the 1857 Government of India Act, the Indian government was made up of British government viceroys at the raj in Calcutta, while responsibility in London was held by the secretary of state for India. The Indian government had no Indian representatives.” (p.320) Yet Emerson insists on thereafter referring to “the Indian government,” never once disrupting the narrative to remind the reader of its absolutely unrepresentative and oppressive character. Why not drop in “the colonial government in India,” “the government of the occupying power,” or “the British dictatorial power in India”?
This is a general problem with Emerson’s writing on British colonial behaviour. After the repression of the Polish uprising in 1830, the Russian Czar had Poland incorporated into the Russian empire. Palmerston sent a despatch to St Petersburg which was mildly critical. The Russian Foreign Minister, Nesselrode, “retorted that Poland was a Russian internal matter in which neither Britain nor France had a right to interfere, and compared Poland to Ireland, a clearly false comparison as Ireland had been part of Great Britain for many centuries, but that Russia continued to use.” (p.150) As if the duration of oppression nullifies its existence! It is shocking to see this written in 2024 given the uninterrupted struggle of the Irish people against British colonialism in every century of its existence.
Regardless, Emerson is determined. Reviewing Russia’s response to British criticisms of Jewish pogroms in Russia, we read: “The long standing comparison with Ireland was dragged out that Russia did not interfere with ‘demonstrations in favour of the Irish.” (p.312) How tiresome that political opponents refuse to overlook British colonialism’s obvious cant and crimes.
But such self-confidence even allows a little genuflection towards objectivity. With reference to Britain’s military seizure of Egypt in 1882, we read: “It is also interesting to point out that in Britain’s unilateral action, in a situation that had been internationally established, she was doing what she had condemned Russia for having done over the Black Sea clauses in 1870.” (p.305) It is probably only “interesting” if you believe in the uniquely benign character of the British empire compared to those of the Russian, German, French, etc. But if you do not accept the national myth, then the conventional hypocrisy of British governments is simply routine.
A new view on the pogroms?
The chapter “The Pogroms” contains some important and interesting material on antisemitic campaigns in Russia. But it contains some remarkable assessments. We are told that the perpetrators were “…generally not peasants but roving bands of industrial workers from Moscow and St Petersburg… Joined by railway workers and local riff-raff, this lumpenproletariat took to the railways, travelling from town to town assaulting and robbing Jews.” (p.309)
The source for this being “Western Jewish scholars in recent years have made clear that the Russian government did not institute the pogroms.” Despite the book having forty pages of end notes and references, there are no references to these assertions. Equally notable is the absence of a single reference to “The Black Hundreds” – widely reported as instigators of pogroms whose connection to the Czarist secret police was taken for granted at the time. This is an enormous hole in the narrative.
Equally notable is how the response in British society to the pogroms is analysed. There are interesting reports on the relief efforts from the Jewish community in Britain. The official stance was more duplicitous: “The pogroms were widely reported in the British press to national condemnation of the Russian government for permitting, or not effectively stamping out, such barbarism. The British ambassador reported that “it is custom to efface the articles contrary to them before the papers are delivered to subscribers, and I have seen whole columns of The Times blotted out for this reason.” (p.311)
So, a little diplomatic censorship is used. A more complete representation of official opinion is the passing of the 1905 Aliens Act. This was the first piece of modern legislation against refugees and migrants. Its main aim was to prevent Jewish immigration from Russia and eastern Europe. Emerson believes this does not rate a mention. This piece of legislative anti-semitism set the pattern for the waves of racist immigration legislation after 1968.
British traditions of Sinophobia
“Following the defeat of China by Britain in the Opium War, the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 had opened up Shanghai, Canton and other cities to foreign trade. The treaty did little to stem the trade in opium despite the Chinese government’s objections. Free trade, not humanitarian arguments, prevailed, as far as the British government was concerned.” (p.241) Why would the treaty “stem the trade in opium” given that the victorious British government fought the war to guarantee sales of British owned opium crops from India? The rest of the world understands the crimes of the British empire because the peoples of the world were its victims. In Britain it is still possible to be disingenuous about those crimes.
Emerson’s commentary on the national uprising in 1900 carries the mark of traditional Sinophobia. “The sudden eruption of repressed Chinese xenophobia at the turn of the century took all the powers by surprise. The Chinese reaction to defeat by Japan had taken two opposing lines. The first was a demand for modernisation; the second a call for the expulsion of foreigners and a return to traditional seclusion. The latter won.” (p.406)
Of course, the counter position of modernisation and traditional seclusion has been raised an infinite number of times to justify imperialism. The modern, civilising force originates from the West, apparently. But after 1949, when the Chinese people “stood up”, they showed that expelling the foreign exploiters was a pre-condition for a sovereign development of their country.
Opposition to the colonisers from the Chinese people did not constitute “xenophobia” – it was the continuing national rebirth of China. “…the Yi Ho Tuan Movement has long been abused and slandered by the imperialists and all reactionary forces. In its own day, the imperialists labelled it a manifestation of “the hostility of the yellow race towards the white race” and of “Chinese hatred for European culture and civilization.” Imperialist lackeys dubbed it “irrational” … All the shameless abuse by the imperialists is refuted by the appraisal of the movement by the great revolutionary teacher Lenin, who wrote in 1900: “What made the Chinese attack Europeans, what caused the rebellion which the British, French, Germans, Russians, Japanese, etc., are so zealously crushing?… It is true the Chinese hate the Europeans, but which Europeans do they hate and why? The Chinese do not hate the European people, they never had any quarrel with them – they hate the European capitalists and the European governments obedient to them.” (4)
In 1900, Lenin understood the dynamics of a Chinese movement whose forward development reshaped the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Emerson’s respect for bourgeois commentary leads her to reproduce colonial slurs more than a hundred years later.
At least there was development?
The redeeming quality for colonialism has always been its supposed contribution to “development.” This is how this good narrative for the colonial rivalry of Britain and Russia in 1880’s Iran is deployed.
“What Salisbury aimed for was a partition of preponderance between Britain and Russia based on economic development. This would serve a dual function. It would mitigate the friction between Britain and Russia by reducing their points of contest, and at the same time strengthen Persia herself by the construction of railways, greater trade and industrial development and the flow of capital. Once the process began, other nations such as Germany and the United States would trade and invest in Persia – not only in the British sphere in the south, but also in the north, thus thwarting Russia’s desire for sole control. Thus, the question would be transformed from an Anglo-Russian into an international one.” (p.375)
Economic development as a by-product of colonialism is the enduring myth of imperialism. The facts speak otherwise. Where roads, railways and waterways were introduced they were directed towards the export of national resources; facilitating the movement of occupying armed forces; and the reproduction of external power relations. They were not built to promote the rational, effective advancement of the colonised nation’s competitive advantage or social needs.
In Iran, the continuous conflict between two empires meant that actual development was more suppressed than normal. Better to see no development than to see one’s rival benefit from it. Emerson explores the problems with railway building but leaves the reader with the impression that the failure was due to the Iranian monarchy.
Charles Issawi’s history of the Iranian economy illustrates how Iranian needs were not addressed. “The only concrete result of all these attempts was the six-mile railway from Tehran to the shrine of Shah Abd al-Azim, built by the Belgians in !888…. With the outbreak of the First World War, the immediate military needs of the competing imperialists had priority. But the railways built had the purpose of advancing troop movements… Iran had to wait until 1938 for a major line. Nor, until the late 1920s was this lack of railways compensated for by a significant amount of motor transport.” (5)
In conclusion
Emerson’s book is a popularisation, as well as an academic endeavour. The opening acknowledgements thank the late Queen Elizabeth II, and King Charles III, for access to the Royal Archives. Such research colours the book with a patina of genealogy, gossip and the liminal incestuousness of Europe’s royal families. Indeed, the whole chapter “The Battenbergs” nominally covers the conflict between Britain and Russia over Bulgaria. But it also traces out, and climaxes with the ancestry of the Mountbattens. A waste of good print.
This is history punctuated by a defence of the British Empire. It fails because it attempts to shoehorn the rivalry between the British and Russian empires into hugely different post 1914 conflicts. Is it really “The First Cold War” if it involves hot wars between Britain and Russia from 1807 to 1812 during the Napoleonic wars; and one of the most important wars of the 19th century, the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856?
After all, the actual Cold War from 1949 involved no direct wars between the USSR and the US, or the USSR and Britain. It feels as if we are being persuaded to accept the idea of a permanent, inevitable conflict between Britain and Russia. That not being the case, the grand narrative of the book falls.
The First Cold War: Anglo-Russian Relations in the 19th Century” Barbara Emerson, Hurst Publishers, 2024
Steve Bell is a member of Liberation and Treasurer of the Stop the War Coalition
The views expressed in the articles published on this website do not necessarily represent those of Liberation
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Notes
1) “The Enemies of the People”, V. Lenin, Collected Works Vol.25 p.57
2) “The First Breath of Freedom”, collection of Decemberist writings and material, Progress Publishers, 1988, P.124
3) “Art and Social Life”, G. Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works Vol.5, p.634
4) “The Yi Ho Tuan Movement of 1900”, Foreign Language Press, Peking 1976, p.125-126
5) “The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914”, Charles Issawi, University of Chicago Press, p152-156
